Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Throughout history artists, writers and musicians - 'creative' people - have tried to outdo God or the Gods in the acts of creation. This extraordinarily wide-ranging study traces the different concepts of creation in Western civilization, following the struggle between man and god for the right to create, and even the right to create gods. Along the way it becomes what is in essence a new history of Western civilization, a series of thirty-three chapters brimming with ideas, insights and erudition. It touches upon religion, art and artistry, alchemy, mystical traditions, opera, film, literature, linguistics, psychoanalysis, psychology and physics, among many other things, exploring what it means to create, as well as the popular myths of creation from every conceivable angle. The result is a breathtaking overview of man's uncrushable impulse to create, and his endless rivalry with the gods.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 0 Something from Nothing (p. 6)
• 1 Meetings with the Maker (p. 11)
• 2 In the Beginnings (p. 29)
• 3 Out of the Chasm (p. 51)
• 4 Cubing the Egg (p. 69)
• 5 In Verbo (p. 81)
• 6 The Supreme Artisan (p. 103)
• 7 Another God (p. 119)
• 8 The Great Work (p. 139)
• 9 Our Own Unmaking (p. 159)
• 10 Author of Himself (p. 171)
• 11 To Create More Worlds (p. 187)
• 12 Uncreating Words (p. 211)
• 13 Nature Caught in the Act (p. 229)
• 14 Jehovah, Jupiter, Fu and Brahma (p. 251)
• 15 Sky Stories (p. 271)
• 16 Protoplasts (p. 293)
• 17 The God of Steam (p. 315)
• 18 Go Forth and Multiply (p. 337)
• 19 Pangenesis (p. 351)
• 20 New Eve, Old Adam (p. 373)
• 21 Begetter and Bearer (p. 389)
• 22 Deicide (p. 409)
• 23 Out of the Canyon (p. 421)
• 24 The First Artists (p. 431)
• 25 Prime Movers (p. 441)
• 26 Creatures of Prometheus (p. 453)
• 27 God's Finger, Man's Hand (p. 473)
• 28 Let There Be Sound (p. 493)
• 29 Children of Chaos (p. 509)
• 30 Psychogenesis (p. 525)
• 31 Creating the Creation (p. 537)
• 32 World-Building (p. 553)
• 33 The Bright Destroyer (p. 567)
• List of Illustrations (p. 585)
• Index (p. 587)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this expansive and often electrifying exploration, Oxford English professor Conrad (Modern Times, Modern Places) aims to present "a celebration of art that doubles as a critique of religion." His supreme faith is in human, not divine creators, and though he thinks it "unfashionable," his premise is that artistic genius does indeed exist. Plato, Mozart, Michelangelo, Schoenberg and Wagner are not surprisingly among the many examples; Mary Shelley and Hildegard of Bingen are among the few women discussed at any length. Thirty-three chapters are thematically arranged, probing concepts of creation in a sometimes dizzying, often brilliant fusion of the linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical. When focused on one artist or period, Conrad's ideas are most acute, his arguments most intrepid, as in the chapter on Leonardo. His conclusion that man is both a creator and destroyer, and that the beauty of aesthetic forms can deliver us from the world's "entropic decay" is hardly new, yet the book's vigorous, engagement with these ideas and others gives it a potency that will appeal to both general and scholarly readers. 160 illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Conrad's treatments of art, music, and literature (his other titles include Cassall's History of English Literature, CH, May'04, 41-5140) are always lucid but massive. Rather than engage in detailed analysis, Conrad (English, Christ Church, Oxford) structures his books in short, manageable chapters and offers detailed reprises of innumerable literary and other works to tell a broad history. Here he uses his remarkable range and aesthetic sensitivity in service of a very big idea: he takes on the history of the notion of creativity--material, divine, and human--looking at literature, art, and music in conversation and competition with religion and science. Conrad's main point here is that the arts set the pace for the long march from views of divinely made existence to an acceptance that humanity makes its own worlds of meaning. The study's other purpose, never openly delimited, is to chart Anglo-American high culture from the Middle Ages to 9/11, including Western philosophical, musical, and literary cultures (especially French, Italian, and German) pertinent to that tradition. The main contours of humanity's gradual self-recognition as chief creator will not surprise (the Renaissance and the Romantics loom large), but no other book samples this cultural and artistic trajectory so acutely and capaciously. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. A. Galloway Cornell University