Reviews for Culture first!

The average rating for Culture first! based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-23 00:00:00 david tuminello As a discourse on "the epistemology of art" Critique of Taste might leave you feeling skeptical, as it did me. Why would I ever want to "penetrate the chaos" of all ambiguity, for instance? I think Della Volpe is missing something here, and we are not just talking some ideological phantoms, or "aesthetic mysticism." I'll just leave it at finding meaning in literature is an act of interpretation, not some exacting "scientific" enquiry. Della Volpe is nevertheless a very sensitive and knowledgeable reader; there is plenty insight to glean from this short volume, despite its tendentiousness. Another thing of interest about this book is its historical situation. Della Volpe's "scientific method" here is built on top of structural linguistics (I don't want to get into it, but his idea is that structural linguistics, mixed with a pinch of Marxist dialectics, "proves" his case on poetics unequivocally). Originally published in 1960, Critique of Taste outlines what you could call an Italian version of Structural Marxism. Certainly not as impactful as Althusser's work, but this book is an interesting historical artifact nonetheless.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-24 00:00:00 Stefano Boych This book contains essays of great value for those who want to find writers who advocates the same opinions of a certain subject. I enjoyed reading Pope essay and discovering it. Also Oscar Wild's and Blake's It is a must have for scholars, it serves as a dictionary for me whenever I want to find a writer who shares the same opinion as mine to backup my arguments.