Books by Angus Fletcher

'Fascinating. It blew my mind!' - Malcolm GladwellWonderworks reveals that literature is among the mightiest technologies that humans have ever invented, precision-honed to give us what our brains most want and need.

In a bold and boundary defining work, Angus Fletcher clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining literature and topology-a branch of mathematics-he maps the ways the imagination's contours are formed by the spherical earth's patterns and cycles, and shows how the world we inhabit also inhabits us.

Fletcher reveals how early modern science and English poetry were in many ways elements of one process: discovering the secrets of motion. Beginning with the achievement of Galileo, the book identifies the problem of motion as the central cultural issue of the time, pursued through the poetry, from Marlowe and Shakespeare to Ben Jonson and Milton.

Intense, resonant, and deeply literary, this account of an American poetics shows how today's consumerist and conformist culture subverts the imagination of a free people. Poetry, the author maintains, is central to any coherent vision of life.

Revealing the immense richness of the allegorical tradition, this book demonstrates how allegory works in literature and art, as well as everyday speech, sales pitches, and religious and political appeals. It shows how allegor expresses fundamental emotional and cognitive drives, and relates it to a wide variety of aesthetic devices.