About this item
Library Journal11/15/2013 There have been many studies of the idea of genius, but a signal virtue of this new account is its comprehensiveness. Rather than start in the 18th century, when the modern idea of genius emergedas an exceptional quality located not in God but in manor with the 19th-century Romantic poets' exaltation of genius as a kind of "divine fury," McMahon (history, Florida State Univ.; Happiness: A History) begins with the ancients, contrasting the Roman notion of ingenium with varied interpretations of genius in modern times. Crucial to the change in meaning of the term was "the waning of mimetic aesthetics," the idea that art was imitation rather than creation. Uniqueness and creativity became the hallmarks of genius from the 18th century on: "The man of genius has a way of seeing, of feeling, of thinking," wrote Diderot, "unique to him alone.
About the Author
Darrin M. McMahon is a historian, author, and public speaker, who lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and the Ben Weider Professor of History at Florida State University.
