Kivy proposes a new strategy for defining fine art in a lucid study of literature and music.

Peter Kivy is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, at Rutgers University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on aesthetics and philosophy of art, including De Gustibus: Arguing About Taste and Why We Do It (OUP, 2015), Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Cornell UP, 2009), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (2004) and Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music (OUP, 2009). Several of his books have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a past President of the American Society for Aesthetics.

Preface; 1. How We Got Here, and Why; 2. Where we are; 3. Reading and representation; 4. On the unity of form and content; 5. The laboratory of fictional truth; 6. The quest for musical profundity; 7. The liberation of music; Epilogue; Notes; Bibliography.