ABSTRACT
Contextual background John Dewey, a seminally important educational thinker, gives us a sense of artistic endeavour as a state of alertness to present reality, in a way that makes a neat contrast to the humanities’ (justifi able) concerns with past and future, and points to yet another facet of interdisciplinary English:
Only when the past ceases to trouble and anticipations of the future are not perturbing is a being wholly united with his environment and therefore fully alive. Art celebrates with particular intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what now is.
