ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to answer the question, ‘What is enchantment?’ It considers the most important characteristics and dynamics of the wonder at the heart of enchantment: its metaphoricity, liminality and concrete magic in greater depth, including the last as ‘upstream’ of any foundational distinction between subjective (etc.) and objective (etc.); its foundational contrast with will and power; its participatory nature; its constitutive relationality; its tensive truth-function; its mythic provenance in Hermes; its inherent impermanence; and its wildness, and therefore unbiddability and uselessness. Sources of theoretical illumination range from Tolkien, Auden, Hoban, and Wallace Stevens to William James, Merleau-Ponty, Bateson, and Zwicky. A sharp contrast is also drawn between enchantment and both the Apollonian mode of cold control and the Dionysian mode of hot union. These subjects are also discussed in more detail specifically in the context of art. Another contrast is drawn with modernism as the ideology of modernity, especially in art. The idea of art as autotelic (its own end) is discussed and defended. The programmatic disenchantment of modernism is analysed and criticised at some length, particularly in relation to artistic wonder, and the influence of Benjamin is questioned. Finally, there is a discussion of Palæolithic cave art, and some other arts as well as crafts in relation to their enchantment.
