安格斯·弗莱彻被认为是最优秀的艺术理论家之一，继承了I.A.理查兹、埃里希·奥尔巴赫和诺斯罗普·弗莱的传统。这本书的目的是打开另一个研究领域：思考——行为，思考的经验——是如何在文学中表现出来的。弗莱彻认识到形式哲学领域只是思维使用的一种证明，他寻找其他语言（及其框架形式）为某些思维活动的目的服务的方式。什么样的思维伴随着历史的书写？灵知句是如何表达某种信仰的？弗莱彻所获得的洞见暗示了一种诗歌和虚构的表达思想的策略——危险、复杂、痛苦和思想的浪漫。读者体验了他对弥尔顿笔下的撒旦的想象，撒旦是一位独创的思想家，把思考的痛苦留给了人类；漫威的《绿荫中的绿色思想》神秘地萦绕在人们心头；旧约和希罗多德；维科和柯勒律治；克雷恩，卡尔维诺和史蒂文斯。弗莱彻的研究范围涉及文学、诗歌、音乐和电影，他从未忘记自己的中心研究方向。他对不清晰、模糊甚至非理性思维的重要作用进行了评论，认为只有在相当痛苦的过程中，思想才会作为思想而活跃起来。最后，他给了我们文学——不是思想的内容，而是它的形式，它的形状，以及在艺术中表现出来的思想所呈现的飘忽不定的色彩。
Colours of the Mind: Conjectures on Thinking in Literature
Angus Fletcher, who is considered to be one of the finest theorists of the arts, follows in the tradition of I.A. Richards, Erich Auerbach and Northrop Frye. This book aims to open another field of study: how thought – the act, the experience of thinking – is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The insights Fletcher achieves suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought – the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. The reader samples his vision of Milton’s Satan, the originial Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell’s mysteriously haunting “green thought in a green shade”; Old Testament and Herodotus; Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino and Stevens. Fletcher ranges over literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry. He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking, to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature – not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colours taken on by the mind as is represented in art.
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