Relevance, Tamarkin shows, was an Anglo-American concept, derived from a word meaning 'to raise or to lift up again,' and also 'to give relief.' It engaged major intellectual figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and pragmatists and philosophers - William James, Alain Locke, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead - as well as a range of critics, phenomenologists, linguists, and sociologists. Relevance is a struggle for recognition, especially in the worlds of literature, art, and criticism. Poems and paintings in the 19th century could now be seen as pragmatic works that make relevance and make interest - that reveal versions of events that feel apropos of our lives the moment we turn to them. This book is a searching philosophical and poetic study of relevance - a concept calling for shifts in both attention and perceptions of importance with enormous social stakes.

Previously issued in print: 2023.