Daily Bread: Art and Work in the Reign of Quantity

FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS, Brian Keeble's writings have made a most rare and valuable contribution to elucidating the applications of the philosophia perennis to our understanding of art and work--to the activities, in short, that sustain everyday life and economy. Daily Bread: Art and Work in the Reign of Quantity is a selection of pieces from Keeble's prose publications, intended to bring this important oeuvre to new readers and to consolidate it in a single volume for those already familiar with Keeble's work.

Inclusive of several previously uncollected essays by the author, the volume is divided into two parts: the first introduces Keeble's principal ideas about art and work, tradition, and the crisis of the modern world; the second discusses these ideas in relation to the work of specific modern artists and poets. These essays reach far deeper and have a much wider scope than most contemporary cultural critique. They offer to the engaged reader ways to confront the contemporary malaise that are viable precisely because the author's approach is based on universal and timeless metaphysical principles.

"Brian Keeble has devoted many years to the study of the traditional arts and is the author of a number of valuable works on the subject. We must be grateful to him for providing a powerful reminder of that art which reflects both beauty and truth and which is of the utmost importance for a life worthy of being called truly human."--SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR, author of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

"Keeble's work] calls for eliminating the barriers between art, crafts, and work by infusing all activity with a sense of the sacred."--JOSCELYN GODWIN, author of Mystery Religions in the Ancient World

"These essays should be of value to those who are responsible for the present state of the arts, not only in our schools, but of the wider arts of working and living to some purpose consistent with our deepest nature."--KEITH CRITCHLOW, Professor Emeritus, The Prince's School of Traditional Arts

BRIAN KEEBLE was editor, designer, and publisher of Golgonooza Press in Ipswich, England, from 1974 to 2004; as well as one of the founders and editors of the journal Temenos (London, 1980-91). He is the author of Art: For Whom and for What? (1998), Conversing with Paradise (2003), God and Work (2009), and other essay collections; the editor of Every Man an Artist: Readings in the Traditional Philosophy of Art (2005) and other volumes; and the author of several collections of poetry, most recently From a Handful of Dust (2011) and Far from the Dawn (2014). Keeble is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy in London, and has served on its Council and Academic Board.