What makes language beautiful? Arabic Poetics offers an answer to what this pertinent question looked like at the height of the Islamic civilization. In this novel argument, Lara Harb suggests that literary quality depended on the ability of linguistic expression to produce an experience of discovery and wonder in the listener. Analyzing theories of how rhetorical figures, simile, metaphor, and sentence construction are able to achieve this effect of wonder, Harb shows how this aesthetic theory, first articulated at the turn of the eleventh century CE, represented a major paradigm shift from earlier Arabic criticism which based its judgement on criteria of truthfulness and naturalness. In doing so, this study poses a major challenge to the misconception in modern scholarship that Arabic criticism was 'traditionalist' or 'static', exposing an elegant widespread conceptual framework of literary beauty in the post-eleventh-century Islamicate world which is central to poetic criticism, the
What makes language beautiful? Arabic Poetics offers an answer to what this pertinent question looked like at the height of the Islamic civilization. In this novel argument, Lara Harb suggests that literary quality depended on the ability of linguistic expression to produce an experience of discovery and wonder in the listener. Analyzing theories of how rhetorical figures, simile, metaphor, and sentence construction are able to achieve this effect of wonder, Harb shows how this aesthetic theory, first articulated at the turn of the eleventh century CE, represented a major paradigm shift from earlier Arabic criticism which based its judgement on criteria of truthfulness and naturalness. In doing so, this study poses a major challenge to the misconception in modern scholarship that Arabic criticism was 'traditionalist' or 'static', exposing an elegant widespread conceptual framework of literary beauty in the post-eleventh-century Islamicate world which is central to poetic criticism, the
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art is a clear and compact survey of philosophical theories of the nature and value of art, including in its scope literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, architecture, movies, conceptual art and performance art. This second edition incorporates significant new research on topics including pictorial depiction, musical expression, conceptual art, Hegel, and art and society. Drawing on classical and contemporary philosophy, literary theory and art criticism, Richard Eldridge explores the representational, formal and expressive dimensions of art. He argues that the aesthetic and semantic density of the work, in inviting imaginative exploration, makes works of art cognitively, morally and socially important. This importance is further elaborated in discussions of artistic beauty, originality, imagination and criticism. His accessible study will be invaluable to students of philosophy of art and aesthetics.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art is a clear and compact survey of philosophical theories of the nature and value of art, including in its scope literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, architecture, movies, conceptual art and performance art. This second edition incorporates significant new research on topics including pictorial depiction, musical expression, conceptual art, Hegel, and art and society. Drawing on classical and contemporary philosophy, literary theory and art criticism, Richard Eldridge explores the representational, formal and expressive dimensions of art. He argues that the aesthetic and semantic density of the work, in inviting imaginative exploration, makes works of art cognitively, morally and socially important. This importance is further elaborated in discussions of artistic beauty, originality, imagination and criticism. His accessible study will be invaluable to students of philosophy of art and aesthetics.
Proust's 'A la recherche du temps perdu' (In Search of Lost Time) is many things at once: a novel of education, a portrait of French society during the Third Republic, a masterful psychological analysis of love, a reflection on homosexuality, an essay in moral and aesthetic theory, and, above all, one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. This Reader's Guide analyses each volume of the 'Recherche' in order and in detail. Without jargon or technical language, David Ellison leads the reader through the work, clarifying but not oversimplifying the intricate beauty of Proust's imaginary universe. Focused both on large themes and on narrative and stylistic particularities, Ellison's readings expand our understanding and appreciation of the work and provide tools for the further study of Proust. All French quotations are translated, making this an ideal guide for students of comparative literature as well as of French.
Proust's 'A la recherche du temps perdu' (In Search of Lost Time) is many things at once: a novel of education, a portrait of French society during the Third Republic, a masterful psychological analysis of love, a reflection on homosexuality, an essay in moral and aesthetic theory, and, above all, one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. This Reader's Guide analyses each volume of the 'Recherche' in order and in detail. Without jargon or technical language, David Ellison leads the reader through the work, clarifying but not oversimplifying the intricate beauty of Proust's imaginary universe. Focused both on large themes and on narrative and stylistic particularities, Ellison's readings expand our understanding and appreciation of the work and provide tools for the further study of Proust. All French quotations are translated, making this an ideal guide for students of comparative literature as well as of French.
David Ellison's book is an investigation into the historical origins and textual practice of European literary Modernism. Ellison's study traces the origins of Modernism to the emergence of early German Romanticism from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and emphasizes how the passage from Romanticism to Modernism can be followed in the gradual transition from the sublime to the uncanny. Arguing that what we call High Modernism cannot be reduced to a religion of beauty, an experimentation with narrative form, or even a reflection on time and consciousness, Ellison demonstrates that Modernist textuality is characterized by the intersection, overlapping, and crossing of aesthetic and ethical issues. Beauty and morality relate to each other as antagonists struggling for dominance within the related fields of philosophy and theory on the one hand (Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud) and imaginative literature on the other (Baudelaire, Proust, Gide, Conrad, Woolf, Kafka).
