Beauty and the Best: Aesthetics and Literary Criticism.
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Transcript of Beauty and the Best: Aesthetics and Literary Criticism.
Beauty and the Best:Aesthetics and Literary Criticism
What is Beautiful to you? Which Art is “Great” Art? Who gets to set that standard?
I. The Question of Greatness
Consider the following:Do we appreciate art because it’s great or isart great because we appreciate it?
In other words,
Is art intrinsically great—and so weappreciate it?
orDo we all appreciate art and thus decide it isgreat?
The Painting?
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda
By?
Leonardo Da Vinci
Great?
Why or Why Not?
What are the yardsticks that we can use to measure art?
TIMEDoes X last (stand “the test of time,” to rely on a cliché)?
All of these are old. Does that make them great?
What are the yardsticks that we can use to measure art?
ConsensusWhen enough people like X, then can we call it beautiful, or good or true?
What say you? Great?
What are the yardsticks that we can use to measure art?
EducationWhen enough smart people like X, then can we call it beautiful, or good or true?
People in universities tell us these are great. Must that be so?
What are the yardsticks that we can use to measure art?
Lack of Education
When enough uneducated people like X, then can we say it is not beautiful, or good or true?
The uneducated (or young) masses have told us these are great. Should we dismiss them?
What are the yardsticks that we can use to measure art?
Feels Good
When X makes us feel good, then can we say that it is beautiful, or good or true?
Dancing, the theater, pot make some people feel good. So are they good, right, or true?
Let’s quickly consider some other “yardsticks”And see if we can find any problems.
- X teaches us and so is good, beautiful, true.
- X makes money…
- X is best known...
II. The Birth of Aesthetics
Aesthetics (the study of Beauty) really springsup in the late 1700s to early 1800s for tworeasons.
i) The world is becoming more cosmopolitan.
ii) These cosmopolitan forces bring with them an interest in preserving and extolling one’s own national art.
Consequently, ideas of taste and beauty andhow one determines these become issues.
Literary Criticism—the idea of critiquingliterature crops up in coffeehouses ofMid-eighteenth Century England.
How? Why?
i. Growing temperance movements
Even to this day, note the number of coffeeshops around university campuses.
ii. Convenience (English weather blows).iii. People find themselves talking about cosmopolitan (alien)
influences on politics and art.
III. Fixing Standards
People spend a lot of time trying to fix (set) standards of taste.We considered a few in the beginning of class.
Some New Philosophy Vocabulary:
An Empirical Approach (e.g., to the study of art/Truth)- that which does require experience/observation with the senses.
A Priori- Before experience
A Non-Empirical Approach (e.g., to the study of art/Truth)- that which does not require experience/observation with the senses.
A Posteriori- After experience
How do we use these words? Ask: Is “good” taste a priori?
In other words, is it innate; is it there before and when you areborn? Is it not dependent on you or your perception of it? ThinkPlato and the Truth to which the prisoner in the cave emerges.Think religion.
Ask: Is “good” taste a posteriori?
In other words, does our notion of beauty come out of empirical,experimental understanding? That is to say, does it not existapart from us?
We’ve considered an example of viewing beauty/Truth throughan a priori lens (Plato). What about an a posteriori lens?
Let’s consider Edmund Burke.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)A political theorist and philosopher.
Burke claimed that there is such athing as “good” taste to be learnedthrough experience. In other words,good taste is a posteriori.
You see, acquiring good taste is about fine-tuning therelationship between our taste, imagination and judgment.
1) Our “tastes” all work the same way. Sweet is sweet andbitter is bitter.
2) Imagination is just the representation of our tastes, so it is largely the same for all of us.
3) We can use rules/laws of judgment—sense and reason—to agree on what is beautiful.
If you have a defect with the senses, you will have a lack of taste. Ifyou have a defect in judgment, you will have bad taste.
For Burke, once one’s judgment, and thus taste, have been properly “educated,” that person will come to the conclusion that one with good taste will appreciate all that is ENGLISH.
Burke’s reasoning ends up being circular and illogical:
-Great art is English art.-How do you know?-Those whose tastes are educated know that great art is
English art.-How do you know that their tastes are educated?-Because they like English art.-Why do they like English art?-Because their tastes are educated.
Burke was a product of his time. His aestheticworld view reflects the intense nationalism (orchauvinism) of his time.
Where does one find these nationalist currents?
See Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin)
See Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
Other aesthetic philosophers about whom you’llhear more in the future include:-David Hume-Immanuel Kant-Friedrich Nietzsche
IV. Is a Flower Ever Just a Flower? Does the Critic Kill the Literature?
Friedrich Nietzsche believed that the advent ofphilosophy in ancient Greece marked the beginningof its decline.
Cold intellectualism, over-thinkingand tricky thought began to detractfrom the spontaneity of myth andart.
What do you think?
Should we always think about/critique art?
Should we never think about/critique art?
Are there times we should and times we should notCritique art?
Does criticism kill art?
These are questions for you to consider. The reality,however, is that to be a student of literature meansthat you are also a student of literary criticism. It’swhat we do.
Cautions in using Lit. Crit.:
1) ALWAYS begin with the text before the lit. crit.
2) Formulate topics, ideas, themes, effect statements, and thesis statements before turning to the lit. crit. (Remember the guy behind you in the art gallery who tells you that the painting looks like a horse. That’s all you’ll ever see—a horse.)
So why go to Lit. Crit. at all?
1) You want to gain a deeper understanding of a work.
2) You want to find support for or refutations of literary ideas.
3) Last ditch: You are struggling for a topic and by perusing some lit crit. you find some ideas. (#3 is to be used only when you have exhausted all other possibilities).
Literary Criticism Applications for Kiss of the SpiderWoman. What are some of the different lenses thatwe could use to consider Kiss…?
Feminist (Gender Studies) Criticism
Marxist Literary Criticism
Freudian (Psychoanalytical) Literary Criticism
Historical Biographical Literary Criticism
Currently, we take a Formalistic Critical approach.