Christian Kock: A Rhetoric of Aesthetic Power, Gebunden

Blurb

This book offers a theory of those formal properties of art that are apt to afford strong aesthetic experience a project resembling Aristotle s in the Poetics, where he analysed structures in tragedies that condition the peculiar pleasure of tragedy. However, the book s scope cuts across all genres of literature and also includes classical music the formal art par excellence. Drawing on a wide array of recent theoretical work and empirical evidence, the book closely analyses dozens of examples of both art forms. Besides Aristotle, major inspiration comes from two modern master thinkers: the linguist Roman Jakobson, who defined the poetic function of language, and the rhetorician Kenneth Burke, who proposed a psychological concept of form. Throughout, the book argues for aesthetic experience as an end in itself and a component of quality of life, one to which everyone should have access rather than just a means to other ends.