Paradoxes of Aesthetic Distance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4160647 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Oswald Hanfling (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 175-186 |
| Publication date | 2003-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjaesthetics/43.2.175 |
| OpenAlex | W1992839321 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
A feature that contributes to the charm of much poetry is its obscurity and indirectness. We want to grasp what the poet is saying and yet, it appears, to do so only with difficulty. How is this preference to be explained? (1) It contributes to promoting an ‘aesthetic attitude’. (2) It conforms to certain general features of human psychology, including (a) a general preference for indirectness and indeterminacy and (b) the pleasure of working things out. Distance, in the relevant sense, may be regarded as an important positive quality of works of art; yet (1) this quality may continue to charm even after the difficulties have been overcome, and (2) its presence, in the case of unusual language, may be largely a matter of accident, depending on how long ago the work was written, and so on
Accident (philosophy · Aesthetics · Charm (quantum number · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · GRASP · Indeterminacy (philosophy · Linguistics · Pleasure · Poetry · Preference · Quality (philosophy · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |