Devotion as Rasa

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-264
Author(s):  
Hamsa Stainton
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Important Center ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

In addition to being an important center for religious innovation and literary production, Kashmir was also the site of major developments in aesthetics from the end of the eighth century onward. After reviewing this history, this chapter considers how Kashmirian poets adopted and adapted language and ideas from aesthetics—particularly the language of rasa—in unusual and creative ways. It focuses on the idea of bhaktirasa, the “taste” or experience of devotion. Notably, many Kashmirian explorations of bhaktirasa occurred long before Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authors would make bhaktirasa well known in South Asia. This chapter argues that the Śaiva hymns of Kashmir represent earlier reflections on the aesthetic dimensions of devotion that can contribute to our understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and religion in South Asia.

MAKOTO AS THE INITIAL PRINCIPLE OF THE ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC BELIEFS OF THE JAPANESE

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
M. P. Gerasimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Hieroglyphic Writing ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal

Makoto (まこと, lit.: truth, genuineness, reality, “realness”) is an element of the conceptual apparatus of the traditional worldview of the Japanese. In Japan, it is generally accepted that makoto is a philosophical and aesthetic concept that underlies Japanese spirituality, involving among other principles understanding of the order and laws of the truly existing Universum (shinrabansho̅; 森羅万象) and the universal interconnectedness of things (bambutsu ittai; 万物一体), the desire to understand the true essence of everything that person meets in life, and, unlike other spiritual values, is purely Shinto in origin. After getting acquainted with the Chinese hieroglyphic writing three Chinese characters were borrowed for the word makoto. Each of these characters means truthfulness, genuineness, but has its own distinctive nuances: 真 means truth, authenticity, truthfulness, 実 signifies truth, reality, essence, content, and 誠 again means truthfulness, sincerity, and truth. Makoto (“true words”) and makoto (“true deeds”) imply the highest degree of sincerity of words and honesty, correctness of thoughts, actions, and deeds. The relationship “true words — true deeds” can be seen as one of the driving factors of moral obligation, prompting everyone in their field, as well as in relations between people, to strive to be real. This desire contributed to the formation of a heightened sense of duty and responsibility among the Japanese, which became a hallmark of their character. However, makoto has not only ethical connotation, but aesthetic one as well, and can be considered as the basis on which were formed the concept of mono no aware (もののあ われ、 物の哀れ) and the aesthetic ideal of the same name, that became the first link in the chain of japanese perceptions of beauty. Each link in this chain is an expression of a new facet of makoto, which was revealed as a result of certain elements of the worldview that came to the fore in the historical era.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaut d'Hubert
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Fragmented Landscape ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Bengali Literature

The introduction opens with a reflection on the relative marginality of the kingdom of Arakan and what it entailed in terms of historiography. I observe a reconfiguration of cosmographical imaginaries around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that conditioned the formation of vernacular literary traditions in eastern South Asia and around the Bay of Bengal. Then I provide a brief overview of the Bengali poet Ālāol’s life and works and discuss what the study of his poetics brings to our knowledge of Middle Bengali literature. I highlight the fragmented landscape of Middle Bengali literary production and the need to study Middle Bengali poems as literary texts and not only as sources for social or religious history. The last section of the introduction provides an overview of the contents of the book.

Textual Events

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Homeric Hymns ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Performance ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ritual Practices ◽  
Formal Features

Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as textual events. Several chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings. Others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. In addition to studies that analyse individual lyric texts and lyric authors (Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar), the volume includes treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events re-examines the relationship between the poems’ formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of sociopolitical discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as enacting cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.

Beneventan (South Italian/Langobardic) Script

2020 ◽  
pp. 119-142
Author(s):  
Francis Newton
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Important Center

This chapter surveys Beneventan script, the distinctive hand of southern Italy which is particularly associated with the most important center of its use, the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Beneventan arose in the late eighth century and continued in common use through the thirteenth--and even later in isolated instances. Distinct calligraphic high points were achieved in various cities, regions, or centers at different periods, including Naples in the tenth century, Monte Cassino in the second half of the eleventh century, and the region of Bari at the same time. Caroline script was used side-by-side with Beneventan at some centers, until Caroline and Gothic scripts finally replaced Beneventan as the standard bookhand in southern Italy.

Affective labour and class distinction in the night-time economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612110063
Author(s):  
Steven Threadgold ◽  
David Farrugia ◽  
Julia Coffey
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Dynamics ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Night Time ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
Consumption Experience ◽  
Gendered Politics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Distinction

This article contributes to recent debates about the relationship between affective labour and class by exploring the classed distinctions enacted through affective labour in the urban night-time economy. Bringing theories of affective labour into a dialogue with Bourdieusian feminist analysis, the article explores the affective and symbolic dynamics of hospitality labour in a gentrified inner-urban neighbourhood of Melbourne, Australia. It shows how the practice of hospitality labour enacts classed distinctions and tensions emerging from the gentrification of inner-urban areas, and how the aesthetic and symbolic dimensions of class contribute to the valorisation of affect in hospitality venues. The valorisation of affect are processes in which the value attributed to an atmosphere or consumption experience is based on the forms of distinction practised within the venue, enacted in aesthetics, tastes and modes of embodiment. The article also shows how practices of class distinction – both ‘punching up’ and ‘managing down’ – are connected to the gendered politics of service work in the way that workers manage the threat of violence or sexual harassment in venues. In general, the article shows how the classed dynamics of gentrification are enacted in affective economies, and therefore how Bourdieusian analysis of class can be usefully deployed in theoretical debates about affective labour.

scholarly journals Portrait of the artist as a philosopher

2021 ◽  
pp. 105971232199468
Author(s):  
Jeannette Pols
Keyword(s):  
Know How ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The response asks about the relationship between artist and audience in the RAAAF artworks. Is the artist an Autonomous Innovator who breaches the ties with the past and the environment? Or is the aesthetic practice located in the creation of relationships around these objects, hence expanding the artwork by using know-how, experiences and enthusiasm of the audience/users?

Exploring Tourist Behavior in a Reused Heritage Site

2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802110200
Author(s):  
Yi-Ju Lee ◽  
I-Ying Tsai ◽  
Te-Yi Chang
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Intention ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Tourist Behavior ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Modeling Analysis ◽  
Heritage Buildings ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigated the relationship among tourists’ perceived sustainability, aesthetic experience, and behavioral intention toward reused heritage buildings by employing stimulus–organism–response theory. There were 354 valid questionnaires collected from the Sputnik Lab in Tainan, Taiwan. A positive correlation was found between tourists’ perception of sustainability and aesthetic experience. When tourists perceived higher aesthetic experience, they also had stronger behavioral intention. Structural equation modeling analysis verified that the aesthetic experience of tourists had mediating effects between perceived sustainability and behavioral intention in the reused heritage space. The reuse of space should be attached significantly to the aesthetic display of space and service so as to promote such scenic spots and increase tourists’ intention to revisit through word of mouth.

Contraste, Dissonanzen, Missklänge: Zum Verhältnis von Idylle und Tourismus in literarischen Schweiz-Reisen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Ida Hahn-Hahn, Hans Christian Andersen)

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-56
Author(s):  
Christian Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hans Christian Andersen ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The discrepancy between common temporary expectations of Switzerland as idyll on the one hand, and the reality of its industrially organized tourism on the other, imposes irritations upon the touristic gaze. This article, then, traces the origins of this discrepancy and examines the relationship between Swiss idyll and tourism in the 19th century. The analyses of Ida Hahn-Hahn’s Eine Idylle and Hans Christian Andersen’s Iisjomfruen showcase different ways of relating idyll and tourism to one another as well as the aesthetic merit produced by this constellation.

Revisiting the relationship between art and industry in nineteenth-century Britain from the manufacturer’s perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Ann Compton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Sector ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Drawing Board ◽  
Public Exposure ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Two Sectors

The mid-nineteenth century critical discourse compartmentalized art and industry by crediting each with specific powers. Manufacturing was identified with the development of technologically advanced processes, materials and products, while fine artists were given authority over the aesthetic aspects of industrial design. The idea that the two sectors had separate areas of responsibility has proved extremely enduring, and continues to influence our perceptions of Victorian manufacturing. This article contributes to the wider task of re-evaluating the relationship between art and industry in nineteenth-century Britain by examining the role of design in potteries and art metalworking firms from the manufacturer’s perspective. It shows that contrary to the picture painted by Victorian critics, design was central to the ambitions and commercial operations of manufacturing businesses. Crucially, decisions about the recruitment of design staff were shaped by the close connection between the creation of new products at the drawing board, and their fabrication in the workshop. Since each branch of manufacturing had its distinctive characteristics, there were significant practical, aesthetic and commercial advantages for manufacturers in employing experienced designers who knew the trade, and were fully conversant with production practices. Unless a professional sculptor joined a firm, they were unlikely to have this inside knowledge, which made commissioning one-off designs from artists a riskier proposition. Manufacturers found that one of the best ways to get around this was to make reductions of sculptures, and initial demand for statuettes in Parian suggested they would be profitable for all concerned. In the end, the market did not live up to its early promise, but the publicity given to Parian statuettes compensated manufacturers and sculptors. Overall, it was this increased public exposure for art manufactures that was the prime benefit of the mid-nineteenth century critical discourse for the industrial sector.

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