The Not-So-Silent Reading

2019 ◽  
pp. 362-373
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wallbank

What does it mean to say that we appreciate rhythm in literature? To answer this question Chapter 22 adopts a two-fold approach: first, it sheds light on the ways in which readers attend to rhythm in literature, and second, it calls for a re-evaluation of certain common assumptions concerning literary aesthetic experience and appreciation. The chapter analyzes the impact of different forms of attention within aesthetic experiences, and through this aims to expose and enlighten the overlooked roles of rhythmic auditory-imagining within our experiences of literary works.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-68
Author(s):  
Sally Schofield

This paper comes from a qualitative doctoral study which explored the impact of group art therapy on people affected by Parkinson’s. It specifically addresses the research question: How might participating in art therapy groups support wellbeing and better functioning for people affected by Parkinson’s? Art therapy is not a widely applied therapeutic intervention for this client population. The study was undertaken at the Catalan Parkinson’s Association which has a long-standing art therapy service integrated into the therapeutic rehabilitation programme. The language-based data gathered for analysis was from four focus group encounters with people affected by Parkinson’s (who had directly experienced group art therapy), family members and professionals from the multidisciplinary team working alongside the art therapist. A thematic network analysis (Attride-Stirling, 2001) was undertaken producing six global themes in response to the research question: self-construction; material action; an aesthetic group movement; new perspectives; artwork as legacy; physical transformation as a relational aesthetic experience. I first describe how the research participants joined the study, the rationale for the focus groups and their composition; followed by a detailed exploration of the six themes, relating them to wider literature and a discussion of their implications for practice.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Vladimir Braginsky ◽  

Sufi ideas exerted a great influence on nearly every aspect of traditional Malay literature of the late 16th to the 17th century. Not only Malay literary practice of that age owed much to the Sufi inspiration, equally important is the fact that Sufism brought to life a pre-modern Malay literary theory including, inter alia, fundamental concepts of literary aesthetics. On the basis of a poem by Hamzah Fansuri and Sufi allegories Hikayat Inderaputera and Hikayat Si Burung Pingai the article investigates the Sufi doctrine of imagination as a particular world all of its own, the “aesthetics of light” expressed through specific illumination of portrayed events and “lighting effects”, and the “aesthetics of ecstasy” communicated through acoustic and olfactory images. By embodying these aesthetics in the “flesh and blood” of literary works, their creators not only managed to reveal Sufi doctrines with more clarity and beauty, but also let their audience experience them both intellectually and emotionally. Keyword : Sufism, Hamzah Fansuri, literary aesthetic, Hikayat Metaphysics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110021
Author(s):  
Sizhe Liu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Xianyou He ◽  
Xiaoxiang Tang ◽  
Shuxian Lai ◽  
...  

There is evidence that greater aesthetic experience can be linked to artworks when their corresponding meanings can be successfully inferred and understood. Modern cultural-expo architecture can be considered a form of artistic creation and design, and the corresponding design philosophy may be derived from representational objects or abstract social meanings. The present study investigates whether cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design is perceived as more beautiful and how architectural photographs and different types of descriptions of architectural appearance designs interact and produce higher aesthetic evaluations. The results showed an obvious aesthetic preference for cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design (Experiment 1). Moreover, we found that the aesthetic rating score of architectural photographs accompanied by an abstract description was significantly higher than that of those accompanied by a representational description only under the difficult-to-understand design condition (Experiment 2). The results indicated that people preferred cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design due to a greater understanding of the design, providing further evidence that abstract descriptions can provide supplementary information and explanation to enhance the sense of beauty of abstract cultural-expo architecture.


Projections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-75
Author(s):  
Paisley Livingston

These brief comments raise some questions about Murray Smith’s remarks, in his new volume Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film, on the nature of aesthetic experience. My questions concern how we might best draw a viable distinction between aesthetic and non-aesthetic experiences and focus in particular on possible links between self-awareness and aesthetic experiences. In sum, I agree with Smith in holding that we should not give up on the notion of aesthetic experience, even though aestheticians continue to disagree regarding even the most basic questions pertaining to its nature.


Lire Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-164
Author(s):  
M Afifulloh

This paper aims to describe the female characters in the novel Kabar Bunga by Marsiraji Thahir, the conflicts and its causes, and the impact of the conflicts experienced by women in the novel Kabar Bunga by Marsiraji Thahir. This novel is examined by a psychological approach in literature, a literary approach that emphasizes the psychological aspects of the types and laws of psychology that can be applied to literary works. The data is qualitative since the purpose of this research is to explain or describe the phenomena of the researches deeply. The data were obtained by categorizing all the related dialogues in the story, then psychologically analyzed. Triangulation was used to validate the data.  After finishing all the steps of analyzing data, the interpretations were made based on the data and the theory. The results of the research were, psychologically, the main character in this novel is described as a person who often feels worried, frightened, keeping the reality up, and she is burdened by the problems faced. This portrayal is the representation of Wulan as a woman and woman emotionally and mentally is depicted as a weakness persona without having the ability to solve the problems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Michaela Keck

This contribution examines the magic-realist metaphor of the Matacão in Karen Tei Yamashita’s (1990) debut novel Through the Arc of the Rain Forest as a trope that invites us to imagine, reflect on, and explore plastic’s cross-cultural meanings, aesthetic experiences, and materialist implications. I contend that through the Matacão, Yamashita engenders a narrative about, as well as an aesthetic experience of, plastic that is inherently ambivalent and paradoxical. While it provides societies with material wealth and sensual pleasures, it poses at the same time a profound threat to life – human and nonhuman. The main part of the article is divided into two major sections: in the first part, I read Yamashita’s story about the Matacão as historiographic metafiction that parodies the socio-cultural history of plastic and its utopian promises and failures. In the second part, I draw on Catherine Malabou’s philosophical concept of plasticity to explore the Matacão’s material agency, as well as the social mobility and economic connectivity of Yamashita’s human protagonists in their plastic environments. The theoretical perspective of Malabou’s concept of plasticity shifts the focus to the agentic forces of the waste material and allows us to read Yamashita’s Matacão as both a site and material that, notwithstanding its devastating impacts, also holds potentialities for resilience and repair, and even the possibility for an, at least temporary, utopia.


Author(s):  
Shaima Abdullah Jassim ◽  
Alaa Muzahim Abdulrazaq

There are many theories that emerged in fields other than literature but influenced the literary works greatly. These theories are used by scholars and critics to analyses and study the literary text. Among these theories are Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and the theory of interpretation of dreams. According to Freud, the human mind is divided into two parts: the conscious and the subconscious. Freud used this theory to treat his patients by making them lie down and talk about their dreams, childhood and other thoughts. It is an attempt to make the unconscious conscious. Additionally, the unconscious can be revealed through the slips of the tongue (paraphrases) and dreams. Moreover, Freud assumes that the human psyche consists of three parts: Id (a store of the human desires and needs); superego (the part of the psyche which represents the high ideals); ego (the part which tries to make a compromise between the id and the superego). He also emphasizes the effect of our childhood upon our lives. The present study is a Freudian reading to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights with reference to the impact of the author’s life upon the flow of the events and the lives of the characters.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Semir Zeki ◽  
Oliver Y. Chén ◽  
John Paul Romaya

AbstractThrough our past studies of the neurobiology of beauty, we have come to divide aesthetic experiences into two broad categories: biological and artifactual. The aesthetic experience of biological beauty is dictated by inherited brain concepts, which are resistant to change even in spite of extensive experience. The experience of artifactual beauty on the other hand is determined by post-natally acquired concepts, which are modifiable throughout life by exposure to different experiences (Zeki, 2009). Hence, in terms of aesthetic rating, biological beauty (in which we include the experience of beautiful faces or human bodies) is characterized by less variability between individuals belonging to different ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds or the same individual at different times. Artifactual beauty (in which we include the aesthetic experience of human artifacts such as buildings and cars) is characterized by greater variability between individuals belonging to different ethnic and cultural groupings and by the same individual at different times. In this paper, we present results to show that the experience of mathematical beauty (Zeki et al 2014), even though it constitutes an extreme example of beauty that is dependent upon (mathematical) culture and learning, belongs to the biological category and obeys one of its characteristics, namely a lesser variability in terms of the aesthetic ratings given to mathematical formulae experienced as beautiful.


Author(s):  
Helmut Leder ◽  
Matthew Pelowski

In most people’s lives, aesthetic experiences are probably frequent and occur in multiple, often very different and idiosyncratic situations. Usually, aesthetic experience involves an episode with the experiencing person in a specific situation, stretched out over time, in which certain objects, their environment, and various constituting elements are brought together. In this chapter, the authors provide a general introduction on the importance of such contextual factors in aesthetic experiences. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the nature of aesthetic experiences as a topic beyond typical aesthetic objects, with regard to how aesthetic experiences emerge as interactions between person, objects, and environment, and thus how they are embedded in informational contexts. In particular, the importance of information context is discussed: how we frame, anticipate, explain, and understand the factors of our experience as we live them. Also examined is how, in psychological studies, extra information or titles presented with pictures and artworks, or instructions regarding the context—so-called framing effects—have been shown to affect aesthetic experiences. The chapter ends with an outlook on major challenges, goals, and future directions.


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