Pleasure and the arts
Subtitle: enjoying literature, painting, and music
By: Christopher Butler.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 236
Subjects: Aesthetics; Pleasure
Description: "The arts direct us to intimate and particularized relationships - with the people represented in the works, or with those we imagine produced them. When we listen to music or look at a purely abstract painting, or when we drink a glass of wine, can we enjoy the experience without verbalizing our response? Do our interpretative assumptions, our awareness of technique, and our attitudes to fantasy, get in the way of our appreciation of art, or enhance it? As the book examines these questions and more, we discover how curiosity drives us to enjoy narratives, ordinary jokes, metaphors, and modernist epiphanies, and how narrative in all the arts can order and provoke intense enjoyment. Pleasurable in its own right, Pleasure and the Arts presents a sparkling explanation of the enduring interest of artistic expression."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.