Abstract
Everyday aestheticians have had relatively little to say about literature. Inspired by Peter Kivy’s philosophy of literature as laid out in his books The Performance of Reading and Once-Told Tales, I examine reading literature as a part of everyday life. I argue that not only do Kivy’s views help explain the value that avid readers place on their daily silent engagement with a book, but that his philosophy of literature also shows how literary works can have an aesthetic presence in our everyday lives even during periods in-between reading a book. In light of the paper, literary reading turns out to be an artistic routine that fills avid readers’ everyday lives in a very literal sense.
Highlights
Everyday aesthetics is a relatively new, but rapidly growing, subdiscipline of philosophical aesthetics that deals with questions concerning the aesthetic value of everyday artefacts and events, and the value they can have in our everyday lives
One proponent of this approach, which has been termed ‘restrictivism’, Arto Haapala, has called everyday aesthetics ‘an aesthetics of “the lacking”’, which he understands as ‘the quiet fascination of the absence of visual, auditory, and any other kinds of demands from the surroundings’.13. In this sense, is not something that strikes us or inspires our attention, but rather something characterized by a soothing sense of familiarity, a feeling that restrictivists take to be aesthetic in kind
The analysis reveals some interesting differences between the reading moments of the avid reader and of the more occasional reader
Summary
Everyday aesthetics is a relatively new, but rapidly growing, subdiscipline of philosophical aesthetics that deals with questions concerning the aesthetic value of everyday artefacts and events, and the value they can have in our everyday lives. Life as its starting point.[11] Instead of the extraordinary moments that sometimes raise the everyday above the ordinary and the mundane, these theorists argue that the aesthetics of everyday life is to be found in the routines of the everyday and in the feelings of safety and of being ‘in control’ their carrying out can engender.[12] One proponent of this approach, which has been termed ‘restrictivism’, Arto Haapala, has called everyday aesthetics ‘an aesthetics of “the lacking”’, which he understands as ‘the quiet fascination of the absence of visual, auditory, and any other kinds of demands from the surroundings’.13 Everyday aesthetics, in this sense, is not something that strikes us or inspires our attention, but rather something characterized by a soothing sense of familiarity, a feeling that restrictivists take to be aesthetic in kind. For critical discussion of the term, see Ossi Naukkarinen, ‘Everyday Aesthetics and Everyday Behavior’, Contemporary Aesthetics 15 (2017), https://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=802. 14 See, for example, my ‘On Habits and Functions in Everyday Aesthetics’, Contemporary Aesthetics 16 (2018), https://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article. php?articleID=846
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