Aesthetic Symbol Research Articles

Moral metaphorics, or Kant after Blumenberg: Towards an analysis of the aesthetic settings of morality

This paper examines the role of formal, aesthetic elements in motivating moral action. It proposes that Blumenberg’s analysis of the existential settings of myth and metaphor provide a useful framework to consider the conception and function of the aesthetic symbol in Kantian moral philosophy. In particular, it explores the hypothesis that Blumenberg’s analysis of ‘pregnance’ and ‘rhetoric’ are useful for identifying and evaluating the processes involved in self-persuasion to the moral perspective.

A Study on Shoe Design Affected by Glam Rock

This study investigated the preceding studies and concept of Glam Rock style, modernistically reinterpreted its aesthetic function and symbolism and connected them to design. It analyzed according to the standards for classification the Glam Rock style appearing mainly in the collections from 2002 S/S to 2007 S/S and presented four pieces of design through the analysis. Its findings are synthesized as follows. First, unstructured design constitutes mule stressing gold cubic overall. It takes an unstable form by the placement of unshapely front ball of foot from transforming Chopin and a relatively poor heel. Second, over trimming constitutes separated pumps in the form of over trimming irregularly a piece of broken glass, metal and thumb tack. Third, Mix & Match combines Boot body of flexible knit material with an acrylic wedge sandal. Fourth, a platform sandal has the structure of color contrast between yellow and bronze in calf fur of tiger-skin pattern. I hope that this study will be developed by reflecting Glam Rock spirit and style as cultural phenomena through analyzing Glam Rock style and presenting design according to selected standards for classification, inferring plastic beauty of fashion shoes from them, investigating the change and feature of age-specific shoe design and making a new attempt possible.

The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses

The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses

Inoperative ironies: Jamesian aestheticism and post-modern culture in Alan Hollinghurst's the line of beauty

Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (2004) is set in 1980s Britain, but its vision of the aristocracy, consumerism and the emerging culture of post-modernism is continuously informed by a deep i...

Synaesthetics: Symbolism, Dance, and the Failure of Metaphor

Synaesthetics:Symbolism, Dance, and the Failure of Metaphor Julie Townsend (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Loïe Fuller in "La danse Blance [sic], ca. 1898"; photograph by Taber. Reproduced with permission from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. [End Page 126] I. Symbolist Criticism and the Question of History In the critical introduction to his influential and often cited work L'Univers imaginaire de Mallarmé (1961), Jean-Pierre Richard posits Mallarmé's dream of the dancer's entrechats as an entry into the process of reading the Mallarméan universe: Voici définie une parfaite méthode de lecture: remplaçons la danseuse par Mallarmé lui-même, substituons au texte chorégraphique les figures verbales d'un poème, et nous aurons trouvé le moyen le plus commode d'entrer dans son univers tout en restant fidèle à sa leçon.1 It comes as no surprise to learn that the perfect method of reading Mallarmé would be found within his own writings. The critical seductiveness of Mallarmé's universe lies precisely its propensity for substitution. He lures the reader with an aesthetic system in which the gaps between poet and dancer or critic and poet dissolve. Similarly, according to Jacques Derrida, Mallarmé seduces by way of an "allusion perpétuelle" that abolishes not only "différence" but also the difference between "la différence et la non-différence."2 As such, entry into the Mallarméan world demands a suspension of time; and, while a poetic system in which time extends infinitely and the artistic subject moves through unceasing transformations in the form of disembodied yet corporeal figures has appealed to many critics, Richard's simple "voici" and Derrida's unexamined ahistoricity strike me as troubling. The Mallarméan world of unraveled contradictions, I argue, itself rests on a phenomenological impossibility—namely, the disembodied dancer. The centrality of dance in Symbolist aesthetics has of course been observed by many generations of critics. In addition to the writings of Mallarmé and Valéry themselves, even the earliest scholars of Symbolist aesthetics noted the extent to which dance seemed to harmonize the problematic relationships between the artist and the work of art, the ideal and the material, as well as the mind and the body. Fin-de-siècle British poet Arthur Symons proposed that Symbolism was "a literature in which the visible world is no longer a reality, and the unseen [End Page 127] world no longer a dream."3 Yet such an assertion, which readily became a critical orthodoxy, certainly requires reassessment. In a poetics that valorizes dream over reality and ideal over material, it is assuredly strange that dance—arguably the most embodied of the arts—would hold such a privileged position. Symbolist poetics, however, demanded the appearance of ideals in a work of art and thus frequently addressed the problem of how those ideals could or should be made manifest. In other words, to ensure that the Symbolist Idéal would be useful, it had both to take some form and to remain free from corruption or limitation. Rather than constructing the dancing body as an opposition to the written poem, both Mallarmé and Valéry strove to posit a symbiotic relationship between these two artistic modes. For many of their readers, Symbolist poets successfully fulfilled this ideal. For example, in his 1927 response to Valéry's work, conservative dance critic André Levinson congratulates the Symbolist use of dance as an operating metaphor for poetry: "De tous les arts, la danse se révèle le plus matériel mais aussi le plus abstrait. Elle résout l'antithèse de la chair et de l'esprit; c'est là son miracle."4 Such commentary suggests that the miraculous resolution achieved by ideal forms could accomplish a kind of cultural redemption through artistic ritual. It is clear that Symons's and Levinson's writings on Symbolism have served to champion a movement to which they remained unquestioningly devoted; as Richard's comments show, these proponents from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been remarkably...

Main Street Replacement Bridge, Columbus, Ohio

Faced with the challenge of replacing an existing Art Deco arch bridge, the city of Columbus, Ohio, decided against replication in favor of constructing a new aesthetic symbol for the city. The proposed Main Street Replacement Bridge, a bridge consisting of a single-ribbed arch inclined at a 10-degree angle, will gracefully span the Scioto River and will provide the city with its new aesthetic symbol, as well as provide the final link between new parkway developments on both banks of the river. The original design concept was abandoned because of increasing construction complexities compounded by a decreasing budget allowance. With a client committed to aesthetic design, a requirement for a less complicated erection process, and a shortened construction timeline, the engineers were challenged to redesign the bridge within the revised budget while maintaining the intriguing geometry of the previous bridge design. How the design team overcame the new design challenges and, specifically, the redesign of the ...

States of Being

Traditional readings of Edward Hopper’s paintings as portrayals of twentieth‐century American life ignored the artist’s lifelong contention that his subjects were ”mediums” for his innermost thoughts and feelings. More recent scholarship has devoted greater attention to this personal dimension, and Gail Levin has explored Hopper’s interest in symbolist poetry, with its emphasis on subjectivity. This article argues for a more substantial connection between the powerful influence of symbolist aesthetics during his developing years and Hopper’s use of familiar reality to express ideas and sensations in highly deliberated, formally expressive compositions. The symbolist preference for metaphor and suggestion rather than explicit description, its interest in individual consciousness, and its belief in the expressive capacities of form and color imbued the climate in which Hopper matured as an artist. These values were compatible with Emerson’s writings, which Hopper read regularly; the ideas of Robert Henri, H...

Signs of Anarchy: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Symbolist Critic at the Mercure de France, 1890-95

Les petites revues sont indispensables pour l'histoire du symbolisme, qui fut surtout une oeuvre de poetes et de critiques: ne peut saisir que la son expression originelle, sa signification esthetique. (1) If Naturalism was primarily invested in the novel, for Symbolism the book was merely secondary. It was in the numerous small journals that sprang up in the wake of Jean Moreas' Manifesto in 1886 and under the aegis of the Third Republic liberalized publishing laws that poets and critics shaped and polemicized the anti-naturalist rebellion. In the mid 1880s, Symbolism was not yet the reigning appellation for the aesthetic experiments of the young generation. Gustave Kahn notes, En 1885 ... nous parlions de symbole, nous n'avions pas cree le mot generique de symbolisme. (2) Debate raged over whether the term symbolism or decadence was more apt, whether the symbolists were only pseudo-decadents, or the decadents merely profane symbolists. Adolphe Rette would later nostalgically recall the atmosphere of these journals as jardins chatoyants where theories ripened and verse flourished. (3) Stressing the sheer number of journals that appeared (and often as quickly disappeared), Ernest Raynaud put it differently: on assista a une veritable levee des plumes. (4) The political overtones of Raynaud's characterization, framed in terms of generational combat, are significant. Jules Letheve, in his Impressionnistes et symbolistes devant la presse, argues that even more than the publication of particular works, it was the polemics in the press themselves--between small journals, and also between established, traditional critics (Brunetiere, Lemaitre, Anatole France) and these youthful upstarts they disdained--that consecrated the existence of the new literary school. In contrast to both the combativeness and the ephemeral quality of most of these journals, Le Mercure de France was founded in 1890 the premise of an open and eclectic editorial policy, a refusal to take part in these sectarian squabbles, and a commitment to poetry, prose, criticism and the visual arts. It quickly became the pre-eminent literary journal of the Parisian fin de siecle--the confluence, even the obligatory passage for all literatures and all thought (5)--and continued publishing until 1965. In the first five years of its existence (1890-95), it published the poetry of Mallarme. Verlaine and Lautreamont, the fiction and drama of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Jarry. It was the first to publish the letters of Vincent Van Gogh and the first to translate Nietzsche into French. (6) Most significantly, perhaps, the Mercure constituted a privileged site of collaboration between the arts. Its early art critic, Albert Aurier, was the first to define Symbolism in art in an ambitious (and now canonical) article Gauguin, and gave the first critical attention to the work of Van Gogh. Together with Remy de Gourmont, the foremost literary critic of the journal, the two gave Symbolism its most coherent and consistent theoretical elaboration. Their efforts to provide a philosophical explanation for Symbolist aesthetics across diverse media was a large part of the journal's early success and signaled a changed role for the critic at the fin de siecle. The linguistic experimentation of poets and writers whose ornamental prose and recherche archaisms drew attention to the materiality of language was deliberately paralleled in painting by artists like Gauguin and Bernard who used color and texture to emphasize the structure of surface. (7) But if poets and painters were united by their desire to reject the slavish depiction of outward appearances, their anti-mimetic techniques alienated an uncomprehending public. For this reason, the importance of the critic became considerably heightened--no longer merely an arbiter of taste or judge of value, he became a translator of meaning. …

Brjusov und die Zeitgeschichte. Eine Studie zur politischen Lyrik im russischen Symbolismus by Sabina s> Siwczyk-Lammers (review)

REVIEWS 723 the UK on the other?How similaris the responseof the studentseitherside of the Atlantic?This is not the place to debate such issues, but I was intrigued every so often to come across remarkswhich ostensibly point to differences, rather than similarities. We are told, for example, that 'In classrooms the world over, it has long been the practice to distilthe age of the great Russian novel into Dostoevsky versus Tolstoy' (p. I04). Not in my experience. And then, even more categorically, we learn that when students are asked 'what Raskolnikovstandsfor' they will be able to answer;when, however, the same question is posed of Levin or Anna Karenina, teachers will 'draw a blank' (P. I I2). My instinctstell me the opposite, but it might be worth testing. As Caryl Emerson states, 'Tolstoy probably would not have wished his novels to have been taught at all' (pp. II3-14). Indeed; he would almost certainlyhave regardedventures such as the present volume with the utmost disdain. Still,ifmankindhad followed allthe greatman'spreceptstherewould not have been anyone around to produce and write such books, let alone to reviewthem. Department ofRussian ROGER COCKRELL UniversityofExeter Siwczyk-Lammers,Sabina.Bdusov unddieZeitgeschichte. EineStudie zurpolitischen Lyrik imrussischen Symbolismus . Opera Slavica:Neue Folge,42. Harassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2002. xii + 353 pp. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography .Index. ?54.00 (paperback). INSoviet criticism Briusovis portrayed either as a decadent or a poet of the Revolution; Western scholarship by contrast has focused primarily on his Symbolist aesthetics. Acutely aware of these different critical approaches, Sabina Siwczyk-Lammersdeliberatelyconcentrateson those lyricsthatreflect Briusov'sreaction to contemporary historical events, firstdrawing attention to the publicationhistoryof the individualtextsbefore analysingtheirmetricrhythmicaland symbolicelements. Her aim is to demonstratethat, independently of his Symbolist aesthetical convictions, Briusov showed a constant, active interestin the social and political events of his day. Aftera brief introductorychapter that outlines the aestheticand ideational basis of Symbolism and the role political poetry played in the worksof poets such as Bal'mont or Blok, Siwczyk-Lammersexamines the impact of distinct political events on Briusov's lyrical output. She divides his work into seven separate historical periods, albeit acknowledging a certain overlap, for instance between the war poetry and the poetry on the 19I7 revolutions.The first period, from I899 to I903, treats 'forerunner texts', poems such as 'Kamenshik'or 'Na osuzhdenie Dreifusa',where a socio-politicalengagement is manifest and where specificproblems such as the rise of anti-Semitism are highlighted. Next, Siwczyk-Lammers investigates Briusov's lyrics on the Russo-Japanesewar, chartinghis changing attitudefrom nationalisticfervour to disillusionment. The I905 Revolution received a similarly ambivalent treatment, with poems such as 'Griadushchie gunny' or 'Lik Meduzy' emphasizing the barbaric, destructive power of the Revolution, and lyrics 724 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 such as 'Dovol'nym' criticizing Nikolai II's manifesto of I7 October. Briusov's poetry on the First World War, profoundly influenced by his experiences as a correspondent, also manifests a progression from enthusiasm to bitterness and regret. Whilst Briusov clearly recognized the historical significance of the February Revolution, he continued to regard literature as his main task. However, Siwczyk-Lammers remarks on his move away from poetry towards active participation as an editor, a translator, critic, and organizer of cultural events. The October Revolution sees Briusov in the camp of the new Bolshevik power; his lyrics chart the progress of the revolution and focus particularly on Lenin's role. After 1924, Siwczyk-Lammers finds his poetic output marked both by a certain denial of reality, as manifest in the work of other writers who did not emigrate, as well as a certain 'opportunism or a disguise or even an honest conversion through the social ideal of communist Russia' (p. 267). As this last statement shows, Briusov's political position is complex. At times, a more in-depth analysis of the tension between his Symbolist convictions and his political activism, notably his simultaneous insistence on artistic freedom and the engagement of the poet, would occasionally have been desirable. Siwczyk-Lammers's title promises an investigation of Briusov's lyrics within the context of the Symbolist movement as a whole. Occasionally she does focus on Briusov's relationship with his contemporaries, for instance when she highlights his ongoing literary dialogue with Bal...

Reading/ Writing the Dialectical Image—Walter Benjamin and Osip Mandel’stam

READING/WRITING THE DIALECTICAL IJ\IAGE-WALTER BENJAMIN AND OSIP MANDEL'STAI'J Anastasia Graf is a graduate swdcn/ ill ,he Department of Comparalil'e Li,eraflJre. Prince/all Ullin·rsiZI·. In the last four lines of Notre Dame. one of Mandel'stam's manifesto-poems of Acmeist poetics, the poet vows to be apprenticed to the construction of the cathedral: But the more attentively I studied Notre Dame, your monstrous ribs, your stronghold, The more I thought: I too one day shall create Beauty from cruel weight. (Selected Poems 17) This was 1912 and Mandel'stam and his fellow Acmeists were struggling to push away from what they perceived to be the mystical and mystified Symbolist aesthetics. The acmeist notion of the word as stone and phenomena rather than symbol. dominates Mandel stam's early poet!)'. Notre Dame and Hagia Sophia in fact read as textbook exercises in ekphrasis, where the poet's task is two-fold--to describe the monument and to construct a cathedral-poem fmm the stony words. Ten years later, Mandel'stam still thought of the poet as the apprenlice from the last stanza of Notre Dame, but his notion of the word had changed from a seif-cont:Jined building block to a polyserruc cluster, pointing beyond itself but still fiml1y grounded in the rich metaphoric tcxture of his poetry, For the Symbolist notion of the statically bin:J!)' word tv1andel'st:Jm substituted the notion of metamorphosis and mutation as the principle of poetic composition and defined the poet as one who moulds the word rather than one who creates. In the poet!)' and essays of this middle period. the poet appears as the medieval scribe, the apprentice to nature or the archaeologist who must transcribe from image to language, but a language that preserves the visuaL fragmentary quality of the image. These two aspects of Mandel'stam's poetics--the poem as a transcription of cullural and natural texts and the notion of the poetic word as polysemic cluster rather than discrete building block-will serve as my point of departure in this discussion. From herc, I would like to proceed to a staged encounter between Mandel'sram's poetics and the aesthetic and historiographic theo!)' of Walter Benjamin. Questions of biographie or historical affinity aside, the intellectual kinship of Mandel'stam and Benjamin is striking in their shared notion of histo!)' as a non-linear and non-narrative form which stands to be disrupted, fragmented, blasted out of its sedimenta!)' periodization and opened up to the present moment. To Benjamin's allegorist-collector corresponds Mandel'stam's figure of the poet as the ploughman who turns over buried strata of the past so as to create a new surface of synchronic time and spatialized histo!)I,1 Opposed 10 intentionality. linearity, logic and grammar in the writings of Benjamin and Mandel'stam. is the image or figural thought. Mandel'stam's poet and Benjamin's critic or materialist historiographer share the task of bringing what Benjamin calls the historical object or the dialectical image to its legibility in the present.

Introduction to the Selected Papers

I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E S E L E C T E D PAPERS Andrea Loscllc is an Associate Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. The principal challenge and merit o f this collection o f papers gathered under the title Camera on Stylo: A Problematic Dialogue? is reading across centuries, cultures, disciplines, and media in the seeming absence o f the camera and in some cases o f the modem pen. How can these serve as critical tools that wc may work into such quilled subjects as the problematic status o f the je in Renaissance poet Maurice Sceve's Delie, objet de plus haute vertu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theatrical descriptions o f gardens and landscapes in Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloisc. Denis Diderot's dialogic and apostrophic representations o f paintings in his Salons, as well as into those topics sharing the same cultural, historical space o f the camera and pen: Stephane Mallarme's symbolist poetics, the abstract simultaneism o f Robert Dclaunay's paintings and Guillaume Apollinaire's free verse, the dialectical images o f Walter Benjamin and Osip Mandel'stam, and visual artist Sol LcWitt's predetermined serial systems? This collection o f papers is the distilled result o f a call for papers that opens out onto the question o f language's relation to visual, material phenomena and that eschews the already well known history o f mechanical reproduction and modern visual culture. Less well-known but no less productive are the juxtapositions that place, for example, Loli Tsan's reading o f Scevc at the end o f this collection and Anthony Abiragi's reading o f M a l l a r m e ' s sonnet, A la nue accablante tu, at the beginning. The Renaissance poet's voice is delie in a mirror structure involving the relation o f a suppressed je with a t u it dares not look upon: ' M o n regard par toy me tue. Do we not hear a paradoxical echo—this doubling o f an implied t u (you) in tue (kills)—in Mallarme's meditation on the trace o f sea foam ( o f an event: a shipwreck or a passing siren) materially obliterated in the past participle, t u o f the verb taire ? S c e v e ' s arrow with which he is pierced by desire becomes, Tsan writes, the visual image du basilic et de son regard poignard. But the arrow with its feathers is also related to the agile quill, an ecriture deliee and fulfilled by this instrument. We are reminded o f how much the symbolists admired the work o f this Renaissance poet when Abiragi writes on Mallarme's sonnet that [t]he silenced ' t u ' strains prolcptically towards other elements in the poem in order to achieve some fomi o f semantic fulfillment..., The source o f this fulfillment for Sccve is visual, but the lady is herself, like the mythical basilisk, lethal in her gaze; the image o f her looking at the poet, a gaze turned on him. threatens to silence him. Like the basilisk, Mallarme's poetic ideality, evidence o f whose dangerous voice is left in only the visual trace o f sea foam, contains the possibility o f its own semantic shipwreck in the colliding material trace o f a posited, real shipwreck and its mythical cause, the figure o f the siren. One might think in this connection o f Anastasia G r a f s reflection on Mandcl'stam's metamorphk images and Benjamin's constcllatory pregnant moments or dialectical images. This essay occupies a pivotal place in this collection as a rethinking o f mystical and mystified symbolist aesthetics that in Benjamin and MandePstam reengages with penned material images during a time when painters were first experimenting with abstraction and cameras were increasingly both recording daily life

Law, Aesthetic Symbolism and Utopia: A Kantian Reading

This paper presents aphilosophical approach to the semiotics of lawin terms of an exercise in symbolictransposition whereby aesthetic categories arebrought to bear on jurisprudence, and inparticular on two of its foundationalquestions. These questions, the backdropagainst which the analysis unfolds, ask (1)whether law is static or dynamic; and (2)whether law `constitutes' human beings, in somespecific sense, or whether the reverse holds. The notions of universality and necessity andthat of utopia are employed together with twoopposite art symbols and a model of theirantitheses is constructed revealing diverseanswers as to how to conceive law in relationto the two questions. One answer is singled outby adopting the principles of Kantian aesthetic(reflective) judgement: to elicit an aestheticclaim, law must be seen as a utopian socialorder exhibiting purposiveness without,however, presupposing any predeterminedsubstantive normative end. This is effected bya special reading permitting the combination ofnecessitation (obligation) with free play – thisbeing the common ground shared by both law andaesthetics but only in this limiting utopianmoment. This is a unique sense in which legaldiscourse is formally assimilated to aestheticnon-purposive judgements yet withoutrelinquishing law's distinctive feature aspurposive order prescribing, however,prescription alone as a formal end.

L'INFLUENCE DE LA PENSÉE OCCULTISTE SUR LE SYMBOLISME BELGE: BILAN CRITIQUE D'UNE "AFFINITÉ SPIRITUELLE" À LA FIN DU 19e SIÈCLE

Since a few years, the number of studies devoted to occultism and esotericism is increasing in the humanities. Nevertheless, the relationship between occultism and painting has been rarely investigated, even though it is known that many artistic movements, such as Romantism or Surrealism, have been deeply influenced by occultist thought. This paper attempts to investigate the occultist influence upon one of the most important artistic movement of the 19th century, Symbolism, focusing especially on Belgian Symbolism. This study is partly inspired by a number of recent publications that do demonstrate the closeness between these two movements, but without discussing their actual historical connections. A historical approach, however, allows us a new perspective on symbolist painting, which has too often been presented merely as reflecting a mysterious aesthetic (not really for scholarly reasons, but rather because only few authors have tried to understand its stylistic background and sources of influence). A systematic study of the connections between occultism and Belgian symbolism proves to be fruitful in several respects. It can be demonstrated that Symbolism was the concrete medium of expression of the occultist revival of the late 19th century; a revival which, without Symbolist painting, would probably not have had the same scale. Discreet by nature, occultism found in painting a proper medium to embody its ideas and theories. Reversely, Symbolism found in occultism a source of icono-graphic themes, subjects or patterns; and it can be demonstrated that occultism contributed in a very concrete manner to the elaboration of the symbolist style. Thus, this article purports to throw new light on the occultist revival of the late 19th century, and to make possible an investigation of the emergence of Symbolist aesthetics. © Koninklijke Brill N V, Leiden, 2002.

Olive Schreiner, Masochism, and Omnipotence: Strategies of a Preoedipal Politics

Late-Victorian culture was saturated with masochistic phenomena-selfdestructive New Woman heroines; the winter Dionysianism of Beardsley, Swinburne, Pater, and other decadents; the imperial suffering glorified by Kipling, Haggard, and Doyle; the self-flagellations of Hopkins' Catholicism; even the self-martyring spectacle of the Oscar Wilde trials and of De Profundis (1897). Masochism constituted one of the many nether worlds that fin-de-siecle culture explored as revitalizing alternatives to what seemed the increasing hollowness of Victorian society. If Terry Eagleton is right that fin-de-siecle culture performed a collective intellectual suicide (17) as it sought forms of experience outside of bourgeois rationality, then masochism might even be described as the privileged psychic structure linking fin-de-siecle experiments with alternative sexualities, the materiality of the aesthetic symbol, or the unconscious itself-whose perverse and sometimes self-destructive energies were first formally theorized in the 1890s. Perhaps no one exemplifies the centrality of masochism in late-Victorian culture better than Olive Schreiner. Schreiner's masochistic proclivities have been obvious to anyone familiar with her self-defeating protagonists or with the pathos of her own biography: the head-banging; the infatuations with powerful, bullying men; the family persecutions from which, at the very least, she did little to shield herself. But what makes Schreiner's masochism particularly useful in understanding fin-de-siecle culture is the wide range of social boundaries it crossed. A native-born South African with British citizenship; a preeminent feminist who wrote instrumentally about race and imperialism; an obscure, bankrupt missionary's daughter who became the darling of elite London intellectual circles-Schreiner illustrates like no other writer what happens to masochistic fantasy structures as they traverse the domains of gender, class, nation, and race. She is thus an exemplary figure through which to pose questions about how masochism might have mediated between the psyche and the social in latecentury culture.

The "Illusion of Life" rhetorical perspective: an integrated approach to the study of music as communication

–The illusion of life rhetorical perspective increases our understanding about how discursive linguistic symbols and non-discursive aesthetic symbols function together to communicate and persuade in didactic music. We argue that lyrics and music work together to offer messages comprised of both conceptual and emotional content through the constructs of virtual experience (lyrics) and virtual time (music). Both virtual experience and virtual time must exist for music to function rhetorically. For songs without lyrics, virtual experience must be derived from some other source. Emotional content is progressively articulated in music and is understood by considering intensity and release patterns both individually and contextually. Music's rhetorical significance lies in the degree of congruity or incongruity that exists between virtual experience and virtual time. Congruent messages make the meaning more poignant, but could come at the expense of listener appeal. Incongruent messages transform the message in some way, making the holistic message more than, and perhaps different from, the message depicted in the lyrics alone. Incongruity could result in misinterpretation, an emotional message devoid of conceptual content, or subtle and systematic persuasion.

Review. Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space. Reynolds, Dee

Review. Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space. Reynolds, Dee

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space. By DEE REYNOLDS. (Cambridge Studies in French, 51). Cambridge University Press, 1995. xv + 290 pp. ELZA ADAMOWICZ ELZA ADAMOWICZ QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume LIII, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 85–86, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/LIII.1.85 Published: 01 January 1999

Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Imagination and imaginary space 2. Verbal hallucination: Rimbaud's poetics of rhythm 3. Reflections in black and white: Mallarme and the act of writing 4. Putting the spectator in the picture: Kandinsky's pictorial world 5. Between the lines: form and transformation in Mondrian 6. Universal exceptions: sites of imaginary space Conclusion Notes Select Bibliography Index.

CRISIS OF BRAIN AND SELF

Abstract. Neuroscientific evidence requires a monistic understanding of brain/mind. Truly appropriating what this means confronts us with the vulnerability of the human condition. Ca‐muss absurd and Tillich's despair are extreme expressions of a similar confrontation. This crisis demands a type of courage that is consistent with scientific truth and does not undermine the spiritual dimension of life. That dimension is not a separate substance but the process by which brain/mind meaningfully wrestles with its crisis through aesthetic symbols, religious faith, and ethical affirmation. The validity of these activities does not depend upon human autonomy but instead upon the fact that they exist. Furthermore, they constitute the self, which Dennett calls a “center of narrative gravity.”

The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music

Preface Introduction PART I: I. Mattheson as philosopher of art II. Mainwaring's Handel: its relation to English aesthetics III. Charles Burney, music critic IV. Kant and the Affektenlehre: what he said, and what I wish he had said V. Mozart and monotheism: an essay in spurious aesthetics VI. Child Mozart as an aesthetic symbol VII. Something I've always wanted to know about Hanslick VIII. What was Hanslick denying? IX. Charles Darwin on music X. Herbert Spencer and a musical dispute PART II: XI. The fine art of repetition XII. Platonism in music: a kind of defense XIII. Platonism in music: another kind of defense XIV. Orchestrating platonism XV. Opera talk: a philosophical 'phantasie' XVI. How did Mozart do it?: living conditions in the world of opera XVII. How did Mozart do it?: Replies to my critics XVIII. Live performances and dead composers: on the ethics of musical interpretation XIX. On the concept of the 'historically authentic' performance XX. Paul Robinson's Opera and Ideas XXI. From ideology to music: Leonard Meyer's theory of style change XXII. Music and liberal education XXIII. A new music criticism? XXIV. Is music an art?