| The Aesthetics of Violence: Art, Fiction, Drama and Film Contributor(s): Appelbaum, Robert (Author) |
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ISBN: 1786605031 ISBN-13: 9781786605030 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers OUR PRICE: $144.54 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Aesthetics - Art | Criticism & Theory - Literary Criticism |
| Dewey: 700.455 |
| LCCN: 2017043451 |
| Series: Futures of the Archive |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.15 lbs) 196 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Violence at an aesthetic remove from the spectator or reader has been a key element of narrative and visual arts since Greek antiquity. Here Robert Appelbaum explores the nature of mimesis, aggression, the effects of antagonism and victimization and the political uses of art throughout history. He examines how violence in art is formed, contextualised and used by its audiences and readers. Bringing traditional German aesthetic and social theory to bear on the modern problem of violence in art, Appelbaum engages theorists including Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Adorno and Gadamer. The book takes the reader from Homer and Shakespeare to slasher films and performance art, showing how violence becomes at once a language, a motive, and an idea in the experience of art. It addresses the controversies head on, taking a nuanced view of the subject, understanding that art can damage as well as redeem. But it concludes by showing that violence (in the real world) is a necessary condition of art (in the world of mimetic play). |
Contributor Bio(s): Appelbaum, Robert: - Robert Appelbaum is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is the author of Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge UP, 2002), Dishing It Out (Reaktion, 2011), Working the Aisles: A Life in Consumption (Zero, 2014) and Terrorism Before the Letter: the Mythography of Political Violence in England, Scotland and France (Oxford UP, 2015). |