Reviews for Plato's poetics

The average rating for Plato's poetics based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-12 00:00:00 Justin Henderson As exciting as any late-19th century treatise on the physical basis of aesthetic feelings, Grant Allen's Physiological Aesthetics is actually quite easy to understand' he seems to have been writing for a lay audience. His actual hypothesis is that aesthetic feelings have a basis in the physical body and serve an evolutionary purpose. Where he stands out is his specific criticism that existing theories of this sort focus only on higher aesthetic experiences and not on the everyday aesthetic life of most humans. He sets out to explain, with a minimum of abstraction, how he thinks this works. Where it falls down is, not surprisingly, Allen's inability or refusal to see aesthetic feeling as being partially cultural or subjective. He declares at one point that a dress that is entirely black with no ornamentation could never be beautiful, a pronouncement only cast into doubt by the entire history of twentieth century women's formal wear; he also declares that black is the only appropriate colour for mourning, revealing primarily that he didn't know much about Korea. I should say that Allen is of course an excellent resource for middle-of-the-road Victorian opinions of why things are beautiful, but sadly his theory of physiological aesthetics is mostly an at-length exploration of this very specific realm and a justification of particular tastes with circa-1877 scientific vocabulary.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-02 00:00:00 Elizabeth Rivera One must find a place to start. This book is quite an interesting beginning to a life of research!