For his first "case study" in the pursuit of differences among the arts, Kivy will attack "the established fact" that "literature is largely, and in an important way, a "representational" art.
That sounds quite bold, doesn't it? "Representation is a term currently in use for two very different kinds of things: the semantic properties of consciousness, or text, and the "phenomenological" properties of "presentation" in various of the visual arts (and elsewhere). It is in its latter use that I say we are mistaken in seeing the novel as a representational art" (p. 64) Which is much less controversial, if we are willing to make that distinction. (the followers of Nelson Goodman are not) The charming part of Kivy's argument is his discussion of Plato and Aristotle, where he reasonably claims that their notion of literature was entirely performative -- i.e. plays as they were acted or poetry as it was spoken - including this quote from Plato's Ion concerning those speakers who: "will be inclined to omit nothing in his narration... and attempt to imitate everything without exception... claps of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, and of wheels and pulleys...barking of dogs, bleating of sheep... and his style will either consist wholly of the imitation of sounds and forms, or will comprise but a small modicum of narration" And then Kivy will quote passages from the novels of George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, and William Faulkner -- some more descriptive than others, but none allowing us to "see" a person or place the way that a painter can. BTW - it's interesting to compare this discussion and his choices with that of Ayn Rand when she was addressing a similar topic with passages from Mickey Spillane and Thomas Wolfe. But as both of them pull descriptive passages out for special notice -- Kivy even calling them a "self-contained form-within-a-form" or "set pieces" like arias in opera -- they both damage the literary experience -- at least as I know it. Just as Kivy damages the visual experience (as I know it) when he writes: "Take the typical case of representation in the arts. I gaze at a Cezanne landscape and I see a mountain. Well, a pedantic German professor is supposed to have corrected his young pupils in a similar situation: "No,you do not see a mountain, you see a picture". But we all know what we are talking about, at least for the present purposes. We see a picture. We see a mountain. We see oil paint. We see a mountain "in" the picture, we "see in" to use Richard Wollheims's way of putting such things. All of these "seeings" and more make up our experience of the representation. And that this point we need be no more precise than that" But we do need to be more precise -- because Kivy wants to contrast the mountain that we see in Cezanne with the one as a novelist may describe it. When Kivy is looking at that Cezanne, is "I see a mountain" really the first thing that comes to his mind? In conclusion, regarding Kivy's first "case study", I don't doubt that a difference can be noted between literature when it is read as opposed to when it is performed. But, other than playing with the word "representational" , how has this exercise increased our understanding of the difference between "the fine arts" and "the pleasing arts" ? And I get the feeling that he's not an especially reliable witness to the quality of any of it. Rather than "giving similarities a rest" --- maybe we should just give "representational" a rest. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=GHX20hH6w-VlZXaROwfZtgAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
