The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 11/18/2010
EAN 9780521841801, ISBN10: 0521841801
Hardcover, 626 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm
Language: English
This is the first modern attempt to put aesthetics back on the map in classical studies. James I. Porter traces the origins of aesthetic thought and inquiry in their broadest manifestations as they evolved from before Homer down to the fourth century and then into later antiquity, with an emphasis on Greece in its earlier phases. Greek aesthetics, he argues, originated in an attention to the senses and to matter as opposed to the formalism and idealism that were enshrined by Plato and Aristotle, and through whose lens most subsequent views of ancient art and aesthetics have typically been filtered. Treating aesthetics in this way can help us perceive the commonly shared basis of the diverse arts of antiquity. Reorienting our view of the ancient vocabularies of art and experience around matter and sensation, this book dramatically changes how we look upon the ancient achievements in these same areas.
Introduction
Part I. Foundations
Aesthetics, Formalism, and Materialism
1. Aesthetic thought in antiquity
2. Form and formalism
3. Matter and appearances
Part II. The Nascent Aesthetic Languages of the Sixth to Fourth Centuries BCE
4. The rise of aesthetic reflection in the fifth century
5. The evidence of Aristophanes and Gorgias
6. The music of the voice
7. The voice of music
8. Visual experience
Part III. Broader Perspectives
9. Sublime monuments in ancient aesthetics
Epilogue.