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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

New aestheticism?


I guess the new aestheticism is not that exiting:  It tends toward a Kantian / Adornian approach and a clunky prose style.  I've underlined some verbiage that a graceful writer might have avoided.  


The works of Wyndham Lewis provide us with a case study for the application of this view of criticism to the understanding of artistic productions. Lewis’s work has been subjected to the same range of assessments as most other authors, from the classic description of it in terms of certain types of basic writing patterns to the relation of it to psychoanalytic or Marxist categories If we turn to the novels of Lewis from a Kantian direction, however, we can see the vital character of his work as consisting precisely in its negotiation with the characteristics of life itself.  

DON'T WRITE LIKE THIS, PLEASE! The pay-off after these three sentences is the striking idea that Lewis's work is about life.  Imagine that!  Does it add anything to say the "characteristics of life itself"?

I find it interesting that "aestheticism" does not seems to have anything to do with the aesthetics of critical prose.  I imagine the "description ... in terms of certain types of basic writing patterns" to be the analysis of narrative and stylistic techniques, so why not say so.  I imagine the relation between this work and psychoanalytic and Marxist categories to be just ...  Marxist and Freudian readings.  

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