Return to:
Literature
© Buildwise, LLC
Publication Review
Title: The
Psychology of Beauty
Author: Ethel D. Puffer, 1905
File: Free Book, PDF 605 KB, 129 pages
Review
"The human being who thrills to the experience of beauty in nature
and in art does not forever rest with that experience unquestioned. .
. He seeks a reason for the faith that is in him. And so have arisen the
speculative theories of the nature of beauty, on the one hand, and the
studies of concrete beauty and our feelings about it, on the other. Speculative
theory has taken its own way, however, as a part of philosophy, in relating
the Beautiful to the other great concepts of the True and the Good; building
up an architectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediate facts and
problems of the enjoyment of beauty. There has grown up, on the other
hand, in the last years, a great literature of special studies in the
facts of aesthetic production and enjoyment. Experiments with the aesthetic
elements; investigations into the physiological psychology of aesthetic
reactions; studies in the genesis and development of art forms, have multiplied
apace. But these are still mere groups of facts for psychology; they have
not been taken up into a single authoritative principle. Psychology cannot
do justice to the imperative of beauty, by virtue of which, when we say
"this is beautiful," we have a right to imply that the universe must agree
with us. A synthesis of these tendencies in the study of beauty is needed,
in which the results of modern psychology shall help to make intelligible
a philosophical theory of beauty. The chief purpose of this book is to
seek to effect such a union".
Table of Contents
- CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS
- THE NATURE OF BEAUTY
- THE AESTHETIC REPOSE
- THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART
- THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM
- SPACE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD MASTERS
- THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
- THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE
- THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA
- THE BEAUTY OF IDEAS
