Synopses & Reviews
Art for Arts Sake and Literary Life is a history of literary aestheticism from the eighteenth century to modern deconstruction. Gene H. Bell-Villada examines writings by critics, philosophers, and other writers from Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Uniting all is his conviction that “there are concrete social, economic, political, and cultural reasons for the emergence, growth, diffusion, and triumph of lart pour lart over the past two centuries.”
Review
"Lucid and learned. . . . much more than an exercise in retrieval, although it is splendid on this account alone, Bell-Villada has also joined debates about the Latin American novel, deconstructionism, and post-modernism, offering what is always in short supply: a wide-angled, historical, and penetrating perspective."—Russell Jacoby Russell Jacoby
Review
"A wide-ranging, erudite, well-written study with a refreshing disdain for doctrine."—Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly
Review
"Professor Bell-Villada has rendered an incomparable service to those probing the sources of the modern aesthetic . . . I have found his book so wide-ranging and inclusive that I would recommend it enthusiastically."—Dore Ashton Dore Ashton
Synopsis
Art for Art's Sake and Literary Life is a dynamic history of literary aestheticism from the eighteenth century to academic deconstruction in our own time. Gene H. Bell-Villada examines an enormous range of writings by critics, philosophers, and writers from Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Uniting all is his conviction that "there are concrete social, economic, political, and cultural reasons for the emergence, growth, diffusion, and triumph of l'art pour l'art over the past two centuries". Bell-Villada begins by considering how such thinkers as Shaftesbury, Kant, and Schiller described beauty as a phenomenon to be weighed not in isolation from other aspects of our existence but as part of our general development as human beings. He recounts how the original vision of Kant and Schiller was simplified and debased within new cultural, political, and economic contexts, leading to the "aesthetic separatism" promoted by lyric poets in France. Bell-Villada then examines how the ideology of Art for Art's Sake took on new forms in Europe and the Americas, culminating in present-day versions associated with the academicization (and ever greater marginalization) of literature. Artfully combining an exceptional amount of learning with a sharp polemical focus, Art for Art's Sake and Literary Life will appeal to a wide range of scholars and general readers for whom literature, aesthetics, and the relations of culture and society are vitally important matters.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-328) and index.
About the Author
Gene A. Bell-Villada is a professor and chair in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Williams College. He is the author of Borges and His Fiction, Garcia Márquez: The Man and His Work, and The Carlos Chadwick Mystery: A Novel of College Life and Political Terror.