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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: for the present give a mere synopsis of M. Taine's general views.
And first it must be determined what a work of art is. Leaving
for a while music and architecture out of consideration, it will
be admitted that poetry, painting, and sculpture have one obvious
character in common: they are arts of IMITATION. This, says
Taine, appears at first sight to be their essential character. It
would appear that their great object is to IMITATE as closely as
possible. It is obvious that a statue is intended to imitate a
living man, that a picture is designed to represent real persons
in real attitudes, or the interior of a house, or a landscape,
such as it exists in nature. And it is no less clear that a novel
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
