Presentation Of The History Of The "expressive Form"

This dissertation seeks to study Susanne Langer's aesthetics as a whole in the context of the literature theory developments in the 20th century by integrating and transcending the present related academic achievements.The art symbol in Dr. Langer's works is a kind of quasi-symbol, or more accurately, a kind of"expressive form". The concept of"expressive form", which points out the difference of art from language as symbols, is the core of Susanne Langer's aesthetics. This concept proposed by critic Melvin Rader was accepted by Dr. Langer after deliberate consideration. And Dr. Langer replaced"art symbol"with"expressive form"as the core of her theoretic exploration. Profound and thorough analysis of this concept will help us grasp the essence of Dr. Langer's aesthetic thinking.Firstly, the significance of the concept of"expressive form"does not lie in the invention of a new concept, but in the internal mechanism suggested by it: expression of idea of feelings the starting point, logical forms the essence, illusion the specific manifestation and infinite destination, intuition the way to grasp it, symbols the medium connecting all levels of"expressive form". Based upon linguistic and biological theory and symbolist methodology, the whole mechanism reflects the main feature of Susanne Langer's theory. To identify art symbol as"expressive form"make it clearer that every art work is an indivisible whole that expresses human feeling and life. Feeling and life are embodied in the form itself. With the presumption that form can express the meaning of life experience, art can be deemed as a kind of meaningful symbol. However, the meaning we talked above is different from the meaning emphasized by linguistics. To be more accurate, it should be called import.Secondly, the core of Dr. Langer's theory was created by integrating and transforming a lot of preceding literature theories. Among them, Cassirer's philosophy is the footstone of...