Feeling and Form

Introduction

Langer’s second major book applies the theory of presentational symbols from Philosophy in a New Key to all the arts, with chapters on each. Every art, she argues, creates a semblance, a “virtual” realm: painting, sculpture and architecture create virtual space, music virtual time, dance a play of virtual powers, literature a virtual history or memory, and drama a virtual future in the mode of destiny. A work of art is therefore an expressive form, a symbol in which we perceive the patterns of feeling, not a report of the artist’s own emotions. The book was much read by art theorists and educators and led to her late three-volume work Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.

Connections

Builds on

• Philosophy in a New Key1942 · Susanne K. Langer

More works by Susanne K. Langer

• 1942Philosophy in a New Key