Tag: beauty
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As The Novel Lay Dying
Lately I’ve developed a tenderness for essays speculating about the “death of the novel,” or that inspiring sub-genre, “why write novels at all?” I suspect they are proof that the form still has a modicum of relevance; the very existence of such essays proves there is still something left to kill off. Contrast this with say, poetry,…
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What is a Real Work of Art?
“The creation of beauty is art,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836 in a slim volume called Nature. The Emerson quote provides the perfect introduction to the subject of Roger Scruton’s BBC documentary “Why Beauty Matters.” Scruton is a well-known British philosopher and author most recently of Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. In the film Scruton tells us, “there is all…