Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the ...world, no species of composition has been so much decried.... "And what are you reading, Miss--?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Folk art" signifies the poetical, musical, and pictorial activities of those strata of the population which are uneducated and no...t urbanized or industrialized. It is of the essence of this art that those who keep it in being are not only passively receptive, but normally are creative participants in the artistic activities, and yet do not stand out as individuals or claim any personal authorship of the productions. "Popular art" on the other hand is to be understood as artistic or quasi-artistic production for the demand of a half-educated public, generally urban and inclined to mass-behavior. In folk art, producers and consumers are hardly distinguished, and the boundary between them is always fluid; in the case of popular art, we find on the contrary an artistically uncreative, completely passive public, and professional production of artistic goods strictly in response to the demand for them. It is indeed a striking fact that folk art, especially folk-poetry, emerges from the ranks of those who enjoy it, whereas popular songs--the street ballads and popular "hits"Mderive from professionals belonging to and spir itually dependent upon the upper classes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Have been reading "Genesis" several Sundays, not as a Christian reads for "spiritual consolation," "instruction," etc., not as an ...infidel reads to carp and quarrel and criticize, but as one who wishes to be informed and furnished in the earliest and most wonderful of all literary productions. The literature of the Bible should be studied as one studies Shakespeare, for illustration and language, for its true pictures of man and woman nature, for its early historical record.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the product...ions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And so she knelt in front of a bookcase, in driving need of the right arrangement of words; for it is a remarkable fact that she w...as left unmoved by criticisms of the sort of person she was by parents, relations, preachers, teachers, politicians and the people who write for the newspapers; whereas an unsympathetic description of a character similar to her own in a novel would send her into a condition of anxious soul-searching for days. Which suggests that it is of no use for artists to insist, with such nervous disinclination for responsibility, that their productions are only "a divine play" or "a reflection from the creative fires of irony," etc., etc., while the Marthas of this world read and search with the craving thought, What does this say about my life?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immat...ure freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but the ...list and record of the productions of such minds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thorough...ly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »