Showing papers in "Style in 2019"
18 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, Roupenian's "Cat Person" has generated controversy due to its irresolute ending, which induces readers to develop divergent search strategies, while overlooking certain improbabilities and deviations from the story's dominant code.
Abstract: abstract:Within days of being published in the New Yorker on December 11, 2017, Kristen Roupenian's \"Cat Person\" had sparked a storm of internet activity, inspiring \"countless tweets\" and \"think pieces about modern dating, consent, feminism and the role of fiction in American culture.\" The positive responses also provoked backlash from some readers, who voiced irritation with the story through social media, debating, for instance, whether Margot or Robert is the more sympathetic character, or if \"Cat Person\" is a self-indulgent personal essay. The wide range of popular interpretations, we contend, while reflective of the contemporary cultural moment, is also a result of the story's sophisticated deployment of narratological and stylistic techniques. A good deal of the controversy, particularly among millennials, has been generated by its irresolute ending, which induces readers to develop divergent search strategies, while overlooking certain improbabilities and deviations from the story's dominant code.
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TL;DR: Yeats's understanding of Chinese arts and poetics is best presented in his poem "Lapis Lazuli", in which he parallels European arts and Chinese arts, displaying a West-East contrast in terms of creative perception, poetic form, and aesthetic essence.
Abstract: abstract:W. B. Yeats's understanding of Chinese arts and poetics is best presented in his poem \"Lapis Lazuli,\" in which he parallels European arts and Chinese arts, displaying a West-East contrast in terms of creative perception, poetic form, and aesthetic essence. Firstly, the poem shows a shift of perception from the personal to aesthetic and finally to Chinese Xujing (虚静) through adjusting the distance between arts and reality and changing literary concerns. Secondly, there is a formal contrast between European symbolism and Chinese Yixiang (意象), revealing the difference between well-designed symbol arrangement, the natural unification of life perception, and the image of things. Thirdly, the differences between the West/East aesthetic essences are revealed through a contrast between the Western intellectual–physical division and Chinese human nature unification. A reading of Yeats's \"Lapis Lazuli\" from a Chinese poetic perspective will help deepen apprehension of Yeats's universal perception of arts, civilizations, and life.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that a single instance of planting and payoff may lead to different aesthetic responses, depending on the perceiver's ability to cope with incongruity between the plant and the payoff.
Abstract: Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed “planting and payoff,” to choreograph audience expectations. Formalist methods within the humanities help us understand the structure of the device, and empirical research in psychology helps us understand the pleasures that attend it. A single instance of planting and payoff, however, may lead to different aesthetic responses, depending on the perceiver’s ability to cope with incongruity between the plant and the payoff. The aesthetic pleasure one derives from the planting-and-payoff device is largely a factor of a narrative’s structural incongruity (too much incongruity leads to confusion; too little leads to boredom) and the perceiver’s capacity for coping (too much capacity leads to boredom; too little leads to confusion). Psycho illustrates each of the ways in which storytellers employ planting and payoff to generate aesthetic pleasure.
TL;DR: The aesthetic pleasure one derives from the planting-and-payoff device is largely a factor of a narrative's structural incongruity and the perceiver's capacity for coping (too much capacity leads to boredom; too little leads to confusion).
Abstract: abstract:Storytellers commonly employ a narrative device, termed \"planting and payoff,\" to choreograph audience expectations. Formalist methods within the humanities help us understand the structure of the device, and empirical research in psychology helps us understand the pleasures that attend it. A single instance of planting and payoff, however, may lead to different aesthetic responses, depending on the perceiver's ability to cope with incongruity between the plant and the payoff. The aesthetic pleasure one derives from the planting-and-payoff device is largely a factor of a narrative's structural incongruity (too much incongruity leads to confusion; too little leads to boredom) and the perceiver's capacity for coping (too much capacity leads to boredom; too little leads to confusion). Psycho illustrates each of the ways in which storytellers employ planting and payoff to generate aesthetic pleasure.