Derek Matravers examines how emotions form a bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; and we may experience emotions towards, or on behalf of, a particular fictional character. These experiences are philosophically puzzling, for their causes seem quite different from the causes of emotion in the rest of our lives. Matravers shows that what these experiences have in common, and what links them to the expression of emotion in non-artistic cases, is the role played by feeling. He carries out a critical survey of various accounts of the nature of fiction, attacks contemporary cognitivist accounts of expression, and offers an uncompromising defence of a controversial view about musical expression: that music expresses the emotions it causes its listeners to feel.

About the Author
Derek Matravers is Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University, and was previously a Research Fellow at Cambridge University, where he continues to teach philosophy.

Reviews
a rich and carefully developed set of positions on topics central to aesthetics. * Susan L. Feagin, Mind, Vol.109, No.435, July 2000. *
Matravers writes very well about expression ... giving us a sharp account of Goodman on expression and metaphor and a convincing and extended critique of various forms of 'cognitivism'. * Michael McGee, British Jnl for Aesthetics, Vol.40, No.3, July 2000. *
this substantial and admirably fair-minded book ... the author offers a lively challenge to the 'cognitivist' view ... and defends an unfashionable 'arousal theory' to replace it. He does this well and definitively. * Michael McGee, British Jnl for Aesthetics, Vol.40, No.3, July 2000. *
it is refreshing to find a philosopher writing on aesthetics extensively illustrating his arguments with our experience of music in a field usually dominated by the visual arts ... This is a complex book, but it is also an important and convincing one and should be read by anyone interested in the relation between art and the emotions. * John Shand, Times Higher Education Supplement *
Art and Emotion is an ambitious and bold defence of views about emotional response and expression that have in general been dismissed far too quickly. Though one may disagree with Matravers' conclusions, he has produced a rich and carefully developed set of positions on topics central to aesthetics and shown that they recive our serious scrutiny. * Susan L Feagin, Mind 2000 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199243167
Author Derek Matravers
Format Paperback
Page Count 246
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 217mm * 138mm * 14mm