Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Authors(s): M. H. Abrams
Source: Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 38, No. 6 (Mar.,
1985), pp. 8-33
Published by: American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20171773
Accessed: 24-03-2016 00:03 UTC
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M. H. Abrams
For the last two centuries the professional
philosophy of art, and more recently the prac
claims:
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al not universal.
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understructure.
Theorists of the various arts, from classical
Greece through most of the eighteenth centu
ry, whatever their divergencies, had assumed
the maker's stance toward a work of art, and
had analyzed its attributes in terms of a con
struction model. That is, they posited a poem
or any other work of art to be an opus, a thing
that is made according to a techne or ars, that
is, a craft, each with its requisite skills for select
10
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century.
/.
The perceiver's stance and the contemplation
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12
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13
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14
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17
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post-classical.
hands.
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men."
***
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24
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absent.
25
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26
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IV.
Let me anticipate what some of you are no
doubt thinking, and admit that the conditions
for the emergence of the theory of art-as-such
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28
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29
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God:
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museum:
V.
Well, what does this excursion into social
and intellectual history come to?
31
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32
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man concerns.
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