Christian Kock publishes monograph on ’moving forms’
Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric, Christian Kock, has published A Rhetoric of Aesthetic Power: Moving Forms.
The book offers a theory of formal properties of art that are apt to afford strong aesthetic experience – a project resembling Aristotle’s in the Poetics. It cuts across all genres of literature and also includes classical music – the formal art par excellence.
Drawing on a wide array of theoretical work and empirical evidence, it analyzes dozens of examples of both art forms. Besides Aristotle, major inspiration comes from two modern master thinkers: the linguist Roman Jakobson, who defined the “poetic function” of language, and the rhetorician Kenneth Burke, who proposed a “psychological” concept of form. Throughout, the book argues for aesthetic experience as an end in itself and a component of quality of life, one to which everyone should have access – rather than just a means to other ends.