Event Info NTU Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities Series Literature, Art, Craft A significant element in the viewer’s experience of a work of visual art is often pleasure in, and admiration for, the skill of the artist – that dimension of the work we often call ‘craft’. In this lecture I will ask to what extent it is useful to discuss the reader’s response to a work of literature in terms of a similar enjoyment of craft. I will draw on the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’ put forward by the philosopher R. G. Collingwood and the theory of ‘techne’ developed by the literary critic Henry Staten, and examine a painting and a poem in order to compare the two genres as examples of craft. In both cases, one question to be asked is: when does craft become something else, something we call ‘art’? And when this happens, is the experience for the reader of literature the same as that for the viewer of visual art? News and Events | School of Humanities | NTU Singapore Registration for this event has closed. |