Outline of the History of Chinese Aesthetics

Author: Ye Lang
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1999-06-04
Features: This book is a renowned work by Professor Ye Lang of Peking University. Over the decade since its publication, it has received widespread acclaim and been selected as a textbook by many universities. The book is divided into four parts: The Beginning of Classical Chinese Aesthetics, The Development of Classical Chinese Aesthetics, The Summarization of Classical Chinese Aesthetics, and Modern Chinese Aesthetics. The time span covers from pre-Qin to modern times, with content involving philosophy, literary theory, poetry, fiction, drama, calligraphy and painting, gardens, and more. The author adopts the method of "focusing on essentials while omitting minor details, highlighting the important to elucidate the lesser," capturing the most representative aesthetic ideas and works of each era. Emphasizing the evolution and development of aesthetic categories and propositions, the book can also be regarded as a history of Chinese aesthetic thought or a history of Chinese aesthetic categories. In the new historical period of socialist "four modernizations," a significant task for aesthetic workers in China is to establish a modern aesthetic system in line with the Marxist-Leninist principle of "facing modernization, facing the world, and facing the future." Establishing this modern aesthetic system holds great practical significance for both the construction of socialist spiritual civilization and the construction of socialist material civilization.