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HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

Academic Year 2025/2026 - Teacher: IVANA ANNA RANDAZZO

Expected Learning Outcomes

The course analyzes history of aesthetics authors and themes since antiquity, with particular reference to some key categories such as creation, form, symbol, artistic perception, expressiveness, imagination, imitation, fruition. The aim, according to the Dublin descriptors, is to provide students with some notions related to the modern and contemporary historical-artistic debate, in order to understand and deepen the fundamental issues of the discipline and develop autonomous judgments. The aesthetic studies, object of the course, will increase the ability to interpret aesthetic phenomena in general and will develop the student's expressive and argumentative ability. The ability to organize the data provided by the discipline in a critical and creative way will be stimulated and students will be able to relate aesthetic ideas with other fields of knowledge.

Course Structure

Frontal lectures. The texts in the program will be read in the classroom and guided discussions will be held on the topics addressed.

Required Prerequisites

No prerequisites required.

Attendance of Lessons

Attendance is not compulsory.

Detailed Course Content

A - General part (4 ECTS): The main historical stages of aesthetics: (from Antiquity to the Renaissance, from the Baroque to the eighteenth century, Idealism, Romanticism, Marxism, Neoidealism, Positivism, Evolutionism, Psychological Aesthetics, Linguistics, Semiotics, Human Sciences, Vitalism, Pragmatism, Analytical Aesthetics, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Hermeneutics, Deconstructionism). The themes of aesthetics: beauty, form, symbol, taste, genius, imagination, mimesis, ugly, sublime, tragic.

B - Monographic part (2 ECTS):

- Ernst Cassirer: three seminars on art as a symbolic form (language and art and the educational value of art).

- Susan Langer: ten lectures on “the problems of the art” from which emerges one of the most influential aesthetic perspectives of the twentieth century.

Textbook Information

A – General introduction (4 ECTS)

E. Franzini- M. Mazzocut-Mis, Estetica, Milano-Torino, Mondadori, pp. VII-XIX e 1-319.

 

B – Monographic course (2 ECTS)

E. Cassirer, Simbolo mito e cultura, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1981, pp. 149- 219.

-  S.K. Langer, Problemi dell’arte, Palermo, Aesthetica Edizioni, 2013, pp. 7-150.

 

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.
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