Abstract

The two versions of Langer's hypothesis that form in art are "logically congruent" to "the forms of feeling," her definition of music as "unconsummated symbol" ), and her general definition of art as "forms symbolic of human feeling" ), are usually treated as synonymous. Her aesthetic writing has been rigidly identified with the congruence thesis. Yet FF explicitly repudiates the "unconsummated symbol." The book reflects Langer's attempt to solve problems with that definition of music as she sought to apply the congruence thesis to the other arts. Moreover, primarily through the introduction of the concept of the "virtual realm," Langer's modification to OSIM in FF actually render the congruence thesis inessential to the new theory. It became an optional rather than a necessary formal principle. ;This essay asserts the value of the concept of the virtual realm for musical and literary theory and for comparative studies in the two arts. Langer's broadcast premises, outlined in PNK and described here as her "biological materialism," justify her postulate of experiential "realms," emergeant out of and rendered sharable through a culture's symbolic practices, on which the arts draw and which they "virtually" or imaginally reformulate. Langer's "feeling"-centered approach to the arts led her to neglect the implications of the concept of the "virtual realm" for a "world"-centered approach. A "modified Langerian" theory of music is proposed, which reconciles "gestural" and "affective" accounts of musical meaning to argue that music can dramatize significant human "stances." The theories of Beardsley, Cooke and Kivy are invoked as foils. A Langerian approach to literature is compared with Altieri's in his 1981 Act and Quality; it is argued that literature can both dramatize "possible attitudes toward existential conditions" and formulate existential conditions themselves in a way that serves people's interest in discovering a reality which they must "cope with practically and morally" . The similarity of Altieri's claims for literature with those of the proposed theory of music is developed to suggest a foundation for comparative arts studies