Goodman on the concept of style

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 452-466

  Jacquette, Dale ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63149156273     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/40.4.452     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Nelson Goodman, 'The Status of Style', in Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), p. 23
2. (originally published in Critical Inquiry, vol. 1 [1975], pp. 799-811).
3. A definition of this sort is proposed by Leonard B. Meyer, in his essay, 'Toward a Theory of Style', in Berel Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style, revised and expanded edition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1987), p. 21: 'Style is a replication of patterning, whether in human behavior or in the artifacts produced by human behavior, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints' The material inadequacy of such a definition is too obvious to merit discussion, unless we are prepared to admit that getting up every morning to go to work is in and of itself a matter of style.
4. See also James Ackerman, 'A Theory of Style', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 20 (1962), pp. 227-237.
5. E. H. Gombrich, 'Style', in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan/Frce Press, 1968-1991), vol. 15, pp. 353-361.
6. A set of conference papers on related topics is collected by Caroline van Eck, James McAllister, and Rence van de Vall (eds), The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 1995).
7. Peter Lamarque, 'Style and Thought', Journal of Literary Semantics, vol. 21 (1992), pp. 45-54;
8. id., 'Imitating Style', in Lars-Olof Åhlberg and Tommie Zaine (eds), Aesthetic Matters: Essays Presented to Göran Sörbom on his 60th Birthday (Uppsala: Uppsala U.P., 1994), pp. 76-86.
9. Goodman, 'The Status of Style', p. 33.
10. Other criticisms of Goodman's definition of style as excessively narrow by virtue of its commitment to the symbolic functioning of a literary artwork are offered by Monroe C. Beardsley, 'Verbal Style and Illocutionary Action', in Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style, esp. pp. 208-212.
11. See also Anita Silvers, 'The Secret of Style', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 39 (1981), pp. 268-271.
12. Goodman, 'Words, Works, Worlds', Ways of Worldmaking, p. 12.
13. Goodman, 'When is Art?', p. 65.
14. See also Goodman, 'On Rightness of Rendering', Ways of Worldmaking, §6, The Fair Sample, pp. 133-137.
15. The concept of style I am advancing, concerned with how things are done, and therefore with activities as the proper subject of attributions of style, is broadly pragmatic. As such, it is in a very general way similar to other pragmatic approaches to the definition of style. See inter alia Kendall L. Walton, 'Style and the Products and Processes of Art', in Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style, pp. 72-103.
16. Jcncfer M. Robinson, 'Style and Personality in the Literary Work', Philosophical Review, vol. 94 (985), pp. 227-247. Robinson's pragmatic theory of style, by contrast with my proposal, is limited to literature rather than to the arts and other activities generally, and to what she refers to as 'individual style', as opposed to the collective styles of genres, schools, art movements, and the like.
17. A functional theory of style applied specifically to problems of style in film is developed by Noël Carroll, 'Film Form: An Argument for a Functional Theory of Style in the Individual Film', Style, vol. 32 (1998), pp. 385-401.
18. See Ambroise Vollard, Les Tableaux, Pastels et Dessins de Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Paris, 1918), vol. 1, 18, p. 5;
19. quoted in Lisa Portnoy Stein, Charles S. Moffett, Eliza E. Rathbone, Katherine Rothkopf, and Joel Isaacson (eds), Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige (Washington, DC: The Phillips Collection in collaboration with Philip Wilson, 1998), p. 131: 'Firm in his conviction that snow 'is one of nature's illnesses', Renoir painted only two or three effets de neige.'
20. A signature account of the style of performance artists is also considered by Joseph Margolis, 'The Autographic Nature of the Dance', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 39 (1981), pp. 419-427.
21. See Timothy H. Engström, 'A Question of Style: Nelson Goodman and the Writing of Theory', Metaphilosophy, vol. 23 (1992), pp. 329-349. Engström, from a deconstructionist postmodern standpoint, calls attention to Goodman's own style of philosophical writing, and in particular to the way in which Goodman's prose stylistically conditions and is conditioned by his adherence to a nominalist ontology.