Aesthetic Theory (Theory and History of Literature)

Aesthetic Theory (Theory and History of Literature) by Adorno, Theodor W. Adorno. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780816617999.

The culmination of a lifetime of aesthetic investigation, Aesthetic Theory is Adornos major work, a defense of modernism that is paradoxical in its defense of illusion. In it, Adorno takes up the problem of art in a day when "it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying." In the course of his discussion, Adorno revisits such concepts as the sublime, the ugly, and the beautiful, demonstrating that concepts such as these are reservoirs of human experience. These experiences ultimately underlie aesthetics, for in Adornos formulation "art is the sedimented history of human misery."