Aesthetics or Appreciation of Beauty

This is a fascinating branch of philosophy. A set of 11 essays on "The Pleasures of the Imagination" was contributed to the journal "The Spectator" in June-July 1712 by Joseph Addison. He divides these into primary pleasures (those that can be perceived by the senses, like architecture) & secondary pleasures, which require imagination like painting, literature, sculpture & music. He analyses the effects of poetic imagery in Homer, Virgil, Ovid & Milton on the imagination.

Nearer home we had Kuvempu writing a slim volume "Raso Vy Saha" in Kannada on literary appreciation & analysis of poetics.

Not to be forgotten is the three part exhaustive (& exhausting!) analysis of Kannada poets "Shaili" (Style) & their works with copious extracts from their works, by Prof. S. V. Ranganna.

The latest scholarly Kannada work on the subject is S. L. Bhyrappa's doctoral thesis on "Truth & Beauty" in Kannada, truly an epochal landmark work. It is a really wide ranging work ranging from the beauty of little children to the beauty in Beethoven's string quartet op.135, where he quotes Morris Weitz as saying this music proves that even non-verbal music can be meaningful.