Language art has many characteristics: the imaginative nature of image creation and image feeling; the combination of narrative and lyricism; the diversity of language structure and discourse situations, etc.
Generally speaking, the aesthetic characteristics of language art are: indirectness and vastness; emotion and thought; structure and language beauty.
Because literature and art use language as a medium and means, language art has formed many unique aesthetic characteristics of its own, which are reflected in indirectness and vastness, emotion and thought, structure and language beauty, etc. Several aspects.
Specifically, the aesthetic characteristics of language art can be understood as the following.
(1) Indirectness and vastness. Literature uses language to shape artistic images and convey aesthetic emotions. Since literary language must pass through the reader's imagination in order to experience the artistic image, the literary image is indirect. This indirectness is not only a limitation of language art, but also its specialty and advantage, because it makes literary images have a broadness unmatched by other arts.
The indirectness of literary images can be said to be one of the important features that distinguishes literature from all other arts. Whether it is architecture, practical arts and crafts, or plastic arts such as painting and sculpture, as well as expressive arts such as music and dance, and comprehensive arts such as drama, they all directly affect people's senses by shaping artistic images. These artistic images can not only be seen or heard, and some even touched. The only exception is the image depicted by the language art of literature. In the process of reading works, through active association and imagination, vivid images are presented in one's mind. This constitutes the indirectness of the image of language art. Therefore, people call literature "the art of imagination". . Although literary images cannot be grasped directly through the readers' sensory organs, they stimulate the readers' imagination through the mediation of language. They can also produce an aesthetic effect as if they are hearing their voices and seeing their people, making the literary images feel like they are there. It is presented vividly and vividly in the reader's mind.
The vastness of the literary world also comes from the characteristics of the language medium. Using language to express real life has broad and in-depth expression capabilities, is rarely limited by time and space, has the greatest freedom, and has great capacity. It can really be said to "view the past and present in a moment, caress the world in a moment." "(Lu Ji's "Wen Fu"), can break through objective time, realize the free extension of time and space, and display the vast and complex social life in an all-round and multi-angle manner.
Secondly, the vastness of literature is reflected in its ability not only to describe the external world, but also to penetrate into people's inner worlds and directly reveal the complex and rich spiritual worlds of various characters. Developing into the depths of people's inner world will undoubtedly make the world of literature broader, and this is precisely what other types of art are difficult to achieve. Literary works can not only show the character's inner world by describing the character's voice, smile, clothing, demeanor, words and deeds, etc., but may also deeply display the character's delicate and complex emotions through direct lyrical or narrative methods.
(2) Emotional and ideological. "Any literary work contains the writer's subjective emotions. The stronger the emotion of literature, the more it can infect readers, and the more artistic charm it has." (Chapter 9 Language Art in "Introduction to Art") Lyric poems, lyrical prose and other emotions Paraliterature is naturally inseparable from emotion, and narrative literature such as novels, reportages, and narrative poems are also inseparable from emotion. As narrative literature, novels and reportages also contain the author's passionate feelings. However, in such works, the author generally does not express his emotions directly. Instead, the author's subjective emotions are often deeply embedded in literary images. Among them, emotions are conveyed through image depiction. Because literature uses language as a medium, it has a unique advantage in expressing the inner emotional world of characters. It is precisely because literary works can penetrate deeply into people's spiritual world and directly reveal the most complex, rich and secret emotions of characters, making the characters created by language arts works more real and profound.
The ideological nature of language art also far exceeds other art forms in depth and breadth.
Although all literary and artistic works will always express the aesthetic consciousness and understanding of life of writers and artists to varying degrees, and thus have a certain ideological nature, among all types of art, the image of language art is the most profound and ideological. The reason why language art has such advantages and specialties is also inseparable from its use of language as a medium, because only language can directly express people's thoughts and has the strongest art in directly revealing people's thoughts, understanding, and evaluation judgments. expressiveness.
In literary works, the relationship between ideology and emotion is extremely close. In a certain sense, the ideological nature of literary works is always wrapped up in emotions and expressed through artistic images. Only works that permeate emotions into thoughts can have artistic charm that shocks the soul, making readers excited and deeply involved. Understand the ideological connotation contained in the work. ②On the other hand, the emotional nature of literary works is also inseparable from the ideological nature, because such emotions often become tendencies with specific love and hate emotions under the guidance of rational thoughts. The so-called tendency is actually the ideological and artistic attributes of the writer's love, hate, praise and criticism reflected in literary works. Obviously, the ideological and emotional aspects of literary works penetrate and blend with each other, becoming indispensable elements of all literary works.
(3) Structural and linguistic beauty. The structure and language of literary works have a special status and role. They are not only important artistic means that constitute literary works, but also have aesthetic value themselves. As an organic whole, a literary work must use the important means of structure to complete it. For literary works, structure plays an extremely important role, and is even directly related to the success or failure of the entire work.
According to the meaning of language art, its representative categories mainly include four styles: poetry, novels, prose, and drama literature.
1． poetry. According to the nature and the way of shaping the image, it can be divided into lyric poetry and narrative poetry; according to the historical development of poetry and whether the language has meter, it can be divided into metrical poetry and free verse. The art of poetry has its own distinctive aesthetic characteristics. First of all, poetry is highly concentrated and general in reflecting life and expressing thoughts and feelings. Secondly, poetry often contains strong emotions and rich imagination. Thirdly, the poetry language is concise, the rhyme is harmonious, the rhythm is distinct, it has the beauty of music, and even the structural beauty of architecture.
2． prose. There are various types of prose, which are generally divided into three categories: lyrical prose, narrative prose and argumentative prose. The important feature of prose is that the form is scattered but the spirit is not scattered. In other words, the aesthetic characteristics of prose lie in: rich and diverse themes and themes, rich and colorful expression techniques, and flexible and free chapter structure. Prose is in a free and flexible form, achieving the aesthetic characteristics of "the form is scattered but the spirit is not scattered".
3. novel. Novel is a literary genre that mainly focuses on narrating stories and shaping characters. It is characterized by using fictional methods to reproduce life based on daily life materials. Characters, plot and environment are the three elements of a novel. Literature is humanities.
Because novels use language as a medium, they have greater freedom than other types of art. They can absorb various artistic expression techniques to depict characters in an all-round way. The novel can describe the character's appearance and behavior in detail, and can also show the character's dialogue and actions. It can also observe and express the character from the eyes of other characters through different perspectives, and can extend the brushstrokes into people's inner world, through Deep psychological description is used to create flesh-and-blood characters. Delicate and profound psychological description is the unique artistic feature of the novel, and it is also a realm that other art categories cannot match. In particular, novels can also describe characters in intricate social life, thereby creating complex and plump round characters or typical characters with high aesthetic value. Creating vivid and vivid characters has always been the primary task of novels.
The aesthetic characteristics of novel art are mainly reflected in: outstanding fictionality; portraying characters from multiple aspects and perspectives; presenting a relatively complete and complex storyline; meticulous description, complete presentation of character and environment, etc. .
In short, literature uses language as a medium and means, which has a significant difference in nature from other arts.
Because literature uses language as a medium and means, language art has formed many unique aesthetic characteristics of its own, which are concentrated in several aspects such as emotion and thought, indirectness and vastness, structure and language beauty.