Language art has many characteristics: the imagination of image creation and the imagination of image feeling; The combination of narration and lyricism; Language structure and the diversity of discourse situations.
Generally speaking, the aesthetic characteristics of language art are: indirectness and extensiveness; Emotionally and ideologically; The structure and beauty of language.
Because literature and art take language as the medium and means, language art has formed many unique aesthetic characteristics, which are embodied in indirectness and extensiveness, emotion and ideology, structure and language beauty.
Specifically, the aesthetic characteristics of language art can be understood as the following.
(1) Indirectness and extensiveness. Literature uses language to shape artistic images and convey aesthetic feelings. Because literary language can only feel the artistic image through readers' imagination, the literary image is indirect. This indirectness is not only the limitation of language art, but also the specialty and advantage of language art, because it makes the literary image incomparable to other arts.
The indirectness of literary image can be said to be one of the important characteristics that distinguish literature from all other arts. Whether it is architecture, practical arts and crafts, plastic arts such as painting and sculpture, or comprehensive arts such as music and dance, it directly affects people's senses by shaping artistic images, which can be seen, heard and even touched. The only exception is the image depicted by the language art of literature. In the process of reading works, a vivid image is presented in one's mind through positive association and imagination, which constitutes the indirectness of the image of language art, so people call literature "the art of imagination". Although the literary image can't be directly grasped by readers' sensory organs, it can stimulate readers' imagination through the intermediary of language, and it can also make people immersive, resulting in an immersive aesthetic effect, so that the literary image can be vividly presented in readers' minds.
The vastness of the literary world also comes from the characteristics of language media. Using language to express real life has extensive and in-depth expression ability, is rarely limited by time and space, has the greatest freedom and great capacity. It can really be said that "looking at the present and the past in an instant, caressing the whole world in an instant" (Lu Ji's Wen Fu) can break through the objective time, realize the free extension of time and space, and show the vast and complicated social life from all directions and angles.
Secondly, the vastness of literature lies in that it can not only describe the external world, but also penetrate into people's inner world and directly reveal the complex and rich spiritual world of various characters. Going deep into people's inner world will undoubtedly broaden the world of literature, which is just beyond the reach of other kinds of art. Literary works can not only show the inner world of characters by describing their voices, smiles, manners, words and deeds, but also deeply express their delicate and complicated feelings through direct lyric or narrative methods.
(2) Emotionally and ideologically. "Any literary work contains the writer's subjective feelings. The more emotional literature, the more it can infect readers and the more artistic it is. " (Introduction to Art Chapter 9 Language Art) Emotional literature such as lyric poetry and lyric prose can not be separated from emotion, and narrative literature such as novels, reportage and narrative poems can not be separated from emotion. Fiction and reportage, as narrative literature, also contain the writer's passion and emotion, but in such works, the author usually does not directly express his feelings, but often conveys the author's subjective feelings through the image description in the literary image. Literature, with language as the medium, has unique advantages in expressing the inner emotional world of characters. It is precisely because literary works can go deep into people's spiritual world and directly reveal the most complex, rich and secret emotions of characters that the characters created by language and art works are more real and profound.
The ideological content of language art also far exceeds other art forms in depth and breadth. Although all literary and artistic works always show the aesthetic consciousness and understanding of life of writers and artists to varying degrees, they are ideological, but among all kinds of arts, the image of language art is the most profound and thoughtful. 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 artistic expression in directly revealing people's ideological understanding, evaluation and judgment.
There is a close relationship between ideology and emotion in literary works. In a sense, the ideological content of literary works is always wrapped in emotion and expressed through artistic images. Only works that permeate emotions into thoughts can have artistic charm that shocks the soul, and readers can deeply understand the ideological connotation contained in the works while being excited. On the other hand, the emotionality of literary works is inseparable from ideology, because this kind of emotion is often guided by rational thought and becomes a tendency with specific love and hate. The so-called tendentiousness is actually the ideological and artistic attribute of the writer's love, hate and praise in literary works. Obviously, the ideological content and emotional content in literary works penetrate and blend with each other, and become an indispensable element in all literary works.
(3) Structural and beautiful language. The structure and language of literary works have a special position and function. They are not only important artistic means to constitute literary works, but also have aesthetic value. As an organic whole, literary works must be completed by the important means of structure. For literary works, structure plays an extremely important role, even directly related to the success or failure of the whole work.
According to the meaning of language art, its representative types are: poetry, novel, prose and drama literature.
1. Poetry. According to the nature and the way of creating images, it can be divided into lyric poems and narrative poems; According to the historical development of poetry and whether the language has rhyme or not, it can be divided into metrical poetry and free verse. The art of poetry has its own distinct aesthetic characteristics. First of all, poetry is highly centralized and general in reflecting life and expressing thoughts and feelings. Secondly, poetry often contains strong feelings and rich imagination. Thirdly, the language of poetry is refined, the rhythm is harmonious, the rhythm is distinct, and it has the beauty of music and even the beauty of architectural structure.
2. prose. There are many kinds of prose, which are generally divided into lyric prose, narrative prose and argumentative prose. The important feature of prose is that it is scattered in form but not in spirit. In other words, the aesthetic characteristics of prose are: rich and varied themes, rich and colorful expressions and flexible and free text structure. Prose is a free and flexible form, which achieves the aesthetic characteristics of "scattered in form but not scattered in spirit".
3. novels. Novel is a literary genre which mainly tells stories and depicts characters. Its characteristic is to reproduce life in a fictional way on the basis of life materials. Character, plot and environment are the three elements of a novel. Literature is human studies.
Because the novel takes language as the medium, it has more freedom than other kinds of art, and can absorb all kinds of artistic expressions to portray characters in all directions. The novel can describe the appearance and behavior of the characters in detail, and can also show the dialogues and actions of the characters. It can also observe and express the character from different perspectives from the eyes of other characters, extend the brush strokes to people's inner world, and shape flesh-and-blood characters through deep psychological description. Delicate and profound psychological description is the unique artistic feature of the novel, and it is also a realm that other art categories can't reach. In particular, novels can also describe characters in complicated social life, thus creating a round or typical character image with high aesthetic value. Creating vivid characters has always been the primary task of novels.
The aesthetic characteristics of novel art are: outstanding fiction; Depicting characters from many aspects and perspectives; Show a more complete and complicated story; Meticulous description, complete presentation of people and environment, etc.
In a word, literature takes language as the medium and means, which is quite different from other arts in nature. Because literature takes language as the medium and means, language art has formed many unique aesthetic characteristics, which are embodied in emotion and ideology, indirectness and extensiveness, structure and language beauty.