Original scientific paper
Ernest “Banburying” or the Importance of Being Rasika. Analyzing Affective Aesthetics of The Importance Of Being Ernest Through Indian Rasa Theory
Marta Brkljačić
; Zagreb
Hrvoje Čargonja
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb
Abstract
This article applies Indian theatre theory, so called rasa theory, in an analysis of the affective aesthetics of Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. Rasa (Sanskrit: juice) is an aesthetic concept that stands for aesthetic pleasure of a work of art. Rasa is both a process of creating the aesthetic appeal of a work of art and an aesthetic experience of it that is reached through “tasting”. The work of art is organically transformed by exposing its rasa and by suggesting its aesthetic meaning through mutual interactions of the affective elements it contains. This application of the concept of rasa to Wilde's drama is an effort in comparative aesthetics, which approaches prominent work of Western culture through the optics of Indian theory of aestheticized affect. The analysis shows how artistic communication takes place in a logically conditioned emotional discourse and develops in a directed way through purposefully created conditions, with the help of affective turning points. To apprehend the totality of the stimuli from which rasa emerges and to make artistic communication more productive, it is necessary to seriously practice aesthetic pleasure and to refine the existing aesthetic sensibility, or in other words, to be seriously "Banburying". Elements of Indian rasa theory reveal aestheticized affective processes in Oscar Wilde's play, which indicates the importance of affectivity in intercultural comparisons and the applicability of rasa theory in a comparative approach to works of Western art.
Keywords
rasa theory; Indian aesthetics; Oscar Wilde; affective aesthetics; play
Hrčak ID:
278158
URI
Publication date:
27.5.2022.
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