[Aiwendil]

I must say I find a curious disconnect between your assertion that "The purpose of art is to be aesthetically beautiful (or ‘entertaining&#8217 [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]" and your slamming of the likes of Britney Spears. Spears and her ilk seem to be the ultimate expression of your assertion – they produce “art” which has been engineered to be nothing more than aesthetically (i.e., sensually) pleasing.

I don't think I've really made my position clear. I realize that now this is rather beside the point of the argument, but allow me to clarify my point of view.

I make a distinction between art that is aesthetically pleasing and art that is popular, based on the supposition that people can be more or less fooled into thinking that a thing is good. There are people who like Britney Spears because it is the popular thing to like; there are people who dislike Mozart because they have never given him a chance. Popularity isn't an accurate measurement of the quality of a work of art because it is in part governed by factors such as these, rather than by aesthetic merit alone.

Spears and her ilk seem to be the ultimate expression of your assertion – they produce “art” which has been engineered to be nothing more than aesthetically (i.e., sensually) pleasing

I don't think the music of these people is aesthetically pleasing. It is engineered to be popular, not to be beautiful. Surely Beethoven's 9th symphony is more aesthetically/sensually pleasing than a Britney Spears song.

But I also do not equate 'aesthetic' with 'sensual'.

What I’m taking away from your arguments is this: that the purest, most legitimate form of art is that which is all form and no content.

This was not my intended meaning. The purest and most legitimate form of art is that which is most aesthetically pleasing. But aesthetic pleasure is a result of both form and content. When I read, say, King Lear, I enjoy the form: the language, the plot (which is really part form, part content), etc. But my pleasure is enhanced by an understanding of the content: the importance of royalty, the naturalistic evil of Edmund, the conflict between false eloquence and ineloquent truth, etc. I do think that form is important, but I don't think that content is worthless. Aesthetic beauty is not just sensual beauty; in fact, I think it is almost the antithesis of sensual beauty. It is beauty that appeals to mind (rather than to the senses), on all its levels - from emotion to intellect.

Aiwendil, your argument here is again well-taken – though I think that in today’s world, where we live and die in an environment steeped in media that has a global reach, I think that the ability of art to effect change in the world has grown considerably.

Excellent point. Certainly the ability of art to effect change has grown. But it tends to be popular art that effects change; or at least it is popular art that effects change the most quickly.

let's say for the sake of argument that Tokien's composition of a great, powerful, emotioanlly rewarding --mmm-- Hyper-Archetype is so comprehensive it gives later writers no motivation to perform their own negotiation of theme and structure-- all the relevant archetypes have been put together for them.

This is very true, Nar. The problem is that the modern fantasy genre is more or less defined by this hyper-archetype. It's difficult to create a fantasy world that is not an imitation of Tolkien without it crossing over the boundaries of the genre.