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RPG Evolution: Are RPGs Art?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9017761" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't think that Appendix B is intended to provoke thoughts and feeling in the relevant sense. I'm not also persuaded that it has an aesthetic in the relevant sense.</p><p></p><p>I look at it this way: I write (and teach) for a living. The work I write involves creative expression - it consists of (what I hope are) well-expressed, imaginative, sometimes vibrant contributions to the various fields in which I work. It has an aesthetic, in a pedestrian sense that it conforms to journal style guides etc, and also in a richer sense that it both conforms to and contributes to the style of the contemporary academic essay. It is intended to provoke thoughts, and - in some cases, eg when writing on topics of injustice or violence - feeling.</p><p></p><p>But my work is not art. One reason is this: the way that it provokes thoughts and feeling is <em>by way of its content</em>. Its style is intended to facilitate that process, but does not on its own generate thoughts and feeling in the way that art does. (I mean, I enjoy it when a referee tells me my work is nicely written, but that is not a compliment intended to compare it to literary writing!)</p><p></p><p>Another is that the aesthetic of my work is in many ways instrumental. The form of the contemporary academic essay is a subtle instrument, but it is not really an end in itself.</p><p></p><p>JRRT's Appendix B is inventive, and imaginative. It complements the artistic component of the work of which it is a part. But I don't consider it, in itself, a work of art. I would say the same thing about REH's essay on The Hyborian Age - which contrasts, say, with his actual Conan stories which are (or aspire to be, even if not all succeed) art in the form of literature.</p><p></p><p>(To be clear: I am referring to the chronology in Appendix B. Some of the preliminary text, eg where we are told that Cirdan saw "further and deeper" than anyone else in Middle Earth, is art, again in the form of literature.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9017761, member: 42582"] I don't think that Appendix B is intended to provoke thoughts and feeling in the relevant sense. I'm not also persuaded that it has an aesthetic in the relevant sense. I look at it this way: I write (and teach) for a living. The work I write involves creative expression - it consists of (what I hope are) well-expressed, imaginative, sometimes vibrant contributions to the various fields in which I work. It has an aesthetic, in a pedestrian sense that it conforms to journal style guides etc, and also in a richer sense that it both conforms to and contributes to the style of the contemporary academic essay. It is intended to provoke thoughts, and - in some cases, eg when writing on topics of injustice or violence - feeling. But my work is not art. One reason is this: the way that it provokes thoughts and feeling is [I]by way of its content[/I]. Its style is intended to facilitate that process, but does not on its own generate thoughts and feeling in the way that art does. (I mean, I enjoy it when a referee tells me my work is nicely written, but that is not a compliment intended to compare it to literary writing!) Another is that the aesthetic of my work is in many ways instrumental. The form of the contemporary academic essay is a subtle instrument, but it is not really an end in itself. JRRT's Appendix B is inventive, and imaginative. It complements the artistic component of the work of which it is a part. But I don't consider it, in itself, a work of art. I would say the same thing about REH's essay on The Hyborian Age - which contrasts, say, with his actual Conan stories which are (or aspire to be, even if not all succeed) art in the form of literature. (To be clear: I am referring to the chronology in Appendix B. Some of the preliminary text, eg where we are told that Cirdan saw "further and deeper" than anyone else in Middle Earth, is art, again in the form of literature.) [/QUOTE]
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