ABSTRACT
The exaggerations of Expression theory, especially the belief that in experiencing a poem aesthetically we reproduce in ourselves the creative activity of the poet, namely, that some works of art are capable of being experienced as if they were human expression and that we do not experience expression exactly as we perceive objects or ordinary objective qualities. Each is a way of making the work available to aesthetic awareness. At the same time they cast doubt on the adequacy of any exclusively objectivist aesthetic theory. Sometimes, when we fail to experience them as expression we regard the hearing as abortive and consider that the work’s aesthetic qualities have not been properly experienced. When we experience John Donne’s poem The Sunne Rising from without, we hear the poet, represented as lying in bed with his mistress, address the sun with good-humoured but violently expressed contempt.
