# Quote — John Dewey, Art as Experience

> In reading a novel, even one written by an expert craftsman, one may get a feeling early in the story that hero or heroine is doomed, doomed not by anything inherent in situations and character but by the intent of the author who makes the character a puppet to set forth his own cherished idea. The painful feeling that results is resented not because it is painful but because it is foisted upon us by something that we feel comes from outside the movement of the subject matter. A work may be much more tragic and yet leave us with an emotion of fulfillment instead of irritation. We are reconciled to the conclusion because we feel it is inherent in the movement of the subject matter portrayed. The incident is tragic but the world in which such fateful things happen is not an arbitrary and imposed world. The emotion of the author and that aroused in us are occasioned by scenes in that world and they blend with subject matter. It is for similar reasons that we are repelled by the intrusion of a moral design in literature while we esthetically accept any amount of moral content if it is held together by a sincere emotion that controls the material. A white flame of pity or indignation may find material that feeds it and it may fuse everything assembled into a vital whole.

- Author: [John Dewey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey.md)
- Book: [Art as Experience](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience.md)
- Page: 71
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dewey#Art_as_Experience_(1934)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/in-reading-a-novel

## More from this book

> Naturalism is a word of many meetings in philosophy as well as in art. like most isms — classicism and romanticism, idealism and realism in art — it’s has become an emotional term, a war cry of partisans.

p. 157 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/naturalism-is-a-word.md)

> The recurrence of relations—not of elements—in different contexts, which constitutes transposition is qualitative and hence directly experienced in perception.

p. 219 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/the-recurrence-of-relations-not.md)

> Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value.

p. 126 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-dewey/art-as-experience/even-the-eye.md)