{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0353395913859746, 'fraction_numerical': 0.013804527885146328, 'mean_word_length': 4.9605263157894735, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Aesthetic Point of View: Selected Essays (review)

MONROEC beardsley published his first article in aesthetics in 1942, and — not counting about twenty-five articles in Shipley's Dictionary of World Literature, 1943 — his second and most influential one in 1946: "The Intentional Fallacy" (with W. K. Wimsatt). Between then and publication of The Aesthetic Point of View he published about seventy-five more articles, numerous reviews, and (disregarding edited books) three books: Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958), Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History (1966), and The Possibility of Criticism (1978). The number, the range, and above all the quality of Beardsley's writings have made him the most eminent living American aesthetician. Whether or not the intentional fallacy is indeed a fallacy or just so-called, it was the most influential single notion in American literary theory and criticism for at least three decades, being almost on all fours with affirming the consequent in traditional and symbolic logic. And, as the editors of The Aesthetic Point of View observe in their excellent introduction, "Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy ofCriticism . . . has become something of a classic in the philosophy of art, having acquired almost the status of a reference work. More than any other single text, it set analytic aesthetics on its feet and made the philosophy of art a respectable area for contemporary Anglo-American philosophers to work in" (p. 7). Indeed, it almost singlehandedly prevents textbooks that are distinguished works of scholarship from being a null class. The virtues of Beardsley's writings in aesthetics lie not solely or even chiefly in his being right or more plausible than other comers. Often he is, of course. But