Does all art have a sentiment?

Question

It occurred to me that when e.g. reading poetry, I attach a lot of significance to a kind of sentiment. It seems independent of how genteel the work is.I am interested in finding a way of thinking about it, which is reasonably strong i.e. which isn't specific to one group of philosophers but widely held or at least usually uncontentious.So I want to know what is near universally claimed about 'sentiment', especially its limits: in the sense of whether all art can be fruitfully approached as an object of (aesthetic) sentiment.

Answer 1

There is an EXCELLENT essay on this very subject: Susanne Langer's "Does Music Have Meaning?" It can be found in her book, Philosophy in a New Key, among other places.

It goes over numerous ideas about whether music communicates emotions, ideas, or other things.