The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic TheoryAndrew Ashfield, Peter de Bolla This collection of texts on the Sublime provides the historical context for the foundation and discussion of one of the most important aesthetic debates of the Enlightenment. The significance of the Sublime in the eighteenth century ranged across a number of fields - literary criticism, empirical psychology, political economy, connoisseurship, landscape design and aesthetics, painting and the fine arts, and moral philosophy - and has continued to animate aesthetic and theoretical debates to this day. However, the unavailability of many of the crucial texts of the founding tradition has resulted in a conception of the Sublime often limited to the definitions of its most famous theorist Edmund Burke. Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla's anthology, which includes an introduction and notes to each entry, offers students and scholars ready access to a much deeper and more complex tradition of writings on the Sublime, many of them never before printed in modern editions. |
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Page xix
... soul be removed from its experiential base in human conduct thereby inhabiting something like a 'purely' aesthetic realm? To what extent is the 'transport' and 'ravishment' of an encounter with the text a sexual as well as aesthetic ...
... soul be removed from its experiential base in human conduct thereby inhabiting something like a 'purely' aesthetic realm? To what extent is the 'transport' and 'ravishment' of an encounter with the text a sexual as well as aesthetic ...
Page xxx
... soul of the reader' [Dennis]. While Dennis is reluctant to explore the full sexual connotations of the reading scene later theorists will not only be troubled by its violence they will also enjoy its 'ravishment' and 'transport'. We ...
... soul of the reader' [Dennis]. While Dennis is reluctant to explore the full sexual connotations of the reading scene later theorists will not only be troubled by its violence they will also enjoy its 'ravishment' and 'transport'. We ...
Page xxxii
... soul. So riches, honours, titles, crowns, and whatever is veiled over with a theatrical splendour, and a gaudy outside, can never be regarded as intrinsically good, in the opinion of a wise man, since by despising such things no little ...
... soul. So riches, honours, titles, crowns, and whatever is veiled over with a theatrical splendour, and a gaudy outside, can never be regarded as intrinsically good, in the opinion of a wise man, since by despising such things no little ...
Page xxxiii
... soul, nor exalts his thoughts; that it calls not up into his mind ideas more enlarged than what the mere sounds of the words convey, but on attentive examination its dignity lessens and declines; he may conclude, that whatever pierces ...
... soul, nor exalts his thoughts; that it calls not up into his mind ideas more enlarged than what the mere sounds of the words convey, but on attentive examination its dignity lessens and declines; he may conclude, that whatever pierces ...
Page xxxiv
... souls to grandeur, and impregnate them with generous and enlarged ideas. “But how, it will be asked, can this be done?” Why, I have hinted in another place, that the sublime is an image reflected from the inward greatness of the soul ...
... souls to grandeur, and impregnate them with generous and enlarged ideas. “But how, it will be asked, can this be done?” Why, I have hinted in another place, that the sublime is an image reflected from the inward greatness of the soul ...
Contents
ix | |
xi | |
xxvii | |
Rhapsody to rhetoric | ii |
Irish Perspectives | 127 |
The Aberdonian Enlightenment | 157 |
Edinburgh and Glasgow | 195 |
From the Picturesque to the Political | 263 |
Sources and further reading | 307 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith admiration aesthetic agreeable appears arises astonishment attention awful beauty called cause character circumstances common conception consider contemplation degree delight Demosthenes discourse distinct divine Edmund Burke eighteenth-century elegance elevation emotion enthusiasm epic poetry exalted example excellence excite expression fancy feel figures French revolution genius give grand grandeur heart heavens Hence Homer horror human ideas Iliad images imagination imitation infinite kind language lofty Longinian Longinus magnificent mankind manner means ment Milton mind moral mountains nature never noble objects observe original Ossian pain painting Palemon Paradise Lost passion pathetic perfection picturesque pleasing pleasure poet poetry present principles produce qualities raise reading activity reason render Richard Payne Knight scenes Scottish enlighten sensation sense sensible sentiments soul species spirit sublime affect surprise taste terrible terror Theocles things thought tion tradition tropes tropological vast Virgil virtue wonder words writing