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 xii
... vast range of distant branches of knowledge make competing claims for authority — we might think here of the beginnings of economics, psychology, sociology, linguistics, geology — lays the ground for the concatenation of simple concepts ...
... vast range of distant branches of knowledge make competing claims for authority — we might think here of the beginnings of economics, psychology, sociology, linguistics, geology — lays the ground for the concatenation of simple concepts ...
Page xiii
... vast bulk of discussion and debate is not exclusively concerned with 'autonomous subjectivity' at all. Indeed, it is precisely within the analytic of the sublime where we find the greatest tension between selfinterest and the interest ...
... vast bulk of discussion and debate is not exclusively concerned with 'autonomous subjectivity' at all. Indeed, it is precisely within the analytic of the sublime where we find the greatest tension between selfinterest and the interest ...
Page xix
... vast objects or within the interior landscape of mental affect, in the third it becomes an endlessly deferred point at which the work of analysis might finally come to an end. This results in a pretty continuous difficulty in ...
... vast objects or within the interior landscape of mental affect, in the third it becomes an endlessly deferred point at which the work of analysis might finally come to an end. This results in a pretty continuous difficulty in ...
Page xxix
... vast comet, that for want of room is ready to burst its orb and grow eccentric.. Welsted, p. 405. Joseph Addison also applied this idea to Paradise Lost itself; see The Spectator, no. 339, 29 March 1712. See Susie L. Tucker, Enthusiasm ...
... vast comet, that for want of room is ready to burst its orb and grow eccentric.. Welsted, p. 405. Joseph Addison also applied this idea to Paradise Lost itself; see The Spectator, no. 339, 29 March 1712. See Susie L. Tucker, Enthusiasm ...
Page xxxiv
... vast reach and capacity of Homer's ideas, when he says, While scarce the Skies, her horrid Head can bound; She stalks on Earth. — Mr. Pope. This description may with more justice be applied to Homer's genius than the extent of discord__ ...
... vast reach and capacity of Homer's ideas, when he says, While scarce the Skies, her horrid Head can bound; She stalks on Earth. — Mr. Pope. This description may with more justice be applied to Homer's genius than the extent of discord__ ...
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