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 xiii
... writers of the period presents a set of difficulties which must 1 Recent work on the Kantian text has taken precisely this line of enquiry. See Cathy Caruth, 'The force of example: Kant's symbols', Yale French Studies, 74 (1988); David ...
... writers of the period presents a set of difficulties which must 1 Recent work on the Kantian text has taken precisely this line of enquiry. See Cathy Caruth, 'The force of example: Kant's symbols', Yale French Studies, 74 (1988); David ...
Page xiv
... writer like Adam Smith, whose Theory of Moral Sentiments represents the most sophisticated and elegant solution to the problem of finding and sustaining a standard of taste, that is in finding a ground for aesthetic judgments. Smith ...
... writer like Adam Smith, whose Theory of Moral Sentiments represents the most sophisticated and elegant solution to the problem of finding and sustaining a standard of taste, that is in finding a ground for aesthetic judgments. Smith ...
Page xx
... writing, religious debate and so forth. The first part presents the origins of eighteenth-century speculation on the sublime, and groups extracts around the central themes of what has been termed the 'Longinian tradition' (Monk) ...
... writing, religious debate and so forth. The first part presents the origins of eighteenth-century speculation on the sublime, and groups extracts around the central themes of what has been termed the 'Longinian tradition' (Monk) ...
Page xxi
... writers presented here all fall within the mainstream of early eighteenth-century English philosophical criticism, although they should not be understood as forming a coherent school. Where Shaftesbury, for example, requires a theory of ...
... writers presented here all fall within the mainstream of early eighteenth-century English philosophical criticism, although they should not be understood as forming a coherent school. Where Shaftesbury, for example, requires a theory of ...
Page xxii
... writers both the authentication and limit for such experiences is provided by moral sense theory. It is hardly surprising, then, that the interconnections between descriptions of a sublime natural world and of the feelings aroused in an ...
... writers both the authentication and limit for such experiences is provided by moral sense theory. It is hardly surprising, then, that the interconnections between descriptions of a sublime natural world and of the feelings aroused in an ...
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