Gothic and Classical in Eighteenth-Century Criticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
James Uden
Keyword(s):  
Original Composition ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Edward Young

This chapter examines the dynamic and evolving relationship between conceptions of “Gothic” and “classical” in mid-eighteenth-century criticism. It argues that both terms were highly changeable in their content and were rarely imagined as mere opposites. The chapter focuses on three authors, all of whom reinterpreted the classical world as an object of private aesthetic experience rather than as a source of political or ethical examples. In his Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), Edward Young imagines the Roman poets as a giant “spectre,” which threatened to overwhelm modern poets, inhibiting their capacity for original creation. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke describes a frightening descent into the Underworld of Virgil’s Aeneid as an opportunity to form homosocial bonds with other male readers. Finally, Richard Hurd in Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) describes the classical world as a distant forerunner to a more modern preoccupation with enchantment and imagination. In all three of these authors, the classical world is shifting its meaning and significance. It is becoming, paradoxically, increasingly Gothic.

scholarly journals Sublime in the aesthetics of Nicolai Hartmann and Edmund Burke

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Sasa Grbovic
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Nicolai Hartmann ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Sensible Qualities

This article is dedicated to the interpretation of the aesthetic thought of Nicolai Hartmann and Edmund Burke, that is, the interpretation of their different understandings of the sublime, and its relation to the beautiful. While Hartmann?s sublime is an aesthetic value that is subordinate to the beauty, Burke defines the sublime as a form of aesthetic experience that is on the same level as beautiful. Burke forms an understanding of the sublime based on his analysis of the aesthetic experience, which includes his understanding of passions, states of the soul and the analysis of the sensible qualities of the aesthetic objects, while Hartmann formally considers sublime as one kind of beautiful, and reaches his understanding of it based on his inquiry of the aesthetic object and his definition of beautiful.

scholarly journals Helen’s semiotic body: ancient and modern representations

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-213
Author(s):  
Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Physical Vacuum ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Site

The paper draws on theoretical work on the representation of the female body as an object of the male gaze in modern narrative, in order to decode and analyze Helen’s portrayal as a physical vacuum in ancient literature. I argue that the negation of Helen’s corporeality emphasizes the semiotic duality of her body, allowing it to be deployed both as a sign and as a site for the inscription of signs. The paper, then, proceeds to show how Helen’s Iliadic depiction has provided the eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke with a rhetorical platform upon which to theorize the aesthetic dichotomy between the beautiful and the sublime. I close my analysis by illustrating how the eclecticism, compromises, and pastiches that inform Helen’s cinematic recreations find a parallel in, and thus perpetuate, ancient pictorial techniques.

Sublime, the

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Crowther
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
The Way

The origin of the term ‘the sublime’ is found in ancient philosophy, where, for example, Longinus linked it with a lofty and elevated use of literary language. In the eighteenth century, the term came into much broader use, when it was applied not only to literature but also to the experience of nature, whereafter it became one of the most hotly debated subjects in the cultural discourse of that age. The theories of Addison, Burke and Kant are especially significant. Addison developed and extended the Longinian view of the sublime as a mode of elevated self-transcendence, while Burke extended John Dennis’s insight concerning sublimity’s connection with terror and a sense of self-preservation. While Addison and Burke encompassed both art and nature in their approaches, Kant confined the experience of the sublime to our encounters with nature. In his theory, the sublime is defined as a pleasure in the way that nature’s capacity to overwhelm our powers of perception and imagination is contained by and serves to vivify our powers of rational comprehension. It is a distinctive aesthetic experience. In the 1980s and 1990s Kant’s and (to a much lesser extent) Burke’s theories of the sublime became the objects of a massive revival of interest, in the immediate context of a more general discussion of postmodern society. Kant’s theory, for example, has been used by J.-F. Lyotard and others to explain the sensibility – orientated towards the enjoyment of complexity, rapid change and a breakdown of categories – that seems to characterize that society.

Mediating the Sublime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikita Mathias
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Media ◽  
Easel Painting

As if accepting Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant’s rejection of the visual arts as carriers of the experience of the sublime as a productive challenge, artists and craftsmen already in the eighteenth century started to experiment with media technological innovations that would give more dynamic, greater and overwhelming images of sublime disaster events. More precisely, such innovations sought to overcome the spatial and temporal limitations of easel painting, aiming to provide experiences of illusionistic immersion and of sensory, affective, and emotional intensity. The media discussed in this chapter range from the moving images of the Eidophusikon and the Diorama to the large-scale pictures of the Panorama, John Martin’s disaster motifs, and American landscape painting. Moreover, these various media participated in broader popularization processes, as pictorial experiences shifted from being viewed as elite activities toward phenomena of middle class leisure entertainment.

Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: Is there a Male Gaze in Empirical Aesthetics?

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan A. Ortlieb ◽  
Uwe C. Fischer ◽  
Claus-Christian Carbon
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Social Motivation ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Hieronymus Bosch ◽  
State And Trait Anxiety ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

In his ground-breaking Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke (1757) presented a comprehensive aesthetic theory based on two types of aesthetic appreciation: the beautiful and the sublime. While beauty inspires us with tender feelings of affection, a thrill of delightful horror attracts us to the sublime. According to Burke these ideas originate in a drive for affiliation (beautiful) and a drive for self-preservation (sublime). He also claims that the sublime is generally the more powerful aesthetic experience. A synopsis of literature on gender differences in aesthetic preferences, personality traits, and social motivation suggests, however, that on average women might be less susceptible to the Burkeian sublime than men. We tested this hypothesis empirically using sixty picture details from a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. One hundred and fifty participants rated these stimuli in terms of threat (respectively safety) and liking. Besides, they completed standardized scales for state and trait anxiety as well as for state and trait depression. We found a strong effect for gender: on average, safety and liking were more closely related for female than for male participants. In the light of these findings we state that Burke’s concepts of the beautiful and the sublime might in fact be confounded with gender-related aesthetic preferences and that his proclivity to the sublime could reflect a male gaze on aesthetics. Finally, we discuss possible indicators for ‘Burke’s fallacy’ in empirical aesthetics today.

The Sublime in Disaster Cinema

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikita Mathias
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Motion Pictures ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
First Century ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Sublime

The film analytical chapter moves along the lines of different key moments of the sublime: the Sublime as somatic excess, subjectivity, transcendence, modality, presentability, the geological sublime, the sublime and the ridiculous, as well as sublime hyperobjects and the ecological sublime. The primary analytical tool applied are Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant’s theoretical models of the sublime. The application of these eighteenth-century theorems for the analysis of twentieth and twenty-first-century motion pictures is solely justified through their shared historical foundation. This historical account takes into view the broader cultural horizon of the sublime, encompassing aesthetic thought, art historical iconographies, media technologies, aesthetic receptive conventions and strategies, scientific, economic, and cultural discourses, as well as general concepts of man’s relation to nature’s forces.

scholarly journals Burke’s understanding of the sublime

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
Sasa Grbovic
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Physiological Explanation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
Human Nervous System

The subject of this article is an interpretation and clarification of one part of Edmund Burke?s aesthetic thought that refers to his understanding of the aesthetic experience of the sublime. For Burke, the sublime is one of the two most important forms of aesthetic experience, besides the beautiful. The intention of this article is to introduce and explain the crucial moments of Burke?s aesthetic viewpoint on our experience of the sublime. In accordance with this, the first chapter of the article is an analysis of the passion that belongs to self-preservation. The second chapter examines Burke?s explanation of the state of the soul that is caused by the sublime objects. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the material causes or sensible qualities of the sublime objects. The last chapter of the article is an interpretation of his physiological explanation that is supposed to offer a specific insight as to why do the sensible qualities of the objects cause the sublime and how do they affect the human nervous system.

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT INFLUENCE: ASSESSING EDMUND BURKE'S CONSERVATIVE LEGACIES

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
CLAIRE RYDELL ARCENAS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Edmund Burke is difficult to classify. Born in Ireland in 1730, he entered parliament in 1765 having already achieved literary distinction for several philosophical works, including On the origins of the sublime and beautiful (1757). His subsequent career as a Whig statesman, politician, and reformer spanned the tumultuous decades of the late eighteenth century and culminated, less than a decade before his death, in his famous polemic against the French Revolution, Reflections on the revolution in France (1790). Over the course of his life, Burke opined with such frequency on so many topics that the nature of his ‘philosophy’ remains an open question, and scholars continue to offer strikingly different interpretations of his life and legacies. ‘Burke's legacy to history’, historian Richard Bourke summarized, ‘has been a complicated affair’.

The Deliberative Sublime: Edmund Burke on Disruptive Speech and Imaginative Judgment

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROB GOODMAN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Rhetorical Practice

Is there a case to be made for the value, amidst relatively settled institutions, of unsettling speech—speech characterized by excess, impropriety, and even the uncanny? Much of contemporary deliberative theory would answer in the negative. This article, however, proposes that we can derive a defense of the deliberative value of immoderate speech from an unlikely source: Edmund Burke's theory and practice of the rhetorical sublime. Burke's account of the sublime was developed in response to an eighteenth-century discourse of civility that anticipated the anti-rhetorical strand of contemporary deliberative theory. By reconstructing Burke's response, we can recover a forceful defense of rhetoric in the present. For Burke, the disruptive practice of sublime speech can provoke circumstantial judgment, overcoming deliberators’ aversions to judging. Drawing on Burke's rhetorical practice alongside his aesthetic and linguistic theory, this article upholds a central role in deliberation for rhetoric, even in its unruly and excessive aspects.

Haydn, meter, and listening in transition

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 141-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Grant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Late Works ◽  
The Way

In recent years, music theorists and analysts have devoted a great deal of attention to the phenomenon of hypermeter, drawing some of their most representative examples from the late works of Haydn. Although this recent trend in analysis has shed much light on Haydn’s music, it has left questions of history distinct from the mode of listening it engages. This article argues that the way we understand conceptualizations of listening and aesthetic experience can greatly inform the way that we understand hypermeter and the question of style in history. Drawing on eighteenth-century theories of music and literature, it recontextualizes Haydn’s hypermetric style with respect to a larger world of aesthetic experience.

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