Edmund Burke 17291797

1
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

• Interested in the Sublimetradition of Longinus
• Also a political theoristgreat critic of French
  Revolution
• Claims society is a partnership between past,
  present, and future
• Interested in physical and psychological response
  to Sublime

2
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

• Wants to develop aesthetic of taste
• Ideal of consensus
• Sublime linked to sensation for Burke
• Unlike Pope, sees an irrational element in art
  and nature
• Great influence on the Gothic

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Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

• Distinguishes Between Sublime and Beautiful
• Transition figure between Neo-Classical Age and
  Romanticism

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From A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of
Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757,
1759)

• 539 Title suggests a shared consensus
• Standard taste and reason
• Truth and falsehood fixed
• 540 Taste defined
• Suggests all men use sense same waysense same
  things
• 541 All men agree upon sensory tastes

5
From Philosophical Enquiry

• 542 Visual pleasure experienced by all
• All men share memory of origin of pleasure
• 543 Pleasure of senses same in all
• Imaginationvaries disposition of ideas derived
  from senses
• Therefore, must be agreement in imagination
• Pleasure of resemblance

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From Philosophical Enquiry

• 546 Since taste belongs to imagination, should
  be same in all men
• 547 Taste as result of sense, imagination, and
  reason
• Very scientific approach
• Groundwork of taste common to all
• Wrong taste derives from bad judgment

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From Philosophical Enquiry

• 548 Judgment vs. Sensibility
• Tate improves as judgment improves
• Sublime
• 550 Great power of death
• Sublime vs. Beautiful

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

• Pioneering feminist thinker
• Strongly influenced by Enlightenment thought
• Critic of Burkes politics and aesthetics
• Interested in female education
• Wrote novels and political tracts

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

• Twice attempted suicide
• Scandalized by Godwins Memoirs
• Cultural criticnot really a literary critic

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From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

• 586 Tyranny of man separates sexes
• Women taught to be weak
• Men try to keep women in state of childhood
• 587 Continued fascination with Milton
• 588 Men and women must be educated by manners
  of their state
• Virtue derives from reason

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From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

• 588 Women textually presented as weak
• 589 Husbands only overgrown children
• Women not encouraged to pursue vigorous learning
• Women encouraged to pursue corporeal
  accomplishments
• Military men

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From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

• 590 Armies dont have real men
• 591 Wollstonecraft pushes the issue
• Women either moral or completely dependent
• Challenges men to dismiss Rousseau
• 593 Women who is taught to please will
  ultimately struggle in marriage

13
Germaine Necker de Staël (1766-1817)

• Key figure in French Revolution
• Claimed novels should broaden their scope
• Believes novels can change the world
• Potential of novel to be about more than love