The Skeptical Sublime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory SatiristsThis book argues that philosophical skepticism helps define the aesthetic experience of the sublime in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature, especially the poetry of Alexander Pope. Skeptical doubt appears in the period as an astonishing force in discourse that cannot be controlled--"doubt's boundless Sea," in Rochester's words--and as such is consistently seen as affiliated with the sublime, itself emerging as an important way to conceive of excessive power in rhetoric, nature, psychology, religion, and politics. This view of skepticism as a force affecting discourse beyond its practitioners' control links Noggle's discussion to other theoretical accounts of sublimity, especially psychoanalytic and ideological ones, that emphasize the sublime's activation of unconscious personal and cultural anxieties and contradictions. But because The Skeptical Sublime demonstrates the sublime's roots in the epistemological obsessions of Pope and his age, it also grounds such theories in what is historically evident in the period's writing. The skeptical sublime is a concrete, primary instance of the transformation of modernity's main epistemological liability, its loss of certainty, into an aesthetic asset--retaining, however, much of the unsettling irony of its origins in radical doubt. By examining the cultural function of such persistent instability, this book seeks to clarify the aesthetic ideology of major writers like Pope, Swift, Dryden, and Rochester, among others, who have been seen, sometimes confusingly, as both reactionary and supportive of the liberal-Whig model of taste and civil society increasingly dominant in the period. While they participate in the construction of proto-aesthetic categories like the sublime to stabilize British culture after decades of civil war and revolution, their appreciation of the skepticism maintained by these means of stabilization helps them express ambivalence about the emerging social order and distinguishes their views from the more providentially assured appeals to the sublime of their ideological opponents. |
Contents
xvii | |
Rochester Dryden and the Skeptical Origins of Sublimity | xlvii |
3 Civil Enthusiasm in A Tale of a Tub | lxxxv |
An Essay on Man and the Limits of the Sublime Tradition | cxi |
5 Popes Imitations of Horace and the Authority of Inconsistency | cxliii |
6 Knowing Ridicule and Skeptical Reflection in the Moral Essays | clxxi |
7 Modernity and the Skeptical Sublime in the Final Dunciad | cxcv |
Notes | 209 |
245 | |
261 | |
Other editions - View all
The Skeptical Sublime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Satirists James Noggle Limited preview - 2001 |
The Skeptical Sublime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Satirists James Noggle Limited preview - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
accept admiration aesthetic ancient Apology appears argues argument assertion attitude authority Cambridge century character claim common concerning course critical cultural define describes discourse distinguish divine doubt Dryden effect epistemological Epistle especially Essay experience expression fact figures final finds force History human idea ideological imagination inconstancy insists intellectual ironic irony judgment kind knowledge less limits lines literary Longinus material means mind moral nature never notes object offers once Opposition Oxford particular passage passions philosophical poem poet poetic poetry political Pope Pope's Pope’s position possible presents principles probable problem puts question radical rational readers reason recognize refer reflects relation religious Rochester satirical says seems seen sense skepticism social society Soul sublime suggests Swift Tale taste things thought tion tradition true truth turn understanding University Press virtue Whig women writing
References to this book
Affektpoetik: eine Kulturgeschichte literarischer Emotionen Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek Limited preview - 2005 |
Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681-1714 Abigail Williams No preview available - 2005 |