A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

#criticism #Ireland #18thcentury

Edmund Burke.  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. (1757)

The Sublime and the Beautiful have long been engaging topics for me. Both are difficult to define or identify. Both rely on an ambiguously contested sense of taste. Both are matter of form, not simply content. These issues were of interest to 18th century thinkers like Burke, especially as Romanticism was filled with moments of the sublime and beautiful, with great emotional imagery.

 

 

 

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I. Literary Theory and Criticism

1. History of Literary Theory and Criticism until 1930

Edmund Burke. “Introduction on Taste”, “Of the Sublime”, and “The Sublime and the Beautiful Compared” in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Philosophical_Enquiry_into_the_Origin_of_Our_Ideas_of_the_Sublime_and_Beautiful

2. “Edmund Burke” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. 536-9. Print.
3. Harris, Ian. "Edmund Burke." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Spring Edition. 2012. Web. 14 Aug 2013.

The article with URL( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/burke/ ) offers more an overview of Burke and less a discussion on the above-cited texts.

“Edmund Burke, author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, is known to a wide public as a classic political thinker: it is less well understood that his intellectual achievement depended upon his understanding of philosophy and use of it in the practical writings and speeches by which he is chiefly known. The present essay explores the character and significance of the use of philosophy in his thought.”