The skeptical sublime : aesthetic ideology in Pope and the Tory satirists
This 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
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (284 pages)
9781280481741, 9781602564411, 9780195349573, 1280481749, 0195349571, 1602564418
1043082559
Available in another form:
1. Introduction: The Skeptical Sublime-Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Satirists; 2. The Abyss of Reason: Rochester, Dryden, and the Skeptical Origins of Sublimity; 3. Civil Enthusiasm in A Tale of a Tub; 4. The Public Universe: An Essay on Man and the Limits of the Sublime Tradition; 5. Pope's Imitations of Horace and the Authority of Inconsistency; 6. Knowing Ridicule and Skeptical Reflection in the Moral Essays; 7. Modernity and the Skeptical Sublime in the Final Dunciad; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; V; W; Y; Z
English