This book examines the role of scepticism in initiating the idea of the sublime in early modern British literature. James Noggle draws on philosophy, intellectual history, and critical theory to illuminate the aesthetic ideology of Pope, Swift, Dryden, and Rochester among other important writers of the period. The Skeptical Sublime compares the view of sublimity presented by these authors with that of the dominant, liberal tradition of eighteenth-century
criticism to offer a new understanding of how these writers helped construct proto-aesthetic categories that stabilized British culture after years of civil war and revolution, while at the same time their scepticism allowed them to express ambivalence about the emerging social order.
- ISBN10 6610481741
- ISBN13 9786610481743
- Publish Date 1 January 2001
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 29 February 2012
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press
- Format eBook
- Language English