Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics
Charles Martindale
Abstract
The aim of this book is to encourage an interest in the tradition of modern Western aesthetics as it applies to poetry and the arts. It argues that the study of literature today is unduly dominated by ideology critique, and that there is a need for a new recognition of the importance of beauty and the aesthetic in our response to the arts. It explores ways in which Kant’s aesthetic theory, as set out in the Critique of Judgement, still provides powerful tools of analysis for the modern critic. For example, the Kantian aesthetic — the free judgement of taste — carries a rebuke to the means/end ... More
The aim of this book is to encourage an interest in the tradition of modern Western aesthetics as it applies to poetry and the arts. It argues that the study of literature today is unduly dominated by ideology critique, and that there is a need for a new recognition of the importance of beauty and the aesthetic in our response to the arts. It explores ways in which Kant’s aesthetic theory, as set out in the Critique of Judgement, still provides powerful tools of analysis for the modern critic. For example, the Kantian aesthetic — the free judgement of taste — carries a rebuke to the means/end rationality that is so widespread and so dangerous in the contemporary West. It shows that the Kantian ‘judgement of taste’ is a judgement of form and content together, and is thus not a version of formalism. It explores the relationship between politics and aesthetics in the responses to the arts, arguing that aesthetic judgements are not simply disguised judgements of other kinds. Finally, it urges on those writing about literature the value of aesthetic criticism — the attempt to isolate the unique aesthetic quality of artworks — as pioneered by Walter Pater, offering three essays on Latin poets as examples of what might be done.
Keywords:
aesthetic criticism,
aestheticism,
reception,
ideology-critique,
Kant,
Walter Pater
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2004 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199240401 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2007 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199240401.001.0001 |
