Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Historically, the three terms of this essay's title have hoped to make an appeal to distinct categories of aesthetic experience: Joseph Addison set the stage, in his Spectator essay of 23 June 1712 (no. 412), by dividing those ‘Pleasures of the Imagination’ that are to be gained from looking at objects, into the ‘Great, Uncommon , or Beautiful’. Nowadays, such divisions are largely redundant, but for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were the subject of heated debate, and, occasionally, rigorous definition. One problem for the would-be definers was that the key terms were in common and often casual use. Take, for instance, Dorothy Wordsworth's account of Coleridge's farcical encounter at the Falls of the Clyde: C., who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with [a] gentleman, who observed that it was a ‘majestic waterfall’. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with Wm. at some length the day before. ‘Yes, sir,’ says Coleridge, ‘it is a majestic waterfall.’ ‘Sublime and beautiful’, replied his friend. Poor C. could make no answer. The categories will keep merging into one another, gathering synonyms as they go. Nevertheless, ... log in or subscribe to read full text