From classic to romantic : premises of taste in eighteenth-century England

Walter Bate’s study presents certain aspects of that most important subject, the change which took place during the eighteenth century in European conceptions of the character, justification, and aim of art. Bate points out that no transition in the history of thought has been more fundamental and pervasive than this with which he deals. Many of the assumptions underlying the art of classical antiquity and the Renaissance were gradually supplanted during the eighteenth century by more individualistic and psychological conceptions of art and taste; and these conceptions, under various names, have largely dominated our thinking about art to the present day.Bate’s purpose is to sketch some of the more significant outlines of this evolution; to describe the preliminary premises which underlay the conception of taste or aesthetic judgment in English classicism and romanticism; and to connect the supplanting of the one by the other with the broader shift in European thought which it reflects. He shows that the change from classic to romantic premises of taste was a reflection of a larger transition—of a shift in man’s entire thinking about himself. His book holds unusual interest for readers in the fields of philosophy and of aesthetics and criticism, both literary and artistic. PREFACE CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE CLASSIC AND NEO-CLASSIC PREMISES CHAPTER II. NEO-CLASSIC DEVELOPMENTS AND REACTIONS CHAPTER III. JOHNSON AND REYNOLDS CHAPTER IV. THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALISM: THE PREMISE OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS CHAPTER V. THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALISM: THE PREMISE OF FEELING CHAPTER VI. THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC COMPROMISE INDEX Bate Walter Jackson : The late Walter Jackson Bate authored several books, including two on Keats as well as Criticism: The Major Texts, From Classic to Romantic, and The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, winner of the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa in 1956. He was Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. Presented as the Lowell lectures, in Boston, in the spring of 1945. Pref. Bibliographical footnotes