Description
Book SynopsisReconsiders the fate of the doctrine of mimesis in the eighteenth century. This book argues that mimesis, rather than disappearing, instead became a far more pervasive idea in the eighteenth century by becoming submerged within the dynamics of the emerging accounts of judgement and taste.
Trade Review“Tom Huhn has written a riveting, brilliant book about mimesis in eighteenth-century aesthetic theory. In a series of nuanced analyses, Huhn demonstrates that Burke, Hogarth, and Kant were in effect producing aesthetic theories that were fully modernist. Art and/or aesthetic experience emerges in them as the revelation of the suppression of nature and sensuous experience, and of the conflictual social relations responsible for that suppression. Huhn’s account of Hogarth on drawing is simply irreplaceable.”
—Jay Bernstein,New School University
“The argument about Burke’s Enquiry is brilliant and original. The idea of treating aesthetics through mimesis rather than versions of affect (that is, treating aesthetic theory as if it were a poetics) is original, and I find Huhn’s argument convincing and illuminating. Especially interesting is his explication via mimesis of the terms ‘imagination’ and ‘judgment.'. . . Burke’s theory is a heavily invested area and Huhn says something original and important. Similarly, Huhn analyses Hogarth’s discourse in his Analysis of Beauty as if it were a philosophical discourse. This is an extremely useful thing to do—and it has not even remotely been done. . . . He has clarified points for me, and I’ve been studying Hogarth for forty years. . . . By treating his Analysis seriously as a philosophical text, Huhn has conferred a dignity on Hogarth’s thought that I find gratifying—and long overdue. He contributes to the growing sense we have of Hogarth’s being one of the central figures in English culture of the eighteenth century. . . . I can testify that Huhn’s Burke and Hogarth chapters are both knowledgeable and extremely intelligent.”
—Ronald Paulsen,The Johns Hopkins University
“Huhn's study is exactly what one hopes for from scholarly monographs—it is a learned and incredibly well informed exposition of major figures in intellectual and artistic history, coupled with an exciting and innovative new perspective. Huhn (School of Visual Arts, New York) argues that mimesis, far from being simple representation, is the mark of a conceptual breakdown in representation. He explores major figures of the 18th century—such as Burke, Hogarth, and Kant—and demonstrates how these figures wrestled with and transformed the concept of mimesis. Huhn is that rare specimen of scholar who wears his learning lightly. He has clearly immersed himself deeply in the work of Theodor Adorno and come to an original and fresh interpretation of him. His investigations of Burke, Hogarth, and Kant are not only brilliant explications in and of themselves—they are profound and stimulating meditations on the implications of Adorno's thoughts on aesthetics and philosophy. This is one of those wonderful books that one can recommend to anyone interested in either Burke, Hogarth, or Kant—as well as anyone interested in Adorno, contemporary aesthetics, or the theory of mimesis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty.”
—S. Barnett Choice
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Burke and the Ambitions of Taste
Prologue
I. Introducing Taste
II. Delight, or the Labor Theory of Pleasure
III. Sensation and Sensibility
IV. Shaftesbury and the Charm of Confederation
V. Sympathy
VI. Ambition
VII. Spectatorship
2. Hogarth and the Lineage of Taste
Prologue
I. The Epistemology of Lines
II. The Eye for Pleasure
III. Dance and the Movement from Vision to Imagination
IV. Eye and Mind
3. Kant and the Pleasures of Taste
Prologue
I. Activating Sensibility
II. Determining Reflective Judgment
III. Phantom Sensations and Mistaken Subjects
IV. Representative Pleasures
V. Opaque Pleasures
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
