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Book
Author Docherty, Thomas, 1955-

Title Criticism and modernity : aesthetics, literature, and nations in Europe and its academies / Thomas Docherty
Published Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1999

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  801.95094 D6372/C  AVAILABLE
 MELB  801.95094 D6372/C  AVAILABLE
Description vi, 248 pages ; 23 cm
Contents Sect. I. Criticism and National Theatricality. 1. Tragedy and the Nationalist Condition of Criticism. 2. Love as the European Humour -- Sect. II. The Subject of Democracy. 3. Culture and Benevolence. 4. Democracy Time and Time Again. 5. The Politics of Singularity -- Sect. III. Aesthetic Education. 6. Pessimism, Community, and Utopia in Aesthetic Education. 7. Education, English, and Criticism in the University
Summary Criticism and Modernity traces the conditions under which criticism emerges as a socio-cultural practice within the institutionalized forms of European modernity and democracy. It argues that criticism is born out of anxieties about national supremacy in the late seventeenth century, with the consequence that the emergent national cultures of the eighteenth century and since become sites for the regulation of the democratic subject through the academic form of arguments about the proper relations of aesthetics to ethics and politics. The central issue is that of legitimation: how can subjective aesthetic experiences regulate the norms of ethical justice? That question is posed not as an abstract philosophical issue, but rather as a question properly located within the struggles for national culture
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Criticism -- Europe -- History.
Criticism -- Political aspects -- Europe.
Aesthetics, European.
LC no. 98049303
ISBN 0198185014 alkaline paper