Representations of Revolution (1789-1820) by Ronald Paulson
Requirements: .PDF reader, 22,2 Mb
Overview: The central tension in Representations of Revolution is that while it focuses on “how to represent the unprecedented,” its awareness of the history of the sublime and grotesque suggests that “we can perceive as unprecedented only that for which we have already been prepared” (27). Different preparations equal different representations, representations (it would seem) thus “always already” there in the psycho-cultural coding of the artist. The subject isn’t “revolutions of representation,” the Revolution being (in Matthew Arnold’s words), “a great movement of feeling, not . . . a great movement of mind.” As it turns out, then, we here see Wordsworth’s Prelude, Burke’s Reflections, and Blake’s prophetic books “as about the experience of coming to terms with the Revolution, not simply as a representation of the phenomenon itself” (251). And “the phenomenon itself”? the ellipsis in the quotation summing up Blake’s use of “the tiger that is half-lamb” (para. 3, above) says that Blake thus “implicitly classified the phenomenon, or at least the complex phenomenon that appeared to external observers such as the artist, as grotesque.” With such qualification, can we speak of “the phenomenon itself”? and if not, perhaps the truly revolutionary experience is that of coming to terms with one’s inability to come to terms, to re-present the phenomenon itself.
Genre: Non-Fiction > General
Download Instructions:
https://filefox.cc/hsam7rd5cblc
https://drop.download/jgj4cdixyu4i
Requirements: .PDF reader, 22,2 Mb
Overview: The central tension in Representations of Revolution is that while it focuses on “how to represent the unprecedented,” its awareness of the history of the sublime and grotesque suggests that “we can perceive as unprecedented only that for which we have already been prepared” (27). Different preparations equal different representations, representations (it would seem) thus “always already” there in the psycho-cultural coding of the artist. The subject isn’t “revolutions of representation,” the Revolution being (in Matthew Arnold’s words), “a great movement of feeling, not . . . a great movement of mind.” As it turns out, then, we here see Wordsworth’s Prelude, Burke’s Reflections, and Blake’s prophetic books “as about the experience of coming to terms with the Revolution, not simply as a representation of the phenomenon itself” (251). And “the phenomenon itself”? the ellipsis in the quotation summing up Blake’s use of “the tiger that is half-lamb” (para. 3, above) says that Blake thus “implicitly classified the phenomenon, or at least the complex phenomenon that appeared to external observers such as the artist, as grotesque.” With such qualification, can we speak of “the phenomenon itself”? and if not, perhaps the truly revolutionary experience is that of coming to terms with one’s inability to come to terms, to re-present the phenomenon itself.
Genre: Non-Fiction > General
Download Instructions:
https://filefox.cc/hsam7rd5cblc
https://drop.download/jgj4cdixyu4i