The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the ArtsBy exploring the relationship between the idea of Nature and the idea of Art in the period from 1660-1760, this study attempts to account for the distinctive quality of the 'Augustan mode' in literature in arts. Before what Pope envisioned as the apocalypse of modernism occurred, artists and aestheticians shared the faith of Newton and the divines in providential order, and, refining the neoclassical doctrine of mimesis, they expressed that faith in theory and practice. In shaping his own ideal forms, the Augustan artist took as paradigm the fiat of Genesis. Showing that theories of 'pure form' in the period rest upon the mutually dependent assumptions of ethnology and aesthetics, Professor Battestin first discusses the ways in which ideas of Nature's harmony, symmetry, and variety affected the doctrine of mimesis in the abstract arts of music, architecture, and gardening. Against the background he next examines the idea of Art and the relationship between form and meaning in the poetry of Pope and Gay and the fiction of Fielding and Godlsmith. THe final chapter, focusing on the deliberate violation of these formal principles in A Tale of Tub and Tristram Shandy, distinguishes between the Augustan and Modern modes by contrasting Swift's implicit acceptance of the ideals of his age with Sterne's sense that they are no logner relevant either to life or to art. |
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... obtained . Daphne's dying request implies this antagonism between mutability and per- manence , between the ugliness of life and the loveliness of art : " " Ye Shepherds , sing around my Grave ! Pope : Art and Time in the Pastorals 73.
... implies . The happy ending of Pamela is unacceptable because the novel asks to be taken as a faithful ( even in a ... imply . Tom Jones asks to be taken as a work of Art , as paradigm and emblem of that wise Design which Pope celebrated ...
... implies , furthermore , the power to choose between good and evil and to determine the proper and effective means of achieving the one and avoiding the other . As such it is the ars vivendi the ' Art of Life ' , as Fielding calls it in ...
Other editions - View all
The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the Arts Martin C. Battestin No preview available - 1989 |
The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the Arts Martin C. Battestin No preview available - 2012 |