ABSTRACT
Transcendence, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 Romantic aesthetics, and Romantic aesthetic ideology, have been significantly reappraised in the final quarter of the twentieth century. The reasons for this are manifold and complex, and reflect the interests of critics from a wide political spectrum. Historicist critics, for instance, have sought to expose and correct the perpetuation of Romantic values in supposedly critical studies. At the same time, a renewed interest in Kantian aesthetics has been at the heart of key postmodern philosophies, most notably JeanFrançois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. EAGLETON’s historical survey of aesthetic philosophies has suggested the immense influence of German Romanticisms on subsequent art theories and practices. Indeed the link between Kant, Johann Fichte, and Hegel and contemporary British writers has been well documented. KIPPERMAN and ASHTON have persuasively argued for a significant German influence in Britain in their recent studies. However, the following discussion concentrates on more localised readings of specifically British Romantic aesthetic modes. The picturesque and particularly the sublime are the preferred modes in which British Romantic artists tended to express the Naturphilosophie inherited from the Continent.
