ABSTRACT
It is a rare honor for a literary critic to be allowed to offer closing reflections on a volume that studies the relation between aesthetics and art history. My mission, I presume, is to cause trouble, unleash a surprise, and make a difference—an impossible assignment (nothing is more evanescent than trouble or surprise, or more fungible than difference), yet also of course, in the present context, the only sort of task worth attempting. And though I won’t be delivering my observations from a purely external vantage, my understanding of the concept of the aesthetic is indeed somewhat different from that elaborated by the other contributors to this volume, so I hope the pages that follow can at least usefully extend the range of perspectives on display.1
