Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Ideology Language, Gender and Political Economy in Revolution

A detailed and theoretically informed reading of the aesthetics and politics of Burke's major writings.

This study develops a detailed reading of the interrelations between aesthetics, ideology, language, gender and political economy in two highly influential works by Edmund Burke: his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), and the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Tom Furniss's close attention to the rhetorical labyrinths of these texts is combined with an attempt to locate them within the larger discursive networks of the period, including texts by Locke, Hume and Smith. This process reveals that Burke's contradictions and inconsistencies are symptomatic of a strenuous engagement with the ideological problems endemic to the period. Burke's dilemma in this respect makes the Reflections an audacious compromise which simultaneously defends the ancien régime, contributes towards the articulation of radical thought, and makes possible the revolution which we call English Romanticism.

Acknowledgements; Note on texts; Introduction; Part I. Aesthetics for a Bourgeois Revolution: 1. A theory not to be revoked: A Philosophical Enquiry; 2. Labour and luxury: aesthetics and the division of labour; 3. The political economy of taste: limiting the sublime; 4. The labour and profit of language; Part II. Reflections on a Radical Revolution: 5. The genesis of the Reflections: resisting the irresistible voice of the multitude; 6. Stripping the queen: Edmund Burke's magic lantern show; 7. A revolution in manners: chivalry and political economy; 8. Reform and revolution; 9. Imaginary constitutions and economies; 10. Speculation and the republic of letters; Notes; Index.

This study develops a detailed reading of the interrelations between aesthetics, ideology, language, gender and political economy in two highly influential works by Edmund Burke: his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).