Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:07:39.361Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - The Enchantments of Andrew Marvell

Skepticism and Taste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

Anita Gilman Sherman
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

This chapter argues that Andrew Marvell’s skepticism hones an aesthetic sensibility attuned to the sublime effects of fluctuating appearances, a skeptical apprehension of the sublime that contributes to the budding culture of taste. Giorgio Agamben supports the linking of skepticism and aesthetics since he sees taste as “an excessive sense, situated at the very limit of knowledge and pleasure,” explaining that “aesthetics takes as its object a knowledge that is not known” (2017, 51, 66). Marvell’s lyric poetry demonstrates the aesthetic pleasures afforded by a skeptical sensibility, even as it charts the emergence of the aesthete from the godly individual struggling to understand radical historical change and his role in the divine plan. Certain poems explore the intersections of secular and kairotic time, terms borrowed from Charles Taylor. His spectator poems show how the problematics of vision become secularized. If the deceptions of the eye in prior decades elicited the correction of both religious reformers and the early scientific establishment, here the wayward gaze is no longer an obstacle to truthful perception, but rather an occasion for enchantment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature
The Problems and Pleasures of Doubt
, pp. 176 - 224
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×