Poetic Exhibitions: Romantic Aesthetics and the Pleasures of the British Museum"Poetic Exhibitions seek both to enrich the study of modern museums with the insights of literary theory and to establish a more practical connection between Romanticism and its attendant ideologies. By reading the aesthetic reflections of such writers as Joseph Addison, William Hogarth, Edmund Burke, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in relation to the exhibitionary plans and popular guidebooks for the early museum, Gidal demonstrates the connections between abstract theory and cultural politics. By reflecting upon the collections and excavations of Sir Hans Sloane, Lord Elgin, Charles Townley, and Austen Henry Layard in relation to their institutional acquisition, he explores the poetics of national incorporation. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 7 |
The Pleasures of the British Museum | 21 |
A Romantic Art | 76 |
Copyright | |
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Poetic Exhibitions: Romantic Aesthetics and the Pleasures of the British Museum Eric Gidal No preview available - 2001 |
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acquisition aesthetic affective allows antiquities artistic Assyria beauty becomes British Museum burden Byron century cited claims collection composition consider constructs contemplation critical cultural curiosity desire difference display distinction Egyptian Elgin Marbles establishes exhibition exhibitionary experience figures Gallery glory Guide Haydon human ideal ideas identification identity ideological imaginative institution Italy John knowledge less logic London marbles material means mediation memory mind narrative national museum nature notes objects observation offers original Oxford painting past perception pleasure poem poet poetic poetry political position practice present produced progress promoted provides reading reflection relation representation rhetorical Romantic ruins Science sculpture seeks sense serve Shelley's simultaneously social spectator sublime taste things thought tion tradition transformation turn understanding University Press variety vision visitors visual West whole wonder Wordsworth York