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Criticism. Genius., Pleasures of Taste. Sublim ity in Objects.

What is true criticism?
What is its design?

Upon what is it founded?

Is it possible to write well without rules of criticism?

Is this an argument against the rules?
What are critical rules intended for?

Does the word genius extend further than to objects of taste? What does it signify?

Can genius be improved? Can it be acquired? Is it as generally given to mankind, and as extensive in its sphere of operations, as taste? Are the sources of the pleasures of taste various? What are they?

Who first attempted a regular inquiry into the subject of the pleasures of taste?

How does he arrange them?

Have great advances been made since his time in this part of philosophical criticism? To what is this owing?

Is the final cause of the sensations, occasioned by viewing the objects of taste, as obscure as the efficient cause?

What do you understand to be the final cause? Which pleasure of the imagination has a character the most distinctly marked?

In what is the simplest form of it seen?

Does space extended in length make so strong an impression as height or depth?

What does the excessive grandeur of the firmament arise from? What, that of the ocean? How may you render an object sublime?

From what is the most copious source of sublime ideas derived?

What ideas tend to assist the sublime?

Why do descriptions of supernatural beings give us an idea of sublimity?

Why do not things exactly regular and methodical appear sublime?

What class of sublime objects is called moral sublime? What effect do they produce? Is terror consistent with sublimity?

Is it necessary to it?

What may be called the fundamental quality of sublimity?

Sublimity in Writing.

In what must the foundation of the sublime in composition be laid?

How must the object be described?

Upon what does this chiefly depend?

Where are we to look for the most striking instances of the sublime?.

How came this to be the case? Why? In what particular writings of the ancients do we find the sublimest passages?

Why is the passage cited by Longinus so sublime?

To what is Homer mostly indebted for his grandeur and sublimity?

What is always found essential to sublime writing? To what is simplicity opposed? To what is conciseness?

What effect has the emotion excited by a sublime object upon the mind?

When the mind is brought to this state, why does a defect in conciseness and simplicity change it?

Which is most propitious to sublime poetry, blank verse or rhyme?

What author affords a full proof of this?

What besides simplicity and conciseness are necessary to sublime writing?

What does strength of description proceed from? What does it imply?

What must the emotion which is aimed at by sublime description do?

What are writers apt to imagine constitutes a sublime style?

In what does the sublime really lie?

What are the principal faults opposed to the sublime? In what does the frigid consist? In what does the bombast lie?

Beauty, and other Pleasures of Taste.

What next to sublimity affords the highest pleasure to the imagination?

How is the emotion it raises distinguished from that raised by sublimity?

Does beauty extend to a greater variety of objects than sublimity? To what is it applied? What affords the completest instance of beauty? What colours are chosen for beauty?

What forms of beauty does figure open to us? In this what first offers itself as a source of beauty? What is meant by a regular figure? Is regularity a very powerful principle of beauty? Why does it appear beautiful?

What next affords a source of beauty, distinct from figure?

What motion belongs to the beautiful?
What to the sublime?

In what direction are the most beautiful motions made?

"What does Hogarth observe on the subject? Do these separate principles of beauty, colour, figure and motion, ever meet in one object? Can you mention any instance?

Where is found the most complete assemblage of beautiful objects?

What beauty is the most complex?
What does it comprehend?

Upon what does its principal beauty depend? What class of moral qualities produces in the mi nd, emotions of sublimity and grandeur?

What class produces such emotions as are raised by beautiful external objects?

What does beauty of writing in its more general sense denote ?

Whom can you mention as writers of this class? Do objects derive a power of giving pleasure frorn any other principles than those of sublimity and beauty? Can you mention any?

To what class of the pleasures above enumerated is to be referred that pleasure which we receive from poetry, eloquence or fine writing? What has been considered by critical writers as chief of all the imitative arts?

With what do they compare it?

Why do imitation and description differ? How far may the art of an historian be called imitative?

Can it be so called in narrative and descriptive performances?

In what do imitation and description differ?

Origin and Progress of Language.

What must we do in order to form an adequate idea of the origin and progress of language?

How did mankind live in the earliest ages? Why should this prevent the progress of lamguage?

If language could not be formed before people were collected in large societies, how can we suppose it could be formed at all?

If language had a divine original, is it probable a perfect system was at once given to mankind?

If we suppose a period existed before words were invented, how would men communicate their feelings?

Do these exclamations form a part of speech? How may we suppose men proceeded in the application of names?

In the names of what objects was this imita tion obvious?

Can you mention any words of this kind? Where does this analogy appear to fail? Does a principle of natural relation between words and objects apply to language in its present state? Why does it not?

What are words in general, as we now use them?

How came interjections to be retained in language after words were invented?

Why was the gesticulating manner, to which the barrenness of language in the early ages gave rise, retained when no longer necessary ?

In what nations was it retained in its highest degree?

To what was the declamation and the pronunciation of their orators similar?

Would their manner be pleasing to cultivated nations at the present day?

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