To Relish the Sublime?

To Relish the Sublime?

Author: Kate Soper

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 178960835X

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More than 130 years from Matthew Arnold's pronouncement that human beings 'must be compelled to relish the sublime', education in the humanities still relies on the ideal of culture as the means of intellectual development. In this distinctive and original work, Martin Ryle and Kate Soper explore the growing tensions and contradictions between this and the contemporary world of work, pleasure, and consumption. While critical of the hypocrisies and elitism that can attach to notions of cultural self-realization, the authors nonetheless defend its overall educational and social value. Their wide-ranging discussion takes in critiques of philosophers from Kant and Schiller to Nietzsche and Marx, and includes historically contextualized readings of novels by Wollstonecraft, Hardy, Gissing, London, and Woolf. In their sustained defense of a conception of personal worth and self-fulfillment for its own sake, Ryle and Soper not only offer a powerful critique of the continuing dominance of work in contemporary society, but also provide a compelling alternative to the standard postmodern skepticism about the relevance of high culture.


The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime

The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime

Author: Cian Duffy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-07-20

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1316515915

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This is the only collection of its kind to focus on one of the most important aspects of the cultural history of the Romantic period, its sources, and its afterlives. Multidisciplinary in approach, the volume examines the variety of areas of enquiry and genres of cultural productivity in which the sublime played a substantial role during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With impressive international scope, this Companion considers the Romantic sublime in both European and American contexts and features essays by leading scholars from a range of national backgrounds and subject specialisms, including state-of-the-art perspectives in digital and environmental humanities. An accessible, wide-ranging, and thorough introduction, aimed at researchers, students, and general readers alike, and including extensive suggestions for further reading, The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime is the go-to book on the subject.


Relish

Relish

Author: Ruth Cowen

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0297865579

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Fascinating biography of a 19th-century celebrity chef Rarely has a man defined the spirit of an age as well as Alexis Soyer: celebrity chef, best-selling author, entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist and Crimean war hero. Soyer built the world famous kitchens of London's Reform Club - which he filled with such ingenious inventions as the gas stove and steam lifts. He set up the most innovative culinary theme park ever seen in the capital, and devised the sauces and relishes that would make household names of Mr Crosse and Mr Blackwell. In the 1840s he set up revolutionary soup kitchens during the Irish potato famine, and in the following decade risked his life by travelling to the Russian peninsula to reform army catering for the troops - saving thousands of soldiers from the effects of malnutrition. Alexis Soyer was one of the most famous names of the early Victorian age, and his legacy lives on through the radical army reforms his work set in train. He was also ¿ in a similar spirit of the age - a secret womaniser, near bankrupt and alcoholic. Yet this brilliant man, who during his lifetime was more famous than the men he regularly brushed shoulders with - men such as Thackeray, Disraeli, Dickens and Palmerston - dropped completely from public view after his untimely death. His friend Florence Nightingale, never one to praise lightly, wrote that his passing was 'a great disaster' for the nation. Yet despite making several fortunes he died virtually penniless, his personal papers were destroyed, his funeral was a hushed-up affair and today his grave lies neglected and rotting in Kensal Green cemetery. This is the first full length, fully researched biography of Alexis Soyer, which explores the life, career and legacy of one of the most enigmatic and extraordinary figures of the Victorian age.


Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy

Author: Matthew Arnold

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-11-24

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1108040179

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Published first in 1869, this controversial essay defends culture, learning and aestheticism against 'philistinism' and the purely functional.