The Time of Beauty
For Levinson, the Keats who thus suffers is our angel of history as described by Benjamin - face turned to the past, blown irresistibly into the future - and, in the later work especially, he reappears as the avenging angel who turns the instruments of domination against the culture that wields them...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Trustees of Boston University
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67839 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0985-1787 |
| _version_ | 1826204701015670784 |
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| author | Jackson, Noel B. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Jackson, Noel B. |
| author_sort | Jackson, Noel B. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | For Levinson, the Keats who thus suffers is our angel of history as described by Benjamin - face turned to the past, blown irresistibly into the future - and, in the later work especially, he reappears as the avenging angel who turns the instruments of domination against the culture that wields them.5 A postulate common in the boom years of the new historicism, best captured by Fredric Jameson's famous remark that "History is what hurts," maintained that the force of "history" is chiefly made manifest in forms of affective "hurt," trauma, and so forth.6 Where this is the case, the beautiful may signify no more than as the possibility of momentary consolation or the utopianism of a perpetually deferred redemption of time. Whether this work takes its cue from Newell Ford's description of Keatsian beauty as "prefigurati ve truth," Paul de Man's characterization of Keats's imagination as largely "prospective" in its orientation, or Patricia Parker's account of the "perpetual 'à venir in Keats," it is the forward-looking poet whose voice has most often been claimed for politics.7 Hazlitt's Essay on the Principles of Human Action furnishes a guidebook for the ethical dimensions of this self-divesting orientation towards futurity; the negatively capable chameleon poet is hailed as its literary embodiment. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:59:40Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/67839 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:59:40Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | Trustees of Boston University |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/678392022-09-28T11:21:09Z The Time of Beauty Jackson, Noel B. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section Jackson, Noel B. Jackson, Noel B. For Levinson, the Keats who thus suffers is our angel of history as described by Benjamin - face turned to the past, blown irresistibly into the future - and, in the later work especially, he reappears as the avenging angel who turns the instruments of domination against the culture that wields them.5 A postulate common in the boom years of the new historicism, best captured by Fredric Jameson's famous remark that "History is what hurts," maintained that the force of "history" is chiefly made manifest in forms of affective "hurt," trauma, and so forth.6 Where this is the case, the beautiful may signify no more than as the possibility of momentary consolation or the utopianism of a perpetually deferred redemption of time. Whether this work takes its cue from Newell Ford's description of Keatsian beauty as "prefigurati ve truth," Paul de Man's characterization of Keats's imagination as largely "prospective" in its orientation, or Patricia Parker's account of the "perpetual 'à venir in Keats," it is the forward-looking poet whose voice has most often been claimed for politics.7 Hazlitt's Essay on the Principles of Human Action furnishes a guidebook for the ethical dimensions of this self-divesting orientation towards futurity; the negatively capable chameleon poet is hailed as its literary embodiment. 2011-12-21T17:11:15Z 2011-12-21T17:11:15Z 2011-01 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0039-3762 0039-3762 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67839 Jackson, N.. "The Time of Beauty." Studies in Romanticism 50.2 (2011): 311-335. Humanities Module, ProQuest. Web. 21 Dec. 2011. © 2011 Trustees of Boston University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0985-1787 en_US http://proquest.umi.com.libproxy.mit.edu/pqdlink?index=0&did=2485905631&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1324322298&clientId=5482 Studies in Romanticism Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Trustees of Boston University Prof. Jackson via Mark Szarko |
| spellingShingle | Jackson, Noel B. The Time of Beauty |
| title | The Time of Beauty |
| title_full | The Time of Beauty |
| title_fullStr | The Time of Beauty |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Time of Beauty |
| title_short | The Time of Beauty |
| title_sort | time of beauty |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/67839 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0985-1787 |
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