Aesthetic and Rhetoric in Swinburne’s Aesthetic Criticism

Abstract

Believes that by reading rhetorically the poetics of Swinburne’s 1868 review essay, “Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence,” the ambiguous status of the aesthetic in Swinburne’s criticism becomes apparent: Swinburne’s positing a sublime aesthetic experience as the origin and referent of this critical writing appears to contrast with his use of metaphor that puts this logocentric model into question by insisting on the nonmimetic quality of all language, including his own. Concludes the status of the aesthetic that emerges from this intersection oscillates constitutively and disruptively between that of phenomenal event and rhetorical figure.