Hazlitt’s ‘Essayism'

Abstract

Examines Hazlitt’s “essayism,” the totality of impressionistic/critical response constituting his practice as an essayist, and argues that his writings reflect not the primacy of either the critic or the impressionist but the speculative interplay of both. Believes Hazlitt’s transition from crabbed philosopher to popular journalist emerges from the influence of writers like Francis Bacon and Edmund Burke. Claims that like Habermas after him, Hazlitt observes in his age a repositioning and diffusion of critical authority throughout society. Concludes that, anticipating the critical impressionism of later critics of culture like George Simmel and the Frankfurt School, Hazlitt argues from a radically critical orientation qualified and in some sense necessarily compromised by, a halffascinated, half-repelled immersion in culture.