Class meetings: First 8 weeks, Wednesday 9:00-10:15 A.M.
Indiana University, Bloomington (Honors Class)
Myles Brand, President's Office, 200 Bryan Hall, office hours by appointment
Peg Brand, Philosophy Dep't.=Syc 026; 855-7088
Peg Brand's Office: 009 Sycamore; office phone 855-7576
Email: Pbrand@Indiana.edu
1. Jan. 15 Introduction
2. Jan. 22 Historical introduction to the concept of the sublime
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) Part I, Sec. VII; Part II; Part IV.
3. Jan. 29 Historical introduction to the concept of the beautiful
Jerome Stolnitz, Beauty: Some Stages in the History of an IdeaS
in Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1961), pp.185-204. (Reprinted in
Essays on the HiStory of Aesthetics, ed. Peter Kivy (New York: University
of Rochester Press, 1992).
Burke, Enquiry. Part I, Sec. X; Part III.
4. Feb. 5 Nature and the sublime
Readings from The Norton Book of Nature Writing, edited by Robert
Finch and John Elder (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, excerpt from Nature, pp. 145-148.
Henry David Thoreau, excerpt from The Maine Woods, pp. 188-193
Walt Whitman, excerpt from Specimen Days and Collect, pp. 238-247
John Muir, A Wind-Storm in the Forests,S pp. 280-287
Mary Austin, excerpt from The Land of Little Pain, pp. 351-356
Sigurd Olson, Northern Lights,S pp. 457-459
Edward Abbey, The Great American Desert,S pp. 685-692
Ursala K. LeGuin, A Very Warm Mountain,S pp. 715-722
N. Scott Momaday, excerpt from The Way to Rainy Mountain, pp. 774-779
Barry Lopez, excerpt from Arctic Dreams, pp. 840-853
Leslie Marmon Silko, Landscape, History, and the Pueblo
Imagination, pp. 883-894
5. Feb. 12 The beautiful and the sublime in the visual arts
Elizabeth A. Bohls, excerpt from Disinterestedness and Denial of
the Particular: Locke, Adam Smith, and the Subject of Aesthetics in
Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, edited by
Paul Mattick, Jr. (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Section titled,
The Impartial Spectator and Its Discontents, pp. 38-44.
A.J. Finberg, Turner's Sketches and Drawings (New York: Schocken,
1968; first published 1910), Chap. III, pp. 28-39.
6. Feb. 15 Field Trip
Collection of Turner artworks at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
7. Feb. 26 Conceptual Analysis of beauty and sublime
March 3 Short papers due
8. March 5 Continuation of the conceptual analysis of beauty and
sublime and concluding remarks
H400 Slides 2/5/97 The Wilson tradition and J.M.W. Turner
Richard Wilson: River, Sea Coast and Cirular Ruin. Nd.
Caernarvon castle. Detail. c. 1744-45 (o/c)
Solitude. 1762. (O/c) 39x49S
Fallen Tree. c. 1755-57. (Oil)
Joseph M.W. Turner: Cathedral Church at Lincoln. (Watercolor) 1795.
450X350cm.
Looking Out To Sea. Wilson Sketchbook #1. 1797.
(Wc) 4x4"
A Study. Wilson Sketchbook. #4,5. 1797. (Wc) 9x4"
Buttermere Lake. 1797. (Wc) 371x266mm.
Moonlight, a Study at Millbank. 1797. (Oil)
Transept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire. 1797. (Wc)
Norham Castle: Study. c. 1798. (Wc) 66x84 cm.
Self-Portrait. 1800. (O/c)
Conway Castle. 1800 (wc) 21x30"
Conway Castle. c. 1802-3. (O/c)
A Road Among Swiss Mountains. 1802. (Wc & pencil/paper)
A Storm in the Mountains. c. 1802 (oil)
Fishermen on a Lee Shore. c. 1803 (oil)
Great Falls of the Reichenbach. 1804. (Wc) 102x69cm.
The Slave Ship. 1840. (O/c) 35x48S (Boston, MFA)
You may use this artwork for your paper assignment:
website http://www.unity.co.uk/hypertext/journal/home.html
A Hypertext Journal by Nina Pope & Karen J. Guthrie: a record of the 4 week journey through the Highlands of Scotland, made in 1996, equipped with laptops, modems, digital camera, video and audio equipment. The trip was geographically based on A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland: the route taken by the famous 18th c. travellers James Boswell and Samuel Johnson. Includes maps, excerpts from Boswell and Johnson's diaries, e.g., "he was not come to Scotland to see fine places, of which there were enough in England; but wild objects-mountains, waterfalls, peculiar manners; in short, things which he had not seen before. I have a notion that he at no time has had much taste for rural beauties. I myself have very little." (Boswell on Johnson)
"The impression is sudden, and the effect often painful." (Johnson)