Addison’s Psychological Aesthetic Theory

 

Sketch by Hogarth

 

 

     Numbers in parentheses include both the Spectator issue number and the page in the text I used, Angus Ross, Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator (Penguin); those in brackets refer to endnotes.

 

 

   The eighteenth century is broadly considered a Neoclassical age, but not all ancient authors were equally influential.  Europe generally looked to the Romans with Vergil and Horace often cited as poetic exemplars and Cicero in prose, while the later Romantic authors such as Shelley and Byron tended to idealize Greek literature.  In addition, just as the embryos of Romanticism were present in poets like Thomson, Young, and Gray who anticipated the styles and values to come, the literary theory of early nineteenth century Romanticism was founded on the work of the previous generation or two, as well as on several competing varieties of antiquity.

     While the greatest literary authority of the eighteenth century was surely Aristotle and his later exponents such as Boileau, Boileau himself had also translated Longinus’ On the sublime (Περì Ὕψους) in 1674 and William Smith's English version (1739) proved immensely popular.  Joseph Addison, in a series of articles in The Spectator (nos. 409. 411-421, 1712) [1], outlines a psychological aesthetic theory focusing on the reader’s reception of works of literature which explicitly favors Longinus’ impressionistic method.  He notes that, while the unities are important as are “other Points of the same Nature,” the sublimity celebrated by Longinus, while neglected by many critics, is yet “something more essential to the Art” (#409, p. 367).  For him imaginative pleasure is “as great and transporting” as understanding, and “a Description in Homer has charmed more readers than a Chapter in Aristotle” (#411, 369).  In his analysis, pleasure is the distinguishing mark of the aesthetic text; he defines taste as the ability to appreciate and evaluate artistic excellence, which is to say, beauty.   

     The emphasis on readers’ reactions is signaled by the epigraph from Lucretius that begins the series: “the Muses touch everything with charm.” [2]  Beauty, then, or pleasure derived from beauty, is the hallmark of the aesthetic object [3], a fundamental fact that many critics prefer to ignore [4].  This initial sign is then reinforced by the parallel with physical taste, the artistic counterpart of which is defined as the ability to discern beauty.

     Such taste is the result of cultivation and is unavailable to “the Vulgar” (#411, 369).  Appreciation, Addison notes, must value art not by rule but by the work’s “Specifick Qualities” (#409, 365) and this ability to appreciate art is developed through familiarity with earlier works and by conversation with sophisticated people (#409, 366) as there may exist many “different Notions of Beauty” (#412, 373), including the art which conceals art (#414, 380). 

     Indeed, beauty may not be prescribed and is scarcely susceptible to analysis since we know neither “the Nature of an Idea, nor the Substance of a Human Soul” (#413, 375).  According to Addison, we “immediately assent to the Beauty of an Object, without enquiring into the particular Causes and Occasions of it” (#411, 370).  Taking a Platonic turn, Addison thinks that our “last, adequate, and proper Happiness” (#413, 375) derives from contemplation of the Divine and that our delectation of lesser objects reflects that ultimate object.  In spite of the obscurity of qualities that generate the “Pleasures of the Imagination,” he does propose that “Greatness, Novelty, or Beauty” are desiderata. 

     The first two of these qualities are shaky.  By “Greatness”, he intends “scope,” as pleasing to the “Fancy, as the speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding.” (#412, 371)  This half-hearted mandate anticipates the Romantic taste for great cataracts and dizzying heights, but it finds little application even in Addison’s own judgements.   The value of novelty is underlined by the second epigraph from Lucretius [5] which suggests the Romantic value in writing: “I wander through the pathless places of the Muses, untrodden by anyone before; it delights me to approach untouched springs and drink from them.”  Addison thinks that particular delight is likely to arise from the “new or uncommon” and that this factor “serves as a Motive to put us upon fresh Discoveries” (#413, 376). The suggestion of an absolute positive value for innovation is fallacious.  Neither it nor “greatness” will guarantee artistic value, whereas beauty surely can.

     Surely most would judge that Addison is going too far when he argues that “the Pleasures of the Fancy are more conducive to Health than those of the Understanding” which require “too violent a Labour of the Brain” (#411, 370) to be quite healthy.  The sympathetic reader, however, may take the claim as symbolic, representing wholesome enthusiasm. 

    Addison does make an erroneous (and unnecessary) judgement in thinking vision the primary sense, “the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses” (#409, 364), though he notes that sight may be reinforced by their combination with other impressions (#412, 375).  His misunderstanding is the more puzzling because he rightly understands the arbitrary nature not only of signifiers but even of primary sense data themselves, which he calls “that great Modern Discovery” and attributes to Locke (#413, 377). 

     Furthermore, for him art is always “defective” as Nature is inevitably “grander,” since  observed reality has the potential for greater “vastness and Immensity” and more of the “August and Magnificent” (#414, 377-378).  In fact, the beauty of the night sky, a sunset, or the range of the Tetons is different in kind to that of poems or paintings,  as such spectacles lack the intentionality which is critical to art.  His criteria for greatness are likewise dubious, as they rest on his awe before scenes of natural grandeur which emerges from religious faith, not aesthetic theory.

     In spite of these failings, Addison’s exposition outlines a largely accurate view of art, the basis for most practical criticism.  The fundamental characteristic of art is possession of beauty, known by the pleasure it inspires.  A reader will select a worthy work which he anticipates will be beautiful, based on the experiences of others, then subject it to interpretation based on prior models and the conversation of the cultivated (since all artistic evaluation requires a cultural context),    Simply by describing his own process of artistic consumption, which then he proceeds to illustrate with a series of essays on Etheridge, Milton, and others, Addison has outlined a convincing literary theory, one which many today might largely second, while  prescriptive Aristotelian models are less amenable to contemporary thought.  Around the same time that Dryden was rewriting Shakespeare to conform more closely to the taste if his day, Addison was recalling another tradition, more psychological and impressionistic in setting forth the theory that art occurs at the moment of its reception and that its hallmark is beauty. 

 

 

 

1.  The title originated in  Sir William Temple’s introduction to Observations on the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673) in which he contrasts sense impressions with imaginative ones.  

2. “Musaeo contigere cuncta lepore,” De rerum natura, 934.

3.  Cf. George Santayana’s definition in The Sense of Beauty (1896) of beauty as “pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing” or “pleasure objectified.”

4.  Though pleasure is regularly included with instruction in the frequent mentions of the Horatian formula “delight and instruct,” it seems to some vaguely disreputable.  When I ventured to mention the pleasure of artistic objects as a student in a graduate seminar, the professor commented drily, “We don’t talk about our personal lives here, Mr. Seaton.”

5. De rerum natura, 926-928.  “Avia Pieridum penagro loca, nullius auto/ Trita solos;  juvat integros accedere fonteis;/ Atque haurire.”

 

1448b4   b13, 17, etc.