Manifestly ideological, classicism-which begins in antiquity-thereby produces a certain kind of subject, one who feels classical and who has a correspondingly classical habitus. In an essay entitled ‘Feeling Classical’ (2005), James Porter undertakes a phenomenology of classicism, which before all else, in Porter’s analysis, seeks to instil ‘the feeling of proximity to and identity with what is classical’, that is, with ‘the products of culture that are felt to be exemplary and of the first order’, and which does so by ‘cultivating a pleasurable form of attachment to history rather than to literature per se’. My title, ‘Feeling Gothic’, is inspired by two similar titles from literary criticism that seek to define an affective relationship with the past. Feeling Gothic thus takes on contemporary relevance as a potential basis for social critique, a reinvention of the role it played for Ruskin and his foremost disciple William Morris. In the final section of the chapter, I consider Ruskin’s Gothic feeling alongside recent work in feminist and queer theory that explores feelings normally considered unpleasant. I then turn to ‘The Nature of Gothic’, wherein Ruskin theorises an architectural style in terms of an affective condition that takes artistic form in the grotesque, defined by Ruskin as ‘playing with terror’. In the sections that follow, I look first at how Ruskin characterises the experience of Gothic architecture in atmospheric terms, and I compare this with representations of Melrose Abbey by Walter Scott, J. M. W.
This chapter focuses on Ruskin’s works of architectural history and theory published between 18, in particular The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–3). The feeling in question I call Gothic feeling. Unlike previous studies in this area, however, it treats a specific feeling rather than the general role of feeling and emotion. This chapter aims to contribute to the elaboration of the role of feeling in Ruskin’s aesthetics and to further the case for its relevance to problems in contemporary art and society.
Moreover, as Spuybroek shows, it helps explain some of the resonances of Ruskin’s work with current trends in aesthetic and cultural theory. The importance to Ruskin’s thinking of a morally bounded affective faculty has long been recognised. While Ruskin is no hedonist, it is nevertheless the case that the questions ‘What was the artist feeling?’ and even the more Paterian ‘How does it make me feel?’ are central questions of aesthetics. In the realm of architecture-the focus of both Spuybroek’s book and this chapter-feeling distinguishes not only the good from the bad but also different styles from each other. Feeling provides, for example, the foundation for the theory of the pathetic fallacy in Modern Painters 3 (1856), but it also conditions aesthetic experience more generally, as in Ruskin’s second Edinburgh lecture of 1853, in which he writes of a ‘romantic feeling’-‘the instinctive delight in, and admiration for, sublimity, beauty, and virtue’-that is ‘the truest part of your being … even truer than your consciences’. Certainly, as a way of relating to and representing the world, feeling is a fundamental part of Ruskin’s aesthetics, both in general and with respect to specific artists, artworks or movements, playing a role on the side of both artistic creation ( poiesis) and appreciation ( aisthesis). In his reappraisal of John Ruskin’s work, The Sympathy of Things (2011, revised 2016), Lars Spuybroek has argued for an aesthetics that is not only ecological (i.e., relational) but also affective, centred on feeling: ‘all relations between things are felt relations’. See OBP copyrights and licenses.Ruskin and feeling: Affective aesthetics, historical feeling Home - Search - New Listings - Authors - Titles - Subjects - Serialsīooks - News - Features - Archives - The Inside StoryĮdited by John Mark Ockerbloom for this curated collection listing is CC0. Help with reading books - Report a bad link - Suggest a new listing Look for editions of this book at your library, or elsewhere. The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Friedrich von Schlegel: Comprising Letters on Christian Art An Essay on Gothic Architecture Remarks on the Romance-Poetry of the Middle Ages and on Shakspere On the Limits of the Beautiful On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians
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