Drama Theory, the Division of Knowledge, and the Emergence of the Aesthetic

Abstract

In The Secret History of Domesticity, Michael McKeon provides a new account of the development of the aesthetic in the eighteenth century. He characterizes the contribution of debates about neoclassical dramatic theory to the division of knowledge into the categories of science and art when they separate the pleasures of the understanding from the pleasures of the imagination. Unlike other accounts of the aesthetic that treat 18th‐century theatricality as a metaphor, McKeon’s use of drama theory mediates between metaphorical theatricality and literal theater history. By emphasizing the emergent epistemological divide between arts and science, however, McKeon does not fully exploit one of the consequences that may flow from giving this importance to drama theory: the location of aesthetics beside commerce or entertainment. To recognize the persistence of drama theory in literature even after the crystallization of the realist novel in the 1740s, moreover, might also generate an alternative history of the novel to the one provided in The Secret History.