The Death of Cleopatra / The Birth of Freedom: Edmonia Lewis at the New World's Fair

Gold, Susanna W.

doi:10.1353/bio.2012.0014

Cited by 13 publications

References 3 publications

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Women on Philosophy of Art

Stone

2024

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This book is the first study of women’s philosophies of art in long nineteenth-century Britain. It looks at seven women spanning the time from the Enlightenment to the beginning of modernism. They are Anna Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, Emilia Dilke, and Vernon Lee. The central issue that concerned them was how art related to morality and religion. Baillie and Martineau treated art as a means of moral instruction, whereas Dilke and Lee argued that art must be made for beauty’s sake. Barbauld, Jameson, and Cobbe thought that beauty and religion were linked, while other women believed that art and religion must be decoupled. Other topics these women explored were gender and genius, tragedy, literary realism, why we enjoy the sufferings of fictional characters, the hierarchy of the art-forms, whether art can transcend its historical circumstances, and critical issues around the artistic canon. Examining the print culture that made these women’s interventions possible, this book shows that these women were doing a particular kind of philosophy of art, which was interdisciplinary and closely tied to artistic criticism and practice. The book traces how these seven women influenced one another, as well as engaging with their male contemporaries. But unlike their male interlocutors, these women have been unjustly left out of narratives about the history of aesthetics. By including these women, we gain a richer and more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy of art.

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Women on Philosophy of Art

Stone

2024

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Stone

2024

Women on Philosophy of Art

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Women and Philosophy of Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Stone

2024

Women on Philosophy of Art

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This chapter introduces the seven women that this book is about: Anna Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, Emilia Dilke, and Vernon Lee. Nineteenth-century British print and periodical culture enabled these women to publish influential and authoritative accounts of art despite certain sexist restrictions that they faced. They focused above all on art’s relations with morality and religion, but also tackled other philosophical questions regarding the arts. Like many of their male contemporaries, they produced a kind of philosophy of art which was interdisciplinary and shaded into artistic practice. The chapter then explains the book’s methodology and relation to existing scholarship. Part of the methodology is to reconstruct the intellectual relations amongst these seven women, locating women in relation to their female influences as well as male ones. Finally, the chapter explains the choice to concentrate on these seven women.

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The Death of Cleopatra / The Birth of Freedom: Edmonia Lewis at the New World's Fair

Cited by 13 publications

References 3 publications

Women on Philosophy of Art

Women on Philosophy of Art

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Women and Philosophy of Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain

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