This dissertation examines affect, rhetoric and aesthetics in relation to English thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing in particular on music. It argues that a “dual aesthetic”, or a division in perception of an artistic experience between broad conceptions related to the intellectual and the sensual, was an implied discourse running through discussions of art, philosophy, music, education and other areas. I argue that both seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers of the arts viewed the intellectual and sensual experiences as different things, and this distinction meant that they felt that an individual could perceive a painting, a work of music or another expression of artistic intent on two levels. A related division is between the macro-rhetorical, or broadly constructional, elements and the micro-rhetorical, or minutiae. In terms of music, ideas of affect and rhetoric were employed in three main ways in the period, given here in increasing order of their level of specific detail. The first was as concepts of general relation between different arts such as poetry, music and painting. Philosophical thought of the period held that the aim of any art was to move the passions and affections, and rhetoric was a template used to establish terms of discussion. The second way in which these ideas could be related to music was as general metaphors, such as the common metaphor of a piece as an oration. The third relation was on the constructional level, where ideas of musical affect were applied to instrumentation, rhythm, dynamics and other areas. Rhetoric served here as a specific constructional model, providing tools such as templates for the general structure of a work and figures that could be used in order to move the passions appropriately. The primary sources consulted are, for the most part, works either written in England, translated into English in the period, or well-known there during the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. Many of these were not concerned in the first instance with music, and explored instead aesthetics, philosophy or the arts in general. Such a contextual examination helps clarify terminological confusion, and many terms which have, for example, a musico-rhetorical function can thus be identified. There was no unified theory of affect and the passions, and certainly no definitive catalogue of musico-rhetorical devices in England in this period. Instead, this dissertation looks at commonalities of approach and the chronological development of affective and rhetorical elements in music. To this end, a wide range of sources have been discussed and contextualized, including works on classical rhetoric and its derivatives, education and medicine. General concepts are identified and information is then extrapolated from this. Ultimately, the elements combine in a hierarchy of construction, with overreaching principles coming from rhetoric, broad elements from affective theory and minutiae from both. The dual aesthetic, an implicit principle underlying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought about the arts, is thus made explicit in this dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254004 |
| Creators | Barnaby Ralph |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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