Abstract
Abstract: Towards the end of his life (ca. 1790–1797), Edmund Burke resorted to a series of sublime appeals in his letters, pamphlets, and speeches, repeating several of the aesthetic forms he had theorized in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757/1759). These appeals invoked psychological terror and provoked violent response, leading Burke and his intended audience away from the prudential deliberation and liberal constitutionalism that he espoused in previous decades. Burke's sublime rhetoric constituted an illiberal response to efforts at promoting toleration of religious Dissenters and electoral reform. Additionally, Burke's authoritarian sublimity accounts for the reception of his Revolutionary arguments both in the late eighteenth century and in our own times. Finally, analysis of Burke's sublime appeals in the 1790s reveals that Burke was more than a psychological theorist of aesthetic affect. He was also a rhetorical practitioner with political effect.
- Journal
- Rhetorica
- Published
- 2026-03-01
- DOI
- 10.1353/rht.2026.a990992
- CompPile
- Open Access
- Closed
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