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Hélène Ibata. The Challenge of the Sublime. From Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic Art
Open accessAbstract
Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is of one of the most well-known texts of eighteenth-century British art and aesthetics alongside with Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty (1753) and Reynolds’s Discourses at the Royal Academy (1769 – 1790). But The Challenge of the Sublime by Hélène Ibata sheds new and fresh light on the Enquiry as it tackles Burke’s reception and legacy among nineteenth-century British artist. Ibata contends that...
Overview
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Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
Laurent Châtel reviews Hélène Ibata's *The Challenge of the Sublime* (Manchester University Press, 2018), which argues that Burke's *Philosophical Enquiry* provoked British painters to disprove his skepticism about a pictorial sublime. The review praises the book as the most comprehensive study to date of Burke's reception in British visual art while raising several critical questions about its premises.
Key findings
- Ibata contends that by implying painters could not rouse sublime feelings as much as poetry, Burke provoked painters "intent on proving him wrong," and that the sublime became a challenge artists took up against the "quadrilateral frame of the painting" (p. 148) and the paradigm of mimesis.
- Part I traces the genesis and afterlife of Burke's *Enquiry* — its genealogy (Longinus, Burnet, Dennis, Shaftesbury, Addison, Baillie) and its posterity via Reynolds and Barry, including Barry's double portrait *Portraits of Barry and Burke in the Characters of Ulysses and a Companion Fleeing from the Cave of Polyphemus* (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork).
- Part II examines panoramic canvasses, frames, and architectural fantasies as means to transcend pictorial finiteness; Part III focuses on Blake's and Turner's interpretations of the sublime.
- The review's own critiques: whether Burke was "dividing" the arts or merely reinforcing the hierarchy in favour of poetry; whether Burke's presumed anti-pictorialism is over-exaggerated (citing Burke's letter to Barry, p. 122, admitting "no skill whatsoever in the art of painting"); and whether the sublime should be thought beyond representation.
Methods
- Book review (recension) in *Miranda* 21 | 2020, evaluating Ibata's monograph; no empirical data or sample.
- Analysis consists of a structured summary of the book's three parts followed by critical discussion of its working hypotheses, drawing on Burke's writings, Saint Girons, Walpole, and Whately.
Limitations
- The review states that the book's non-historicist posture, shaped by Kant, Marin, Nancy, and Derrida, "somehow stretches Burke beyond his intent and design."
- The review itself raises unresolved questions (e.g., whether Burke's paramount concern was reception rather than representation; whether the sublime should remain an intermediate, "below the limit" experience) — these are the reviewer's critiques, not stated limitations of the book by its author.
- Evident from the text: this is a review, not primary research, so it reports no original data or findings of its own.
Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.
Integrity signals
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Verification
Claims the paper makes
8 Own interpretation · 1 No basis given
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Ibata contends that by implying painters could not rouse sublime feelings as much as poetry, Burke succeeded in provoking painters who became intent on proving him wrong.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Ibata’s central tenet is Burke’s skepticism about the possibility of a pictorial sublime.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: unclear — It is unclear why the paper says it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“she argues that the growing taste for the aesthetics of terror necessitated innovative means to counteract what was often deplored about painting on canvas at that time, the necessarily “quadrilateral frame of the painting” (p. 148).”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Probably not a substantial claim. 6
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“she suggests that the sublime became a (new) challenge for artists to take up in order to win over the technical constraints which they faced with two-dimensional canvasses and the age-old paradigm of mimesis.”
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“One is also left wondering whether the idea that Burke ‘draws attention to the visual arts as the locus of a representational crisis’ is over-exaggerated”
hedged- Asserted: fails — The authors may not put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The authors may not put it forward as true. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“For the sake of intensity, the sublime needs to be a direct experience in the flesh - non-virtual, non-vicarious, devoid of proxy, but not fully ‘bodied’.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“As a whole, the book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the interrelation between a well-established text (too often read in isolation in past writings) and manifold British pictorial practices conceived here as more or less direct reactions to Burke’s ideas and beliefs.”
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Similarly, it is difficult to infer from Burke’s emphasis on drawing and determinacy, which he ranked as being essential training of great artists, that he was excluding painting altogether from any qualification for sublimity”
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“As for Burke, it is more convincingly a case of being dedicated to classical learning and belles lettres.”
boosteddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Citations
Cites
The challenge of the sublime: From Burke's Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic art
Ibata, H. (2018) · HAL · Cited by 7
Cited by
Sorted by citations
William Robinson (1838-1935), Garden Beauty and the Sublime
Wasilewski, A. (2024) · Études anglaises · doi:10.3917/e.etan.764.0424
Metadata
- Authors
- Châtel, L.
- Affiliations
- Université de Lille (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Châtel, Laurent
- ORCID
- Châtel, Laurent
- Venue
- Miranda
- Publisher
- OpenEdition
- Published
- 2020
- Volume
- 21
- ISSN
- 2108-6559 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3093313821
- Semantic Scholar
- c09f0bbda4159cdfc26edbfe9ec0f4d67a57dbd7
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Miranda (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- OpenEdition (OpenEdition) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Museology › Historical Art and Culture Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Visual Culture and Art Theory
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Art, Aesthetics, and Perception
- Keywords
- Edmund Burke, sublime, reception history, 19th-century British art, aesthetics
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