Solitude and the Sublime

Ferguson traces the development of two accounts of the sublime, Berkean empiricism and Kantian formalism, to argue that they have been definitive for subsequent discussions on the significance of aesthetics, including deconstructive criticism. As interest in aesthetic experience evolved in the eighteenth century, discussions of the sublime located two opposed accounts of its place and use. Ferguson traces these two positions - the Burkean empiricist account and the Kantian formalist one - to argue that they had significance of aesthetics, including recent deconstructive and New Historicist criticism.