Edmund Burke and Ireland

This study of Burke's engagement with Irish politics and culture argues that Burke's influential early writings on aesthetic are intimately connected to his political concerns. The concept of the sublime, at the heart of his aesthetic, addressed itself to the experience of terror, a spectre that haunts Burke's political imagination throughout his career. Burke's preoccupation with violence, sympathy and pain allowed him to explore the dark side of the Enlightenment. This major...
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This study of Burke's engagement with Irish politics and culture argues that Burke's influential early writings on aesthetic are intimately connected to his political concerns. The concept of the sublime, at the heart of his aesthetic, addressed itself to the experience of terror, a spectre that haunts Burke's political imagination throughout his career. Burke's preoccupation with violence, sympathy and pain allowed him to explore the dark side of the Enlightenment. This major reassessment of a key political and cultural figure will appeal to Irish studies specialists, Political theorists and Romanticists.