Burke & "That "Demmned Elusive Pimpernel" On this day in 1793, the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" officially began. Such events inspired not only the well-known fiction and verse but some of the world's most enduring political and philosophical writing, including the 1790 forewarning of "fire and blood" in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism Find a scholarly essay which considers the importance of Burke's mid-eighteenth century treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. With references to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, Joseph Addison, John Baillie, John Dennis, and others.
"Its originality does not consist so much in its approach to the aesthetic problem, essentially a psychological one, with its origins in John Locke, nor in its 'Introduction on Taste,' added in the second edition. ... The Enquiry's originality lies in its redefinition of the concepts of the sublime and, not less significantly, of the beautiful."
Online Books Page Find electronic texts of Reflections on the Revolution in France, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke, and other works.
