Post-Baroque Sublime? The Case of Peter Ackroyd

This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd's English Music as a landmark in contemporary manifestations of the baroque tradition in British literature. It is based on contemporary approaches to the baroque as an aesthetic constant or strain -more than on a periodization-theory of the baroque. The dem...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jean-Michel Ganteau
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidad de Zaragoza 2000-12-01
Series:Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/misc/article/view/11215
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Summary:This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd's English Music as a landmark in contemporary manifestations of the baroque tradition in British literature. It is based on contemporary approaches to the baroque as an aesthetic constant or strain -more than on a periodization-theory of the baroque. The demonstration is tripartite in structure. I first concentrate on the ingredients of what may be called a ''baroque diction" (flux, hyperbole, overflowing of the frame, etc.). I then move on to the representation of artifice and the artifice of representa_tio~, by concentrating on the baroque topos of the world as a stage, the exammauon of metaleptic ploys and their implications in terms of ontological or transcendent potentialities. The last part addresses the question of the baroque as a way to probe at the boundaries of traditional, phenomenal reahsm, as a force meant to extend the province of traditional mimesis by replacing representation with presentation. I conclude with some reflections on the expressionist functions of the baroque as an avatar of romanticism.
ISSN:1137-6368
2386-4834