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Mapping the Aesthetic Mind: John Dennis and Nicolas Boileau
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 68, Number 2, April 2007
- pp. 233-253
- 10.1353/jhi.2007.0012
- Article
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This essay shows how two early modern literary critics, John Dennis and Nicolas Boileau, sought to map out how the mind came to know the transcendental aspects of a literary work, specifically poetry. Both theorize a non-rational faculty rooted in sensible experience which is able to gain knowledge outside of reason's grasp. The essay argues that each writer uses a religious model to describe the profoundest intellectual effects of poetry. This appropriation of a religious model, however, results in an inability for both writers to account for the rationally knowable aspects of poetry along with its transcendental effects.