The figure of anger: Political and personal passions from Hobbes to Coleridge.
Item
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Title
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The figure of anger: Political and personal passions from Hobbes to Coleridge.
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Identifier
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AAI3325409
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identifier
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3325409
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Creator
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Bissonette, Vincent K.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Blanford Parker
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Philosophy
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Abstract
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This dissertation focuses on the place of personal and political anger in philosophical and literary works from Hobbes to Coleridge. I take my definition of anger from Aristotle: "Let anger, then, be desire, accompanied by pain, for revenge for an obvious belittlement of oneself or of one's dependents, the belittlement being uncalled for" (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.2). Without denying the violence of anger, this definition emphasizes its connection to a personalized, felt justice, thereby allowing it to take its place within heroic and patriotic discourses. However, despite its continuing attraction throughout the period I examine, anger and its apparent righteousness are ultimately rejected as masking ambition, disrupting society, and being confused by the preponderance of personal over political concerns.;Chapter 1 focuses on Aristotle's articulation of virtuous anger and Thomas Hobbes' critique of it. In Chapter 2, I explore how these versions of anger inform John Dryden's political poetry. In his earlier poems, Dryden acknowledges the volatile passions of the people, but imagines a king who can both indulge the people's passions and harness them for the good of England. However, in "Absalom and Achitophel," Dryden portrays anger as anarchic and the Aristotelian rhetoric of anger as dangerously seductive, able to dupe the ambitious and foment rebellion. In Chapter 3, I turn to eighteenth-century philosophers who view anger in terms of providential design and polite society. In the context of providence, anger could be seen as a constructive passion, regardless of the individual's violent experience of it. However, in the context of polite society, it was undeniably unpleasant and therefore to be avoided. Chapter 4 works out the tension between political/ethical and personal anger as it figures in Coleridge's political poetry of the 1790s. In some of his earlier works, we can see him retreat from his initial enthusiasm for the French Revolution into the pastoral. However, in the poems in the quarto volume of 1798, Frost at Midnight, Coleridge uses the pastoral to re-engage with the political. His sophisticated understanding of anger facilitates his critique of France, England, and himself.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
