Doświadczenie a gender w literackim i filozoficznym dyskursie oświecenia i romantyzmu (zarys problematyki)
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Date
2007
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Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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Experience and Gender in the Literary Discourse of the Enlightenment and Romanticism (an outline of the problem)
Abstract
The aim of this article is to demonstrate close links between 'experience' as an epistemological
notion and 'femininity' as a gender concept. Experience is considered here within two dichotomies:
experience - reason; and experience - innocence. They are traced here mainly in the
writings of Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Krasicki, Mickiewicz, Blake and American Transcendentalists.
Both dichotomies constitute an essential part of the Enlightenment and Romanticism
thought, art and lifestyle. In particular they construct the code of sensibility, which highly influenced
the 18lh and 19,h centuries aesthetics, spirituality and philosophy. As a result of the cult of
sensibility in Western culture there appeared a peculiarly gendered figurę - that of a sensitive
man, a feminized małe, capable of experiencing and showing strong emotions. By connecting
maleness with features usually perceived as typically feminine, the latter gained higher cultural
status. The counterpart for the sensitive man was a reasonable woman, a female person endowed
with traditionally masculine intellectual capacities. The discourse of experience has a special
meaning in William Blake's work and thought; here it is related to his anti-rationalist and antiscientific
worldview, as well as to his apotheosis of Innocence as the State of elear insight into the
true reality - one that is hidden behind the visible world. From Blake, via European Romanticists
and American Transcendentalists it is possible to draw links to contemporary counterculture,
environmental movements and theories (eco-criticism, eco-feminism) with their appreciation of
soft feminine values.
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Citation
Przestrzenie Teorii, nr 7, 2007, s. 311-331.
ISBN
978-83-232177-2-5