St. Thomas and the Bard: On Beauty in the Tempest and the Limits of Aesthetic Experience

• Authors: Fitzpatrick Daniel
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper addresses the matter of differences of aesthetic judgment by examining Shakespeare’s Tempest through the Thomistic understanding of substance and of beauty. It seeks principally to explore three elements of aesthetic inquiry: (1) what characterizes the subject who perceives beauty? (2) what characterizes the object of aesthetic experience? and (3) how do aesthetic judgments differ from sensual perceptions? The Tempest serves as particularly fruitful territory for such exploration in virtue of the persons of Miranda and Caliban, who by the limitations of their experience delineate the generic borders, the degrees of virtual quantum excellence, which characterize the beautiful object. Their education at the hand of Prospero likewise elucidates somewhat the process of aesthetic training.

Keywords

EN

Thomas Aquinas; Aristotle; William Shakespeare; genus; aesthetics; virtual quantity; substance; beauty; perception; taste

• Publisher: International Étienne Gilson Society
• Journal: Studia Gilsoniana
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 789-812

Dates

published

2021-12-30

Contributors

author

Fitzpatrick Daniel

• Holy Apostles College & Seminary, Conn., USA

References

• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Available online at: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed Apr. 25, 2021.
• Aquinas, Thomas. Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Translated by John P. Rowan. Chicago, 1961. Available online at: www.Isidore.co. Accessed Apr. 25, 2021.
• Aristotle. Poetics. Available online at: www.classics.mit.edu. Accessed Apr. 25, 2021.
• Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. New York: Vintage, 1991.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1925.
• Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. Beirut: World Heritage Publishers, 2015.
• Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
• Hotchner, A. E. Papa Hemingway. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2005.
• O’Rourke, Fran. Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
• Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Available online at: www.opensourceshakespeare.org. Accessed Apr. 25, 2021.

Notes

EN

DOI: 10.26385/SG.100433