3. Writing, Reading, Seeing: Visuality and Contingency in the Literary Epistemology of Neoclassicism

Abstract

Histories of literature sometimes present their object as if it were the hero of a nineteenth-century bildungsroman. According to this narrative, literature has become increasingly autonomous in modernity, expanding its degrees of freedom and operating according to its own rules. Aesthetic autonomy is then seen to be fully implemented in romantic and post-romantic literature in the nineteenth century. It is doubtful whether any such teleological construct can ever be an accurate description of historical processes, particularly considering the instability of ‘literature’ as an object. In many respects, one might argue that complete autonomy in the arts – such as the power of literature “to say everything, in every way” (Derrida 1992, 36) – has never been achieved and remains a utopia, another “unfinished project” of modernity (Habermas 1997). Are early modern developments merely the prehistory of an ‘autonomous’ literature? How are we to understand this? Traditionally, many literary histories locate decisive developments in the eighteenth century: together, these constitute the emergence of a modern framework in which literature works. There is no doubt that a number of important, or even essential, cultural achievements of the eighteenth century indeed depend on earlier developments; but I think it would be wrong simply to regard the seventeenth century as a mere way station towards something else or as