Introduction: Transformations in the Enlightenment Culture of Beauty

Karen Harvey*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter discusses six main transformations in the Enlightenment culture of beauty: a growing critical engagement with the relationship between physical beauty and inner virtue; increasing emphasis on the viewer’s response to beauty rather than the objective features of physical beauty; a diversification of the dominant ideals of beauty; the growing visibility amongst a widening group of people of a critical engagement with the significance of beauty, especially its relationship to sexual desire; the integration of beauty into new ideas of essentialized and embodied categories of people; and a democratization of the culture of beauty, facilitated in large part by its commercialization. Beauty culture became more accessible to a greater range of people, while longstanding and evaluative understandings of difference – notably of gender, age and race – were woven tightly into the virtues supposedly embodied in beauty in ways that made a palpable difference to people’s lives.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationA Cultural History of Beauty in the Age of Enlightenment (1700 - 1800)
EditorsKaren Harvey
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherBloomsbury
Chapter1
Number of pages36
Volume4
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2 Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Not yet published as of 10/05/2024.

Harvey, K. (ed.) A Cultural History of Beauty in the Age of Enlightenment (1700 - 1800), vol. 4 of A Cultural History of Beauty. London: Bloomsbury. General Editor Paul Deslandes.

Keywords

  • Beauty
  • gender,
  • race
  • the body
  • Enlightenment

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