- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy
- Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections
- Newtonianism and Adam Smith
- Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
- Adam Smith and Early-Modern Thought
- Adam Smith's Aesthetics
- Adam Smith As Critic
- Adam Smith: History and Poetics
- Adam Smith On Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety
- Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and The Origin and Function Of Conscience
- Adam Smith and The Limits of Sympathy
- Adam Smith and Virtue
- Adam Smith and Self-Interest
- Adam Smith on Labour and Capital
- Adam Smith on Value and Prices
- Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level
- Commercial Relations: From Adam Smith to Field Experiments
- Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption
- Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform
- Adam Smith and the Law
- Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations
- Adam Smith on Civility and Civil Society
- Adam Smith on Religion
- Adam Smith on Equality
- Adam Smith on Women
- Adam Smith and Marx
- Adam Smith and the New Right
- Adam Smith: Methods, Morals, and Markets
- The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith
- Index Introductory Note
Abstract and Keywords
Though not best known for his work in criticism, Smith spent much of his later life on a major treatise on the ‘imitative arts’, which may have included the ‘Essay on the Imitative Arts’, posthumously published in 1795. Wordsworth, for one, had no use for Smith as a critic, but Robert Burns was deeply influenced by Smith’s writings. Thanks in part to the example of Rousseau, Smith’s critical arguments are closely imbricated with the more celebrated moral and social arguments he makes in Rousseau’s interest in the imitative arts, especially the musical arts, was deeply politicized from the start in ways that Smith would have been well aware of. To understand Smith’s complex challenge to the larger tendencies of Rousseau’s polemics, it is necessary to see why Smith quarrelled with Rousseau’s account of the imitative arts and to understand the stakes of this disagreement.
Keywords: Adam Smith, criticism, arts, imitation, music, Rousseau
James Chandler is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, founding director of the Center for Disciplinary Innovation, and Chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. His recent work includes The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature (2009) and An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema (University of Chicago Press forthcoming 2013).
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- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Adam Smith: An Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy
- Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections
- Newtonianism and Adam Smith
- Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
- Adam Smith and Early-Modern Thought
- Adam Smith's Aesthetics
- Adam Smith As Critic
- Adam Smith: History and Poetics
- Adam Smith On Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety
- Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and The Origin and Function Of Conscience
- Adam Smith and The Limits of Sympathy
- Adam Smith and Virtue
- Adam Smith and Self-Interest
- Adam Smith on Labour and Capital
- Adam Smith on Value and Prices
- Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level
- Commercial Relations: From Adam Smith to Field Experiments
- Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption
- Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform
- Adam Smith and the Law
- Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations
- Adam Smith on Civility and Civil Society
- Adam Smith on Religion
- Adam Smith on Equality
- Adam Smith on Women
- Adam Smith and Marx
- Adam Smith and the New Right
- Adam Smith: Methods, Morals, and Markets
- The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith
- Index Introductory Note
