To speak of the aesthetic in the early twenty-first century within English studies is to risk multiple misunderstandings. The word has been a suspect one in recent years and has served as the subordinated member of key binary opposites in contemporary critical practice. For nearly a generation, in an era dominated by French poststructuralist theory, the aesthetic has been the opposite of the political. It identified the discredited critical practice of Northrop Frye and the New Critics before him; it meant discussing literature decontextualized from its larger social milieu, purposes, and intertextuality. As John Joughin wrote, ‘For most radical critics, aesthetics still tends to be discarded as part of the “problem” rather than the “solution.”’ For many recent radical critics, art has been understood either as a version of ideology, or as an irrationalist practice through which contemporary Postmodernist critics have undermined rationality.

There have been a number of critics, however, and fortunately some major ones, who have resisted this reductive binary thinking in their use of the concept of the aesthetic. Fredric Jameson is one example, and a major influence on this book. Terry Eagleton recovered from an early anti-aesthetic phase to write the appreciatory, if flawed The Ideology of the Aesthetic and the more recent Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic.