Letters Concerning Taste (And) Essays

Abstract

John Gilbert Cooper was a British poet and writer, and one of the chief contributors to Robert Dodsley’s Museum (1946-7). His Letters Concerning Taste (And) Essays (1754) is considered the first volume on the subject of taste. Written in an epistolary style, the work sets out letters to classical figures such as Euphemius, Philemon, Leonora and Eugenio. Writings about art and creativity can be traced to the texts of classical antiquity, but aesthetics as a separate and systematic area of philosophy is almost wholly a product of the 18th century. It was at that time that philosophers began to treat notions about creativity and our responses to it with a kind of philosophical rigour found in epistemology and metaphysics. 18th-century authors, such as John Gilbert Cooper, sought to define what poetry, literature, painting and sculpture were and to determine the links between the various forms of artistic expression. Like Cooper, many questioned whether artistic sensitivity could be acquired or was innate, asking how good taste was cultivated and maintained.