The Use of the Senses: Sensation, Danger and New Protagonists of Taste in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain

Abstract

From the mid-1740's the critical domain of taste, traditionally the preserve of a discerning ruling elite, became crowded with new entrants. These commentators, including Joseph Spence and John Gilbert Cooper, privileged individual judgement and sensory observation above notions of the public good. Several educated urbanites objected to this trend and began to alert the public to its potentially threatening impact. This article addresses that body of writing, including the recently attributed Hercules and Cadmus in George Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead (London, 1760), which was written by Elizabeth Montague, Allan Ramsay's Dialogue on Taste (London, 1757) and Frances Reynolds's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origins of Our Ideas of Beauty (London, 1785). Drawing from the writings of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, I argue, Reynolds and her contemporaries hoped to seek solutions to the problems created by Britain's changing social consensus.