Literary Analysis

Randisha Perkins

Khan

Literary Analysis

April 22, 2015

Have you ever heard the saying, “you’re as beautiful as the word?” The idea of someone being more beautiful than the actual word itself? William Gilpin and Edmund Burke take it upon themselves, in essay form, to explain why there is a difference between being beautiful and being physically appealing to the masses using point of view, imagery, and character.

Gilpin introduced picturesque beauty and brings up points in an excerpt from his essay ‘Essay I: On Picturesque Beauty’ about beauty having to do with what is appealing to the eye. Burke speaks more about beauty being something that the person can validate as beautiful.

        Gilpin believes that there is a difference between beauty and picturesque beauty. To him real beauty is artificial, it doesn’t exist. Picturesque is more about an aesthetic. Thing that are structured or placed specifically to create a certain look is what William Gilpin would describe as picturesque beauty. Gilpin uses point of view in this article by bringing up the way that Burke see’s beauty and how he agrees with part of it. This is what Gilpin believed about beauty:

“A very considerable part of the effect of beauty, says he, is owing to this quality: indeed the most considerable: for take any beautiful object, and give it a broken, and rugged surface, and however well-formed it may be in other respects, it pleases no longer. Whereas, let it want ever so many of the other constituents, if it want not this, it becomes more pleasing, than almost all the others without it. (1782, Essay I: On Picturesque Beauty)

Gilpin is just saying that the things in life that are seen as less perfect is what picturesque beauty is all about.  Burke’s idea of beauty is one that is more common in today’s society. People will make their own judgment of whatever they feel is beautiful or not. He believes that the road to one’s beauty comes with horror and danger.  Burke said:

It is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the only difference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of imitation; for it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that principle are somewhat pleased with it. (1909-14, Of the Effects of Tragedy)

Burke believed this because a person will do all they can do as far as physical and mental health to achieve this ideal beauty that’s not realistic. Contrary to what Gilpin had to say, Burke doesn’t like the idea of one having to alter themselves to achieve beauty.

Gilpin also uses imagery within his essay to demonstrate his idea of why picturesque beauty is better than ‘regular’ beauty.

Thus then, we suppose, the matter stands with regard to beautiful objects in general. But in picturesque representation it seems somewhat odd, yet we shall perhaps find it equally true, that the reverse of this is the case; and that the ideas of neat and smooth, instead of being picturesque, in fact disqualify the object, in which they reside, from any pretensions to picturesque beauty.

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