Thousands of Canvases: Bernard Bosanquet's Aesthetics of the Extraneous

Abstract: Bernard Bosanquet's interpretation of Hegel's aesthetics offers a compelling model for imagining a novel theory that is inclusive instead of exclusive and which tends toward a broader imagining of the space of aesthetics. Unlike many dialectical thinkers, Bosanquet wishes to understand aesthetics in terms of all objects being produced—in a manner reminiscent of twenty-first-century distant reading. This essay suggests the value of Bosanquet, and perhaps of British idealism more generally, for beginning to imagine a way past the persistent debates (close vs. distant reading, critique vs. post-critique) of contemporary literary studies.