Hegel and the matter of poetry

This essay addresses the question of what poetry is made from by examining a number of cruxes in Hegel's Aesthetics (other aspects of Hegel's work, including the Early Theological Writings, the Phenomenology, and the Encyclopedia are also discussed). The essay takes its lead from recent attempts to recover the significance of Hegel's aesthetics for thinking about modern and contemporary art (J.M. Bernstein's Against Voluptuous Bodies and Robert Pippin's After the Beautiful, above all), but notes that Hegel's consideration of the materiality of poetry is especially intractable, given that poetic material, language, is not as straightforwardly material as canvas, paint, stone, and wood may be taken to be. The essay shows that both recent interpreters of Hegel's aesthetics and commentators on his theory of poetry in particular have somewhat stinted the complexity of his view of poetry's materials. The relation of poetry to art - indeed, whether poetry is and remains an art form - is, moreover, central to the essay's discussion.