This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion.
The materials are not necessarily the
same as the instructor's teaching notes
and are not designed to represent a full
exposition or argument. This page is
subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
10/26/04
)
Preliminary Class
Business
Enrollment
Presentations
Today: Jim Hodge
Friday, Oct. 29, 3:00-4:30:
Maggie Sloan, Gery Egan, Kim
Knight
Nicolas Boileau, Oeuvres
divereses du Sieur D*** avec Le traite
de sublime ou du merveilleux dans
le discours, trad. du grec de Longin (Paris,
Denis Thierry, 1678) [orig. pub.
1674]
Joseph Addison, "Essay
on the Pleasures of the Imagination," in The
Spectator, No. 412 (June 23,
1712)
Edmund
Burke,A Philosophical Enquiry
into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James
T. Boulton (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ.
of Notre Dame, 1968) [orig. pub.
1757]
Samuel
Holt Monk, The Sublime: A
Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century
England (New York: Modern Language
Association of America, 1935)
Walter John Hipple, Jr., The
Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque
in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic
Theory (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern
Illinois Univ. Press, 1957)
Albert O. Wlecke, Wordsworth
and the Sublime (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1973)
Stuart A. Ende, Keats and
the Sublime (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Press, 1976)
Karl Kroeber, "Romantic
Historicism: The Temporal Sublime," in Images
of Romanticism: Verbal and Visual Affinities,
ed. Karl Kroeber and William Walling
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978)
Selected Recent
Works
Thomas
Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime:
Studies in the Structure and Psychology
of Transcendence (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976)
Neil Hertz, "The Notion
of Blockage in the Literature of the
Sublime," in The End of the
Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and
the Sublime (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 1985)
Peter De Bolla, The Discourse
of the Sublime: Readings in History,
Aesthetics, and the Subject (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1989)
Frances Ferguson, Solitude
and the Sublime: Romanticism and
the Aesthetics of Individuation (New
York: Routledge, 1992)
Steven Knapp, Personification
and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985)
Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla,
ed., The Sublime: A Reader in British
Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Jean-François
Lyotard, "What is Postmodernism?" in The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington
and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Univ.
of Minnesota Press, 1984)
Jean-François Lyotard, "The
Interest of the Sublime," in Jean-François
Courtine, et. al., Of the Sublime:
Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey
S. Librett (Albany, N.Y.: State Univ.
of New York Press, 1993) (originally
published as Du Sublime [Paris: Editions
Belin, 1988])
Mountain Gloom and Mountain
Glory: The Development of the
Aesthetics of the Infinite (1959)
Thomas Burnet, Sacred
Theory of the Earth (first written
in Latin; trans. by the author into
English in 1684):
"These mountains are plac'd in no
Order one with another, that can
either respect Use or Beauty; and
if you consider them singly, they
do not consist of any Proportion
of Parts that is referable to any
Design, or that hath the least Footsteps
of Art or Counsel. There is nothing
in Nature more shapeless and ill-figur'd
than an old Rock or Mountain, and
all that Variety that is among them,
is but the many various Modes of
Irregularity. . . ."
Thomas Gray
Journal of his grand tour:
"you here meet with all the beauties
so savage and horrid a place can present
you with; Rocks of various and uncouth
figures, Cascades pouring down from
an immense height out of hanging Groves
of Pine-Trees, & the solemn Sound of
the Stream, that roars below, all concur
to form one of the most poetical scenes
imaginable. . . .
Not a precipice, not a torrent, not
a cliff, but is pregnant with religion
and poetry."
William Gilpin, Observations,
Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty,
Made in the Year 1772, On Several
Parts of England; Particularly the
Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland,
and Westmoreland (1786),
pp. 124-25:
"If an artificial mirror, a few
inches long, placed opposite a door,
or a window, occasions often very pleasing
reflections; how noble must be the
appearance, when an area of many leagues
in circumference, is formed into one
vast mirror; and this mirror surrounded
by a combination of great, and beautiful
objects? The majestic repose of so
grand, so solemn, and splendid a scene
raises in the mind a sort of enthusiastic
calm, which spreads a mild complacence
over the breast—a tranquil pause
of mental operation, which may be felt,
but not described;
Soothing each gust of passion
into peace;
All but the swellings of the
soften'd heart;
That waken, not disturb, the
tranquil mind."
Uvedale Price, Essays on
the Picturesque (1810):
"A mind in such a state may be compared
to the surface of a pure and tranquil
lake, into which if the smallest
pebble be cast, the waters, like
the affections, seem gently to expand
themselves on every side: but when
the mind is carried on by any eager
pursuit, the still voice of the milder
affections is as little heard, and
its effect as short lived, as the
sound or effect of a pebble, when
thrown into a rapid and rocky stream."
–Two-Part Prelude, p. 10,
Blasted-Hawthorn episode
–1805 Prelude, V: ll. 389
ff. (pp. 172-74), "There was
a boy"
[–Ruined Cottage "image" of
the spear-grass; "greater Romantic
lyric" poems]
Longinus Selections
from
Section 1,Peri Hypsous
Further, writing for a man of such learning
and culture as yourself, dear friend,
I almost feel freed from the need of
a lengthy preface showing how the Sublime
consists in a consummate excellence and
distinction of language, and that this
alone gave to the greatest poets and
historians their pre-eminence and clothed
them with immortal fame. For the effect
of genius is not to persuade the audience
but rather to transport them out of themselves.
Invariably what inspires wonder casts
a spell upon us and is always superior
to what is merely convincing and pleasing.
For our convictions are usually under
our own control, while such passages
exercise an irresistable power of mastery
and get the upper hand with every member
of the audience.
Again inventive skill and the
due disposal and marshalling of facts do not show themselves in one or two touches:
they gradually emerge from the whole tissue of the composition, while, on the
other hand, a well-timed flash of sublimity scatters everything before it like
a bolt of lightning and reveals the full power of the speaker at a single stroke.
But, as I say, my dear Terentianus, these and other such hints you with your
experience could supply yourself.
Section 7,
Peri
Hypsous
We
must realize, dear friend, that as in
our everyday life nothing is really great
which it is a mark of greatness to despise,
I mean, for instance, wealth, position,
reputation, sovereignty, and all the
other things which possess a deal of
theatrical attraction, and yet to a wise
man would not seem supremely good, since
contempt for them is itself eminently
good–certainly men feel less admiration
for those who have these things than
for those who could have them but are
big enough to slight them–well,
so it is with the grand style in poetry
and prose. We must consider whether some
of these passages have merely some such
outward show of grandeur with a rich
moulding of casual accretions, and whether,
if all this is peeled off, they may not
turn out to be empty bombast which it
is more noble to despise than to admire?
For the true sublime, by some virtue
of its nature, elevates us: uplifted
with a sense of proud possession, we
are filled with joyful pride, as if we
had ourselves produced the very thing
we heard. If, then, a man of sense, well-versed
in literature, after hearing a passage
several times finds that it does not
affect him with a sense of sublimity,
and does not leave behind in his mind
more food for thought than the mere words
at first suggest, but rather that on
careful consideration it sinks in his
esteem, then it cannot really be the
true sublime, if its effect does not
outlast the moment of utterance. For
what is truly great gives abundant food
for thought: it is irksome, nay, impossible,
to resist its effect: the memory of it
is stubborn and indelible. To speak generally,
you should consider that to be truly
beautiful and sublime which pleases all
people at all times. For when men who
differ in their habits, their lives,
their tastes, their ages, their dates,
all agree together in holding one and
the same view about the same writing,
then the unanimous verdict, as it were,
of such discordant judges makes our faith
in the admired passage strong and indisputable.
=
pivotal works in the history of sublime
theory