The sublime

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521300094.018

17 - The sublime

from LANGUAGE AND STYLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Jonathan Lamb

Edited by

H. B. Nisbet and

Claude Rawson

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H. B. Nisbet: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Claude Rawson: Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut

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Summary

Francisco Robortello published the editio princeps of Longinus' first-century treatise, Peri Hypsous, in 1554. Although it was followed by the editions of Manuzio (1555) and Porta (1569), this remarkable work of criticism made no impression – that is to say, there was no attempt to assign the sublime more than a stylistic significance – until Boileau translated it into French, over a century later (1674). Despite three translations into English between 1652 and 1698, it was not until Welsted's in 1712 (reprinted in 1724) and Smith's popular Dionysius Longinus on the Sublime (1739) that Longinus and the sublime became thoroughly current in Britain. The long fallow period between the rediscovery of the Paris manuscript and the exploitation of the sublime in criticism and aesthetics can be accounted for in terms of a confidence among neoclassical critics that was interrupted in France, and terminated in Britain, by the quarrel over the Ancients and Moderns. When the pre-eminence of classical literature, together with the critical precepts it justifies, came under the hostile scrutiny of modernist writers the sublime simultaneously became an urgent issue; and Longinus was used by both sides as a champion, alternately playing the part of ancient exemplar and of modern usurper. The passage between these two points – between the sublime conceived to be the coincidence of rule and practice and the sublime in its more revolutionary aspect as an unprecedented event – will be traced in the following essay.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 394 - 416

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521300094.018 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1997

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17 - The sublime

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