13 - The Sublime

Summary

The modern interest in the sublime is generally thought to have been awakened by the appearance in 1674 of Nicolas Boileau's translation of the treatise Peri Hypsous [On the Sublime], which is traditionally attributed to Longinus. Largely as a result of the influence of this treatise, the topic of the sublime assumed central significance in the aesthetic reflections in the eighteenth century. Although the reasons for this sudden emergence of interest are complex, clearly a major factor was that the sublime represented that which stood outside the sphere of the dominant neoclassical aesthetic, with its emphasis on form, rules, and clarity. For, on the one hand, the sublime constituted a major challenge for proponents of this aesthetic, while, on the other hand, it provided a natural focal point for its critics.

Apart from Longinus's treatise itself and Boileau's commentary, both of which continued to be widely read, the most influential treatment of the subject in the second half of the eighteenth century was Edmund Burke's, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (first edition 1757). Adopting a psychophysiological approach, Burke attempted to provide both a description of the experiences of the sublime and the beautiful and a causal account of the genesis of these feelings. Moreover, in contrast to most previous theorists, he emphasized the radical distinction between the two feelings. Most importantly, the sublime, for Burke, involved terror as its “ruling principle.”