The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant
Cambridge University Press, 7/16/2015
EAN 9781107101531, ISBN10: 1107101530
Hardcover, 328 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm
Language: English
In this book, Robert Doran offers the first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime, from the ancient Greek treatise On the Sublime (attributed to 'Longinus') and its reception in early modern literary theory to the philosophical accounts of Burke and Kant. Doran explains how and why the sublime became a key concept of modern thought and shows how the various theories of sublimity are united by a common structure - the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and exalted - and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the face of the secularization of modern culture. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and philosophical analysis, his book provides a new, searching and multilayered account of a concept that continues to stimulate thought about our responses to art, nature and human events.
Introduction
Part I. Longinus' Theory of Sublimity
1. Defining the Longinian sublime
2. Longinus' five sources sublimity
3. Longinus on sublimity in nature and culture
Part II. Sublimity and Modernity
4. Boileau
the birth of a concept
5. Dennis
terror and religion
6. Burke
sublime individualism
Part III. The Sublimity of the Mind
Kant
7. The Kantian sublime in 1764
'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime'
8. The sublime in the 'Critique of Practical Reason'
9. The sublime in the 'Critique of the Power of Judgment'
10. Judging nature as a magnitude
the Mathematically Sublime
11. Judging nature as a power
the Dynamically Sublime
12. Sublimity and culture in Kant.