Terror Eternity and the Sublime (original) (raw)

An essay concerning Burke's idea of the Sublime

The second best known theoretical work of the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of ou Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful' (1957), is overshadowed by Burke's political work. But although the 'Enquiry' is not Burke's magnum opus, it still is a very important work that deserves more attention than it gets these days, for several reasons. In the first part of this paper we will examine Burke's Enquiry, focusing on his concept of the Sublime. In the second part I hope to point out some of the similarities between Burke's theory and William Turner's practical application of those rules, by studying some of his famous paintings.

Transgressive Sublime in E.A.Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart and "The Imp of the Perverse"

This article enquires into Edgar Allan Poe's (1809-1849) "The TellTale Heart" (1843) and "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845) in the light of the Kantian sublime. These stories of horror genre contain sublime experience; they are the mixture of horror, terror and pleasure which disturbs the human reason. They are the analyses of amoral and transgressive acts. The transgressors kill their victims obsessively and arbitrarily to construct order and beauty for themselves; their experiences of the sublime realize first through their committing murders intelligently and talentedly, and then making confessions of them. The obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia together stand out in the most extreme, leading to ignore the aftermaths of their actions. Both narrators assert that their urges and deeds are normal, necessary and inevitable. They experience the sublime through pleasure while doing evil which makes the reader/the perceiving subject experience the sublime at the same time, not getting pleasure but through wonder, suspense and terror. The narrators experience the sublime much later, while confessing, and make the reader undergo the sublime experience of wonder, horror, suspense and terror together, leaving her/him aback. The stories are the discussions about the nature of the unknown and the irresistible motives to do wrong. Using the aesthetic theory of pleasure and terror, and feeling the depths of the unconscious, Poe scrutinizes these urges. He elaborates on what lies beyond reason, the common and the worldly, that is the sublime subverting Kant's notions about the working of human mind. I. Introduction For Dark Romantic/gothic writers have delight in transgression and representation of evil, their works often present stories of the sublime through perversity: Frankenstein (1818) and the stories of H.P. Lovecraft are among many. They are interested in the dark side of human nature and the tools that take them to the depths of it and to the sublime: perverse thinking and visualization of terrible scenes. One common point of all these works is that they stimulate the sublime in transgressive and evil acts such as committing murders. For Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) inclination to perversity and the capacity of man's enjoying or committing perverse actions and crimes is universal to all mankind. He regards the sublime as the equivalent of his 'single-effect' concept and achieves the transgressive sublime/'the single effect' by including the readers into the sphere of the perverse narrators'/characters' points of view and into the identification with them. This article aims at proving that he through his peculiar use of the sublime, which includes taking the risk of going beyond the 'ordinary' or familiar types of the sublime invalidates Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) notion of the sublime depending on the elaboration of his major psychological themes of transgression and perversity. The Gothic emerged as a romantic response to the boundaries and basic tenets of the Enlightenment thinking, and the gothic sensibility is fascinated with the anxiety over its philosophical and aesthetic limits. It focuses on the antisocial , the irrational, and the immoral; so it is closely related to transgression. In this respect, it transgresses the established socio-cultural and aesthetic values. It proves that progress is impossible as long as imagination overwhelms reason and unexplainable phenomena whether in human psyche or in the universe will exist. In this respect, as a Romantic concept and in the gothic context, the sublime often emerges in transgressive acts. A major trope of the Gothic, it denotes intense emotions in the face of power and infinity, elevating the mind and the imagination together. The sublime signifies the transgression of rational mind, so it can be syntesized that the Gothic and the sublime are the two interlocked areas of aesthetic theory. The sublime is a link between terror and pleasure. It is something that disturbs and subdues the human reason and imagination. Although it seems paradoxical that seemingly displeasing things such as terror and pain can produce the sublime, it is a negative bliss and delight in gothic sense. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) claimed that for terror is the strongest emotion, it is the most sublime and dreadful pleasure provided that the subject feels safe. In the Age of Reason, the term meant something

The Dreadful Details: The Counter-Agency of the Sublime

Postmodern conceptions of the fragmentation of text, rhetor, and audience have complicated traditional notions of rhetorical agency and reception. Notably, Carolyn Miller found agency to rest not in the hands of the rhetor or audience but in the rhetorical performance, itself. This theory can be extended with consideration of the power of aesthetics and specifically the appeal of the sublime as conceived by Hugh Blaire and Edmund Burke to suggest that the agency and efficacy of the rhetor, audience, and performance may all be undermined by the power of the sublime, which subverts conventional rhetorical strategies by its own "will" to overpower the emotions of the beholder. This paper examines such conflicting appeals in Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner's Gettysburg photograph "The Harvest of Death," which he regarded as displaying "the dreadful details" which would be sufficient support for his imploring to "[prevent] such another calamity from falling upon the nation." The paper argues that such images undermine the rhetor's intention and the audience's rational judgment by appealing to the complementary awes of heroic narrative and sublime image, effectively stripping agency from the rhetor, the conscious audience, and the rhetorical performance of producing the photo.

The Transgressive Sublime in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Imp of the Perverse"

This article enquires into Edgar Allan Poe's (1809-1849) "The TellTale Heart" (1843) and "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845) in the light of the Kantian sublime. These stories of horror genre contain sublime experience; they are the mixture of horror, terror and pleasure which disturbs the human reason. They are the analyses of amoral and transgressive acts. The transgressors kill their victims obsessively and arbitrarily to construct order and beauty for themselves; their experiences of the sublime realize first through their committing murders intelligently and talentedly, and then making confessions of them. The obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia together stand out in the most extreme, leading to ignore the aftermaths of their actions. Both narrators assert that their urges and deeds are normal, necessary and inevitable. They experience the sublime through pleasure while doing evil which makes the reader/the perceiving subject experience the sublime at the same time, not getting pleasure but through wonder, suspense and terror. The narrators experience the sublime much later, while confessing, and make the reader undergo the sublime experience of wonder, horror, suspense and terror together, leaving him aback. The stories are the discussions about the nature of the unknown and the irresistible motives to do wrong. Using the aesthetic theory of pleasure and terror, and feeling the depths of the unconscious, Poe scrutinizes these urges. He elaborates on what lies beyond reason, the common and the worldly, that is the sublime subverting Kant's notions about the working of human mind. I. Introduction For Dark Romantic/gothic writers have delight in transgression and representation of evil, their works often present stories of the sublime through perversity: Frankenstein (1818) and the stories of H.P. Lovecraft are among many. They are interested in the dark side of human nature and the tools that take them to the depths of it and to the sublime: perverse thinking and visualization of terrible scenes. One common point of all these works is that they stimulate the sublime in transgressive and evil acts such as committing murders. For Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) inclination to perversity and the capacity of man's enjoying or committing perverse actions and crimes is universal to all mankind. He regards the sublime as the equivalent of his 'single-effect' concept and achieves the transgressive sublime/'the single effect' by including the readers into the sphere of the perverse narrators'/characters' points of view and into the identification with them. This article aims at proving that he through his peculiar use of the sublime, which includes taking the risk of going beyond the 'ordinary' or familiar types of the sublime invalidates Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) notion of the sublime depending on the elaboration of his major psychological themes of transgression and perversity. The Gothic emerged as a romantic response to the boundaries and basic tenets of the Enlightenment thinking, and the gothic sensibility is fascinated with the anxiety over its philosophical and aesthetic limits. It focuses on the antisocial , the irrational, and the immoral; so it is closely related to transgression. In this respect, it transgresses the established socio-cultural and aesthetic values. It proves that progress is impossible as long as imagination overwhelms reason and unexplainable phenomena whether in human psyche or in the universe will exist. In this respect, as a Romantic concept and in the gothic context, the sublime often emerges in transgressive acts. A major trope of the Gothic, it denotes intense emotions in the face of power and infinity, elevating the mind and the imagination together. The sublime signifies the transgression of rational mind, so it can be syntesized that the Gothic and the sublime are the two interlocked areas of aesthetic theory. The sublime is a link between terror and pleasure. It is something that disturbs and subdues the human reason and imagination. Although it seems paradoxical that seemingly displeasing things such as terror and pain can produce the sublime, it is a negative bliss and delight in gothic sense. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) claimed that for terror is the strongest emotion, it is the most sublime and dreadful pleasure provided that the subject feels safe. In the Age of Reason, the term meant something

Wonder vs. Sublime in Romantic and Postmodern Literature

Wonder vs Sublime in Romantic and Postmodern Literature , 2018

An important question within ecocritical studies is whether there are forms of aesthetic experience more environmentally useful than others. Several categories have been researched by contemporary scholarship. The sublime and wonder, in particular, have garnered much attention from ecocritics. The sublime was a key concept in the Romantic era. In his treaties titled A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke defined the sublime as "[w]hatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime, that is,