I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. When making a case for the kind of terror you find in Radcliffe’s own novels (as opposed to the crude physical horror like that in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk), Radcliffe states: Remember Burke, who suggested that terror was the best source of the sublime? Well, if you don’t have an imposing mountain right outside for your daily dose of awe, how else might you induce some terror to help you reach the sublime? By reading Gothic novels, of course! Ann Radcliffe, one of the most popular authors of Gothic novels at the end of the eighteenth century, explicitly engages with Burke’s theory of the sublime in her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” which I touched on briefly in my post about Horror vs. There are two roles that the sublime plays in Gothic literature: first, as the intended experience for the reader, and second, as a motif that shows up within the text itself. And since the Gothic essentially grew out of Romanticism, it’s no wonder that we find the concept of the sublime working its way into Gothic novels, especially early on in the genre’s development. Others felt that one could find enlightenment, at least momentarily, through the sublime. Since Romanticism was in part a reaction against Rationalism, many sought out the sublime as an experience that goes beyond rational thought. Hence, the constant wandering in nature and meditating upon landscapes and strong emotions. In fact, their end goal was essentially to experience the sublime and reproduce it in their poetry. The poets of the Romantic movement were positively obsessed with the sublime. Other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, disagreed with the way that Burke separated out the beautiful and the sublime, but one core concept held true: the sublime is a mingled feeling of awe and terror that can often be inspired by the grandeur of nature. Burke believed that terror was the key to the sublime, since “it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” He goes on to lay out several other characteristics such as obscurity, power, vastness, and infinity, which may contribute to a sense of the sublime. Whereas beauty simply comes from objects that are well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, the sublime is experienced when overwhelming pain and terror lead to a sort of delight. In this treatise, Burke distinguishes between the beautiful and the sublime as separate categories, viewing the sublime as superior and more powerful. He laid out his theories on the term in a 1757 treatise titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. One philosopher whose name is most associated with the sublime is Edmund Burke. The idea of the sublime came to prominence in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, as young British writers and philosophers went on their Grand Tour of continental Europe and came back particularly awed by the majestic mountains of the Swiss Alps and needed a term to describe that experience. It is no surprise, then, that the term would be picked up by artists and writers.
Speaking broadly, the sublime is a concept from the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, which deals with the nature of beauty and taste. Photo of the Swiss Alps by Oliver Schweizer on Unsplash
#Definition of gothic literature series#
But what exactly does it mean? I’ll do my best to give a simple introduction to this rather complex term in this post, which will be the first in a series on important vocabulary words that will enhance your understanding of the Gothic. The “sublime” is a word you’ll hear tossed around a lot as you study Gothic literature, and even sometimes within the texts themselves.
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