Browsing by Subject "Sublime"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Security and Destruction:" Reading the Sublime in the British Romantic Period "
    (2022-11) Brogden, Matthew
    This dissertation examines the sublime in relation to four authors of the British Romantic period: Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), William Godwin (Political Justice and Caleb Williams), Percy Shelley (“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”), and Mary Shelley (The Last Man). It draws on major theorists of the sublime—particularly Longinus, Burke, and Kant—but finally relies on textual analysis, working to discover the distinct texture of each sublime it examines. More specifically, I study the ways in which the authors I study stage and negotiate difficulties in the process of reading or meaning making, difficulties that take many shapes but broadly come as confrontations with the unknown, mysterious, or awe-inspiring. The first chapter centers on Edmund Burke’s attempt to decipher the French Revolution, the second on the interpretive challenges that emerge in William Godwin’s work—more specifically, those that relate to the history of language and the interpretation of character—the third on Percy Shelley’s effort to praise and theorize an unseen divinity, and the fourth on Mary Shelley’s depiction of the last man’s confrontation with an uncertain future, what the novel names a “dread blank.” I show that the plots, arguments, and language of the texts I study are intertwined with—or develop towards—moments typically named sublime and conclude by making the case for its continued relevance.
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    Warring opinions: an investigation into the sublime aesthetic narratives of contemporary warfare.
    (2010-08) Licht, Melissa Vera
    This project uses aesthetic concepts of the sublime as critical categories for exploring opinions and subjective responses to war as they are presented in selected soldiers' memoirs, literary theory, films, and public affairs-from World War I to the (ongoing) Gulf War. Representations of sublime force as well as sublime sacrifice and idealism permeate even "objective" journalistic accounts of warfare and inform the perspectives through which we engage with war in thought and feeling. The project argues that "opinion" is not merely a rationally measurable statistical phenomenon but an aesthetic problematic through which we experience ourselves in relation to the world. Soldiers' memoirs and public discourses narrate the trauma of war and express opinions that swing between and simultaneously uphold radically different positions: war as a sublime communal endeavor versus war as the destruction of social meaning. These opposing opinions reflect different aesthetic and narrative strategies: different ways of representing one's position in the world and of managing overpowering forces and emotions. Opinion itself is built and supported through our emotional narratives of sublime antagonism and/or sublime interest in the social world. The critical thought of Hannah Arendt, J. Glenn Gray, Paul de Man, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, and Immanuel Kant are central to the analysis of sources throughout the project.