Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments: Sources
Acknowledgments
Note on the Texts

Editor’s Introduction
Part I. Ancient
1.Longinus, from On Sublimity
2.Bharata-Muni, from Na?yasastra

Part II. Postclassical
3.Guo Xi, from The Interest of Lofty Forests and Springs
4.Zeami Motokiyo, “Notes on the Nine Levels”
5.Francesco Petrarca, “The Ascent of Mont Ventoux”

Part III. Modern
6.Nicolas Boileau Despréaux, from “Preface to his Translation of Longinus On the Sublime”
7.John Dennis, from The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry
8.Giambattista Vico, “On the Heroic Mind”
9.Edmund Burke, from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
10.Moses Mendelssohn, from “On the Sublime and Naive in the Fine Sciences”
11.Elizabeth Carter, from Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu
12.Immanuel Kant, from Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
13.Anna Aiken (Anna Letitia Barbauld), “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror”
14.Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Men
15.Immanuel Kant, from Critique of the Power of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
16.Friedrich Schiller, “Of the Sublime (Toward the Further Development of Some Kantian Ideas)”
17.Anna Seward, Letter to Rev. Dr. Gregory
18.Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance
19.Helen Maria Williams, from A Tour in Switzerland

Part IV. Late Modern
20.William Wordsworth, “The Sublime and the Beautiful”
21.Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
22.Arthur Schopenhauer, from The World as Will and Representation
23.Georg W. F. Hegel, “Symbolism of the Sublime”
24.Richard Wagner, from “Beethoven”
25.Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Birth of Tragedy, Joyful Wisdom, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
26.Rudolf Otto, from The Idea of the Holy

Part V. Contemporary
27.Barnett Newman, “The Sublime is Now”
28.Julia Kristeva, from Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
29.Fredric Jameson, from “Postmodernism, or the Logic of Late Capitalism”
30.Jean-François Lyotard, “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde”
31.Meg Armstrong, from “‘The Effects of Blackness’: Gender, Race, and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and Kant”
32.Cynthia A. Freeland, “The Sublime in Cinema”
33.Arthur Danto, “Beauty and Sublimity”
34.Vladimir J. Konecni, “The Aesthetic Trinity: Awe, Being Moved, Thrills”
35.Jane Forsey, “Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?”
36.Sandra Shapshay, “Commentary on Jane Forsey’s ‘Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?’”
37.Robert R. Clewis, “Towards A Theory of the Sublime and Aesthetic Awe”
38.Emily Brady, “The Environmental Sublime”

Chapter Summaries

Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1.Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072
2.Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948
3.Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950-1951
4.Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, c. 1817

Promotional Information

The first English-language anthology of texts on the sublime from Longinus and the Ancient Greeks to today.

About the Author

Robert R. Clewis is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Honors Program at Gwynedd Mercy University, USA and is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He is author of The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom (2009), a translator of Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology (2012), and editor of Reading Kant’s Lectures (2015).

Reviews

Robert Clewis has done heroic work in collecting the full range of important materials about the sublime from philosophy, art history, poetry, and criticism and in ably introducing them. This collection makes it possible for the first time to think systematically about special experiences of excitation, threat, and accession to power in a time when, for better and for worse, disruption looms large in many cultural and political agendas.
*Richard Eldridge, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College, USA*

The Sublime Reader is a much needed first comprehensive anthology dedicated to the aesthetic sublime. The texts are masterfully selected with a view to covering a long history, from ancient to contemporary works in Western and Eastern aesthetic traditions, and to presenting a wide range of accounts of the experience and judgment of natural and artistic sublimity. This is an invaluable resource for students, instructors, the general audience seeking depth and breadth in the fascinating subject of the sublime.
*Uygar Abaci, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University, USA*

The Sublime Reader fills a long-standing gap in the available resources for teaching and thinking about aesthetics. It is the first collection of extracts that sets ancient treatments of beauty, awe or wonder into dialogue with the more familiar eighteenth-century European discussion of the sublime and our own contemporary debates about the effects and value of aesthetic form and objects. This collection will expand the field as its deft and thoughtful juxtapositions stimulate further explorations in our understanding of what it means to be struck by wonder.
*Peter de Bolla, Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics, University of Cambridge, UK*

The Sublime Reader is a unique collection of readings from the entire breadth of historical and contemporary philosophical traditions on one of the most exciting topics in aesthetics. It is also unique in its coverage of contributions by writers from literature and the arts. The editor's clear introductions and stimulating study questions make this an ideal teaching tool. This book could be the text for an entire course in aesthetics or an invaluable resource for other courses in the field.
*Paul Guyer, Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philosophy, Brown University, USA*

The Sublime Reader is a much-needed compendium of both classic and underappreciated texts that, together, depict the origins and genealogy of this compelling idea. Robert Clewis has spent many years thinking and writing about the sublime, and this thoughtful and inclusive selection of cross-disciplinary primary materials is the best I’ve seen.
*Andrew Chignell, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, USA*