Comparing and Contrasting the Sublime
What can be said about the sublime? Class discussion led to the definition of sublime as the element found in travel literature that is unexplainable. It is that part of travel literature where the writer is in awe of his or her surroundings, where nature can be dangerous or where nature reminds a human being of their mortality. The term "sublime" has been applied to travel texts studied in class and it is hard not to compare the sublime from texts earlier in the term to the texts in the later part of the term. Two texts that can be compared in terms of the sublime are A Tour in Switzerland by Helen Williams and History of a Six Weeks' Tour by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. There are similarities and differences found in both texts concerning individual perspectives of travel and the sublime. The main focus of this commentary will be comparing and contrasting the perspectives of Williams and Shelley within their respective texts, the language of the sublime and the descriptions of the sublime.
Both Shelley and Williams write from a personal perspective. Both travel to and make observations on the area that interests them. Williams travels to Switzerland while Shelley travels through Geneva to Chamonix. In the introduction of Williams's text she immediately reveals the reason why she wishes to visit Switzerland while Shelley assumes that the reader recognizes that he is a traveler who wants to go from point A to point B. Williams's introduction reveals that she has already dreamed about what it would be like to visit Switzerland and she shares with her readers that 'I am going to gaze upon images of nature; images of which the idea has so often swelled my imagination, but whic...
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...ering more leeway to understanding the sublime. On a more personal note, comparing how Williams and Shelley write about the sublime has made the idea more clear in my mind on how to approach readings that contain the sublime, it is much easier to understand and furthermore, it offers more than one way of looking for and at the sublime.
Works cited
Extracts from:
"The Shelleys at Chamonix:1816." Mary Shelley and P. B. Shelley History of a Six Weeks' Tour. London: T. Hookham, 1817. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Ed. By David Miall and Duncan Wu. Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997.
Williams, Helen Maria. A Tour in Switzerland; or, A view of the present state of the Government and Manners of those Cantons: with comparative sketches of the present state of Paris. 2 Vols. London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1798. http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Travel/Coxe-Williams.htm.
Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of
Nevertheless, the sublime does not lead us to despair, but to a higher pleasure than beauty affords
Mary Shelley was a creative individual, who changed the structure and the topic of famous works for those who will follow her with their own acclaimed piece of work.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
While immersed in its beauty, Victor and his creation escaped worldly problems and entered a supernatural bliss. In short, Shelley presents nature as very powerful. It has the power to put the humanity back into man when the unnatural world has stripped him of his moral fiber. In comparison to the pure beauty of nature, the unnatural acts of man are far more emphasized; therefore, the reader is clearly aware of man’s faults and their repercussions. Unfortunately, not even the power of nature could balance the work of man: “the cup of life was poisoned forever.”
Interestingly enough, Shelley employs the phrase “antique land” (1) to start out; the diction in this instance highlights the setting, and our perspective of time, for antiquity denotes the belonging to the past and not being modern. The style in which the poem is rendered is reminiscent of a folk tale’s recital since we are told the story through an obscure traveller and the reader is naturally drawn into the mysticism and mystery. However, in this way, Shelley distances the audie...
Both poems inspire their reader to look at their own life. In addition, they treat the reader to a full serving of historic literature that not only entertains, but also teaches valuable lesson in the form of morals and principles.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was born August 30th, 1797 in Somers Town, London. Her mother died only eleven days after giving birth to Mary. Her father, William Godwin, was responsible for taking care of Mary and her half sister, Fanny Imlany. Mary came from a very educated and intellectual family. Her mother whose name was Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher and feminist. Her father, William was a political philosopher. At the age of four years old, Mary’s father remarried a woman by the name of Mary Jane Clairmont. Mary Jane had two children previously. Their names were Charles and Claire Clairmont. It was very important to Mary’s father to give Mary the opportunity to become educated and also teach her his views on “liberal political theories.” (Mary, 2010) She never received any formal education, but her father tutored her. In 1814, Mary meets Percy Bysshe Shelley whom followed her father’s politics. Percy Shelley was a poet-philosopher and they soon became romantically involved. They would meet at Mary’s mother’s grave site and that is where they got to know each other and fell in love. Mary was only seventeen at the time and Percy was twenty-two years old and also married to Harriet. However this does not stop them, Mary becomes pregnant with t...
In his book On the Sublime, Longinus rhetorically identifies five principal elements to the art of mastering sublimity, through the use of written texts. Longinus defines sublimity as, “a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse […] sublimity on the other hand, produced at the right moment, tears everything up like a whirlwind and exhibits the orator’s power at a single blow” (Longinus 347). However, there is great jeopardy when writers seek to produce subliminal messages. Longinus describes the difference between messages being falsely and truly sublime. He characterizes false sublimity as “puerile” and bombastic. True sublimity will touch the audience’s heart; it goes beyond words, allowing emotion to run through. Furthermore, Longinus outlines the five rhetorical principles in order to achieve sublimity. (1) Ethos: Greatness of Thoughts, (2) Pathos: Emotion, (3) Pathos: Figures of Speech Logos, (4) Logos: Nobile Diction, and (5) Logos: Arrangement. Blacks for year’s fought hard to receive equal rights to those whites had. The late 1950s, early 1960s was a turning point for African-Americans with the establishment of the Civil Rights Era. The Civil Rights Era represented a social movement for blacks in hopes of ending racial segregation and discrimination, especially in the Jim Crow Deep South. At the forefront of this movement was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who sought equality for the poor, victims of injustice, and African-Americans, by advocating peaceful protests. On August 28, 1963, King delivered one of the most memorable speeches of all time during the March on Washington. The mastering of Longinus’s five principals of the sublime is exemplified in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Moreover, the last couple of minutes o...
Mary Shelley assumes that the ideas of reason should be measured with the common sense. She criticizes with this narration the radical rationalism that was evident in the literary pieces of her parents. Shelley’s husband also used the similar ideas in his poems, the so-called Prometheanism of the Romantic Age (Bloom 8).
Shelley envisioned a strong sense of humanity in her novel. She encapsulated the quintessence of the period in which she lived by expressing ideologies, such as humanity’s relationship with God and the hypothesis of nature versus nurture. The relationship with God was vividly changed during the industrial era.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Prometheus Unbound. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002. 206-283.
In the Critique of Judgement Kant defines the sublime as "that, the mere ability to think which shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of sense." (1) Such striving for absolute comprehension beyond what the imagination is capable of representing in a simple perception or image may be occasioned by the "rawness" of scenes like the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the magnitude or immensity of which alludes to the Idea of absolute greatness. (2) Imagination's failure to contain this Idea understandably results in pain. (3) But pain is not the end-point; characteristic of sublime feeling is a "movement" of pain to pleasure: "the feeling of a momentary checking of the vital powers and a consequent stronger outflow of them." (4) In other words one is awestruck: nature appears as a "mere nothing in comparison with the Ideas of Reason." (5) From this we realize our superiority to nature "within and without us" and our supersensible destination beyond nature. (6) In this paper I wish to explicate J-F. Lyotard's reading of the Kantian sublime. There are lessons to be learned here, as the title of his recent work (1994), Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, suggests.
The Romantic writers of the late 1700s and the early 1800s enjoyed a freedom in writing that is reminiscent of the freedom of some of the great Greek writers. Like the Greeks more than one thousand years earlier, the Romantic writers were able to enjoy such professions in the humanities due to the influx of technology in their respective societies. With the rise of the Greek Polis came efficiency in farming, shared labor, and specialized manufacturing on a more primitive scale. These innovations were key to the origin of philosophical writing for never before had so many humans had the luxury of time for contemplating life. The medical and mechanical advances, and increased importance of education for all classes in England during the 19th century replicated this revolution in many ways. England was developing into a network of urban areas. Wealthy business owners were able to support young poets and artist in their artistic endeavors. Without the support of the urban society, poets such as Shelley would have lived a life of labor and non-published thoughts of life. The irony occurs in that Romanic Poets such as Percy Shelley, who enjoyed the luxuries of modern life, would come to distain the very evolutionary events of society which enabled the time and freedom to contemplate. There was no end to the apparent contradictions of personal philosophy versus popular culture, and ...
It is important, before continuing with an examination of Paradise Lost and its epic characteristics and conventions (specifically, those in Book I), to review for a moment exactly what an "epic" is. Again, according to Lewalski, "Renaissance critics generally thought of epics as long poems treating heroic actions or other weighty matters in a high style, thereby evoking awe or wonder" (12).