The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant

In this book, Robert Doran offers the first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime, from the ancient Greek treatise On the Sublime (attributed to 'Longinus') and its reception in early modern literary theory to the philosophical accounts of Burke and Kant. Doran explains how and why the sublime became a key concept of modern thought and shows how the various theories of sublimity are united by a common structure - the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and exalted - and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the face of the secularization of modern culture. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and philosophical analysis, his book provides a new, searching and multilayered account of a concept that continues to stimulate thought about our responses to art, nature and human events.

Introduction; Part I. Longinus' Theory of Sublimity: 1. Defining the Longinian sublime; 2. Longinus' five sources sublimity; 3. Longinus on sublimity in nature and culture; Part II. Sublimity and Modernity: 4. Boileau: the birth of a concept; 5. Dennis: terror and religion; 6. Burke: sublime individualism; Part III. The Sublimity of the Mind: Kant: 7. The Kantian sublime in 1764: 'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime'; 8. The sublime in the 'Critique of Practical Reason'; 9. The sublime in the 'Critique of the Power of Judgment'; 10. Judging nature as a magnitude: the Mathematically Sublime; 11. Judging nature as a power: the Dynamically Sublime; 12. Sublimity and culture in Kant.

Robert Doran is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Rochester, New York. He is the author of The Ethics of Theory: Philosophy, History, Literature (2016) and the editor of three books: Philosophy of History after Hayden White (2013), Hayden White's The Fiction of Narrative (2010), and René Girard's Mimesis and Theory (2008). Professor Doran holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, California and a PhD in General and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III.