The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory
Abstract
This collection of texts on the Sublime provides the historical context for the foundation and discussion of one of the most important aesthetic debates of the Enlightenment. The significance of the Sublime in the eighteenth century ranged across a number of fields - literary criticism, empirical psychology, political economy, connoisseurship, landscape design and aesthetics, painting and the fine arts, and moral philosophy - and has continued to animate aesthetic and theoretical debates to this day. However, the unavailability of many of the crucial texts of the founding tradition has resulted in a conception of the Sublime often limited to the definitions of its most famous theorist Edmund Burke. Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla's anthology, which includes an introduction and notes to each entry, offers students and scholars ready access to a much deeper and more complex tradition of writings on the Sublime, many of them never before printed in modern editions.
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The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant
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The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780
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The Cambridge History of the English Language
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The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
(1997) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300094 · Cited by 148 · see citing works
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Salmon, V. (2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521264761.003 · Cited by 119 · see citing works
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LEXIS AND SEMANTICS
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Eighteenth-century women poets
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The Physiological Sublime: Burke's Critique of Reason
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Lass, R. (2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521264761.004 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
The transformation of rhetoric
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The social world of authorship 1660–1714
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Görlach, M. (2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521264761.007 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Naomi Shihab Nye's Aesthetic of Smallness and the Military Sublime
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Pittock, J. H. (1997) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300094.025 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
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Lochhead, J. (2008) · Women & music · doi:10.1353/wam.0.0004 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
The institution of criticism in the eighteenth century
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Lucan and the Sublime: Power, Representation and Aesthetic Experience
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A Renaissance for the Crystalline Novel?
James, D. E. (2012) · Contemporary Literature · doi:10.1353/cli.2012.0035 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
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Manning, S. M. (1997) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300094.027 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Shakespeare and impure aesthetics
Grady, H. H. (2010) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.47-5500 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
The Origins of Modern Aesthetics: 1711–35
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Videogames and the Digital Sublime
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Publishing and bookselling 1660–1780
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Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts
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Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
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The eighteenth-century periodical essay
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The Contractility of Burke's Sublime and Heterodoxies in Medicine and Art
Sarafianos, A. (2008) · Journal of the History of Ideas · doi:10.1353/jhi.2008.0005 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
The Deliberative Sublime: Edmund Burke on Disruptive Speech and Imaginative Judgment
Goodman, R. (2017) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055417000557 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
BURKE AND KANT ON FEAR OF GOD AND THE SUBLIME
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Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (I): from the Restoration to the death of Pope
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Arne, Handel, the Beautiful, and the Sublime
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Packham, C. (2013) · Eighteenth-Century Studies · doi:10.1353/ecs.2013.0043 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Earthsickness: Circumnavigation and the Terrestrial Human Body, 1520–1800
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Wagner’s Sublime Effects: Bells, Cannon and the Perception of Heavy Sound
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Medieval revival and the Gothic
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The problem of periodization: Enlightenment, Romanticism and the fate of system
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Sentimental fiction: ethics, social critique and philanthropy
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Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (II): after Pope
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"A New Description of Empire": Edmund Burke and the Regicide Republic of Letters
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Brewer, J. (2009) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521790079.003 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
From Dr. Moreau to Dr. Mengele: The Biological Sublime
Gomel, E. (2000) · Poetics Today · doi:10.1215/03335372-21-2-393 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Criticism and the rise of periodical literature
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The Aesthetics of Nature and the Environment
Crawford, D. W. (2004) · doi:10.1002/9780470756645.ch17 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
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Damrosch, L. (1997) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300094.017 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
William Godwin's Caleb Williams : The Tarnishing of the Sublime
Fludernik, M. (2001) · ELH · doi:10.1353/elh.2001.0032 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Stages of the Sublime in North America
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Chandler, J. (2009) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521790079.002 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
Darwin, Concepción, and the Geological Sublime
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Hamlet and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
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The Imperial Sublime: English Travel Writing and India, 1750–1820
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More is different: literary change in the mid and late eighteenth century
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Landscape politics and colonial identities
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Literary criticism and the rise of national literary history
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Brown, M. (2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300100.002 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Eighteenth-century travel literature
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Górak, J. (1997) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300094.026 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Persistence, adaptations and transformations in pastoral and Georgic poetry
Fairer, D. (2005) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521781442.012 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
The rival sirens: performance and identity on Handel's operatic stage
(2014) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.51-3740 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Transcendental philosophy and Romantic criticism
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Warner, W. B. (2005) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521781442.006 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Lindenberger, H. S. (2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521300100.019 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Transformations of the novel – II
Ferris, I. (2009) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/chol9780521790079.022 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
The feminine sublime: Between aesthetics and ethics
Żylińska, J. (1998) · Women a Cultural Review · doi:10.1080/09574049808578336 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Java's ruined candis and the British picturesque ideal
Tiffin, S. (2009) · Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · doi:10.1017/s0041977x09990061 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 1996-08-15
- OpenAlex
- W202232445
- Semantic Scholar
- 47459c59a7ec6533a89a18d6ba93a5e41653633a
- Cited by
- 319
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 46.20
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Art, Aesthetics, and Perception
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Historical Thought
- Keywords
- sublime, Edmund Burke, Enlightenment aesthetics, eighteenth-century aesthetics, aesthetic theory, literary criticism, landscape design, connoisseurship, ethics, political economy, painting, history of aesthetics
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