The Sublime

Catalog description

The “sublime” is an aesthetic term that goes back to Ancient Rome and forward to current times. We can get a sense of its contemporary use by looking at a Tate Modern wall description. The Tate tells us that, although the term is “much contested,” the sublime denotes “an exalted state of mind, or an overwhelming response to art or nature that goes beyond everyday experience.” The sublime expresses “formlessness, immensity, intense light or darkness, terror, solitude and silence,” all of which can be overpowering and even traumatic. But, surprisingly, rather than overwhelm us or traumatize us, the sublime offers us “the solace of transcendence, an art in which one could lose oneself.” Early examples of the sublime included natural or artistic representations mountains, avalanches, waterfalls, stormy seas, human ruins, or the infinite vault of the starry sky. This course examines theoretical and creative representations of the sublime in writers and artists from ancient to postmodern. These include Longinus, Kant, Schiller, Wordsworth, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Newman, Rosenblum, Du Bois, Lyotard, Battersby, Chopin, Freeman, Malick, Wagner, Viola, and von Trier. Our goal is to consider the personal, political, spiritual, and aesthetic potential of this most elusive and fascinating concept.