The “sublime” is a word you’ll hear tossed around a lot as you study Gothic literature, and even sometimes within the texts themselves. But what exactly does it mean? I’ll do my best to give a simple introduction to this rather complex term in this post, which will be the first in a series on important vocabulary words that will enhance your understanding of the Gothic.
Speaking broadly, the sublime is a concept from the branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, which deals with the nature of beauty and taste. It is no surprise, then, that the term would be picked up by artists and writers. The idea of the sublime came to prominence in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, as young British writers and philosophers went on their Grand Tour of continental Europe and came back particularly awed by the majestic mountains of the Swiss Alps and needed a term to describe that experience.
One philosopher whose name is most associated with the sublime is Edmund Burke. He laid out his theories on the term in a 1757 treatise titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. In this treatise, Burke distinguishes between the beautiful and the sublime as separate categories, viewing the sublime as superior and more powerful. Whereas beauty simply comes from objects that are well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, the sublime is experienced when overwhelming pain and terror lead to a sort of delight. Burke believed that terror was the key to the sublime, since “it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” He goes on to lay out several other characteristics such as obscurity, power, vastness, and infinity, which may contribute to a sense of the sublime. Other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, disagreed with the way that Burke separated out the beautiful and the sublime, but one core concept held true: the sublime is a mingled feeling of awe and terror that can often be inspired by the grandeur of nature.
The poets of the Romantic movement were positively obsessed with the sublime. In fact, their end goal was essentially to experience the sublime and reproduce it in their poetry. Hence, the constant wandering in nature and meditating upon landscapes and strong emotions. Since Romanticism was in part a reaction against Rationalism, many sought out the sublime as an experience that goes beyond rational thought. Others felt that one could find enlightenment, at least momentarily, through the sublime. And since the Gothic essentially grew out of Romanticism, it’s no wonder that we find the concept of the sublime working its way into Gothic novels, especially early on in the genre’s development.
There are two roles that the sublime plays in Gothic literature: first, as the intended experience for the reader, and second, as a motif that shows up within the text itself. Remember Burke, who suggested that terror was the best source of the sublime? Well, if you don’t have an imposing mountain right outside for your daily dose of awe, how else might you induce some terror to help you reach the sublime? By reading Gothic novels, of course! Ann Radcliffe, one of the most popular authors of Gothic novels at the end of the eighteenth century, explicitly engages with Burke’s theory of the sublime in her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” which I touched on briefly in my post about Horror vs. Terror. When making a case for the kind of terror you find in Radcliffe’s own novels (as opposed to the crude physical horror like that in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk), Radcliffe states:
“Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one.”
Thus, by writing suspenseful novels filled with vague and unknown dangers, Radcliffe hoped to evoke in reader the kind of terror that leads to the sublime.
But it’s not just the readers who experience the sublime, oftentimes characters in the story do, as well. Ann Radcliffe is known for writing heroines that spend lengthy passages of the book wandering through mountainous landscapes writing poetry about its beauty, as Julia does in A Sicilian Romance. A more familiar example may be Mary Shelley’s character Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s mad scientist grows up among the Swiss Alps, and he returns to the mountains when lost in grief after his younger brother William in killed. He finds comfort there in his experience of the sublime:
“These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillised it.”
Yet, Victor’s peacefulness is shattered when his creation finds and confronts him up in the mountains, which serve as a fitting backdrop to this terrifying encounter. With their blend of positive and negative emotions, sublime landscapes are the perfect home for Gothic protagonists and tragic monsters alike. And how did we wind up circling back to the Swiss Alps, specifically? These majestic mountains that informed the very definition of the sublime served as Mary Shelley’s view while she first composed the horror story that would become Frankenstein at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, Switzerland. Undoubtedly, these surroundings informed her mindset while writing the story and inspired her to saturate it with explorations of the sublime.
I hope this post helped you to better understand the connection between the Gothic and the sublime! If you still have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. What other examples of the sublime in the Gothic can you think of? And what other vocab words would you like to see me cover? Please do comment and let me know.
Also, do you like my new Morbid Monday header? I got some custom calligraphy from Sydnie at Minerva’s Mark, whose business name was inspired by this post about the importance of Minerva Press! You can check her out on Instagram at @MinervasMark for more elegant and literary-inspired calligraphy.