Monday, May 17, 2010

A Sublime Beginning?

This blog is my ramblings on literary theory, and on critical discourse theory more generally. Restricting the theory to "literature" seems to me a waste of time and energy. If there ever was a golden age where the average person entertained themselves with great works of literature, its long gone now. What then would be the benefit of restricting critical thinking to just literature.

Much of literary theory seems to trace back to Longinus "On the Sublime." While useful as a beginning, I have to question is there really is any such thing as the sublime, at least as defined by Longinus. The definition seems to require that it be possible to have a universal response, and everything we know about how people interpret and respond to texts points to there never being a universal interpretation or response. So, instead of trying to present something that matches Longinus definition of the sublime, I'll leave you with something that I always think of when the sublime is brought up.

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