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(2018
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2018 #2b: Short Essay (Term) (Index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Ruth Brown
Universally Sublime
The term I have enjoyed learning the most about so far in this course is
sublime. I didn’t know it was a literary term
and I had only heard it used in ways to represent good and beauty. I was
surprised to learn that sublime has a balance between beauty and terror, and
that it refers to things on an elevated scale. I also didn’t realize that I
experience the sublime in my regular life when I see a sunset that is so vast
and majestic, but also overpowering in that I don’t know how to take it all in
or describe it in any words.
Washington Irving displays this same kind of sublime in
Rip Van Winkle when
he writes about the mountains being “clothed in blue and purple, and print[ing]
their bold outlines on the clear evening sky.” He also describes how the
mountains look when the sky is cloudless, like “a hood of gray vapors about
their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light
up like a crown of glory.” This shows that while the sublime is grand and
elevated, it is also accessible and all around us if we have the knowledge to
identify it.
Another particular passage in Rip Van Winkle
that serves to explain more about the sublime is found when Rip is helping the
stranger carry the keg up the mountain and this reflection is made, "there was
something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and
checked familiarity.” The unknown is a vast, unexplored world and it is one that
people enter in various states, from recklessness and excitement, to hesitation
and anxiety. For me, the idea of the unknown has always been a thing of both
hope and fear and I now understand that this is what the sublime is all about.
I think it is beneficial for me to learn and know the term sublime because it
can be applied in every area of life. It is a universal theme that can be seen
in nature, religion, and the constructs of society and because art imitates
life, it can be seen throughout literature. Literature often presents human
nature in a way that can be viewed easier than from within ourselves, and we can
isolate and study certain aspects that can be hard to isolate or identify within
our own life. Sublime is one of those aspects that I would have never isolated
or identified in my own life without the use of literature.
