LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2002 sample student research journal

LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Paper, summer 2002

Michelle Glenn
LITR 5535 2002
Research Journal

The Sublime: General Knowledge of the Term, How it Relates to Romanticism, and Important Questions Concerning the Topic

INTRODUCTION:

I have been interested in the notion of the sublime since the beginning of the semester, yet, I did not feel comfortable using it as my topic for the midterm because I was not sure that I had enough insight on it. When contemplating my subject for the research journal, the sublime was the first topic that popped into my mind. I decided to use my research journal as an opportunity to enhance my educational career, as it would give me the chance to learn about the term and to develop my own thoughts about it. In doing such, I might be able to address the topic appropriately in another class, or perhaps, even my final.

Before delving into the research aspect of my journal, I had to set some goals for myself. After all, I knew that the sublime was a huge subject, to say the least. Therefore, I narrowed down my topic accordingly. In researching the sublime, my goal was to establish a general definition of the term and to determine its relevancy to romanticism. In order to do this, I realized that I would have to conduct extensive research using materials such as encyclopedias, books, and the Internet.

Being the true romantic that I am, I was eager to embark on my quest for knowledge. I found the research process to be quite rewarding, though it did seem to take on a life of its own. What I mean by this is simply that I found some information that was obviously relevant to my goal and some that seemed to slightly deviate from it, though it turned out to be quite useful. I believe that incorporating all of this information into my research journal was to my benefit because it allowed me to make connections between information that I had been thinking about for some time and ideas that might have never crossed my mind otherwise.

My research journal, in an attempt to be reader friendly, is organized thematically. The first section of my journal contains background information on the sublime. Within this section, I define the term, distinguish it from that of the beautiful, and discuss its various forms. All of this information is intended to provide the reader with a foundation of understanding for the sublime. The second section, “Putting the Pieces Together,” explains the relationship between sublimity and romanticism. This section includes the following aspects of the sublime experience: emphasis on the individual, the horizonal focus of romantic literature and art, the sublime as a personal response, how this personal response started, and the emotion involved in such an occurrence. The final section, which emerged solely from my research, raises important questions about the sublime and its relevancy to today’s world.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE SUBLIME:

Establishing a general definition of “the sublime” -

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001. University of Tennessee at Martin. 19 June 2002. <http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/sublime.htm>.

Before conducting in-depth research on the topic of the sublime, I felt that it was necessary to have a general understanding of the term. For this reason, I turned to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The entry for sublime was as follows:

‘Sublime’ refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of a transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time. It differs from greatness or grandeur in that these are as such capable of being completely grasped or measured. By contrast, the sublime, while in one aspect apprehended and grasped as a whole, is felt as transcending our normal standards of measurement or achievement.

Though we had previously discussed the sublime in class, a textbook definition had not been given. This is not to say that there should have been, it only serves to justify the discomfort that I was experiencing with the term. However, after reading the definition in print, my confusion with the sublime almost immediately dissolved. As a result, I felt confident in proceeding with my research.

My next step was to collect some background information on the term, as I believed that this was essential to grasping it completely. In this regard, the encyclopedia entry listed the names of Edmund Burke, Henry Home, and Immanuel Kant. A summary of their works and ideas concerning the sublime was given. Each idea seemed to be self-explanatory, except for the distinction that was mentioned between the sublime and the beautiful. In this respect, I decided to research the work of Immanuel Kant, since he directly addressed this issue in one of his essays.

Exploring the differences between the sublime and the beautiful -

Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Trans. John T. Goldthwait. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960.

Immanuel Kant’s essay, “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,” centers on the discussion of sublimity verses beauty, a distinction that I feel is critical when studying the concept of the sublime.

According to Kant, the difference between the sublime and the beautiful can be recognized when analyzing the amount of emotion that the viewer experiences when looking upon a certain object. In Kant’s definition, beauty evokes a sense of pleasure or cheerfulness. While the sublime does the same thing, it is accompanied by a degree of terror or quiet wonder (47). A further distinction between the two is that sublimity occurs on a grand scale, whereas beauty is often experienced on a smaller level (48). I comprehended this idea quite easily, as I had often had the urge to identify certain passages as sublime until corrected by this principle in class discussion.

After distinguishing between the sublime and the beautiful, Kant presents the reader with a catalog of examples which tend to be very useful in illustrating his point. For example, Kant says, “Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime; flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in figures are beautiful. Night is sublime, day is beautiful” (47). These examples are simply wonderful because they show just how different the sublime and the beautiful really are. Perhaps, this is the most important information that I learned in reading this text. There is always something more to the sublime than beauty, a seemingly mysterious elevation or tinkering with the mind. This phenomenon is best described in Kant’s own words: “The sublime moves, beauty charms” (47).

Acknowledging the various forms of sublimity -

Hull, Roger. American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880. 19 May 2002. GlaxoSmithKline. 12 June 2002. <http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:wkA321sCg78C:www.tate.org.uk/britain/ exhibitions/americansublime/teacherpack.PDF+how+the+sublime+is+related+to +romanticism&hl=en&ie=UTF-8>.

This website, which will be discussed more in another section of my journal, explains the different meanings that the term sublime has taken on. On one hand, sublimity is seen as “noisy and boisterous,” often taking the form of storms or other powerful phenomena (8). On the other hand, sublimity is viewed in a transcendental-like manner, as an occurrence of “repose and silent energy” (8). This type of sublimity involves reaching a state of awe through experiences like watching a sunset. Though these definitions are very different, neither can be rejected. This is extremely important, especially when looking for sublime instances in literature or art. Without knowledge concerning both types of the sublime, it is possible to overlook a sublime instance, as the types of sublimity are often intermingled and may be difficult to recognize because of this.

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER: SUBLIMITY AND ROMANTICISM:

Investigating both the emphasis on the individual and romanticism’s focus on the horizon -

Twitchell, James. Romantic Horizons. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983.

By this point in my research, I was able to understand the concept of sublimity and even to recognize sublime instances in literature. Yet, I must be honest, I had no idea how it fit into the romantic scheme of things. In seeking out the answer to this question, I found a book entitled Romantic Horizons that seemed to bring all the information that I had learned about the sublime and romanticism together. I began to understand the correlation between the sublime and the romantic period when I read about the psychological aspect of the sublime. In discussing this, the author states, “for as the ‘eye’ goes up to the horizon, the ‘I’ goes to the threshold of elevated consciousness” (IX). This quote is actually what brought my research journal together. Prior to reading this, I had not realized that sublime instances predominately occurred when an individual was separated from the masses. In studying the course objectives, I always studied individualization and sublimity separately, not thinking that they might run together. This epiphany became the continuity between sublimity and the romantic period. Romanticism is very much a struggle of the individual to break the chains of society, or his/her current circumstances. Sublimity is a vehicle for doing this because it allows the individual to look upon an object and to move on to some new level of awareness where a “momentary unity with both his ‘inner self’ and the world ‘beyond’” (28) can be achieved.

After a long awaited grasp of the relationship between the sublime and romanticism, I was free to focus my attention on the beginning of that same quote. What was this business about the ‘eye’ going up to the horizon and how did this idea fit in with everything else? According to the text, romantic attention, whether by poet or artist, is directed toward the place where the “earth and sky meet because that is the break, if you will, where sublimity can be achieved” (10). Just as the sublime separates the realm of the conscious and the mystical, the horizon separates the realm of the natural and the heavenly (IX). This explains the concentration of both romantic poets and artists on the horizon, or the “lifting of the eye/I” (37).

As an example of this horizonal focus, prospect poetry is mentioned in the text. This form of poetry is one “in which the poet climbs a hill, looks around until he finds an interesting, or commanding vista, and then paints a word picture of it,” mimicking the process of the painter (37). In this instance, the poet achieves elevation through features such as diction and imagery. On the other hand, the artist achieves the same goal using features of perspective, or depth of field. In elaborating on this new focus of romantic sight, the author states, “landscapes complete with blue mountains at the horizon had become as obsessive a subject for painters as they were for poets” (9). This was something that I had recognized in studying the sublime, almost every poem or painting that dealt with the subject contained mountains, hills, sunsets, etc. However, I had now come to realize that this was no fault in the art. In each and every one of these works of art, this scenery had been used purposefully because it placed the reader/viewer amongst the horizon, the place where sublimity occurs.

Certainly, as previously stated, the horizon separated the natural and the heavenly. Was this the only reason that sublimity usually occurred there? I could not help but wonder about those people who did not believe in heavenly things. How did sublimity move them? I found the answer to these questions in another romantic ideal: anything besides the “here and now.” This philosophy asserts that if we are living in the midst of something, it is not romantic to us. In romanticism, “nature up too close is what confines the self, what prevents expansion” (8). Therefore, keeping in line with the terms of romanticism, in order to create a sublime feeling, nature had to be depicted at a distance. Thus, another reason that romantic poets and artists used horizonal images in their work. These images are generally beyond our grasp and fall into the “there” category, as opposed to the “here and now.”

Focusing on the sublime as a personal response and how this response started -

This website is actually a resource packet for teachers educating their students about various nineteenth century artists. If I had come across it during my initial stages of research, I might have discarded it, thinking that it had no relation to literature. Yet, after much research by this point, I knew that the website would be worth looking into.

I was highly intrigued with the website’s discussion of a new connection that sublimity offered in terms of art and literature. According to the website, around the time of the eighteenth century, nature was considered threatening because it seemed to thwart efforts of progression. For example, dense forests occupied the land that was desperately needed for agricultural purposes. It was not until romanticism came about that this perception of nature begin to change. In this regard, literary romanticism is said to have “provided a lens for looking at nature as sublime, rather than simply dangerous, dirty, and in the way of human aspiration” (5). With this new perception of nature, sublimity became increasingly more important to the artistic works of the time. As the author of the website states, “the concept of the sublime became a powerful vehicle for romantic poets and painters interested in expressing an intensely personal response to the vastness of nature” (4). Just as writers used poetic phrases and other literary techniques to comment on the grandeur and enormity of nature, the artists of this time period “evolved an indigenous landscape idiom in response to the astonishing scale and features of nature in the New World. . . ”

More on the sublime as a personal response -

Podstolski, Max. “The Return of the Sublime: The Romantic Impulse.” Spark-Online. 2000. 19 June 2002. <http://www.spark-online.com/november00/miscing/podstolski.html>.

This article discusses issues of sublimity in art. I decided to include this source in my research journal because I felt that the latter portion of the article would be useful in elaborating on the relationship between the sublime and romanticism. In discussing the sublime, the author makes it clear that experiencing sublimity is a very personal occurrence. He goes on to say that an artist concerned with the sublime is acknowledging this incident as an authentic encounter and attempting to mediate it in some form (6). According to the article, this form does not have to be depicted in any certain manner. In judging this type of art, the important element in the portrayal of the sublime experience is “the expression or communication of individual authenticity in one’s art form” (6).

The same mode of thinking can be observed when studying sublime instances in literature of the romantic period. There is no doubt that each writer during this time considered sublimation to be a personal experience. Due to this, the romantics believed that these types of occurrences should be conveyed uniquely, representing the individual style of the writer. There might very well be twenty different poems that make references to huge mountain peaks, but each one will relate the experience differently. Considering this, the artistic work of the time can truly be regarded as romantic philosophy in motion.

Exploring the relationship between emotions and the sublime -

“The Cult of Giganticism: Slide One of Three.” 26 June 2002. Internet Explorer. University of Houston Clear Lake Library. Path: Google; The sublime in literature and romanticism; incomplete documentation.

As I scanned this website, my eyes zeroed in on a quote from William Wordsworth that read, “‘poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility’” (Slide one). I was intrigued by this statement and decided to take a closer look at the website.

The website discussed the amount of emotion that is behind the sublime, and how the intention of the romantic was to rekindle that emotion in society. If successful, the romantics believed that “the soul, spirit, and mind” of mankind could be “raised up and partake of something greater, more divine, . . .” (Slide one). After reading this, I began to recall Kant’s discussion of emotion and see yet another connection between the sublime and romanticism: the level of emotion involved. Now that this idea had been brought to my attention, I began to think of sublime instances in this manner. Sure enough, everything that came into my head supported the theory of the sublime being highly charged with emotion. The need to break free, the religious connotations of the scenery, the dreamy state the viewer enters; all of these aspects of the sublime are related to emotion. This is how the sublime fits into the romantic period. Romanticism is said to occur in the realm of emotion, as characters tend to put issues of the heart before all others. In this sense, it is often viewed as a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, or the age of “reason” and “reality.”

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SUBLIME: WHY THE URGE TO EXPERIENCE IT? ARE SUBLIME INSTANCES STILL GOING ON?

Twitchell, James. Romantic Horizons. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983.

Yet another fascinating question that this book raises is: “Why would a person want to experience the sublime?” The answer to this question is fairly simple. Within the terror of the sublime, there is a bit of pleasure, so long as there is no actual risk of harm. This is why reading a poem about a shipwreck or viewing a painting of an erupting volcano would be considered sublime to the spectator, but not to those people who have been through the experience (14). The author explains the thrill of the sublime by describing that the rush is “partly the thrill of ‘there but for the grace of God go I,’ partly the result of overcoming anxiety, and partly the joy of moving out of self-consciousness into something beyond” (14).

Taking into account all the information that I learned in my research, I found myself asking, “Is the sublime still around?” To my surprise, I found the answer to this question amongst the information offered on this website. According to the author, the sublime is alive and well in our culture. In commenting on this, he states, “the impulse to view from a safe distance, and yet more surprising, even to enjoy horrific incidents caused by the overwhelming power of nature, remains constant as the box office success of films like Titanic demonstrate” (14). I find this belief to be right on the mark. It seems to me that there will always be those scenes in nature or on television that we, as spectators, find ourselves drawn to look at, though we may cringe at the sight of them.

CONCLUSION:

As crazy as this may sound, the concept of the sublime, is sublime to me. Its complexity frightens me to the utmost extent. Yet, I had a constant desire to read just one more article on the topic. It seemed that I could not resist the temptation to encounter the movement of the sublime experience, no matter what I did. I found myself constantly reading about the sublime, when I should have been doing other things. That is the point when I realized that I had come to understand the romantic experience better than ever before, as I had been casting off reality, engulfed in the notions of transgressing unexplainable boundaries. After realizing I had been overcome by the sublime’s power, I was able to compose myself and delight in each of the things that I had learned from this research experience.

In gathering the information for my journal, first and foremost, I have learned that much of the available information on the sublime simply dealt with defining the term. Each person seemed to have a different take on the term, which is predictable, considering its complexity. I found that it was useful to revert back to earlier sources on the sublime and study its development, rather than simply trying to comprehend one of the modern definitions that seemed to be so readily accessible. Aside from this, research on the sublime has opened my eyes to the vastness of the topic. Prior to doing this research, I only thought of the sublime in the realm of literature. I had no idea that sublimity was so prominent in artistic works, or even that it was beginning to emerge in the usage of popular culture.

In terms of unity, I could not have picked a better topic. Although I was somewhat apprehensive about focusing my research journal on the relationship between the sublime and romanticism, this feeling dissolved when I began to realize just how closely the two concepts were aligned. The sublime seemed to fit any one of the romantic impulses, whether it be the individual in nature, the individual as separate from the masses, the tendency towards “anything but the here and now,” transgressing boundaries, or even the desire to “self-invent or transform.” Before researching the sublime, I had often regarded it as one of the minor ideologies of the romantic spirit. Perhaps, this was because our class discussions emphasized such themes as desire/loss and the gothic so much more than that of the sublime. Perhaps, it was my own mistake. Either way, my research has taught me that the sublime is much more important to romanticism than my first inclinations had perceived it to be.

The knowledge from my research journal has opened up my eyes to the range of possibilities in teaching the sublime to my future students. The sublime seems to transgress boundaries in itself, because it can be related to almost any subject. I see this quality of the sublime as beneficial, as it is conducive to the current interdisciplinary movement in education.

My research has allowed me to acquire an abundance of knowledge on the topic of the sublime. Even still, there is always more to learn. In continuing my studies on the subject, I believe that I would further develop the continuity between romantic art and literature. I am highly interested in the horizonal imagery that was previously discussed in my journal. Time allowing, I would like the opportunity to examine this idea more closely, perhaps even pin-pointing concrete examples of such usages in poems and paintings. Once this was done, I would attempt to analyze how each poet or artist achieved this impression of elevation in his/her work. Along the same lines, I have a notion that the development of the sublime is similar in both art and literature. In other words, just as writers use absolute language to develop the sublime, painters use absolute or stark colors to develop the sublime. I am not sure how correct this assertion is, but I found the idea interesting and would like to see if there is any truth to it.

Although I decided that the focal point of my journal would be to discuss the sublime in romanticism, I could not help but include the section that discusses the sublime in today’s world. I am intrigued by our unconscious interest in the sublime and would like some more rationale for this phenomena. I would also like to explore how often sublime occurrences are taking place in our society (verses the societies of the past) and the reason for this.

There is so much to learn about the sublime that I believe that I could develop all of these aspects and still not be an expert on the topic. I feel that this is the appeal of the topic, though: just when I think that I have grasped it, it morphs and moves me to follow it into another mode of thinking.