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American
Literature: Romanticism Student Midterm Samples 2015 3. Web Highlights |
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Gregory Buchanan
23 March 2015
Familiarity
and Estrangement in the Sublime
The sublime is often experienced in the
magnitude of natural phenomena or their implicit danger, but several course
readings suggest that it may also be experienced in common, everyday situations
from which we are estranged. Occurrences with which we are familiar in
predictable contexts become disorienting and vaguely threatening when translated
into new environments. Rip Van Winkle enjoyed games and likely played them often
while at home, but when confronted with a common game played in an extraordinary
way in the wilderness, he finds it sublime. Similarly, Goodman Brown decided to
commit sin before leaving home, suggesting his comfort with everyday sin, yet
regarded the complete unveiling of sin in the wilderness as a tremendously
sublime occasion. The images of Jonathan Edwards are taken from the everyday
experiences of his auditors, but when human treatment of the spider is
translated into divine treatment of the sinner, the sublime is experienced not
only in the infinite wrath of an angry God, but also in a common experience
considered from an unexpected perspective. While exploring these instances of
sublime estrangement, I found several helpful insights in the mid-term exams of
Krisitin Hamon (2008), Sharon Lockett (2006), Elena Luquette (2010), and Aaron
Morris (2006). Estrangement becomes sublime in Rip's and Goodman Brown's
journeys into the wilderness, but also in the transformations of domesticity in
Jonathan Edward's sermon, and contrasting these different approaches yields
insight into the diversity of the sublime in American Romanticism.
The sublimity that Rip Van Winkle
experiences along his journey into the wilderness
largely results from the magnitude of the game-playing and festivities he
witnesses in such close proximity to ordinary domestic life. Rip begins his
journey with his "escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife"
(13), in search of rest and pleasure. But when he finds a group enjoying itself,
he is overwhelmed by the dimensions of its game: "Nothing interrupted the
stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were
rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder" (19). Morris
notes that increased proportions in the wilderness, even of desirable objects
and events, yield a sense of danger: "At times, Irving used the concept of
infinity to intensify the dark and threatening aspects of the wilderness" (3).
Although the game played at the party is not strictly infinite, its effects
appear supernatural, an effect to which Rip is especially susceptible because of
his tendency to find spiritual comfort in nature, as Lockett notes (9). Morris
and Lockett's insights are supplemented nicely by Hamon's observation that the
individual may powerfully experience the sublime in isolation, removed from his
or her community (1). Although the
sublime may be a communal experience, observable by anyone watching magnificent
displays of the powers of nature, it may also occur privately, possibly as the
result of one's special sensitivity to subtle aspects of nature. Reading Rip's
journey with additional information from the mid-terms has improved my
understanding of the sublime by introducing an uncommon aspect, the infinite
that can be observed in magnified versions of the commonplace.
Like Rip Van Winkle, Goodman Brown also
journeys to a place where he believes he will experience what he desires, a
sinful encounter, only to realize the sublime in the extreme proportions of the
perverse meeting. In addition to the magnified sinfulness of the devil's
meeting, another source of the sublime is nature, whose features are distorted
and grotesque, rendering the wilderness a terrifying environment: "He had taken
a dreary road, darkened y all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely
stood aside to let the narrow path creep through" (8). Morris and Hamon seem to
disagree about the extent to which the atmosphere of the wilderness contributes
to Goodman Brown's experience of the sublime. Morris asserts that the terror of
the wilderness is a common cause of the sublime (2), while Hamon maintains that
it is Goodman Brown's self-imposed isolation that causes him to find sublimity
in the wilderness (8). Both Morris and Hamon offer substantial reasoning in
their mid-terms for their respective claims, but I agree with Hamon.
Goodman Brown's isolation is instrumental to his perception of the
sublimity of the devil's congregation. The sense of the congregation's power
seems most powerfully expressed in its singing: "Verse after verse was sung; and
still the chorus of the desert swelled between the deepest tone of a mighty
organ..." (58). Although Goodman Brown likely intended to commit sin upon
leaving home and isolating himself, he struggles to comprehend the sublime depth
of absolute devotion to sin that he observes in others. I disagree with
Luquette's claim that Goodman Brown's meeting is revelatory because of the
extent of the community's hypocrisy; it seems more likely that the depth of
their sin is what frightens Goodman Brown. Working through Goodman Brown's
experience through the perspective of several mid-terms has led me to reconsider
my thinking about the sources of the sublime, and it has re-affirmed my overall
interpretation of the story as an account of religious experience, rather than
social commentary.
Contrary to Rip and Goodman Brown, who
journey away from the ordinary sphere of the domestic to find the sublime in the
wilderness, the auditors of Jonathan Edwards' sermon experience the sublime
through images and metaphors that draw heavily on domestic tasks and items to
estrange common experience from moral complacency. Edwards uses the image of a
spider suspended over fire to illustrate the moral condition of the
unregenerate: "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you..." (26). Spiders are
relatively unthreatening and easily observed in a domestic environment, but here
they take on a new significance, one which translates human aversion into divine
abhorrence, creating a sense of profound dread that is deeply sublime.
Luquette's exam points out the radical moral change Edwards hoped to inspire by
choosing such a common item to represent the sinner, in hopes that his moral
message would be remembered throughout the course of everyday business (4).
Lockett expresses a similar point: "Edwards is an individual for whom the
sublime offers a daily mode of existence" (4). The impending condemnation that
Edwards describes partakes extensively of the infinite, a fundamental attribute
of the divine nature of God; this recalls Morris' point regarding the importance
of the infinite in the sublime (3). Edwards translates sublimity into the
communal life of the Puritan congregation he addresses. Hamon maintains that he
does this through conveying his personal experience of sublimity from enjoying
God's creation during long walks in the wilderness into terms to which his
auditors can relate individually but also appreciate as parts of a religious
collective (3). I enjoyed reading perspectives from the mid-terms on Edwards'
personal appreciation for the sublime in nature, and especially I learned a lot
about Edwards' perception of his relationship to God from Hamon's third
paragraph. These insights made it easier for me to contrast Edwards'
presentation of the deep sublime in domestic terms with the depths of the
sublime experienced by Rip and Goodman Brown in their journeys outside of the
domestic.
Rip's and Goodman Brown's journeys into the
wilderness contain examples of the sublimity that occurs when occurrences common
in domesticity are magnified in strange environments, with which Edwards'
transformations of domestic occurrences into moral exhortations contrast. That
the sublime is present in both kinds of estrangement attests to its versatility
as a concept. Our first course objective states identification of the sublime as
a part of our study of American Romanticism. I was greatly aided in
understanding the diversity of the sublime by reading the mid-term exams of
Kristin Hamon, Sharon Lockett, Elena Luquette, and Aaron Morris. In several
instances, these exams provided valuable insight into the sublime as it occurs
in the wilderness, its presence in individual and communal forms, and its
association with the concepts of infinity and terror.
