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'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'

Steven Vine

English: the Journal of the English Association, Volume: 60, Issue: 228, Pages: 45 - 65

Swansea University Author: Steven Vine

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DOI (Published version): 10.1093/english/efq039

Abstract

This essay examines 'The Waste Land' (1922) and other poetic and critical works by T. S. Eliot in order to consider the ‘criterion of “sublimity”’ (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, 1919) that empowers them. It argues that Eliot’s texts present an abridged version of the sublime that...

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Published in: English: the Journal of the English Association
ISSN: 0013-8215 1756-1124
Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 2011
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa11470
first_indexed 2013-07-23T12:05:42Z
last_indexed 2018-02-09T04:41:07Z
id cronfa11470
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spelling 2014-05-15T16:37:24.0305458 v2 11470 2012-06-14 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"' 8adad05ceecbaab7f4b2be512149b4d7 Steven Vine Steven Vine true false 2012-06-14 CACS This essay examines 'The Waste Land' (1922) and other poetic and critical works by T. S. Eliot in order to consider the ‘criterion of “sublimity”’ (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, 1919) that empowers them. It argues that Eliot’s texts present an abridged version of the sublime that stops short of the recuperative moment found in the Kantian and Romantic sublimes. While the ‘negative’ moment of the sublime is preserved, any countervailing restoration at the level of reason (Kant) or imagination (Romanticism) is cancelled. Instead of the sublime being found in the reasoning or imagining self, 'The Waste Land' locates the sublime in the ‘intensity’ of modernistaesthetic form and the nightmare of ‘excess’. Redirecting Maud Ellmann’s account of ‘abjection’ in the poem ('The Poetics of Impersonality',1987), the essay builds on Kristeva’s comment that ‘the abject is edged with the sublime’ ('Powers of Horror', 1982) to argue that 'The Waste Land'’s sublime is poised on the border between detritus and meaning, excess and intensity. The essay also draws on Kristeva’s account of ‘melancholia’ in 'Black Sun' (1989) to characterize 'The Waste Land'’s battle with symbolic collapse, and argues that 'The Waste Land'’s ‘criterion of “sublimity”’ resides in its courting of and resistance to symbolic dissolution. Journal Article English: the Journal of the English Association 60 228 45 65 Oxford University Press Oxford 0013-8215 1756-1124 T.S. Eliot, sublime, Romanticism, modernism 1 3 2011 2011-03-01 10.1093/english/efq039 &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt; &lt;crossref_result xmlns=&quot;http://www.crossref.org/qrschema/2.0&quot; version=&quot;2.0&quot; COLLEGE NANME Culture and Communications School COLLEGE CODE CACS Swansea University 2014-05-15T16:37:24.0305458 2012-06-14T15:38:36.2719623 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics Steven Vine 1
title 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
spellingShingle 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
Steven Vine
title_short 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
title_full 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
title_fullStr 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
title_full_unstemmed 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
title_sort 'Ecstatic or Terrible: "The Waste Land"'s "Criterion of "Sublimity"'
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author Steven Vine
author2 Steven Vine
format Journal article
container_title English: the Journal of the English Association
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publishDate 2011
institution Swansea University
issn 0013-8215
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doi_str_mv 10.1093/english/efq039
publisher Oxford University Press
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hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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description This essay examines 'The Waste Land' (1922) and other poetic and critical works by T. S. Eliot in order to consider the ‘criterion of “sublimity”’ (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, 1919) that empowers them. It argues that Eliot’s texts present an abridged version of the sublime that stops short of the recuperative moment found in the Kantian and Romantic sublimes. While the ‘negative’ moment of the sublime is preserved, any countervailing restoration at the level of reason (Kant) or imagination (Romanticism) is cancelled. Instead of the sublime being found in the reasoning or imagining self, 'The Waste Land' locates the sublime in the ‘intensity’ of modernistaesthetic form and the nightmare of ‘excess’. Redirecting Maud Ellmann’s account of ‘abjection’ in the poem ('The Poetics of Impersonality',1987), the essay builds on Kristeva’s comment that ‘the abject is edged with the sublime’ ('Powers of Horror', 1982) to argue that 'The Waste Land'’s sublime is poised on the border between detritus and meaning, excess and intensity. The essay also draws on Kristeva’s account of ‘melancholia’ in 'Black Sun' (1989) to characterize 'The Waste Land'’s battle with symbolic collapse, and argues that 'The Waste Land'’s ‘criterion of “sublimity”’ resides in its courting of and resistance to symbolic dissolution.
published_date 2011-03-01T12:24:07Z
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