Journal article 1519 views
'Blake's Material Sublime'
Steven Vine
Studies in Romanticism, Volume: 41, Issue: 2, Pages: 237 - 257
Swansea University Author: Steven Vine
Abstract
The essay argues that Blake offers an affirmative version of what Coleridge deplores as the ‘material sublime.’ For Coleridge, the material sublime entails an excess of sense and spectacle over against intellect and reflection. Acknowledging that there is an idealist strain in Blake that promotes id...
| Published in: | Studies in Romanticism |
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| Published: |
2002
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa17983 |
| Abstract: |
The essay argues that Blake offers an affirmative version of what Coleridge deplores as the ‘material sublime.’ For Coleridge, the material sublime entails an excess of sense and spectacle over against intellect and reflection. Acknowledging that there is an idealist strain in Blake that promotes ideality over materiality, the essay contends that Blake’s prophetic books present a sublime that opens materiality up to infinitude. This involves a discovery of the sublime in temporal and historical process rather than the metaphysical. Drawing on Lyotard’s sense of the ‘postmodern’ sublime as an aesthetic of the event, and Jerome McGann’s argument that Blake pursues a poetics of practice rather than Kantian disinterestedness, the essay suggests that Blake locates the sublime in the ‘Particular’ not the ‘General,’ the singular not the abstract. This emerges in the labours of his poet-artist-prophet figure, ‘Los,’ who works relentlessly in time and projects a sublime of historical futurity rather than transcendence. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
2 |
| Start Page: |
237 |
| End Page: |
257 |