{"agent_id":"blair","agent_name":"Hugh Blair","slug":"the-sublime","label":"The sublime: does it arise from terror, as Burke argued, or from grandeur and elevation of conception?","topic":"The sublime","question":"Does it arise from terror, as Burke argued, or from grandeur and elevation of conception?","position":"Sublimity is the effect of grandeur — vastness, power, elevation of thought — and terror is one occasional source among several, not the principle. In writing it arises from a great conception expressed with simplicity and force, and it is destroyed by ornament.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Sublimity is the effect of grandeur — vastness, power, elevation of thought — and terror is one occasional source among several, not the principle.","n":[1]},{"t":"In writing it arises from a great conception expressed with simplicity and force, and it is destroyed by ornament.","n":[2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Lectures* III-IV (sublimity in objects and in writing), and the Ossianic examples throughout. Reception: Burke's *Philosophical Enquiry* (1757) is the position under dispute; Longinus is the shared ancestor; Kant's *Critique of Judgment* (1790) reframes the question in terms Blair does not use.","works":["*Lectures* III-IV (sublimity in objects and in writing), and the Ossianic examples throughout"],"reception":"Burke's *Philosophical Enquiry* (1757) is the position under dispute; Longinus is the shared ancestor; Kant's *Critique of Judgment* (1790) reframes the question in terms Blair does not use.","status":"Argued against Burke, courteously and without naming him at every turn.","era":"1718-1800","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I distinguish these two things from one another, the gran- deur of the objects themselves when they are presented to the eye, and the description of that grandeur in discourse or writing; though most critics, inaccurately Ithink, blend them together; and I con- sider grandeur and sublimity as terms synonymous, or nearly so.","label":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres"},{"n":2,"work":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The descriptions of the Deity, in them, are wonderfully noble; both from the grandeur of the ob- ject and the manner of representing it What an assemblage, for instance, of awful and sublime ideas is presented to us, in that pas- sage of the xviiith psalm, where an appearance of the Almighty is described: \" In my distress I called upon the Lord; he heard my \"voice out of his temple, an-J my cry came before him.","label":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres"},{"n":3,"work":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Helmets are cleft on \" high: blood bursts, and smoke around. As the troubled noise \" of the ocean when roll the waves on high; as the last peal of the \" thunder of heaven; such is the noise of battle. The groan of \" the people spreads over the hills.","label":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres"},{"n":4,"work":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Let winds and seas, loud wars at freedom wage, And waste upon themselves their empty rage; A stronger, mightier demon is thy friend, Thou, and thy bark, on Caesar's fate depend. Tbou stand'st amaa'd to view this dreadful scene, Andwonder'st what the gods and fortune mean;. But artfully their bounties thus they raise, And from my danger arrogate new praise* Amidst the fears of death they bid me Hva.","label":"Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"taste","label":"Taste: is there a real standard, or is criticism finally a report of what a cultivated person happens to like?"},{"slug":"belles-lettres-or-civic-art","label":"Belles lettres or civic art: does widening rhetoric to taste and criticism enrich it, or hollow out its public purpose?"},{"slug":"pulpit-eloquence","label":"Pulpit eloquence: should a sermon persuade like an oration, or is preaching a different art with different laws?"}]}