Frederic Church, Niagara Falls, 1857
Hope you've had time to read and consider the excerpts from Edmund Burke on the Sublime. To prepare for our discussion on February 9, please respond to ONE of these questions as a comment to this post. Please do NOT consult external resources, but frame your answer according to your own sense of Burke's points, the pleasures we take in art, the value of the Sublime, etc.
Burke's basic idea is psychological: the Sublime is essentially the response to things that could induce pain but instead induce "delight." So:
1) How does something painful ("terrible," "dangerous," etc.) become delightful? What good does this delight do?
2) Burke contrasts the Sublime with the Beautiful. What's the point of this opposition?
3) Does Burke's idea of the Sublime help us to notice, or to understand, anything in particular about Frankenstein, or about the experience or value of reading the book?
2) Burke contrasts the Sublime with the Beautiful. What's the point of this opposition?
3) Does Burke's idea of the Sublime help us to notice, or to understand, anything in particular about Frankenstein, or about the experience or value of reading the book?
If you see another comment posted here that you want to respond to, please go ahead and do so.
As always, please tell me if you have any trouble getting access to this blog, and if access doesn't work, please email your comment to me at: bwelt@gwu.edu so I can post it for you.
As always, please tell me if you have any trouble getting access to this blog, and if access doesn't work, please email your comment to me at: bwelt@gwu.edu so I can post it for you.
If you are inspired to share any other examples of the Sublime as you understand it, go ahead and create a post--if you have accepted the invitation to become an author at this blog.
6 comments:
Burke’s concept of the sublime helps readers of Frankenstein understand the genre of the novel as well as the nature of the story and themselves. For Burke, the sublime suggests pain and danger without the immediate threat that leads to delight in the reader. The genre of horror plays off the passions of the sublime. With Frankenstein, the reader partakes in a horror story involving the creation of Victor Frankenstein. In the novel, Victor is under the constant threat of the creature being revealed or the daemon attacking another victim. However, the reader is safely disconnected and can enjoy the passions of the story. The romantic dimensions of Burke’s concept of the sublime are found scattered throughout Frankenstein. The concept of the sublime contains the notions of terror, obscurity, vastness and power. Often the tragic events involving the daemon conjure a storm and nightfall, in a similar way to The Tempest. Storms and nightfall instinctually are associated with the notions of uncertainty and danger. These environmental effects allow the readers to visualize the narrator’s uncertainty of their surroundings and shadows. Obscurity is used by Mary Shelly to not only heighten the tension and horror of the scene but also to align with the romantic notions of the sublime. There are many instances where Frankenstein finds calmness in nature. When Frankenstein travels to the mountains and valleys of Chamounix, Frankenstein describes the scene, “…gave wings to my soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy” (Shelly pg. 100). The feelings of connection to nature are a persistent human experience. Thus the awe in the heights and vastness of nature via the power and beauty of the scene is not only conveyed to the reader but also adheres to romantic concepts. The Frankenstein novel is steeped in the ideas of power or namely divine power. The power of creation is paralleled with Frankenstein giving life to the dead. The concept of divine power is often alluded to through the aspects of the creation of storms, vastness of nature and even through fate. The divine power, especially death, is both hated and initially feared by Frankenstein. The aspect of creation only relating to a divine power is still a topic of debate in modern times. Thus Mary Shelley places the elements of romanticism and sublime into the Frankenstein novel to not only build her story but also allow interest and association of the reader to the work.
The highest passion a person can experience is a result of the idea of pain, danger, or threats, and when faced with these sudden, frightening moments, a person’s mind and body are stricken with ‘passion’, they reach the sublime, to follow the terms of Burke. This reaction that Burke explains seems to be the feeling of an adrenaline rush. This adrenaline is the reason that people love things like amusement parks, horror films, sky diving, and gambling so much; dangerous activities excite the brain and the nerves. When on a roller coaster, there is not a large chance that any real harm will come to the riders, but the prospects that something could happen result in electric effects- it puts every nerve in one’s body on fire, and gets one’s mind going a mile a minute. It is in this way that pain and negative prospects can become delightful- it is because the fear instilled by them is emotionally and sensually stimulating in a way like nothing else.
Burke contrasts the Sublime with the Beautiful from his reading. Sublime is the cause of the strong emotion from individual feeling. It produces pain, depression, or fear. And he says, the sublime is cause by darkness, or silence. It also is caused by grandeur or elegance. From this, the sublime is the cause of astonishment, and have eloquence, significance, or power. Burke defines sublime as obscurity. Like sublime, the beautiful is imperfect. The beauty is caused by unsymmetrical or unbalanced proportion. If the sublime is strong and powerful, the beautiful is gentle and calm. If sublime represent tragic and gloomy, the beautiful represents joyful and bright. According to Burke, although they have opposite meaning each other, the sublime and the beautiful can be combined in works of art in many ways.
How does something painful ("terrible," "dangerous," etc.) become delightful? What good does this delight do?
Something that is terrible or dangerous becomes delightful through the hormones that rush through the body when flight or fight response kicks in. By experiencing such pain is to be in synch with the attributes of human experience and thus a signifier of a well rounded existence. The good this delight does is sensitize the experience, by relinquishing power to the situation at hand, and allows humans to just go along for this wild ride of the unknown world.
Something terrible or dangerous becomes delightful when one can experience the terror without being in actual danger. This is demonstrated by the popularity of horror movies, Halloween mazes, haunted houses, and the obsession with anything paranormal. There is no actual “proof” of the paranormal, and this temps people to do things that scare themselves to prove that there isn’t any true existence of the supernatural, making their fears seem silly and unwarranted. Human nature is to be fascinated with the unknown. Burke touches on this when he mentions that obscurity is necessary to make anything truly terrible. The delight in experiencing terror is helpful because it distracts from any real danger or terror that exists in reality, as well as helping humans cope with what truly terrifies or mystifies them.
Beautiful or sublime affects on human being. Burke understood and found out the philosophy of the sublime and beautiful. The sense of fear or pain is the most powerful human emotion, not the experience of beauty. According to Burke, the casual stimulations in our life puts energy into our human being, and the intense emotional experiences is the main source of sublime. The idea of fear, of pain or of danger could be more stronger than the idea of delight. And these points can influence on the imagination. In this process, the imagination cause the sublime. The concept of the sublime from Burke can be useful to understand the novel ‘Frankenstein’. The ’Frankenstein’ is as a horror novel, plumbs the depth of horror and violence. And each component of Frankenstein stimulates readers and make own imaginations. As the final outcome, the dangerous and fear sources turn into the pleasure of this literary work.
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