"Wrenched Out of Chaos": Stevens, Longinus, and the Relative Sublime.
The sublime remains a contentious concept within Wallace Stevens studies and modernist studies more generally, yet Stevens himself emphasized classical Greece's most sublime aspects. Stevens's comprehension of the classical sublime substantially derives from his familiarity with Longinus and from su...
| Publicado en: | Wallace Stevens Journal Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 127 - 148 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Johns Hopkins University Press
Fall2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | The sublime remains a contentious concept within Wallace Stevens studies and modernist studies more generally, yet Stevens himself emphasized classical Greece's most sublime aspects. Stevens's comprehension of the classical sublime substantially derives from his familiarity with Longinus and from subsequent philosophical conceptualizations of the experience of moments of meaningful wonder and awe brought about by various phenomena that resist human understanding. Yet Stevens's representation of the sublime also involves a transition to a specifically modernist approach that leads him to define "a relative sublime" in his late quest poem "The Sail of Ulysses," wherein he follows Longinus in emphasizing silence as a marker of moments of secular transcendence for a heroic mindset. |
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