著者

玉田 敦子

出版者

中部大学

雑誌

貿易風 : 中部大学国際関係学部論集 (ISSN:18809065)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.60-84, 2008

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After the publication of Longinus's Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime), translated by Boileau in French in 1674, the concept of "sublime" became one of the most important subjects of the European intellectual society. Boileau's translation was subsequently translated again into English and published several times in England, thereby gaining a broader readership. Since then, Longinus's treatise and Boileau's added introduction have been invoked as the authority on the matter of sublimity, which was the ideal of the rhetoric discipline. If the concept of the sublime had a great impact on the French literary society of the time, it is because Boileau defined the sublime in a short sentence. In theories and treatises on rhetoric and aesthetics in Europe, despite always consulting Boileau's translation of Longinus's On the Sublime, the notion of the sublime became separated from its previous theological and "moral" connotation. Consequently, it seems necessary to clarify the process through which the concept of the sublime became secularized by analyzing theories and treatises on rhetoric published in the Age of Enlightenment. In England, sublime appears as a pleasure of the natural landscape rather than a notion of rhetoric. Poet and literary critic John Denis first used the expression "delightful horror" to express the pleasure afforded by Mount Ainguebelette in his letter written in Turino on October 25, 1688. Fifteen years later, in his "Proposition" from The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, he explained this expression, trying to associate it with the theory of sublime written in the work of Longinus. Terror as the greatest passion subsequently became recognized as one of the main issues in aesthetic studies in England. Although, English authors such as Addison or Bailly often referred to Longinus, they considered the pleasure of landscape to be more interesting than the pleasure of literary works. As the status of awful scenery's beauty increased, the notion of sublime became separated from its previous sacred connotation, thereby providing a further aspect of the secularization of the notion. Finally, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful (1747), Edmund Burke demonstrated that "terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close." In France, the idea of the "natural sublime" appeared particularly in Salon de 1767, an art critique written by Diderot, who read Burke's Enquiry precisely. Such reception of the natural sublime in France prepared the public for the Romanticism in French literature, in which strong feelings, imagination, and representations of nature are important. In eighteenth-century France, the act of watching pains or distress of others required a pretext. According to Michel Foucault, during this age, exemplary punishment with show trials was considered the most useful for society. In this context, the delight received from the pains of others was explained by the deterrent effect of these punishments, which were perceived as "beauty" for the deterrent power itself. To prove the concept that a horrible spectacle is beautiful, authors of the time often referred to Montaigne and others from the sixteenth century. In the Age of Baroque, horrible spectacles were used to achieve religious and political purposes ; the stories of such spectacles were circulated to intensify their impact. In the Age of Enlightenment, La Motte, Batteux, and Marmontel attempted to define "sublime" as the effect of surprise expressed in "elegant" expression. According to the rhetoric theory of the time, "elegance" is defined as a grammatical license opposite to the grammatical "exactitude." Elegance brings changes and surprises in style with a license that creates rifts in the discourse and continues to have sensory pleasures. In this way, the sublime as the succession of surprises and intermittent changes-which Longinus and Boileau defined as one of the elements of the sublime-is associated with "elegance," a value that represents a "libertine" aesthetic.