ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublīmis) is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.

Detailed explanation-2: -The sublime, by contrast, according to Kant, is a principle of disorder, of purposivelessness. It is the phenomenon of our understanding encountering something which it cannot organize or contain. It cannot determine a delimiting organizing principle in the thing because it cannot determine any limits to the thing.

Detailed explanation-3: -Burke proposes that beauty stimulates love, but that the sublime excites horror. While beauty relaxes, the sublime brings tension. The feeling that something is sublime is triggered by extremes – vastness, extreme height, difficulty, darkness or excessive light.

Detailed explanation-4: -The sublime has long been understood to mean a quality of greatness or grandeur that inspires awe and wonder. From the seventeenth century onwards the concept and the emotions it inspires have been a source of inspiration for artists and writers, particularly in relation to the natural landscape.

Detailed explanation-5: -The sublime is associated with “masculine” qualities of strength and size (capable of evoking admiration, awe or terror); the beautiful is associated with feminine qualities of smallness, smoothness, and delicacy.