Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Sublime before Romanticism
- Part II Romantic Sublimes
- Part III Legacies
- 17 The Victorian Chthonic Sublime
- 18 Mapping the Nineteenth-Century Sublime
- 19 The Romantic Sublime and Environmental Crisis
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
19 - The Romantic Sublime and Environmental Crisis
from Part III - Legacies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Sublime before Romanticism
- Part II Romantic Sublimes
- Part III Legacies
- 17 The Victorian Chthonic Sublime
- 18 Mapping the Nineteenth-Century Sublime
- 19 The Romantic Sublime and Environmental Crisis
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
One of the major aesthetic and philosophical frameworks that has been used to represent and think about the modern environmental crisis is the sublime. This chapter traces how a tradition of the sublime traceable directly to Romantic literature and culture has been used to conceptualize both the forms of nature that we should cherish, such as particular landscapes, and the forms of nature that we should shrink from, such as extreme weather events. The chapter also addresses how in the twenty-first century the sublime, and specifically a ‘Romantic sublime’ based mainly on Kant’s writings, has been condemned as an aesthetic that assumes a distance between human and nonhuman, and which creates a false impression that humans can transcend or solve the environmental crisis. Finally, the chapter considers whether a Romantic eco-sublime might still have a useful role in helping us to think about the nonhuman world and our relationship with it in a time of crisis.
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- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime , pp. 251 - 262Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023