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
- 5 German Romanticism and the Sublime
- 6 The Romantic Sublime and Kant’s Critical Philosophy
- 7 Alpine Sublimes
- 8 Urban Sublimes
- 9 Highlands, Lakes, Wales
- 10 Science and the Sublime
- 11 Musical Sublimes
- 12 The Arctic Sublime
- 13 The Body and the Sublime
- 14 The Sublime in Romantic Painting
- 15 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
- 16 The Sublime in American Romanticism
- Part III Legacies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
16 - The Sublime in American Romanticism
from Part II - Romantic Sublimes
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
- 5 German Romanticism and the Sublime
- 6 The Romantic Sublime and Kant’s Critical Philosophy
- 7 Alpine Sublimes
- 8 Urban Sublimes
- 9 Highlands, Lakes, Wales
- 10 Science and the Sublime
- 11 Musical Sublimes
- 12 The Arctic Sublime
- 13 The Body and the Sublime
- 14 The Sublime in Romantic Painting
- 15 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
- 16 The Sublime in American Romanticism
- Part III Legacies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
This chapter examines the influence of William Bartram´s Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida on the writing of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the 1790s and highlights the uniqueness of Bartram´s eco-centric approach to sublimity in early American thinking about the natural world. A practiced botanist and natural illustrator, Bartram delights in cataloguing plant and animal lives, but the Travels also offers a significant intervention into trans-Atlantic discourses of sublimity. Bartram´s sublime overwhelms the perceiver with plentitude rather than terror, and he narrates experiences of sublimity from amidst the rich life he delights to describe rather than at a distance. He emphasizes continuity between human and more-than-human lives. Bartram also resists the nationalistic orientation of his American contemporaries, attending to native and local epistemologies. The chapter concludes with comparisons between passages of the Travels, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” and Wordsworth’s “Ruth.”
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- The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime , pp. 207 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023