Related to ideas of the great, the awe-inspiring and the overpowering, the sublime has been debated for centuries amongst writers, artists, philosophers and theorists and has become a complex yet crucial concept in many disciplines.
In this thoroughly updated edition, Philip Shaw looks at:
- Early modern and post-Romantic conceptions of the sublime in two brand new chapters
- The legacy of the earliest classical theories, through those of the long eighteenth century to modernist, postmodernist and avant-garde conceptions of the sublime
- Critical Introductions to major theorists of the sublime such as Longinus, Burke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Lacan and -i-ek
- The significance of the concept through a range of literary readings, including the Old and New Testaments, Homer, Milton and writing from the Romantic period to the present da