Challenge of the Sublime

Hélène Ibata is Professor of English and Visual Studies at the University of Strasbourg

• IntroductionPart I: From the Enquiry to the Academy1 The Philosophical Enquiry, theories of the sublime and the sister arts tradition2 Presenting the unpresentable: the modernity of Burke’s Enquiry3 Reynolds, the great style and the Burkean sublime4 The sublime contained: academic compromisesPart II: Beyond the ‘narrow limits of painting’5 Immersive spectatorship at the panorama and the aesthetics of the sublime6 Frames, edges and ‘unlimitation’7 ‘Sublime dreams’: ruin paintings and architectural fantasiesPart III: Relocating the sublime: Blake, Turner and creative endeavour8 Against and beyond Burke: Blake’s ‘sublime Labours’9 Turner: from sublime association to sublime energyConclusionIndex

'Most studies of the sublime simply bypass a lot of criticism because reviewing the history of the criticism of nineteenth-century aesthetics is burdensome. Ibata, instead, puts her work on Burke in the context of as much previous work as is practically feasible and puts Burke’s treatise in relation to contemporary accounts of the sublime in a way that is rarely, if ever, accomplished…she helps the reader to understand what is unique in Burke and which other writers on the sublime influenced each aspect of his ideas.'European Romantic Review