The new sublime in Joanna Baillie and WIlliam Wordsworth

In this dissertation, I argue that Joanna Baillie and William Wordsworth crystallize the transition to Romanticism by moving from a sublime focusing on objects of sensation to one of subjective sensations and thoughts. Burke's sublime, emphasizing objects of awe and terror, incorporated in gothic melodrama and natural objects, was subjectivized by Baillie through her transformation of Gothicism. She incorporated subjective sensations and perceptions and ultimately, morality. Wordsworth first engaged Burke in his Gothic drama, then subjectivized the sublime by investing the Kantian theory of it with subjective sensations, particularly domesticated ones, and by emphasizing his own version of morality. The movement from the gothic sublime to the subjective and the moral is seen through examinations of Wordsworth's The Borderers, Baillie's Poems 1790, her plays De Monfort, Orra, and The Family Legend, and Wordsworth's The Prelude of 1805.