The sublime and modern subjectivity: The discourse of elevation from neo-Classicism to French Romanticism

This dissertation reinterprets the notion of the "sublime" in relation to modern culture. Seen as a discourse of elevation and emblem of heroic values, what characterizes the sublime in the modern era is its ability to reconcile notions of autonomy and transcendence, in the context of secularization. I show how this attempt at reconciliation figures in important ways in thinking the modern individual from an aesthetic as well as an anthropological perspective. The French Revolution is a pivot point in this study, for it signals the breakdown of social hierarchies and a corresponding loss of transcendence on the political level. The negative social effects of equality (envy, vanity, banality) came as a shock to the Romantic liberals who believed in a heroic individualism based on the sublime. As the individual diminished in power and authority with the growth of democracy, heroic values (sublimity) gradually came to be considered as anachronistic. I analyze the theoretical and fictional works of the French Romantics to show how their belief in a heroic individualism leads to a clash between their political liberalism and their aesthetic ideals. The ultimate failure of the Romantic attempt to reconcile the sublime with a post-Revolutionary society tending toward democracy is seen by later thinkers as an indicator of cultural decline.; The dissertation proceeds historically, and is divided into two parts: Part I studies how the notion of the sublime figures in the subjective turn of modern thought; Part II examines the discursive function of the sublime in the social critique of prominent French Romantics. Part I begins with an extended analysis of Longinus' first-century treatise Peri Hypsous , followed by a consideration of Longinus' reception in Nicholas Boileau, John Dennis, and Giambattista Vico. Subsequent chapters on Abbe Du Bos, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant treat the notion of the sublime with respect to the development of European aesthetic thought. The second part focuses on three French writers of the nineteenth century, Madame de Stael, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo. The conclusion connects the late modern nostalgia for the sublime with the pessimistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.