Longinus and the Subject of the Sublime: Journal Article by Suzanne Guerlac

Classical Origins and Attribution

The article's context begins with the classical treatise On the Sublime, attributed to an anonymous Greek rhetorician from the first century, often mistakenly linked to Longinus. This work investigates sublimity in literature, defining it as a lofty excellence that elevates readers intellectually and emotionally. It highlights the interplay of natural genius and rhetorical skill, emphasizing emotional intensity and harmonious composition. The treatise also critiques literary decline due to societal corruption and lost ambition.

Philosophical and Rhetorical Influences

On the Sublime is situated within a rich intellectual tradition influenced by earlier philosophers and rhetoricians. Longinus draws extensively on Plato’s defense of noble literary style and responds to contemporaneous debates about rhetoric's decline under imperial censorship and moral decay. The treatise integrates theories from figures like Gorgias, Aristotle, Demetrius, and Caecilius of Calacte, reflecting diverse rhetorical approaches such as the magnificent and vehement styles. These influences form the foundation for Longinus’s conception of the sublime as a powerful, elevating effect on both speaker and audience. The treatise’s fragmentary survival and ambiguous authorship complicate its interpretation but underscore its lasting impact from antiquity through the Renaissance and beyond.

Literary and Historical Contexts

Suzanne Guerlac’s article also engages with the broader historical and literary context in which On the Sublime was received and transformed. The idea of the sublime reemerged during the 17th century Baroque period, notably influencing writers like Milton and reshaping artistic aims toward evoking overwhelming emotional responses. The sublime’s meaning evolved from classical notions of elevated style and intellectual loftiness to encompass aesthetic experiences involving awe and confrontation with the unknown. Guerlac’s work explores this genealogy, examining how the treatise’s themes unfold across centuries, informing critical debates about literature’s purpose and power to transcend ordinary experience.

Key themes (sublimity & rhetoric)

• The essay explores how “sublime” writing elevates readers, creating awe and emotional intensity that transcends ordinary experience.
• Longinus identifies five sources of the sublime: grandeur of thought, strong emotion, rhetorical devices, noble language, and dignified composition.
• Moral excellence and authenticity in the writer are crucial for achieving the sublime, not just technical skill.
• The sublime is found across genres and cultures, illustrated by examples from Homer to the Hebrew Bible.
• The power of the sublime lies in its ability to inspire readers, making them feel as if they created the ideas themselves.

Motifs & problems

Longinus’s treatise is rich with recurring images of ascent, flight, and elevation—metaphors for the soul’s expansive response to sublime writing. He repeatedly describes the reader’s soul as being “uplifted” or taking “a proud flight,” emphasizing transport beyond the human condition. Yet, ambiguity surrounds the text itself: authorship is uncertain, about a third is lost, and key passages invite debate over whether sublimity is innate or learned, moral or aesthetic. The tension between bold originality and moral integrity runs through the work, as does concern over whether political freedom or luxurious decay better nurtures eloquence. These motifs and problems make the treatise a fertile, but sometimes elusive, object of study.

Study questions

• How does Longinus define the “sublime,” and how is it different from mere rhetorical skill?
• What role does the writer’s character play in creating sublime writing, according to Longinus?
• Why does Longinus include examples from such a wide range of authors and cultures?
• How do metaphors of flight and elevation help explain the effect of the sublime on readers?
• What challenges or gaps in the text make it difficult to fully understand Longinus’s arguments?
• Can the concept of the sublime be applied to forms of expression beyond literature, such as visual art or music?
• How did On the Sublime influence later discussions of aesthetics, especially during the Romantic period?

Critical approaches & debates

Scholarship on Suzanne Guerlac's Longinus and the Subject of the Sublime largely adopts poststructuralist and psychoanalytic lenses, emphasizing the disruption of stable subjectivity through the sublime’s dynamic tensions. Guerlac challenges traditional rhetoric-focused readings by showing how Longinus destabilizes binaries like form/content and sincerity/force, viewing the sublime as a “dynamic overlapping” of symbolic and imaginary orders. Critical debates arise around interpreting this paradoxical sincerity and the role of emotional affect, with some emphasizing the sublime’s affective force, while others highlight its formal or philosophical dimensions. Disagreements persist on how to reconcile Longinus's rhetoric with his fragmentary text and its elusive definitions.

Key passages

Guerlac highlights Longinus’s metaphor of the “swarm” of emotions, exemplified in Sappho’s fragment 31, where conflicting feelings—cold and hot, mad and sane—coexist to create a complex unity rather than a single emotion. This passage illustrates sublimity as a paradoxical fusion that defies clear boundaries, underscoring how sublime writing disrupts conventional subjectivity and unified feeling, a core move in Guerlac’s interpretation.

Bibliography

Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. H. L. Havell (1910; reprint edition). Related primary texts include Caecilius of Calacte’s rhetorical treatises. Foundational studies: Robert Doran’s The Theory of the Sublime (2005). Recent scholarship: Suzanne Guerlac, "Longinus and the Subject of the Sublime" (1988); Adam J. Marcinkowski, “Feeling Thoughts: The Swarming Sublime” (2020), exploring affective complexity in Longinus.