Classical Literary Theory

On Sublimity: The Vastness of Human Contemplation

Shakespeare’s King Lear’s last words before his death prove that madness attached to his name has much ponderous content; moreover, proving that his deep and earnest feelings transcend any bathetic emotions. Longinus’s “sublimity” is no stranger in the end of King Lear, as it is pregnant with instances of expropriation and designation. The speaker of Lear arrives and vanishes into his own text, leaving his audience in the midst of traumatic experience as his sublime effect outlives his vocalization. The author, in this case, has already accomplished what seems to be an essential point of sublimity—painting the picture on a canvas that he has intended himself.

Lear’s ending is not in the redemptory manner brought about by gleams of apprehension; nonetheless, it is occasioned by his profound spirit. He represents the one with lofty thoughts, effects, the unusual, and the absolute. Lear’s capacity to imitate these marvelous prospects of nature and their sermon to captivate all aspects of representation in grandiloquent tones is something extraordinary. His words, while holding Cordelia’s dead body, “O, you are men of stones. / Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so / That heaven’s vault should crack. She is gone forever” (Shakespeare 5.3.262-64), tag the borders of reason and manifestation with a signification of what might be anticipated beyond those borders, tangenting the transcendent.

Longinus’s comment on Sappho’s poem; it bringing togetherness to the senses, also to the body and mind, can as well mark Lear’s words from the above (Longinus 140). The “tongues,” “eyes,” from the senses and “stones” representing the feeling of senselessness, cultivate the experience that escapes from ordinary understanding. When the power of this situation is such that vernacular phrases and strong comparisons embedded in metaphors are not enough; it is then when the sublime resorts. The notion of the infinity surpasses emanation. However, Longinus’s all five sources of sublimity are present, emphasizing the effectiveness of it. King Lear has the natural genius whose “words [are] great [because] thoughts are weighty” (Longinus 139). His noble and inspirational diction, word choice, and elysian emotions are well within the frames of Longinus’s idea of sublimity.

Audience’s fictitious affiliation with the speaker is the result of the speaker’s power to carry his listener into his message. This very occurrence is the result of what Longinus calls “phantasia,” in which “enthusiasm and emotion make the speaker see what he is saying and bring it visually before the audience” (Longinus 143). This is not in much contrast with what might be called the more modest everyday instances of citing. In truth, the design of quotation comes to be incorporated in the very idea of sublimity, while the sublime might as well be distinguished in terms of inescapability of reiteration or citation. King Lear’s tone stays the same towards the end, “And my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life? / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no life at all?” (Shakespeare 3.2. 312-13). Longinus notes that “real sublimity contains much food for reflection . . . makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory” (138). It is through repetition of the same-toned utterances that the speaker inscribes sublimity not only within himself but also lasts in the memory of the audience.

Sublimity . . . contained in the vastness of human contemplation found its place in one of the works of Shakespeare, King Lear. It is on a sense another tragedy, but seems more because of the immense sublimity presented in itself and concealed like a great work of art. There is a much deal of treasure intertwined: character, compelling emotions, poignancy, and philosophy. Yet everything has its decent place and everything is where it is ought to be. It has the quality of the sublime—united and harmonious in and out of itself.

Works Cited

Longinus. “On Sublimity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent

B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 136-154.

Print.

Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen

Orgel and et. al. Penguin Books Ltd.: New York, 2002. 1574-1615. Print.