Date of Award
1984
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Sloane, Mary
Abstract
Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful provided the latter eighteenth century with a systematic theory of the sublime that was based on the surge of enthusiastic emotion one experiences when observing the astonishing peril of nature's magnificence. Burke concluded, a decade after James Thomson's final edition of The Seasons, that poetry, by its "most lively and spirited verbal description ... raises a very obscure and imperfect idea" of landscape. Poetry, Burke wrote, produces stronger emotions than does painting, which he relegated to the neoclassic idea of a clear imaging of nature. Had he the timely advantage of experiencing the sketches and paintings of the neoclassically influenced painter, J. M. W. Turner, Burke would have acknowledged the sublime emotions, astonishment and terror. Furthermore, Burke could have acclaimed Turner's sublime as more affective, as it identified a boundlessness achieved by a greater understanding of obscurity.
Extent
117 p.
Recommended Citation
CLUTE, PRISCILLA STRANG, "BURKE'S CONCEPT OF THE SUBLIME: THOMSON'S "THE SEASONS" AND TURNER'S PAINTING" (1984). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1980 - 1989. 298.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_3/298
Identifier
FADT14219
Comments
FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1984.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection