Sublimity by fiat

Abstract

Longinus’ On the Sublime is thought to have been ushered onto the English literary scene by Boileau’s Traité du Sublime (1674). The search for antecedents to Boileau has yielded scattered references in Rainolds, Chapman, Junius, Milton, and a few rhetorical textbooks, but not enough to indicate a school of thought or even particular enthusiasm. The reception of Langbaine’s Latin translation of 1636 hardly predicts the vast literary influence the treatise would wield by the end of the century. A more promising readership may, however, be suggested by a string of citations in seventeenth-century sermons. In Longinus’ quotation from Genesis and praise of Moses’s oratory, clergymen found literary and rhetorical roots for their explorations of divine sublimity. Developing alongside Longinus’ reception in Christian rhetorics, these citations offer an alternative route for the early association of On the Sublime with Milton’s Christian epic, and its eventual entry into the literary mainstream.