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Longinus literature - Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime

Longinus literature - Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime: Encyclopedia II - Longinus literature - Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime

Longinus literature - 10th Century. The original treatise, before translation, is printed in a medieval manuscript and is attributed to "Dionysius or Longinus" ("Longinus" 135) Longinus literature - 13th Century. A Byzantine rhetorician makes obscure references to what may be Longinus’ text (Grube vii). Longinus literature - 16th Century. ...

Longinus literature: Encyclopedia II - Longinus literature - Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime

Longinus literature - Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime

Longinus literature - 10th Century

The original treatise, before translation, is printed in a medieval manuscript and is attributed to "Dionysius or Longinus" ("Longinus" 135)

Longinus literature - 13th Century

A Byzantine rhetorician makes obscure references to what may be Longinus’ text (Grube vii).

Longinus literature - 16th Century

The treatise is ignored by scholars until it is published by Francis Robortello in Basel, in 1554, and Niccolò da Falgano, in 1560 (“Longinus” 136). The original work is attributed to “Dionysius Longinus” and most European countries receive translations of the treatise (Roberts 1).

Longinus literature - 17th Century

Sublime effects become a desired end of much Baroque art and literature, and the rediscovered work of "Longinus" goes through half a dozen editions in the 17th century. It is Boileau's 1674 translation of the treatise into French that really starts its career in the history of criticism. Despite its popularity, some critics claim that the treatise was too “primitive” to be truly understood by a “too civilized” seventeenth-century audience (Brody 98).

Longinus literature - 18th Century

Longinus’ text reaches its height in popularity (Grube ix). In England, critics including Dryden and Pope esteem Longinus' principles of composition and balance second only to Aristotle's Poetics. Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful owes a debt to Longinus' concept of the sublime, and the category passes into the stock-in-trade of Romantic intellectual discourse. As "Longinus" says, "The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport," a fitting sentiment for Romantic thinkers and writers who reach beyond logic, to the wellsprings of the Sublime. At the same time, the Romantics gain some contempt for Longinus, given his association with the “rules” of classical poets. Such contempt is ironic, given the widespread influence of Longinus on the shaping of eighteenth-century criticism (Russell xlv).

Longinus literature - 19th Century

Early in the century, doubts arise to the authorship of the treatise. Thanks to Italian scholar Amati, Cassius Longinus is no longer assumed to be the writer of On the Sublime (Roberts 3). Simultaneously, the critical popularity of Longinus’ work diminishes greatly; though the work is still in use by scholars, it is rarely quoted (Grube viii). Despite the lack of public enthusiasm, editions and translations of On the Sublime are published at the end of the century (Grube viii).

Longinus literature - 20th Century

Although the text is still little quoted, it maintains its status, apart from Aristotle’s Poetics, as “the most delightful of all the critical works of classical antiquity” (Grube x-xi).

Other related archives

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Baroque, Basel, Boileau, Edmund Burke, Francis Robortello, Genesis, On the Sublime, Romantic, copyist, medieval, rhetoric, sublime

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Historical Criticism and Use of On the Sublime", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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