1. The Synthetic Sublime
A Simple, Passionate and Sublime Request in Pursuit of Happiness: an in depth look at Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress".
Many writers have attempted to write poetry alluding to the common phrase, Carpe Diem, seize the moment. Few writers have executed this effort with such gracefulness and literary beauty as Andrew Marvell. Marvell illustrates this saying by using a straw man argument (a method of debate that sets up a possible rebuttal and later knocks it down) to persuade his love to bring to an end her extraneously coy ways. Within his argument, Marvell uses many literary devices to convey his thoughts.
As his love is extremely shy, she wastes precious time lingering in her bashfulness. Marvell therefore displays many of the endless possibilities that life may hold if she had infinite time at her disposal so that she could continue in her diffidence and still capture all that life has to offer and her bashfulness would have no negative consequence: "Had we but world enough, and time,/ This coyness, lady, were no crime"(1-2). If they had all the time that the world possesses, there would be nothing wrong with her shyness. With this immeasurable amount of time, they could do anything imaginable like going to the corners of the world in search of riches, "Thou by the Indian Ganges' side/ Should'st rubies find" (5-6). She could continue in her shyness if they were alive until the "conversion of the Jews", a religious allusion to the common Christian belief that all Jews will convert directly before the end of time (10). If they had that time, she could afford to continue in her shyness and if he had that time, his love would grow to infinite capacity. This is because he could set aside time to praise every aspect of her being: "A hundred years should go to praise/ Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze./ Two hundred to adore each breast:/ But thirty thousand to the rest.
Edmund Burke's idea of the sublime contrasted from the other critics with his belief about the opposition between the beautiful and the sublime. While Longinus' idea of the sublime had an asterisk, which stated that the truly great cannot be despised, Burke believed the sublime was founded in pain and obscurity. Sublime is based in pain because it is so overwhelming it passes over beauty into powerful emotion. ... Burke's sublime has a noxious aura around it because the sublime finds its pleasure through pain because the sublime can arise in two ways the first being that it is p...
In this essay first Lyotard's account will be explained, through the explanation of his understanding of the sublime and how this notion of sublime affects the world of art. After the explanations of Lyotard's account the question whether it sufficiently explains what art is will be entertained, and it will be shown that his account is both by nature incapable of giving a sufficient explanation, than the idea that perhaps the request of a "sufficient" explanation is out of the question will be entertained. ... After this continued definition of the sublime and the explana...
Griffith, "Frankenstein typifies the most important ideas of the Romantic era, among them the primacy of feelings, the dangers of intellect, dismay over the human capacity to corrupt our natural goodness, the agony of the questing, solitary hero, and the awesome power of the sublime." ... An example of an idea of the dangers of intellect would be through Frankenstein, to whom "life and death appeared ideal bounds" to be broken through, whom succeeds in his intellectual pursuit but at great cost, because in the end he not only loses his brother, wife, and best friend, he also ends up being the ...
The concept of discovery whether it is physical, spiritual or intellectual, can be nominally defined as the pursuit of the unknown. ... The use of alliteration in 'lush and lusty' evinces an affirmative perception of the land through an association with feminine sublimity as opposed to the sarcastic and mocking prose of the latter character, where the juxtaposition of color imagery hints at the inhospitality of the land. ... The conflict between the warnings of the plights of travel is nullified through the speaker's imploring request for a chance to experience the wonders of a...
For it were a simple fact that insanity is evil, the saying would be true; but in reality the greatest blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods (465). ... Socrates is channeling his proof, and mine, through the value and effectiveness coming from the pursuit, not the simple acquisition of such thought through simple questions and answers. ... Socrates sees that the critical thinking that philosophy brings is an essential weapon in the pursuit that Phaedrus is after; and no matter how passionate you are about your pursuit, there is only one right way to pu...
The Great Gatsby is about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, a time period when the dream had been corrupted by the avaricious pursuit of wealth. The American dream is sublime motivation for accomplishing ones goals and producing achievements, however when tainted with wealth the dream becomes devoid and hollow. ... Result of American dream being corrupted is that the motivation and ambition were gone and the dream is left with the pursuit of an empty goal. ...
The Great Gatsby is about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, a time period when the dream had been corrupted by the avaricious pursuit of wealth. The American dream is sublime motivation for accomplishing ones goals and producing achievements, however when tainted with wealth the dream becomes devoid and hollow. ... Result of American dream being corrupted is that the motivation and ambition were gone and the dream is left with the pursuit of an empty goal. ...