The sublime, the grotesque and the carnival

MA 1Terms and Concepts

Main theorists of the sublime

• Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756)

• Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement (1790)

Implied notions• The beautiful and/versus the sublime (concepts

of „nature”)• Boundedness and boundlessness//form and

formlessness• The physical and the metaphysical• „conversant with infinity” (Wordsworth)• The numinous (power/presence of divinity) --

Kant• Transgression• Life and death

Effect of the sublimeAwe and admiration // fear and attractionSensibility and imagination"The Alps fill the mind with an agreeable kind of

horror” (Addison)Burke: „negative pain” = delight (not the same as

positive pleasure)Recognition of boundedness/physicality from the

perspective of infinity and vice versa – ambiguityThreat of annihilationConfrontation of the human with (in)finity

Percy Bysshe Shelley, „Mont Blanc”

All things that move and breathe with toil and soundAre born and die, revolve, subside and swell.Power dwells apart in its tranquillityRemote, serene and inaccessible:And this, the naked countenance of earth,On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains,Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creepLike snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipiceFrost and the Sun in scorn of mortal powerHave piled – dome, pyramid and pinnacle,...........................................................................

Percy Bysshe Shelley, „Mont Blanc”• Mont Blanc yet gleans on high: – the power is

there,• .....................................................• [...] The secret strength of things• Which govern thought, and to the infinite dome• Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!• And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and

sea,• If to the human mind’s imaginings• Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

• “The valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. [...] It was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings” (Fr 358)

• Mont Blanc: “awful majesty” (Fr 362)• Arctic pole: “vast mountains of ice”

Post-romantic sublime

• The technological sublime• Factories• Car/mobility (Futurists)• Aviation• War machinery• Computer technology

• Questions of subjectivity

The grotesque: features 1• Etymology: small cave; grotto (Roman ornaments)• Disfigured body• Bricolage• Animal and human• Misplacements• Incongruity• Monstrosity• Embarrassing/frightening intrusions/protrusions• Fantastic, strange, disgusting, ugly

The grotesque: features 2

• hidden demonic fantasy: torment and attraction• challenges ideals of proper order with dissonant

elements• combination of terror, fear, beauty, and laughter• Complexity and uncertainty of tone• Revulsion/sympathy – (lack of) sense of comedy• Grotesque: no consolation (re: tragedy; nor full

comic relief)

The grotesque: instances

• Gargoyles (the modern idea of the medieval)• Freak shows• Literary genres: satires; tragicomedies• Eastern European grotesque (absurd)

Freak shows• Peak 1840-1940• Diseases, genetic mutations, biological disorders• Cultural other (Hottentot Venus)• Human monstrosity• Giants, dwarfs• Conjoined twins, half-man/woman

• Circus/Zoo (ethnological exposition)

• Confirmation of the subject by gazingat/fixing Otherness

The carnival(esque)

• Mikhail Bakhtin: Rabelais and his World• Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel

The carnival: causes

• Christian calendar• Carnival // lent• Body // denying the body• Significance of rules and regulations (the order of

disorder/out of order)• Modernity (modern bourgeois subject)• Formalisation of work processes• Alienated bodies• Bourgeois neurosis (a result in itself)

Carnival: structure• Ritualistic inversion• Temporal and spatial limits• Centre and periphery• Merging of classes• Physical and imaginary periphery• Sea side (Brighton, Blackpool, Scarborough)• The Oriental (sexual phantasies)• Release from the (self-)discipline of the everyday• Authorised transgression – pretence to lead us beyond our limits• Subversion and liberation (implies the recognition of rules and

order)

Carnival: modes of appearance

• Medieval/Bakhtinian sense: no audience/spectacle (pageants, fairs – balls )

• Grotesque physicality, eccentricity• Inversion, sacrilege• Body (distorted, protruding, open)• Feasting• Laughter (the fool – unofficial but legalised)• Dirt/filth• Dissolution of boundaries between inside and outside• Masks (I as the Other; self-fashioning/construction)• Carnival: a means of fending off hysteria (Allon White)

Carnival/Lent

• Penitent self-denial• Fasting• Denial of desire• Control • Self-imposed self-discipline• Carnival: a means of fending off hysteria or end of

festivities (Allon White)

• Bulimic pattern