On the Sublimeactive 1st century LonginusOmniClassics · Literature
On the Sublime
active 1st century LonginusAn ancient critic asks how language can carry readers beyond persuasion.
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About the book
The treatise traditionally attributed to Longinus investigates the power of elevated writing to astonish and transport an audience. Drawing examples from poetry and prose, it examines the contributions of great thought, strong emotion, figures of speech, diction, and composition. Its interest extends beyond technical correctness: a work may possess faults yet achieve an imaginative force that a more polished performance cannot match. Comparisons among writers make the argument a series of acts of reading, while discussions of exaggeration and false grandeur distinguish intensity from mere inflation. H. L. Havell's translation, accompanied by Andrew Lang's introduction, presents a work whose surviving form is incomplete but whose central questions remain pointed: what gives language greatness, and how can criticism recognize it?
- Literary greatness
- Rhetoric
- Imagination and emotion
Why read it
Read it for criticism that treats the strongest effects of writing as experiences needing explanation.
English translation by H. L. Havell; introduction by Andrew Lang