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On The Sublime,: - Roman Classicism: Longinus and Horace

Longinus was a Roman critic from the 3rd century AD who wrote On the Sublime, focusing on the quality of "sublimity" in literary works. Sublimity transcends genres and comes from imagination, passion, and eloquent style. It leads readers to ecstasy rather than just persuasion. Horace was a 1st century BC Roman poet and critic whose Ars Poetica was sometimes more influential than Plato or Aristotle. He said poetry should "teach and delight" and took models from writers like Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Horace argued poetry should follow tradition by imitating previous poets while allowing for creation and innovation.

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224 views2 pages

On The Sublime,: - Roman Classicism: Longinus and Horace

Longinus was a Roman critic from the 3rd century AD who wrote On the Sublime, focusing on the quality of "sublimity" in literary works. Sublimity transcends genres and comes from imagination, passion, and eloquent style. It leads readers to ecstasy rather than just persuasion. Horace was a 1st century BC Roman poet and critic whose Ars Poetica was sometimes more influential than Plato or Aristotle. He said poetry should "teach and delight" and took models from writers like Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Horace argued poetry should follow tradition by imitating previous poets while allowing for creation and innovation.

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Ahmed Aloqaili
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Lecture 2

-Roman classicism: Longinus and Horace

Longinus:
The third important critic of the classical era, after Plato and Aristotle, is Longinus.
He lived in Ancient Rome and belongs to the 3rd century of the Christian era. He is
different from both Plato and Aristotle.
 In his book On the Sublime, Longinus is interested in a special quality of
literary works: ‘Sublimity’.
 Sublimity or elevation can be found in some works but not in others. Unlike
Aristotle, who dealt with particular characteristics that distinguish each literary
genre from another, Longinus’s sublimity is a quality that transcends generic
boundaries. It can be found in drama or epic or lyric or even rhetoric or history
or theology. He can be interested in a single element, a phrase, or a passage in
a text which gives pleasure and is the source of the sublime.
 Longinus defines ‘the Sublime’ as: ‘a certain distinction and excellence in
expression and it is from no other source that greatest poets and writers
have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of renown’
 He gives importance to imagination, passion, high concepts, eloquent style
and elevated diction as the most important features of a literary text, and he
considers these as the major sources of the sublime.
 “the sublime leads the listeners not to persuasion but to ecstasy, for what
is wonderful always goes together with a sense of dismay and prevails
over what is only convincing or delightful, since persuasion as a rule is
within everyone’s grasp, whereas the Sublime, giving speech an invincible
power and strength, rises above any listener”
 He thought that literature could model a soul and that a soul could pour itself
out into a work of art. The Sublime is therefore the product of a great soul.
 Longinus has been considered by many as the first romantic critic and reader
response critic as he considers the Sublime in relation to the expression of
strong feelings as well as a matter of reader response.

Horace: [1rst c. BC]


He is a Roman poet and critic. His book of literary criticism Ars Poetica
was sometimes more influential than Plato and Aristotle’s books.
 Horace is mainly associated with the notion that ‘a poem is like a
painting’ and that poetry should ‘teach and delight’. He takes his
models from classic writers such as Homer (The Odyssey, The
Illyad), Virgil (The Aeneid) and Ovid (Metamorphoses).
 Homer argues that poetry should follow tradition and poets should
imitate other poets before them. He gives importance to inherited
forms and conventions as well as creation and innovation.

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