English Literature / Unit 12 ENL 1146 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Sublime and the Picturesque
Captions available
The idea
Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry argued that the sublime, vast, obscure and terrifying, differs from the beautiful, smooth and gentle. William Gilpin introduced the picturesque in seventeen eighty-two, praising roughness and irregularity, in his Observations on the River Wye.
In practice
Sublime awe, picturesque roughness, gentle beauty.
Where people slip
The sublime involves terror; beauty does not.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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