Milton, Longinus, and the Sublime in the Seventeenth Century

In Milton, Longinus, and the Sublime in the Seventeenth Century, Thomas Matthew Vozar offers an important study detailing how John Milton developed his concept of the sublime from an existing tradition, recognizable as such, before the work of Nicolas Boileau, Immanuel Kant, and Edmund Burke. Until relatively recently, many scholars held that the theory of the sublime as understood today—a distinctive psychological and emotional response to an artistic or natural phenomenon—originated only with the work of these late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars, who identified Milton’s poetry as an example of the sublime, but anachronistically. Vozar, in his detailed, thoroughly researched book, lends significant support to recent scholarly efforts to show that a full-fledged theory of the sublime did exist before these so-called “aesthetic” theorists, thus refuting a still-influential argument by Samuel Monk.To correct this history, Vozar sets out to offer a “comprehensive” and “historical exposition of ideas of the sublime, Longinian and otherwise, as these existed in Milton’s lifetime,” and thus carry out a “historically grounded exegesis of the sublime in Milton” (2). The book succeeds admirably at this ambitious goal. Building from recent arguments by James Porter, Eugenio Refini, Patrick Cheney, and others, Vozar offers a detailed argument that Milton developed concepts of the sublime from a variety of discourses available in his own day, thus adding substantially to our understanding of both the character of Milton’s work and the history of the sublime.The first chapter surveys ancient ideas of the sublime as they emerged not only from Longinus, but from other writers such as Demetrius and Hermogenes, and then traces the reception of the sublime across early modern Europe, classifying it in three forms. First, Vozar discusses the rhetorical sublime, or sublimity that emerges from a lofty style or manner of discourse, the form he argues is predominant in Longinus’ Peri Hypsous and other ancient texts. Next he considers the physical sublime, or sublimity that results from excessive size, scale, or distance. Finally, he discusses the theological sublime, or sublimity stemming from concepts of divine greatness. As Vozar notes, the physical and theological sublime correspond roughly to James Porter’s material sublime and immaterial sublime, respectively, distinguished by whether the source of the sublime is present to the senses or far removed/transcendent (The Sublime in Antiquity; Oxford, 2016). The chapter exemplifies Vozar’s close attentiveness to the Greek and Latin vocabulary of the sublime across Longinus and other sublime writers, editors, and commentators.The three subsequent chapters then evaluate Milton’s knowledge and use of these three forms of the sublime in sequence. In “Milton and the ‘Stile of Lofty’,” a particularly rich and variegated look at Milton’s rhetorical sublime, Vozar argues that Milton’s concept of the “lofty stile” mentioned in the tract Of Education (1644) is ultimately Longinian and associated throughout Milton’s work with “biblical style, inspired enthusiasm, and republican politics” (42). The chapter breaks significant new ground in building a case for Milton’s knowledge of Longinus and other ancient sublime authors through his tutors and Cambridge education, trips to the Vatican, and other sources. The chapter also adds to scholarly discussions by David Norbrook, Annabelle Patterson, and Patrick Cheney on the impact of Longinus’ interest in republicanism on the Miltonic sublime. Focusing on Satan’s discourse in Paradise Lost, Vozar suggests that Milton’s Satan is not a successful orator of the “republican sublime” because he, like the audiences Longinus critiques in Peri Hypsous, is in “slavery to the passions” and lacks the “self-mastery” needed for political liberty (83). The argument thus contributes as well to the longstanding critical fascination with the Satanic sublime, including David Sedley’s = efforts to evaluate Satan’s own failed attempts to create the sublime (Sublimity and Skepticism in Montaigne and Milton; Michigan, 2005).The next chapter—“The Sublime Physics of Paradise Lost”—looks at sublimity of scale, focusing on Longinus’ fascination with “cosmic distances” and their instantiation in Milton’s universe. Much of the chapter focuses on Milton’s fascination with the sublimity of Mount Etna, cited as sublime by Longinus, a fascination that Vozar argues was possibly furthered by Milton’s own travel to the volcanic crater Solfatara. In Milton’s poetry, Vozar identifies the physical sublime in the character of Satan, along with parts of the material universe in Paradise Lost.The last chapter—“Milton and the Theological Sublime”—argues that Milton’s depiction of theology is inspired by Peri Hypsous, particularly Longinus’ admiration for the sublime theology of the fiat lux passage (“Let there be light”). First identifying this theology in Milton’s depiction of chastity in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634)—a “sublime notion, and high mystery” (123)—Vozar argues that Milton directly ties such sublime theological concepts to depictions of divine wrath and violence in other works, particularly Paradise Lost and his theological tract, De Doctrina Christiana. In exploring the sublimity of divine wrath in Milton’s epic depiction of the War in Heaven, Vozar argues that the entire spectacle and the depiction of God himself are consistent with the Longinian sublime (127).This book achieves its primary goal marvelously, illustrating how Milton drew from a thriving contemporary tradition of the sublime, which indeed existed before the more publicized work by Burke and Kant in particular. The study showcases Vozar’s significant strengths in historical and archival research, detailing the myriad of ways Milton might plausibly have developed his own coherent ideas of the sublime, including in works that have not been linked as frequently to it, particularly The Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, In Quintum Novembris (1626), and De Doctrina Christiana.Efforts to achieve a secondary goal, meanwhile—showing how the theoretical tradition of the sublime that informed Milton was “much more widespread” than Longinus (2)—will allow more space for critical disagreement. With this effort to broaden the critical framework of the sublime, Vozar signals his alignment with scholars such as James Porter and against Robert Doran and Stephen Halliwell, who argue for the distinctiveness and centrality of Longinus’ theoretical framework and contribution to the theory of the sublime (Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant; Cambridge, 2015; Halliwell, Introduction to Pseudo-Longinus: On the Sublime, ed. Halliwell; Oxford, 2022). Vozar, however, largely avoids the dangers of an overly broad or vague definition by keeping Longinus at the center of his readings (as the book’s title suggests), particularly when discussing Milton’s concept of the sublime, while carefully identifying relevant ideas of Demetrius, Hermogenes, Dionysus of Halicarnassus, and other ancient, medieval, and early modern authors that dovetailed with Longinus’ thinking.One of the book’s great strengths is its clarity and precision, but an occasional point of confusion for me was the three-part classification system used to divide the sublime into rhetorical, physical, and theological divisions. Though Vozar acknowledges that these divisions are artificial and possible for the sublime to “transgress” (12), it was sometimes difficult to see the purpose of distinguishing the rhetorical sublime, as he defines it, from the other two categories. For Vozar, the rhetorical sublime refers to language that creates the heightened emotional impact characteristic of the sublime, while the other two forms refer to concepts that generate such emotional impact. This categorization differs from prior classification systems, which have traditionally used the term “rhetorical sublime” to refer to high literary style, apart from the “aesthetic” impact described most famously by Kant and Burke. Especially for scholars used to the traditional definition, it could feel a bit arbitrary to see Milton’s “biblical sublimity” classified as the rhetorical sublime and literary descriptions of divine terror as the theological sublime when in both cases Milton is using language to express concepts of divine majesty. Across all three forms, Vozar is describing phenomena that could be understood to anticipate the “aesthetic sublime.”Yet this is a minor point about an excellent and important work of scholarship on Milton and the early modern sublime. The book is meticulously researched, boldly argued, and clearly written—an outstanding achievement and essential reading for scholars of Milton or the history of the sublime.