Between Awe and Terror: The Sublime in Romantic Poetry through Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley

Abstract

As discussed by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the sublime is one deeply structured facet of human experience and imagination which certainly shaped the Romantic period’s involvement with poetry. Burke’s notion of the sublime was rooted in the simultaneous feelings of awe, terror, and beauty. Burke’s sublime dictated the romantic poet’s endeavour with nature. The objective of this document is to focus on how William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, responds to the sublime and how they use it to further reinterpret the myriad layers of poetry.

With Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, the reader observes a sublime that is meditatively tranquil. Here, nature serves as a catalyst for self-growth and introspection, leading to spiritual rejuvenation. In contrast with this, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner exhibits terrifying dimensions of the sublime which are linked to the supernatural. Human culpability and weakness become the main focus form. Shelley’s Mont Blanc exhibits yet another dimension, the sublime being absolute chaos and fury, deliberately dismissing any hint of purpose and giving limitless scope for nature to engage with its occupants. Thus, through close examination of the primary materials, this paper aims to illustrate the multitude of ways the sublime can be interpreted and incorporated into more modern Romantic literature.

This is the overall argument of this paper. It is in the subtitles of these sections that we demonstrate how Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley portray nature as an entity that ‘nurtures’ a profound psychological breakdown while at the same time offering an opportunity for transcendence.