Piers Plowman, the sublime

Abstract

The person who utters the proud and sublime words quoted at the head of this page is the Satan himself, and this fact alone tells us a lot about Langland’s sublime. It is indeed, to a large extent, on such upward flights of fancy that Longinus based his notion of the sublime, hoping to arrive at the heart of the mystery of artistic fame and immortality. The effects of hearing a sublime piece of music or poetry he describes in the following terms: “For by some innate power the true sublime uplifts our souls; we are filled with a proud exaltation and a sense of a vaunting joy, just as though we had ourselves produced what we had heard”. In eulogizing “the true sublime”, he was aware that there are many pitfalls in such ambitious striving, and it is easy to take pinchbeck for genuine gold, or to mistake the merely vulgar or pompous for “the true sublime” . But he never questioned the desirability and the supreme value of the sublime as the sublime.