Burke's Explanation Of The Sublime

Edmund Burke gives us his version of the sublime in his book, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful." He links beauty with pleasure and sublimity with pain and terror. He views the beautiful as what is aesthetically pleasing and well formed. From Burke’s point of view, the sublime is not corporeal, it is a generated plethora of sensations that are attached to the experience of being in the presence of the sublime. There is a predominant feeling of astonishment at hand but also a similar one of respect and wonder. In the Greek language, there is but one word for “fear” and “wonder”, the same goes for the words “terrible” and “respectable”. Burke states that when something is so great and astonishing,
The fact that we personally overcome the blockage due to our own pensiveness is very intriguing. His notions of the sublime can be derived from the poetic models that which he associates his works with. Burke believes that proper use of language is the most influential factor on creating this obscure sublime. Consequently poetry is at the pinnacle since is it ambiguous in itself. Poetry is the most obscure form of language, it prides itself on being judicious and witty. By throwing the terror and fear caused by the sublime into the picture it is not surprising that the result of this reasoning brings Milton and his poetic prose into play. From Burke's point of view, the sublime stems from a corporeal object that incites wonder in an individual, due to its size or beauty. He compares the sublime to power. Burke states that we “succumb” to the sublime, just as Wordsworth’s character succumbs to the overwhelming experience of living your everyday life. Wordsworth character in the blind beggar is able to surpass the blockage and feel the sensations that are correlated with his perception of the sublime, power and