The Classical Sublime: French Neoclassicism and the Language of Literature by Nicholas Cronk (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 200S 815 in the process of destroying Port-Royal (to which Racine was now reconciled) and the mixed signals sent out by the fact that at the end of Athalie Joas will not be the liberating king that everyone hopes him to be, a factwhich is underlined by Racine in the text ofthe play and in the rare footnotes which he himself inserted. These quibbles aside, each chapter contains fresh and exciting interpretations of both familiar and less familiar material. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Nicholas Hammond The Classical Sublime: French Neoclassicism and the Language of Literature. By Nicholas Cronk. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press. 2002. ii + 2iopp. ?32. ISBN 1-88636-522-9. Nicholas Cronk's book takes as its subject matter the seventeenth-century French preoccupation with pseudo-Longinus' first-century Greek treatise, Peri Hupsous, or On the Sublime. Longinus suggests, among other things, that simple yet powerfully moving discourse can be termed 'sublime' and is productive of ecstatic experience in the reader or listener. Cronk's work is original in considering in detail the im? portance of Longinus for seventeenth-century literature. Based on a thesis written a good ten years before Sophie Hache's La Langue du ciel: le sublime en France au XVIT siecle (Paris: Champion, 2000), its publication none the less post-dates the appearance of the latter, and the two works do not, unfortunately, take each other into account. Cronk's focus is on the seventeenth-century questions and debates to which an interest in Longinus was, he suggests, a response. He observes, namely, not just the reader-oriented view of language encouraged by Peri Hupsous, but the undercurrents of Platonism and poetic enthusiasm which can be seen to support this. He relates Boileau's 1674 translation of Longinus to broad ideas of poetic fury and inspiration, to hermetic discourse, and to minor genres such as the 'devise'. A number of classical theorists, using emblems, for example, as metaphors for poetic discourse more generally, are able to discuss Plato's ideas without appearing to affronta rational Aristotelianism which Cronk takes to be the dominant mode of seventeenth-century discourse. So Boileau's translation of Longinus constitutes a participation in a taboo aesthetic, a reaction against an officiallysanctioned obsession with clear and distinct ideas; and Cronk goes into much detail about the contrast between the ineffable power granted to discourse in the Traite du Sublime and the nomenclaturism of con? temporary linguistic debate. Sublimity introduces into seventeenth-century French literature an element of affectwhich should be seen as a defining part of classicism. To maintain this is to place a tremendous amount of weight on the term 'classi? cism'; those who see this as a somewhat false and falsifying appellation in the first place will not find much to detain them in the idea that its definition should be expanded . In this regard, Cronk's book seems dated. Moreover, his case hangs on the assertion that in Longinus, and subsequently in Boileau, transcendence stands as the opposite to rationalism, exaltation as the opposite to explanation. This fails to take into account the complexity of Peri Hupsous, in which we find an agile movement between an ecstatic sublimity and cognition. This is evinced in, apart from anything else, Longinus' own initial aim to write a useful treatise: to encourage thinking about the sublime is to render graspable sublime experience. More (or at least mention) should be made of Longinus' contradictions: these nuance the seventeenth-century interest which Cronk so importantly identifies, making inspiration and ecstasy only one part of the story. But The Classical Sublime, clearly and interestingly written, remains a very worthwhile contribution to seventeenth-century studies. Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emma Gilby ...