The Sublime

In a letter written in October 1817 Keats, famously describes Wordsworth’s ‘poetical Character’ as an instance of the ‘egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone’. Drawing on the classical understanding of sublime with its connotations of grandeur, nobility and elevation (from Longinus’ first century rhetorical treatise Peri Hypsous or, On the Sublime), but also with a sense of the word’s more recent association with ‘ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible’ Wordsworth emerges in Keats’s account as a singular and formidable presence, the ‘strong precursor’ against whom the younger poet struggles to distinguish himself.