Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre

Contrary to widely held assumptions, the early modern revival of ps-Longinus’ On the Sublime did not begin with the adaptation published by Boileau in 1674; it was not connected solely with the Greek editions that began to appear from 1554; nor was its impact limited to rhetoric and literature. Manuscript copies began to circulate in Quattrocento Italy, but very few have been studied. Neither have the ways the sublime was used, in rhetoric and literature, but also in the arts, architecture and the theatre been studied in any systematic way. The present volume is a first attempt to chart the early modern translations of Peri hupsous, both in the literal sense of the history of its dissemination by means of editions, versions and translations in Latin and vernacular languages, but also in the figurative sense of its uses and transformations in the visual arts in the period from the first early modern editions of Longinus until its popularization by Boileau.

Contributors include Francis Goyet, Hana Grundler, Lydia Hamlett, Sigrid de Jong, Helen Langdon, Bram Van Oostveldt, Eugenio Refini, Paul Smith, and Dietmar Till.