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4 - The Nordic Sublime

from Part I - The Sublime before Romanticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2023

Cian Duffy
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

This chapter shows how, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Norse gods and the Scandinavian Viking were reimagined and refashioned in poetry, visual art, and music drama in accordance with Burke’s ideas of the sublime. Coinciding temporally with Burke’s Enquiry, the revival of interest in Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian poetry furnished poets and artists with a new mythology as an alternative to classical Greek and Roman mythology. This chapter argues that the aesthetics of the sublime, as a challenge to neoclassical standards, encouraged an expansion of the poetical canon, allowing for the inclusion of ancient Scandinavian poetry, which the previous generation had scorned as rough and barbaric, and furthermore provided a new verbal and visual idiom in which this poetry could be recreated for a contemporary audience.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • The Nordic Sublime
  • Edited by Cian Duffy, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
  • Online publication: 06 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009026963.006
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  • The Nordic Sublime
  • Edited by Cian Duffy, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
  • Online publication: 06 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009026963.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Nordic Sublime
  • Edited by Cian Duffy, Lunds Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Romantic Sublime
  • Online publication: 06 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009026963.006
Available formats
×