Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-30T16:19:09.239Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • 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
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

  • 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
×

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
×