General Information
Course Description
9564 - The Sublime: Visions and Theories from the Enlightenment to the Postmodern - This course will examine in detail theories and visualizations of the sublime from the later 18th century in England and Germany to the present in Canada. Our discussion will be framed by the following questions: why did artists, philosophers and other writers turn to the elusive category of the sublime so decidedly in the 18th century? How and why was the sublime developed by the Romantics? To what extent are the discourses of the sublime still potent today? Central to discussions will be issues of disciplinary borders, that is, how did and do the fields of philosophical aesthetics, literature and the practicing visual arts define one another through the notion of the sublime. The course will strike a balance between historical European and contemporary Canadian art and between art theory and material practices. Emphasis will be given to careful attention to the details and nuances of both visual and theoretical "texts," and discussion will be encouraged of the relationships between contemporary art and theory and their antecedents.
