What does Burke see as the difference between powerful animals that have been domesticated and equally powerful animals that have not? What does he say is the fundamental difference between an ox and a bull?
How do the concepts of vastness and infinity produce the sublime? How are these concepts related to fear or power?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
How might you use Burke's idea of the sublime to describe William Blake's painting and poem "The Tyger" (p. 262)? Are there specific references to the sublime in Blake's poem?
Does Burke see the natural world in the same way that Basho (p. 300) does? Do the objects of Basho's haiku appear to be the kinds of things that Burke would describe as "sublime"?
In what ways are the images in Carl Jung's The Red Book (p. 108) sublime? Does Jung's view of human nature equate with Burke's?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Explain, in your own words, why Burke feels that sublime images have more aesthetic power than beautiful ones. Evaluate the effectiveness of his argument. Do you agree, disagree, or agree and disagree?
Choose a book or movie from the horror genre and use Burke's theory of the sublime to explain its appeal. Look specifically for elements that Burke lists, such as terror, obscurity, power, magnificence, and infinity.
Analyze either the selection from Jung's The Red Book (p. 108), Picasso's Guernica (p. 497), or Blake's drawing of "The Tyger" (p. 262) as an example of the sublime. What element(s) of the image give it power?
william blake
The Tyger
[1794]
POET, PAINTER, PRINTMAKER, and prophet, William Blake (1757-1827) has consistently defied critics' attempts to place him into categories. During his lifetime, Blake made a modest living engraving books; his illustrations for Dante's Inferno and the Book of Job are among his most famous and historically significant contributions to English literature and history. Additionally, he illustrated and published his own books of poetry and prose meditations that he referred to as "prophecies," such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) and Jerusalem (1820).
Blake saw himself as the modern equivalent of an Old Testament prophet. He was hostile to organized religion and specifically to Christianity, which he saw as a religion that took the most vital elements of human nature—sexuality, creativity, and individual expression—and proscribed them as "Satanic." Blake believed that, to fulfill their potential, human beings had to fully develop what Christians called the "angelic" and "demonic" elements of their natures. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake famously argues that Milton's Paradise Lost is a great poem because Milton "was of the devil's party without knowing it."
Blake's most famous poetic works are the two books The Songs of Innocence (1794) and The Songs of Experience (1794). The first of these books features, as its title suggests, sweet, innocent expressions of faith from the perspective of a young child. The most famous of these, "The Lamb," affirms Christ as the Good Shepherd—a common image in the New Testament—and is often included in Christian sermons and literary anthologies. The second group of poems, however, is narrated by the voice of an experienced poet who understands that the child's voice is na'i've and incomplete. Many of the poems in The Songs of Experience are specifically intended to accompany poems in The Songs of Innocence.
"The Tyger," the most famous of Blake's works, is a companion poem to "The Lamb." The former poem asks, "Little Lamb, who made thee[?]" and answers with allusions to Christ, who "calls himself a Lamb." "The Tyger," on the other hand, abounds with Satanic and infernal images—yet asks the same basic question: "What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?" The poet answers with a rhetorical question: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" If the answer is yes, then we must acknowledge that God is a very different creature than the New Testament leads us to believe.
Both The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience were published as illustrated manuscripts with Blake's own illustrations. In Blake's view, the illustrations were as important to the overall rhetorical effect of the poem as the words themselves. Both are reprinted here.
william blake
The Tyger, 1794 (relief etchings printed in orange-brown).
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Wikimedia Commons.
See p. C-5 in the color insert for a full-color reproduction of this image.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
How do Blake's illustrations and hand-lettered text affect the way that you read "The Tyger"?
Almost all of the lines of "The Tyger" are phrased as questions, and all of the questions are related to the overall question of the poem. What do you think that overarching question is?
Look at all of the words in the poem that associate the tiger with fire. What is the effect of this extended metaphor?
"The Tyger" was originally intended to be a companion poem to "The Lamb." Blake alludes to this earlier poem in the line "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" What do you see as the point of this question?
The last stanza of "The Tyger" repeats the first stanza almost verbatim. Only one word changes: "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" changes to "What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" How does this slight difference reframe the overall question that the poem is asking?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Examine "The Tyger" in light of the arguments about human nature found in Mencius's "Man's Nature Is Good" (p. 78) and Hsun Tzu's "Man's Nature Is Evil"
(p. 84). Is the tiger of the poem good, evil, or something outside of this dichotomy?
How do both Blake in "The Tyger" and William Paley in Natural Theology (p. 311) use the existence of a creation to draw conclusions about the creator?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Analyze "The Tyger" as a painting that happens to include words instead of a poem that happens to be accompanied by an illustration. How does your view of the work change?
Look up the text and image of Blake's poem "The Lamb" online. Write an essay analyzing "The Tyger" as a response to, and companion for, "The Lamb."
Apply Edmund Burke's arguments about the sublime (p. 256) to "The Tyger." What elements of the sublime can you see in Blake's poem?
leo tolstoy
from What Is Art?
[1896]
COUNT LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910) is the author of what many consider the two greatest novels ever written: War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Born into a noble family, Tolstoy followed the typical career path of a young aristocrat in czarist Russia. This included nearly failing in his early studies, dropping out of college, racking up huge gambling debts, joining the army, and later marrying and starting a family.
As an army officer and later as a world traveler, Tolstoy had the opportunity to experience both the best and the worst of European culture. Through his friendships with such influential French figures as the novelist Victor Hugo and the political theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, he developed a strong interest in both prose fiction and the plight of the poor. When he returned to Russia, he began to write. His early novels were primarily autobiographical, but, by 1869, he had developed his craft well enough to produce War and Peace.
As his social consciousness continued to develop, Tolstoy grew uncomfortable in his roles as privileged aristocrat and famous author. In 1881, deeply influenced by both the New Testament and the writings of European socialists such as Proudhon, Tolstoy experienced a religious conversion to "Christian anarchism"—a religion largely of his own design that rejected the authority of secular governments and advocated strict nonviolence, severe aestheticism, and care of the poor. Toward the end of his life, much to the dismay of his wife and their thirteen children, Tolstoy renounced the copyrights on his novels and changed his will to leave his estate to his serfs.