THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: Aristotle's Poetics and Longinus's On the Sublime

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, free in its entirety, concerns two ancient treatises on literature: Aristotle’s Poetics and Longinus’s On the Sublime. First, I rehearse the life and overall philosophical contribution of Aristotle; then I explore his theory of tragedy—including immensely influential concepts like mimesis, the tragic flaw, and the catharsis of pity and terror—and discuss their relation to his philosophy in general and as a riposte to Plato’s censoriousness; finally, I explain why he judged tragedy a better genre than epic and poetry a more philosophical form of writing than history. Second, I turn to Longinus and his theory of the sublime in literature, his focus on emotion and ecstasy over structure, his rhapsodic close reading of Sappho, his mischievous praise for Plato’s madness, his defense of metaphor, his love for the flawed work of genius over the merely correct work of diligent mediocrity, his view that genius represents the inherent infinitude of humanity, and his discussion of literary decline in relation to war, democracy, and the love of money. Finally, I consider these two treatises as the origin points for divergent forms of modern literary aesthetics: neoclassicist and formalist for Aristotle, Romantic and subjectivist for Longinus. Please like, share, and comment! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded here:

Aristotle's Poetics and Longinus's On the Sublime: Catharsis, Ecstasy

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