On the Sublime

On the Sublime is a treatise on aesthetics and literary criticism originally written in Greek between the first and third centuries AD. The author is not definitively known, but the text is typically credited with the name Longinus. Although the work has come to be known as On the Sublime in English, its subject is advice to writers on “the essentials of a noble and impressive style.” For this reason, G. M. A. Grube translates the title as On Great Writing.

Longinus addresses the idea of greatness in prose and poetry, and how writers can achieve this quality in their writing. Greatness, which he calls the sublime, is a quality so powerful and profound that it overwhelms and moves the reader, or “takes the reader out of himself” (4). Longinus proposes five sources that can lead to great writing: great thoughts, strong emotions, noble diction, effective word arrangement, and figures of speech. To further his argument, Longinus analyzes examples of both strong and weak writing from works written over the previous thousand years. Among the many writers he quotes are Homer, Plato, Sappho, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, and Cicero, as well as the Book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible.