32 pages • 1 hour read
LonginusOn the Sublime
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 100A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-5 Summary
Addressing his “dear friend” Postumius Terentianus, Longinus recalls when the two of them read a treatise on great writing, by Caecilius. Longinus feels that Caecilius’s work, although well-intentioned, is “not worthy of its subject” (3), and fails to instruct the reader about how to become a great writer. The friends agree on the basic principle that “great writing does not persuade; it takes the reader out of himself” (4). Postumius has asked Longinus to write down his own opinions on great writing, and Longinus will now do precisely that.
Some believe that “great writers are born, not made” (5), and that it is impossible to teach great writing by technical rules. Longinus disagrees: Even natural talent is not “random or altogether devoid of method” (5), and genius needs the discipline of knowledge and training. Readers also need critical training to perceive literary effects, including those produced through inborn talent.
At this point there is a lacuna in the text. When it resumes, Longinus quotes from a lost play by Aeschylus. He criticizes the play’s language as excessively theatrical, bombastic, and full of confused images. This example leads Longinus to identify the first major fault in writing: turgidity, an overly complex attempt to produce grandeur. A second fault, puerility, consists of clumsy or overextended metaphors. False enthusiasm, or unnecessary and artificial emotion, is a third fault. These three faults are all rooted in a “desire for novel conceits, the chief mania of our time” (9).
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
On the Sublime is written in the form of a letter to a friend of the author. This epistolary form is relatively common in ancient literary works. Longinus refers to his friend, Postumius, intermittently throughout the book, reminding the reader of the communicative basis of the work and giving it a personal dimension. We might feel as if we are eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends rather than directly receiving Longinus’s thoughts.
At the same time, Longinus frames his work as a reaction to a treatise on great writing by the rhetorician Caecilius. Longinus implies that he can treat the subject of great writing more effectively than Caecilius did. In this way, On the Sublime has the quality of a conversation among writers and literary friends.
In Chapter 2, as a prelude to his discussion of great writing, Longinus presents a question that artists have asked for many centuries: Which is more important, genius (natural talent) or art (knowledge and training)? He concludes that both are important and that they complement each other. While Longinus‘s book outlines a set of rules for great writing, he concedes that genius and passion override a strict adherence to those rules, and that genius requires freedom.
In Chapters 3 and 4, Longinus begins to catalog literary faults, identifying the desire for novelty as a major error in the writing of his day. The catalog style of his list reappears later in his discussion of figures. Longinus is unafraid to criticize revered authors like Plato as he gives examples of what not to do when writing.
Concluding his discussion of faults, Longinus states a philosophical principle, that “good things and bad come from much the same sources” (9). By this he means that writers’ talents and intentions can have either good or bad results, depending on how they are directed. Longinus intends to guide other writers in the right direction by showing them how to use literary devices well and by pointing out the “pitfalls” and “risks involved.”
