Longinus's Spectrum of Sublimity

In our group's presentation on genre's and sublimity in Longinus's text, we tried explaining the sense we had that Longinus was relaying a spectrum of sublimity in his text. This spectrum holds that sublimity is attained en medias res, and that on either extreme you have Longinus' two pet peeves turgidity and puerility.

Longinus sympathizes with those authors and writers who fall into turgidity because they are aiming at attaining sublimity, but over shoot their throw. He provides a pretty awesomely gruesome image to keep in mind when trying to understand the logistics of turgidity, "In literature as in the body, puffy and false tumours are bad" (Longinus 348). So we understand turgidity to be puffy over zealous language.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Longinus highlights the "sheer opposite of greatness" as puerility. Puerility for Longinus is an excessively over-worked or shallow idea (Longinus 348). Through understand puerility as the antithesis of turgidity, on the spectrum, we understand that it contains hardly any substance at all.

Longinus' third fault he finds reoccurring in the texts he analysis also fits on this spectrum of sublimity. He states this fault, "consists of untimely or meaningless emotion where none is in place, or immoderate emotion where moderate is in place" (Longinus 348).

So this spectrum would look a little like this:

(puerility)-----(meaningless emotion)-----------(Sublime)---------(immoderate emotion)-----(turgidity)

This spectrum helps me to understand an undercurrent in Longinus' argument, which seems to say that any extreme of language in texts which leads reader away from truth simultaneously leads readers away from sublimity. Which makes me think that sublimity for Longinus is a kind of honest truthfulness in text. "A kind of eminence or excellence in discourse" (Longinus 347). He describes sublimity as producing ecstasy in the reader, we are suspended in wonder and amazement through our experience of the text (Longinus 347). Can't we understand this ecstasy as our minds digesting pure truthfulness. Think about the books and text that have touched you the deepest in your life, do they not rip you open and demonstrate to you some truth about yourself or your life you had not previously considered? Every time you listen to songs that make you cry because of their simplistic truths, you are experiencing the pure state of sublimity in the middle of Longinus' spectrum. It's the color of yellowish-gold and it fills your core, and then "tears everything up like a whirlwind" (Longinus 347).