Sublimity in the Poetry of William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley

ABSTRACT I present two contrasting perspectives on the ‘sublime’ in Romantic poetry: that of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who viewed sublimity as something from above which is up to the poets to interpret; and that of William Wordsworth, who viewed sublimity as something from within that needs only to be discovered. Despite these philosophical differences, both poets rely on figures of language to convey the paradoxes and circularities that invariably characterize the notion of sublimity. I conclude that this leads to a focalization of language itself as an instrument of the sublime; in effect, the language of sublimity becomes a kind of sublime rhetoric.