1. Tintern Abbey, J.M.W. Turner, 1795, British Museum

3. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, Th. Gainsborough, 1750, National Gallery, UK

4. QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Hannibal Crossing the Alps, Turner, 1826, Tate Gallery

5. Wanderer Above the Mist, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818, Kunsthalle Hamburg

6. The Sublime
• Man lost in nature -- smallness in
immense nature
• Nature transcends society and man
• Nature connotes beauty and eternity
• But also terror, awe, danger
• World without God, society, convention
• Eternity and freedom of nature

7. Nature as Innocent Power
To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
--Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

8. Nature as Violent Power
The boat incident: Prelude Book I
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head…
--Prelude 1.374-400

9. Nature as Violent Power
The power, which all
Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature
thus
To bodily sense exhibits, is the express
Resemblance of that glorious faculty
That higher minds bear with them as their own.
--Prelude, 14.86-90

10. Echoes on Mt. Snowdon
There I beheld the emblem of a mind
That feeds upon infinity, that broods
Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
Its voices issuing forth to silent light
In one continuous stream; (14.70-74)
…Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support (Paradise 1.19-23)

11. Echoes on Mt. Snowdon
There I beheld the emblem of a mind
That feeds upon infinity, that broods
Over the dark abyss, intent to hear
Its voices issuing forth to silent light
In one continuous stream; (1850 Prelude 14.70-74)
The perfect image of a mighty mind,
Of one that feeds upon infinity,
That is exalted by an underpresence,
The sense of God, or whatso’er is dim
Or vast in its own being… (1805 Prelude 13.69-73)