Longinus, a Greek critic from the 3rd century AD, wrote a treatise on the sublime, emphasizing that true genius elevates readers to ecstasy rather than merely persuading them. He identified five sources of sublimity—great thought, inspired emotion, effective figures of speech, noble diction, and dignified elevation—while noting three impediments: affectation, cold pedantry, and sentimentality. His ideas significantly influenced literary criticism, linking sublimity to beauty, truth, and lasting artistic fame.

2.  A Greek critic Longinus wrote the treatise On the Sublime. He
was the greatest creative writer of the 3rd
century AD.
 Longinus was attracted to the logical or ethical side of
Plato’s work.
 He used for his own purpose the platonic account of the
enchantments with which poetry can ravish and lift us out of
ourselves.
 He superimposed the imagination and insight of Plato.

3.  According to Longinus, a work of genius does not aim at
persuasion, but ecstasy – on lifting the reader out of himself.
 The sublime effect of literature is attained not by arguments
but by revelation, or illumination.
 Its function is sacramental. The truly sublime has uplifting
effect.
 In other words, we are lifted out of ourselves and carried to a
new realm of experience and perception, and filled with
ecstasy as if we ourselves had created what we see and
hear.

4. For his theory of sublimity, Longinus classifies its characteristics.
The five sources of sublimity are:
1. Capacity for great thought and a firm grasp of ideas,
2. Inspired emotion and strong passion,
3. Figures of speech and a proper construction of figures,
4. Noble diction,
5. The effect of dignity and elevation - the power to integrate
and fuse the elements so as to give them a tone of sublimity.

5. Longinus also talked about the three impediments to sublimity:
1) affectation,
2) cold pedantry, and
3) sentimentality

6.  The treatise of Longinus influenced the post-renaissance critics.
 For Addison, Milton’s Paradise Lost is a great poem on account of
sublimity.
 The Romantic concept of inspiration of the artist is an echo of
sublimity.
 Northrop Frye builds up a typology framed on the basis of Longinus’
ecstasies.
 The transport of Longinus can be seen in relation to the concept of
‘synaesthesia’, or an equilibrium or organization of impulses
suggested by I.A. Richards.

7.  In general we may consider that passage which always
pleases, and pleases all readers, contains the beauty and
truth of the sublime.
 Thought and passion (which are the requirements for
sublimity) – are demanded by Longinus in the same spirit in
which Matthew Arnold demanded “truth and seriousness”.
 According to him, the sublime consists of certain loftiness of
language and it is by this only that the greatest poets and
prose-writers have won pre-eminence and lasting fame.