This section defines the following key, related concepts : ecstatic, Gothic, mystical, Romanticism, sublime, and visionary.
Ecstasy, ecstatic (or ekstasis) from the Ancient Greek, έκ-στασις (ex-stasis), "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere .... [There is] a form of ecstasy described as the vision of, or union with, some otherworldly entity … of which Plotinus spoke; this pertains to an individual trancelike experience of the sacred or of God.... Spiritual ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently accompanied by visions and emotional/intuitive (and sometimes physical) euphoria.... Spiritual ecstasy can be distinguished from spirit possession and hypnosis in that ecstasy is not accompanied by a loss of interior consciousness or will on the part of the subject experiencing it. Rather, the person experiencing ecstasy notices a dramatic heightening of awareness of the spiritual, and a total concentration of the will on it.
Excerpted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_(philosophy) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ecstasy
Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance…. [T]he literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere…. Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.... [C]ontributions to the Gothic genre were provided in the work of the Romantic poets. Prominent examples include Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
Christabel and Keats'
La Belle Dame sans Merci which feature mysteriously fey ladies.
Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction#The_Romantics
Mysticism, mystical (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion) is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.… The emphasis that is placed on subjective direct experience of the "divine and otherworldly transcendent goal of unity", makes it highly controversial to individuals who place a greater emphasis on empirical verification of knowledge and truth (such as scientists for example).
Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism
Romanticism and Romantic poetry: Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.... The movement stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and custom to something noble….
[P]oets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban…. Romantic poetry referred to the natural aspects of the world, focusing on the feelings of sadness and great happiness…. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to his and Coleridge's
Lyrical Ballads defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” though in the same sentence he goes on to clarify this statement by asserting that nonetheless any poem of value must still be composed by a man “possessed of more than usual organic sensibility [who has] also thought long and deeply”…. They, along with William Blake believed that they were reviving the true spirit of English poetry by pursuing the "romance" and the sublime that was lost since Milton. John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron then comprised the latter half of the movement, largely continuing in the same tradition, though deviating slightly into more metaphysical matters.
Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_poetry
Sublime: In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation.... [Edmund] Burke's doctrine of the sublime was powerfully influential on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. He believed that a painful idea creates a sublime passion and thus concentrates the mind on that single facet of experience and produces a momentary suspension of rational activity, uncertainty, and self-consciousness. If the pain producing this effect is imaginary rather than real, a great aesthetic object is achieved. Thus, great mountains, storms at sea, ruined abbeys, crumbling castles, and charnel houses are appropriate subjects to produce the sublime.
… The sublime is that in nature which is so much greater than man that its attraction actually includes a certain degree of fear and trepidation on the part of the beholder, although a fear not so immediate that it traumatizes. … Natural landscapes that often evoke the sublime include mountains, chasms, Northern wastelands, massive waterfalls, etc.
Excerpted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy), http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/guide.html#sublime, and Hugh Holman's A Handbook to Literature
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1817, Kunsthalle Hamburg. Romantic artists during the 19th century used the epic of nature as an expression of the sublime.
Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionary
Visionary: Defined narrowly, a visionary is one who purportedly experiences a vision or apparition connected to the supernatural. At times this involves seeing into the future. The visionary state is achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, day dreams, or art…. Artists may produce work loosely categorized as visionary art for its luminous content and/or for its use of artistic techniques that call for the use of extended powers of perception in the viewer [e.g., William Blake].
This is the class website for Mystical Themes in English Romantic Poetry: “To see a world in a grain of sand,” a course at the Osher Lifelong Institute, University of Washington, Dec. 1-10, 2009.
