The Naked Sublime
No Thumbnail Available
Links to Files
Permanent Link
Collections
Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2010
Type of Work
Department
English and Languages
Program
Doctor of Philosophy
Citation of Original Publication
Rights
This item is made available by Morgan State University for personal, educational, and research purposes in accordance with Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Other uses may require permission from the copyright owner.
Abstract
This study investigates the sublime in three of Sharon Olds' collections, The Father, The Gold Cell, and Blood, Tin, Straw. It offers a reading of the sublime that counters the trend within the discourse to define the concept as either masculine or feminine, expands the sublime moment to include the sensory and the beautiful, and shifts the sublime from domination to reconciliation. Promoted by Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, a masculine narrative emphasizes male autonomy and distance; invented by Patricia Yaeger, the feminine account describes how the female accommodates the other and draws near to the inexplicable. Both versions emphasize an individual's crisis of the mind. "The Naked Sublime" maintains that two co-equal entities construct and share in a sublime moment that is both crisis and resolution. Olds' collections provide the impetus for this reading through her focus on nakedness. Even as Olds' participants share their nakedness with one another--and feel anxiety as a result--they eventually feel complete in their desire for one another. Olds' work leads to the construction of the term naked sublime that compels the discourse to strip away gender constructs and point to new readings of the sublime, readings that are not cliché, antagonistic, hierarchical, or privileged. Because nakedness is a condition felt by men and women and is a concept, like the sublime, which provides diverse paradoxical meanings--from the ordinary to the revelatory or the shameful to powerful--this reading of Olds challenges the exclusivity of the gendered sublime.