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Made me reconsider - I always thought of it in the chemical sense of a material that can transition directly from a solid to a gas. Both ethereal I guess?
This video confuses my understanding of the sublime. How does this notion of the sublime correlate with the psychotherapeutic notion of sublimination, where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior? (i.e. becoming sublime) That doesn't sound 'sublime' according to Burke? Rather the contrary. Usually one would think that being sublime is equivalent to being 'great', 'complete', 'total', or something of the sort. In a third way, there is the chemical transformation of transforming a solid to a gas, without passing through the liquid state. What does all these notions have in common? I am bedazzled.
Same. It contextualizes my almost primal fear of and paradoxical fascination with ancient ruins. That feeling that the ghosts of the past are bearing down on you for your intrusion, the vastness of the time between these ruins and your own time. It just truly awes and horrifies.
A prime example to me of sublime gothic beauty is the cathedral in Köln - it is quite literally gothic in its style of architecture but is also “goth” in its deeper subjective impact. It’s so massive, so unapologetically maximalist; its countless spires give it a sharp and almost dangerous appearance despite it being a holy place. It’s also covered in centuries of soot stains and patina, making it seem almost as if it’s casting supernatural shadows upon itself even in bright sunlight. When I saw it in person I felt that amazing mixture of awe and slight terror that made my goth little heart sing!
Been a while since I visited the truly impressive Gothic cathedral in Cologne... Something that really struck me all those years ago was the "gloomth" of the interior which was in stark contrast to various English cathedrals and even Southern German ones. Great awe-inspiring experience that really tickled my Gothic sensibilities.
It just looks evil. Like how do people worship a presumably good god in there? How do people reconcile that in their head? It's an evil building, made to look evil, to worship evil.
The fact that Justin can’t make it through a LOTR book is the most interesting fact I’ve learned from any of his videos. Absolutely insane, I can’t even assimilate that information.
...I had- & still have the SAME reason(s) as the Good Doctor for throwing-down One More copy of TLoTR than I've picked up -- to 'Give it A[nother] Try'... I've concluded that the Tolkien Trilogy was- and has -- according to the fluxes of Popular Culture -- essentially "Been Popular for Being Popular"
@@jordanm6940 i feel like college dropout former gifted children seem to forget actual nerds prefer actual sustainable and valuable knowledge over pseudo-intellectual mythological garbage. the brain is inherently receptive to one form of media over the other in such cases
I went to prep school in England, a big Gothic/Victorian Mansion. Our elderly french teacher complete with paunch, Edwardian suit, pocket watch and monacle, read us a horror story every Christmas, the last lesson before the break.
Having been Goth for forty years I am very pleased with your analysis of gothic literature. I forgot just how much I love the word 'gloomth' so thanks for the reminder.
@@SAOS451316 no offense but if you think gloomth is onomatopoeic of a falling tree I doubt you have actually heard one fall in person. It's the roar of a wounded beast merged with a peal of thunder. I would hardly describe that as sounding like gloomth.
@@siobhanomalley1968 That's probably only the introduction to the gods, most people have that issue. The tales from the first and second age totally slap and it's hard to stop reading. Of course, this is all subjective but I would encourage you to persevere or skip ahead to Feanor losing his shit and then continue from there.
“history as horror”, what an excellent summation of the Gothic, such as it can be summarized. It’s a great jumping point, at least. I love the path you take through this subject. Gothic horror, like the perception of the sublime to the modern mind, is rooted in our sense of self but ultimately at odds with it. We need that modern sense of self to feel the loss inherent in gothic horror, because it is the rock we cling to as the waters of the sublime overtake us. It’s deeply personal depersonalization. I also think that it’s rooted in a peculiar, academic anxiety. The classic conception of a history is the book of knowledge. It is ancient, it is good, and it is good because it is ancient. The story of the gothic is, in some ways, the story of the first modern historians. The edifices of material culture crumble, and we are left to dwell on what is lost: it dwarfs us. More so for the first modern historians, to truly understand that the content of a book may be as corrupted as the moldering pages upon which it was scrawled. It is to know not what the ancients knew but to know that the ancients might have known nothing. Gothic horror is the horror of books.
As I learn more about history I've frequently wondered how we got from the Goths who sacked Rome to "Gothic" architecture to our modern "Goth" aesthetic, and here you are to give that exact explanation!
I'm a long time cinema geek. Murnau's Nosferatu is one of my favorite early movies, along with Dreyer's Vampyr. I learned a lot from the video you've offered us here. Cheers. ✌️
@@jesperandersson889 How do you define "early movie"? Like, Nosferatu came out in 1922. I said "early movie" in a "my actual Grandma wasn't even born" kind of way. Y'know? 😛 Maybe you're implying "early movie" in some really specific academic way?
i was a 'goth' many years ago. my earliest memories consists of listening to the band 'sisers of mercy', dressing in all black, and wearing black combat boots. thank you dr sledge for the good memories! (and for today, all the additional context...)
You are hands down, the best educator that I have encountered. Granted, with only a bachelor's degree, I have a relatively small sample to have been impressed by, but still you are tops. Thank you for the content that you provide.
Thank you for the great video! I really like Rudolf Otto's use of the Sublime in his "The Idea of the Holy" (1917, orig. "Das Heilige"). According to him, numinous feelings have two aspects at the same time: The "mysterium tremendum", that which inspires fear, and the "mysterium fascinans", that which draws one near to it. The work was very influencial in the new field of religious studies and the German theology of that time.
There was a novel about 2 years before "The Castle of Otranto" that arguably distilled the Gothic ideal before Walpole. It was called "Longsword Earl of Salisbury" by Thomas Leland. It's loosely based on the life of William Longespée, half brother of Richard I. It influenced Walpole .
Interesting. I have often heard the claim of Walpole’s creation of the gothic, but this is the first time that I have heard anyone posit an alternative. I will be looking into it. Thank you.
Oh, yeah. I actually read the original edition, so unfortunately my impression of it isn't really "Gothic" because of all the f-shaped s letters. See, when you read the flowing prose but keep getting caught on words that look like fhore, fands, courtefy, and such, it kinda has the feel of listening to someone with a speech impediment trying his best. It reads pretty damn funny to me. If anyone ever wants to read this novel, get the modern 1990s version. To me, this book shall forever be "Longfword, Earl of Falisbury".
All your videos are fun and interesting, but this one was even a few notches more fascinating than usual. Sublimity as you explained it sounds like that which inspires awe, which is another word that has taken on an altogether different meaning than it originally held.
Is it just me or anyone wish this episode would’ve been filmed by camp fire and Dr.Sledge holding a flashlight under his chin? The delivery is sooo darkly great! 😈
Or, better yet, by walking by lantern-light at night through dark moors, cemeteries, ruins, and catacombs, with the sound of night insects and other creatures of the shadows in the background....
Love sleeping to your videos! Not to say they’re boring, you just have a calming voice Its great because I end up rewatching videos because I actually want to know about the topic
Dr. Sledge - Thank you for talking about the sublime. This is my favorite of your videos. You speak about the Gothic and the sublime like a poet. 26 years ago, I was in grad seminar on 19th C. American Lit. that incorporated the sublime in literary criticism. Thank you. I'll post a longer comment below.
In reference to The Lord of the Rings, E.L. Doctrow wrote an essay for the NY Times series Writers on Writing where he postulated that older Novels like The Lord of the Rings don't read so well anymore because the style of writing has changed due to the influence of movies. He sites The Maltese Falcon as a turning point. John Houston used Dashill Hammett's novel as his shooting script. The incredibly sparse style Hammett employed became the norm. Doctrow postulates that modern novels are written to be movie scripts. He points out that Stendhal's The Red and the Black has an opening chapter that just describe in detail entering the town. Hammett had a lot of influence on movies. Akira Kurosawa used Hammett 's Red Harvest and Glass Key as a basis for his classic Yojimbo - which Serjio Leone later based his Fistful of Dollars on.
@@Eire-xq9jz I find some modern Mysteries hold up.I usually read historical Mysteries, so maybe they are just far enough off the beaten path to be left alone. It may just be that there hasn't been enough time for the trash to sink. I found G.R.R. Martin unreadable. His writing had that washed out dirty mono-chrome of Medieval movies have today. At least The Lord of the Rings had some texture and color. I keep telling people if the Vikings could have Chromed their boats and had bright pink sails they would have done it. Maybe they are going for something Gothic in their tone, but instead they look like they took Monty Python and the Holy Grail as history.
I'm just starting a Masters in creative writing and found the NY Times full archive of writers on writing articles thanks to this comment 😄 Its interesting this sort of works in reverse, there are some classics I've not been able to get into until I saw film adaptations - Lord of the Rings being one, Dune another (the Lynch Dune), but once I had that visual reference and story overview I flew through them.
I'm just starting a Masters in Creative Writing and you videos never fail to leave me without some type of inspiration or further reading to improve my work 😄 And just wanted to add for anyone who doesn't know - both of the recommended texts in this video are free to read on Project Gutenberg.
Well Dr Justin, this one touched something in me. Being British with a touch of the Gothic about me, in that I've stayed in more than a few haunted castles, and Manor houses on the back-end of their past elegance, I am very into this genre. But you said something important here about contemplating something bigger. I get that. When one has stood by oneself at Callanish standing stones on a starry night, or sat for a while at a 5,000 year old Dolmon, one is put in his place by the meaninglessness of everything back in the city. I even get that when I go camping here in Texas, and see the awesome sight of the Milky Way, something most people alive will never see. It's there, but you've got to leave your towns and go look for it. Long story short, too late, which is why I believe a camping trip, or a day by the sea, or a walk up a mountain, or a wander on a moor, resets us all. We realize just how vulnerable we actually are. At the mercy of the multi-dimensional unknown, and that is what Lovecraft tapped into...
Sweden took that historical Gothic revisionism to the extreme with the southern part of Sweden proper being deemed Götaland or Gothland when Gustav Vasa was forging a unique Swedish national identity as distinct from the Danes. Gustavus Adolphus also used this Gothic identity to push the protestant cause in the thirty years war.
This is reassuring that I’ve done a good job keeping the Burkean sublime in mind despite not having a proper name for it in all the lore I wrote for my vampire dnd campaign. I had only encountered discussion of the sublime in Fanged Noumena before and only had an intuitive understanding of it. Once I’m done with my Clark Ashton Smith kick I’m definitely reading Castle of Otranto. Thanks Dr.Sledge!
Exceptional work on this one is... I was literally thinking that your rhythm and delivery is coming across as delightfully Lovecraftian, when you said..."You're getting those Lovecraft vibes yet." (We are on the same page). Amazing timing, wordplay, and tone.
True beauty always has an element of horror in it, a kind of uncanny sense or something slightly disturbing, it is this that makes us pause and wonder at it. Without this the thing in question cannot open doors to a sublime experience - it is merely a pretty thing. Our encounters with the sublime are shocking as if being transported to the edge of a precipice, one suddenly has terrible knowledge that they will never be the same after these strange encounters. Love the gothic content 🌹
Great video, Dr. Sledge. A very informative and helpful presentation about one of my (and many others) all-time favorite genres. I definitely would like to hear your subsequent commentaries on this subject.
The day after my PCs diablerized the Malkavian Primogen you drop this. Absolutely perfect and was immediately shared with the rest of my gaming group. Thank you so much. This is perfect.
Fabulous episode this week. I really enjoyed listening and learning all about the history of the gothic. Regarding The Castle of Otranto, yes indeed, it is a bit difficult to read. For me it’s all the wacky names. There are soooo many names and after page 15 it gets really confusing. I lose track of who’s who and who’s chasing after which character and why. I even lose where they’re doing all this stuff, which room or tunnel or tower or dungeon. However you have given me renewed strength. I will once again pick up this tiny tempting tome and do my best to power through it and make it to the end. Perhaps I’ll make a spreadsheet of all the characters and their relationships to one another 😅 That way I’ll have a kind of reference chart 📊 to look to when I loose the plot 😅 Wish me luck 👍
Please consider adding a Gloomth T-shirt to your store. I must have one! And I also loved that sneaky Bauhaus reference, too. Your channel is Wonderfiul, Dr Sledge. I am mildly addicted to listening to you talk about pretty much anything, though most of what you say flies over my head. Thank you!😀
There's an Italian Philosopher (Umberto Galimberti) who often speaks about the feeling of the "sacred", meaning everything outside the rationally coded reality we live in. "Sacred" includes religious concepts like the coexistence of opposites (in the divine will for example) or simply the coexistence of multiple meanings on a single thing (a glass can be used to drink water but also it can be thrown as a weapon), and so the dionisiac "folly". Artists, poets, but also children, explore the "sacred". Civilization keeps the "sacred" in separated realms (religion, art) to enable humans to live together with less turmoil possible (it would be difficult to live in a society where things are not universally "coded"). This is very much close to Nietzsche's reasoning. Now the concept of "Sublime", the way you explained it in this video. I feel like connecting the dots here! The "Sublime" to me looks like another concept within the "Sacred" or vice versa. I feel like I've just understood for the first time in my life why I am always searching for the "Sublime," through my taste for listening and composing extreme music, or esoteric and philosophic readings, or my love for going to explore abandoned places and ruins, or by always dreaming about the infinite universe. Thank you Dr. Justin Sledge. I'm not able to express how much your work is valuable to me.
Wow, literally every video is amazing. As an aspiring academic in a master's program, your communicative art is something to strive for. I plan to make my cohort fans for this channel.
Mark Fisher’s dissertation “Flatline Constricts: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction” is worth the read. Takes the gothic well understood here to a contemporary moment, both for better and for worse.
Another excellent video. I taught Gothic literature for years and always had to skim over Burke’s theory of the sublime with barely enough time to do the texts themselves justice. I wish this video had been available to show the students, giving them the historical perspective and context of the genre’s origins. My aesthetic shall forever be Gloomth
This reminds me of a song we made titled: “My Joy Division has The Cure for my Depressed Mode why I be playing War Tapes while BoWie feeling Low at Murphy’s Bauhaus”. lol. Awesome episode yet again Prof. Sledge.
You peak my interest every upload. I love some of the gothic stuff. The architecture, the objects, the philosophy and so on. Not that i live by all of it but i dig it. Cheers
Hahaha..! The Intro & The Exit; both are almost Shakespearein with comedy!..😂 The content between was revealing, inspiring and insightfully deep.🤔 Thank you.. This was Cool..👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾💕🖖🏾
i was just having a binge of your videos as this popped up! always a treat to listen to your research and insights! essentially as the nights get darker and the vail gets thinner! 👻
Silmarillion !! Love the name drop. I’ve read that twice and LoTRs more times than I can count. This gives me confidence that the titles you mention are accomplishable feats for me. Thx 😁😁👍🏼
I think it's awesome that you did this episode. Take a look at the philosophical underpinnings of the Gothic in your academic style, is. . . refreshing. . . Invigorating. . . An unexpectedly good deed in a weary world. You Rock.
You talked me into reading it, and then, by the end, you talked me out of ever reading it. So that went just about nowhere. But thanks for all the chilling chatter that surrounded the idea of the book (novella?). Quite fascinating. I just never thought the sublime as coming to rest so much in the "horror" camp, rather than the strangely wonderful blurring of beauty and horror confused that is ultimately very satisfyingly a "balm" for the soul. The storm that makes the eye of the storm.
Oh my gosh! I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was to hear you say it, but I really enjoyed reading The Silmarillion and I have never made it out of the shire trying to read LOTR either! I am so relieved to find someone else who feels similar about it. Thanks so much for sharing that tidbit. :)
Dr. Sledge, I'm a relatively new subscriber who has been absolutely loving your content. I actually ended up here originally because your first video on the Demiurge was linked on a video I was watching about the horror ttrpg Kult: Divinity Lost, which is HEAVILY based in Gnostic lore. Anyway, I'm also goth, so this video is checking all the boxes! Thank you so much for what you do. It's incredible.
The beast’s heavy steps, echo in dread, I tremble in fear, wish I were dead. I trip in the dark, struggling to flee Only to realise, the monster is ME!!👹 Lol😅. Thank you.✌🏻🧡
I taught Otranto as part of my course on Gothic fiction in Germany in 2017; will be looking at it again at my current appointment in India in the next few weeks. The German students thought it was great; I look forward to seeing what the Indians will make of it.
This is probably one of my favorite videos you’ve done. I laughed multiple times. Your description of the sublime was perfect. I’d love for you to do something similar for cosmic horror.
This, discussion, to me, brings to mind Robert Plutnik's theory of Emotion, the color wheel of emotion where "amazement" is found between grief and fear, with "awe" close by.
When you were describing the sublime, it was very poetic... beautiful. I was enthralled. Captivated. ...As far as summaries on the internet, I find that they get me excited to get the books. ...Aside from my ever growing library, you should see my list of books to buy. To which I've added Burke's Enquiry. Thanks :)
Esotericism, philosophy, Kælan Mikla, gothic literature and æstethics and safe words. This video really has everything! Great work as always Dr Sledge! 🌒🦇🌹🍷🧛♂️
Dear Dr Sledge, you managed to explain to me my own love history since my adolescence in half and hour. Gloomth is definitely the word I bear on my arms and on my brow (which is sublime, for sure).
This was great I enjoyed this very much. I have never heard a summary of the beginnings of the gothic genre before and I had no idea the Warpole family had so much to do with it. Thank you so much.
OK, I need to listen to that all again and it sounds like The Castle of Otranto could make a cool D&D adventure. I am finally doing Ravenloft this Halloween. I have been waiting 41 years.
Shakespeare got a lot of how he wrote very psychological and modern-feeling characters from Euripides, which we know he studied as a schoolboy in the original Greek. The Ancient Greeks would've LOVED gothic fiction, I think!
I was getting Blackwood vibes more than Lovecraft, but I was fairly close. This was a phenomenal video, despite being different from the usual. Excellent work.
Dr. Sledge - Here is the continuation of the Super Thanks post. Before watching the video, I didn't read the full description and wasn't aware you would be discussing the sublime. As you talked about the aesthetic of beauty and terror, I thought, "He's talking about the sublime" about 5 seconds before you said the word sublime. "He said it! And he said it again!" I'm psychic! *dramatic musical chords* Then I experienced a "nerdgasm" at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and art. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, I felt "physically as if the top of my head were taken off." Back in ancient times, I learned about the sublime in a grad school course on 19th century American literature 26 years ago. Picture it, Western Illinois University, 1998. Dr. Joswick taught 19th c. American lit to first year grad students using the sublime as a critical lens. We read the obvious male writers: Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. But Dr. Joswick snuck in a few women writers: Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. You can't have a course on the theory of the sublime without including Edmund Burke, obviously. To understand the sublime beyond literature, the syllabus also included American landscape paintings and excerpts from John Muir's travelogues. Dr. Joswick also introduced us to Walker Percy (experiencing the sublime in Percy's chapter on ex-s***ides). The course was memorable. While going down this rabbit hole on the sublime, one could say beauty and terror are two sides of the same coin. I see the sublime's relationship to the tragicomic. Henri Bergson's theory of comedy included a comparison of the comic with the tragic, which are also two sides of the same coin. (Memories from another past lit seminar on the theory of comedy. Wanna know what's not funny? The theory of comedy.) Can one experience the sublime in its truest state while also feeling the tragicomic? Is this the threshold of absurdity? Is this a dumb idea? I don't have a degree in philosophy. Dr. Sledge, were you referencing Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies when you said the power of the sublime threatens to annihilate us and our consciousness and life itself? "Every angel is terrifying." "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us." Rilke understood the sublime. Thank you for your years of hard work bringing high quality scholarly content to the public. And thank you for reading my post if you made it this far.
I didn't think Otranto was unreadable! I liked it. It feels ahead of its time; Walpole writes in his introduction to the second edition that he wanted to combine "two genres of romance, the ancient and the modern," meaning that he wanted to put realistic people in fantastic situations and see how they react. So we basically have him to thank for speculative fiction.
Your explanation of the sublime vs. what we experience in our insulated daily lives reminds me of a quote given by the 11th century teacher Machig Labdrön in the Chöd tradition of Tibetan Buddhism: “Go to the places that scare you.” In some way these places that truly frighten us serve to dramatically heighten our awareness and make us feel vitally alive, more than the average person feels in our everyday lives. I think it’s at least partly this desire to experience this bright vividness - in spite of the accompanying fear - that brings us back to the horrible, gothic, dreadful, and macabre, again and again.
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Your comment about liking the silmarillion but can't make it through LOTR is me. So funny.
kaelan mikla mentioned!
What is your fav metal throat singing band called?
I Adore Vlad
28:05 You've never finished Lord of the Rings? That's it! You're dead to me now. 😜
This has been the first time I’ve actually feel like understood what the sublime actually means.
Made me reconsider - I always thought of it in the chemical sense of a material that can transition directly from a solid to a gas. Both ethereal I guess?
This video confuses my understanding of the sublime.
How does this notion of the sublime correlate with the psychotherapeutic notion of sublimination, where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior? (i.e. becoming sublime) That doesn't sound 'sublime' according to Burke? Rather the contrary. Usually one would think that being sublime is equivalent to being 'great', 'complete', 'total', or something of the sort. In a third way, there is the chemical transformation of transforming a solid to a gas, without passing through the liquid state. What does all these notions have in common? I am bedazzled.
Same. It contextualizes my almost primal fear of and paradoxical fascination with ancient ruins. That feeling that the ghosts of the past are bearing down on you for your intrusion, the vastness of the time between these ruins and your own time. It just truly awes and horrifies.
Well, its used in slightly different ways in different fields … this is s certain history of usage.
Pps. You might like Cousins' The Ugly
The frequency with which you are dropping such thoughtful content is utterly remarkable. Keep it up! Thank you for exploring these topics.
Thanks!
Agree! Also totally didn't see this one coming. Amazing
A prime example to me of sublime gothic beauty is the cathedral in Köln - it is quite literally gothic in its style of architecture but is also “goth” in its deeper subjective impact. It’s so massive, so unapologetically maximalist; its countless spires give it a sharp and almost dangerous appearance despite it being a holy place. It’s also covered in centuries of soot stains and patina, making it seem almost as if it’s casting supernatural shadows upon itself even in bright sunlight. When I saw it in person I felt that amazing mixture of awe and slight terror that made my goth little heart sing!
Been a while since I visited the truly impressive Gothic cathedral in Cologne...
Something that really struck me all those years ago was the "gloomth" of the interior which was in stark contrast to various English cathedrals and even Southern German ones.
Great awe-inspiring experience that really tickled my Gothic sensibilities.
It just looks evil. Like how do people worship a presumably good god in there? How do people reconcile that in their head? It's an evil building, made to look evil, to worship evil.
@@igor_kossov interesting question. I wonder what the architects thought how the building looked, which emotions they ascribed to it.
That's a good text!
I think the architects just did the 19th century version of "OH MAN THIS'LL LOOK SO FUCKEN SICK BRO"
The fact that Justin can’t make it through a LOTR book is the most interesting fact I’ve learned from any of his videos. Absolutely insane, I can’t even assimilate that information.
he should try just the silmarillion its more like an actual medieval/late antique "universal histories" genre
@@Smoug haven't read yet.
Loving the Silmarillion set me up to be a religious studies major I swear.
...I had- & still have the SAME reason(s) as the Good Doctor for throwing-down One More copy of TLoTR than I've picked up -- to 'Give it A[nother] Try'...
I've concluded that the Tolkien Trilogy was- and has -- according to the fluxes of Popular Culture -- essentially "Been Popular for Being Popular"
@@jordanm6940 i feel like college dropout former gifted children seem to forget actual nerds prefer actual sustainable and valuable knowledge over pseudo-intellectual mythological garbage. the brain is inherently receptive to one form of media over the other in such cases
I went to prep school in England, a big Gothic/Victorian Mansion. Our elderly french teacher complete with paunch, Edwardian suit, pocket watch and monacle, read us a horror story every Christmas, the last lesson before the break.
You just described my version of Heaven.
Having been Goth for forty years I am very pleased with your analysis of gothic literature. I forgot just how much I love the word 'gloomth' so thanks for the reminder.
It's like the onomatopoeiaic expression of a large stone falling into a well.
@@drewgoin8849 Yes it is, or perhaps it's also that of a falling tree. Both are nice vignettes of decay.
@@SAOS451316 no offense but if you think gloomth is onomatopoeic of a falling tree I doubt you have actually heard one fall in person. It's the roar of a wounded beast merged with a peal of thunder. I would hardly describe that as sounding like gloomth.
A discussion of gothic literature and the sublime? It's not my birthday, but it sure feels like it right now. 🖤
Mine is tomorrow, so that’s a gift and a half.
Hi Doc Sledge. I stayed up until 1 in the morning to tell you "Happy Teachers' Day"! Hope you have a good one and thank you for doing what you do.
"Joy Division but with harpsichords". You're cracking me up.
I really want someone to make this now.
Just made the same comment. LOL🤣
@@rycolligan ua-cam.com/video/LTFpcoU2IrA/v-deo.html
that was my favorite line of the whole video
Conquistadors with pompoms JD style😊😅
This channel is more academic than many university programs. Amazing. Thank you so much.
I shall now 𝕲𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖙𝖍 my way through Burke and the Castle Of Otranto. (And yes, I have read The Silmarillion. 😁)
I love the Silmarillion but God, it's such a slog 😂 truly like reading a complex religious text imho
@@siobhanomalley1968 That's probably only the introduction to the gods, most people have that issue. The tales from the first and second age totally slap and it's hard to stop reading. Of course, this is all subjective but I would encourage you to persevere or skip ahead to Feanor losing his shit and then continue from there.
“history as horror”, what an excellent summation of the Gothic, such as it can be summarized. It’s a great jumping point, at least.
I love the path you take through this subject.
Gothic horror, like the perception of the sublime to the modern mind, is rooted in our sense of self but ultimately at odds with it. We need that modern sense of self to feel the loss inherent in gothic horror, because it is the rock we cling to as the waters of the sublime overtake us.
It’s deeply personal depersonalization.
I also think that it’s rooted in a peculiar, academic anxiety. The classic conception of a history is the book of knowledge. It is ancient, it is good, and it is good because it is ancient.
The story of the gothic is, in some ways, the story of the first modern historians. The edifices of material culture crumble, and we are left to dwell on what is lost: it dwarfs us. More so for the first modern historians, to truly understand that the content of a book may be as corrupted as the moldering pages upon which it was scrawled. It is to know not what the ancients knew but to know that the ancients might have known nothing.
Gothic horror is the horror of books.
Let's be real, all of Esoterica has been leading up to this episode.
As I learn more about history I've frequently wondered how we got from the Goths who sacked Rome to "Gothic" architecture to our modern "Goth" aesthetic, and here you are to give that exact explanation!
I'm a long time cinema geek. Murnau's Nosferatu is one of my favorite early movies, along with Dreyer's Vampyr.
I learned a lot from the video you've offered us here.
Cheers. ✌️
NOT an early movie but an eerily chillingly horrifically hauntingly seriously gothic movie (just a SMALL correction)
@@jesperandersson889 How do you define "early movie"?
Like, Nosferatu came out in 1922.
I said "early movie" in a "my actual Grandma wasn't even born" kind of way. Y'know? 😛
Maybe you're implying "early movie" in some really specific academic way?
flintstones?
@@hugodesrosiers-plaisance3156 I agree with it the good doctor had most of it right
Let me just pause Siouxsie and the Banshees. Let me tab out of Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines. You have my attention
I cannot believe more people aren't commenting on the sneaky Bauhaus reference at 22:12 Undead Undead Undead
Alone in a darkened room . . . The count.
YES!!!.. I was totally enamored with Bauhaus back in that day. Saw their reunion tour and was not disappointed.
This was incredible! You were on fire. So poetic and informative.
🔥🖤🔥
Glad you thought so - thanks!
You have a gift for descriptive language that is delightful!
Many thanks!
I love this man’s use of vocabulary.
i was a 'goth' many years ago. my earliest memories consists of listening to the band 'sisers of mercy', dressing in all black, and wearing black combat boots. thank you dr sledge for the good memories! (and for today, all the additional context...)
You sing that corrosion with your bad self!😘
I found Bauhaus first, but they were definitely in the same realm.
You are hands down, the best educator that I have encountered. Granted, with only a bachelor's degree, I have a relatively small sample to have been impressed by, but still you are tops. Thank you for the content that you provide.
Thank you for the distinction of sublime and delight,food for thought.
Goth is glorious. My son has just entered his goth phase and I'm here for it.
Great opener for spooky season!
DID NOT expect a reference to actual goth rock on my favorite esoteric literature channel‚ but i'm thrilled about it.
literally to kaelan milka … he's so tapped in
Thank you for the great video! I really like Rudolf Otto's use of the Sublime in his "The Idea of the Holy" (1917, orig. "Das Heilige"). According to him, numinous feelings have two aspects at the same time: The "mysterium tremendum", that which inspires fear, and the "mysterium fascinans", that which draws one near to it. The work was very influencial in the new field of religious studies and the German theology of that time.
dr justin really made a 30 minute video just for his goth baddy subscribers mad respect. fantastic video as always!
There was a novel about 2 years before "The Castle of Otranto" that arguably distilled the Gothic ideal before Walpole. It was called "Longsword Earl of Salisbury" by Thomas Leland. It's loosely based on the life of William Longespée, half brother of Richard I. It influenced Walpole .
Interesting. I have often heard the claim of Walpole’s creation of the gothic, but this is the first time that I have heard anyone posit an alternative. I will be looking into it. Thank you.
Oh, yeah. I actually read the original edition, so unfortunately my impression of it isn't really "Gothic" because of all the f-shaped s letters. See, when you read the flowing prose but keep getting caught on words that look like fhore, fands, courtefy, and such, it kinda has the feel of listening to someone with a speech impediment trying his best. It reads pretty damn funny to me. If anyone ever wants to read this novel, get the modern 1990s version.
To me, this book shall forever be "Longfword, Earl of Falisbury".
All your videos are fun and interesting, but this one was even a few notches more fascinating than usual. Sublimity as you explained it sounds like that which inspires awe, which is another word that has taken on an altogether different meaning than it originally held.
Is it just me or anyone wish this episode would’ve been filmed by camp fire and Dr.Sledge holding a flashlight under his chin? The delivery is sooo darkly great! 😈
Or, better yet, by walking by lantern-light at night through dark moors, cemeteries, ruins, and catacombs, with the sound of night insects and other creatures of the shadows in the background....
Love sleeping to your videos!
Not to say they’re boring, you just have a calming voice
Its great because I end up rewatching videos because I actually want to know about the topic
Dr. Sledge - Thank you for talking about the sublime. This is my favorite of your videos. You speak about the Gothic and the sublime like a poet. 26 years ago, I was in grad seminar on 19th C. American Lit. that incorporated the sublime in literary criticism. Thank you. I'll post a longer comment below.
In reference to The Lord of the Rings, E.L. Doctrow wrote an essay for the NY Times series Writers on Writing where he postulated that older Novels like The Lord of the Rings don't read so well anymore because the style of writing has changed due to the influence of movies. He sites The Maltese Falcon as a turning point. John Houston used Dashill Hammett's novel as his shooting script. The incredibly sparse style Hammett employed became the norm. Doctrow postulates that modern novels are written to be movie scripts. He points out that Stendhal's The Red and the Black has an opening chapter that just describe in detail entering the town. Hammett had a lot of influence on movies. Akira Kurosawa used Hammett 's Red Harvest and Glass Key as a basis for his classic Yojimbo - which Serjio Leone later based his Fistful of Dollars on.
I have to say as someone born in 1970 I find almost anything written after the 1980s unreadable. I love LOTR and older victorian fiction.
@@Eire-xq9jz I find some modern Mysteries hold up.I usually read historical Mysteries, so maybe they are just far enough off the beaten path to be left alone. It may just be that there hasn't been enough time for the trash to sink. I found G.R.R. Martin unreadable. His writing had that washed out dirty mono-chrome of Medieval movies have today. At least The Lord of the Rings had some texture and color. I keep telling people if the Vikings could have Chromed their boats and had bright pink sails they would have done it. Maybe they are going for something Gothic in their tone, but instead they look like they took Monty Python and the Holy Grail as history.
I'm just starting a Masters in creative writing and found the NY Times full archive of writers on writing articles thanks to this comment 😄 Its interesting this sort of works in reverse, there are some classics I've not been able to get into until I saw film adaptations - Lord of the Rings being one, Dune another (the Lynch Dune), but once I had that visual reference and story overview I flew through them.
I'm just starting a Masters in Creative Writing and you videos never fail to leave me without some type of inspiration or further reading to improve my work 😄 And just wanted to add for anyone who doesn't know - both of the recommended texts in this video are free to read on Project Gutenberg.
How are you going to earn a living?😂
Well Dr Justin, this one touched something in me. Being British with a touch of the Gothic about me, in that I've stayed in more than a few haunted castles, and Manor houses on the back-end of their past elegance, I am very into this genre. But you said something important here about contemplating something bigger. I get that. When one has stood by oneself at Callanish standing stones on a starry night, or sat for a while at a 5,000 year old Dolmon, one is put in his place by the meaninglessness of everything back in the city. I even get that when I go camping here in Texas, and see the awesome sight of the Milky Way, something most people alive will never see. It's there, but you've got to leave your towns and go look for it. Long story short, too late, which is why I believe a camping trip, or a day by the sea, or a walk up a mountain, or a wander on a moor, resets us all. We realize just how vulnerable we actually are. At the mercy of the multi-dimensional unknown, and that is what Lovecraft tapped into...
Sweden took that historical Gothic revisionism to the extreme with the southern part of Sweden proper being deemed Götaland or Gothland when Gustav Vasa was forging a unique Swedish national identity as distinct from the Danes. Gustavus Adolphus also used this Gothic identity to push the protestant cause in the thirty years war.
This is reassuring that I’ve done a good job keeping the Burkean sublime in mind despite not having a proper name for it in all the lore I wrote for my vampire dnd campaign. I had only encountered discussion of the sublime in Fanged Noumena before and only had an intuitive understanding of it. Once I’m done with my Clark Ashton Smith kick I’m definitely reading Castle of Otranto. Thanks Dr.Sledge!
Exceptional work on this one is... I was literally thinking that your rhythm and delivery is coming across as delightfully Lovecraftian, when you said..."You're getting those Lovecraft vibes yet." (We are on the same page).
Amazing timing, wordplay, and tone.
The Caspar David Friedrich stuck out to me in an instant, such haunting and beautiful works
True beauty always has an element of horror in it, a kind of uncanny sense or something slightly disturbing, it is this that makes us pause and wonder at it. Without this the thing in question cannot open doors to a sublime experience - it is merely a pretty thing. Our encounters with the sublime are shocking as if being transported to the edge of a precipice, one suddenly has terrible knowledge that they will never be the same after these strange encounters. Love the gothic content 🌹
Great video, Dr. Sledge. A very informative and helpful presentation about one of my (and many others) all-time favorite genres. I definitely would like to hear your subsequent commentaries on this subject.
Also, finish the Lord of the Rings series. 😊
probably not going to happen
The day after my PCs diablerized the Malkavian Primogen you drop this. Absolutely perfect and was immediately shared with the rest of my gaming group. Thank you so much. This is perfect.
It is a great joy to see my favorite Gothic painter's works displayed in your video. Friedrich was so real
Fabulous episode this week. I really enjoyed listening and learning all about the history of the gothic.
Regarding The Castle of Otranto, yes indeed, it is a bit difficult to read. For me it’s all the wacky names. There are soooo many names and after page 15 it gets really confusing. I lose track of who’s who and who’s chasing after which character and why. I even lose where they’re doing all this stuff, which room or tunnel or tower or dungeon.
However you have given me renewed strength. I will once again pick up this tiny tempting tome and do my best to power through it and make it to the end. Perhaps I’ll make a spreadsheet of all the characters and their relationships to one another 😅 That way I’ll have a kind of reference chart 📊 to look to when I loose the plot 😅 Wish me luck 👍
Did not expect a Kaelan Mikla reference in an ESOTERICA video! Interesting crossover.
They're great
Totally worth crawling out of my crypt for! Many thanks!
Please consider adding a Gloomth T-shirt to your store. I must have one!
And I also loved that sneaky Bauhaus reference, too.
Your channel is Wonderfiul, Dr Sledge. I am mildly addicted to listening to you talk about pretty much anything, though most of what you say flies over my head. Thank you!😀
There's an Italian Philosopher (Umberto Galimberti) who often speaks about the feeling of the "sacred", meaning everything outside the rationally coded reality we live in. "Sacred" includes religious concepts like the coexistence of opposites (in the divine will for example) or simply the coexistence of multiple meanings on a single thing (a glass can be used to drink water but also it can be thrown as a weapon), and so the dionisiac "folly". Artists, poets, but also children, explore the "sacred".
Civilization keeps the "sacred" in separated realms (religion, art) to enable humans to live together with less turmoil possible (it would be difficult to live in a society where things are not universally "coded").
This is very much close to Nietzsche's reasoning.
Now the concept of "Sublime", the way you explained it in this video. I feel like connecting the dots here!
The "Sublime" to me looks like another concept within the "Sacred" or vice versa. I feel like I've just understood for the first time in my life why I am always searching for the "Sublime," through my taste for listening and composing extreme music, or esoteric and philosophic readings, or my love for going to explore abandoned places and ruins, or by always dreaming about the infinite universe.
Thank you Dr. Justin Sledge. I'm not able to express how much your work is valuable to me.
This was a much needed investigation. Sublimity is so important but it’s not frequently taught. Great job!
@@iandaitz3090 Why is sublimity important?
There are many aspects of the sublime to treat but generally the sublime astounds, confounds, and humbles us.
Wow, literally every video is amazing. As an aspiring academic in a master's program, your communicative art is something to strive for. I plan to make my cohort fans for this channel.
Mark Fisher’s dissertation “Flatline Constricts: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction” is worth the read. Takes the gothic well understood here to a contemporary moment, both for better and for worse.
Thanks for your wit and humor which you employ with understated precision. Love it and it keeps me coming back for more.
Another excellent video. I taught Gothic literature for years and always had to skim over Burke’s theory of the sublime with barely enough time to do the texts themselves justice. I wish this video had been available to show the students, giving them the historical perspective and context of the genre’s origins. My aesthetic shall forever be Gloomth
This reminds me of a song we made titled: “My Joy Division has The Cure for my Depressed Mode why I be playing War Tapes while BoWie feeling Low at Murphy’s Bauhaus”. lol. Awesome episode yet again Prof. Sledge.
You peak my interest every upload. I love some of the gothic stuff. The architecture, the objects, the philosophy and so on. Not that i live by all of it but i dig it. Cheers
I'm so happy you dig Black Sabbath. This channel gives me hope for the future of rizz in academia.
Hahaha..! The Intro & The Exit; both are almost Shakespearein with comedy!..😂 The content between was revealing, inspiring and insightfully deep.🤔 Thank you.. This was Cool..👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾💕🖖🏾
I read The Castle of Otranto a year ago. Not only did I not find it unreadable, but I loved it.
i was just having a binge of your videos as this popped up! always a treat to listen to your research and insights! essentially as the nights get darker and the vail gets thinner! 👻
Silmarillion !! Love the name drop.
I’ve read that twice and LoTRs more times than I can count.
This gives me confidence that the titles you mention are accomplishable feats for me. Thx
😁😁👍🏼
I think it's awesome that you did this episode. Take a look at the philosophical underpinnings of the Gothic in your academic style, is. . . refreshing. . . Invigorating. . . An unexpectedly good deed in a weary world.
You Rock.
Always great to see you flexing that Philosophy muscles! And the theme couldn't be better for the time of the year (and for my personal preferences).
So good Justin, you’re an excellent writer and orator.
When you said Bridgerton vibes I felt true horror.
I felt nauseous and bored at the image. Quick, think ruined misty castles with wolves and dark shadows under a blue moon.
You talked me into reading it, and then, by the end, you talked me out of ever reading it. So that went just about nowhere. But thanks for all the chilling chatter that surrounded the idea of the book (novella?). Quite fascinating. I just never thought the sublime as coming to rest so much in the "horror" camp, rather than the strangely wonderful blurring of beauty and horror confused that is ultimately very satisfyingly a "balm" for the soul. The storm that makes the eye of the storm.
Love your content, thank you for all your work into this!!!
Oh my gosh! I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was to hear you say it, but I really enjoyed reading The Silmarillion and I have never made it out of the shire trying to read LOTR either! I am so relieved to find someone else who feels similar about it. Thanks so much for sharing that tidbit. :)
Dr. Sledge, I'm a relatively new subscriber who has been absolutely loving your content. I actually ended up here originally because your first video on the Demiurge was linked on a video I was watching about the horror ttrpg Kult: Divinity Lost, which is HEAVILY based in Gnostic lore. Anyway, I'm also goth, so this video is checking all the boxes! Thank you so much for what you do. It's incredible.
Love all the references and thorough research put into these videos, thank you !! I watched this by my fireplace while it was storming outside :D
The beast’s heavy steps, echo in dread,
I tremble in fear, wish I were dead.
I trip in the dark, struggling to flee
Only to realise, the monster is ME!!👹
Lol😅. Thank you.✌🏻🧡
not funny-this the conceit of movie Forbidden Planet!...😉
I taught Otranto as part of my course on Gothic fiction in Germany in 2017; will be looking at it again at my current appointment in India in the next few weeks. The German students thought it was great; I look forward to seeing what the Indians will make of it.
not only educational, but this was a lot more fun than I imagined it would be.
Thank you Doctor!
This is probably one of my favorite videos you’ve done. I laughed multiple times. Your description of the sublime was perfect. I’d love for you to do something similar for cosmic horror.
So happy the algorithm let me find you. Fantastic job. 🐦⬛
As part of the subculture I cannot be grateful enough for this.
This, discussion, to me, brings to mind Robert Plutnik's theory of Emotion, the color wheel of emotion where "amazement" is found between grief and fear, with "awe" close by.
When you were describing the sublime, it was very poetic... beautiful. I was enthralled. Captivated.
...As far as summaries on the internet, I find that they get me excited to get the books. ...Aside from my ever growing library, you should see my list of books to buy. To which I've added Burke's Enquiry. Thanks :)
Love your videos. Fantastically informative and soothing in a way. Cheers.
Esotericism, philosophy, Kælan Mikla, gothic literature and æstethics and safe words.
This video really has everything!
Great work as always Dr Sledge! 🌒🦇🌹🍷🧛♂️
Dear Dr Sledge, you managed to explain to me my own love history since my adolescence in half and hour. Gloomth is definitely the word I bear on my arms and on my brow (which is sublime, for sure).
This was great I enjoyed this very much. I have never heard a summary of the beginnings of the gothic genre before and I had no idea the Warpole family had so much to do with it. Thank you so much.
Wow this was so much fun, reading the castle of otranto right away.
As a student of comparative religion and history, as well as goth music enthusiast, this video was just perfect🦇
Thank you for your hard work and generosity, Dr. Sledge!
I appreciate your humor as much as your erudition.
OK, I need to listen to that all again and it sounds like The Castle of Otranto could make a cool D&D adventure. I am finally doing Ravenloft this Halloween. I have been waiting 41 years.
The Carl Sagan reference was top notch. Keep it up, sir! Your content is excellent.
Totally missed that. I was that weird kid that couldn’t get enough of Mr. Sagan. I’m watching it again. LOL
@@nathanielgillespie2627 same here 😂
Thanks Justin, this went so much further than I would have initially geussed. Took me back to my own studies in Art Theory and Philosopgy of Mind.
Excellent stuff, fascinating and sublime. Thank you.
Great video - I always learn something when I watch your videos
NES Classic Castlevania! 0:55 🤘❤🤘
This might be your best straight-up essay. I’d love to see it on paper.
Thank you so much for taking the time to study this and make this amazing video!!
Shakespeare got a lot of how he wrote very psychological and modern-feeling characters from Euripides, which we know he studied as a schoolboy in the original Greek. The Ancient Greeks would've LOVED gothic fiction, I think!
I'm so excited to watch this video! I'm taking a course on 18th century American gothic lit right now, and I'm really enjoying it.
In essence: gothic, it's just vibes... Love this video!
I was getting Blackwood vibes more than Lovecraft, but I was fairly close.
This was a phenomenal video, despite being different from the usual. Excellent work.
Dr. Sledge - Here is the continuation of the Super Thanks post. Before watching the video, I didn't read the full description and wasn't aware you would be discussing the sublime. As you talked about the aesthetic of beauty and terror, I thought, "He's talking about the sublime" about 5 seconds before you said the word sublime. "He said it! And he said it again!" I'm psychic! *dramatic musical chords* Then I experienced a "nerdgasm" at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and art. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, I felt "physically as if the top of my head were taken off." Back in ancient times, I learned about the sublime in a grad school course on 19th century American literature 26 years ago.
Picture it, Western Illinois University, 1998. Dr. Joswick taught 19th c. American lit to first year grad students using the sublime as a critical lens. We read the obvious male writers: Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. But Dr. Joswick snuck in a few women writers: Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. You can't have a course on the theory of the sublime without including Edmund Burke, obviously. To understand the sublime beyond literature, the syllabus also included American landscape paintings and excerpts from John Muir's travelogues. Dr. Joswick also introduced us to Walker Percy (experiencing the sublime in Percy's chapter on ex-s***ides). The course was memorable.
While going down this rabbit hole on the sublime, one could say beauty and terror are two sides of the same coin. I see the sublime's relationship to the tragicomic. Henri Bergson's theory of comedy included a comparison of the comic with the tragic, which are also two sides of the same coin. (Memories from another past lit seminar on the theory of comedy. Wanna know what's not funny? The theory of comedy.) Can one experience the sublime in its truest state while also feeling the tragicomic? Is this the threshold of absurdity? Is this a dumb idea? I don't have a degree in philosophy.
Dr. Sledge, were you referencing Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies when you said the power of the sublime threatens to annihilate us and our consciousness and life itself? "Every angel is terrifying." "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us." Rilke understood the sublime.
Thank you for your years of hard work bringing high quality scholarly content to the public. And thank you for reading my post if you made it this far.
I didn't think Otranto was unreadable! I liked it. It feels ahead of its time; Walpole writes in his introduction to the second edition that he wanted to combine "two genres of romance, the ancient and the modern," meaning that he wanted to put realistic people in fantastic situations and see how they react. So we basically have him to thank for speculative fiction.
Your explanation of the sublime vs. what we experience in our insulated daily lives reminds me of a quote given by the 11th century teacher Machig Labdrön in the Chöd tradition of Tibetan Buddhism: “Go to the places that scare you.”
In some way these places that truly frighten us serve to dramatically heighten our awareness and make us feel vitally alive, more than the average person feels in our everyday lives. I think it’s at least partly this desire to experience this bright vividness - in spite of the accompanying fear - that brings us back to the horrible, gothic, dreadful, and macabre, again and again.