The C. G. Jung Center, 408 Franklin Street, Buffalo, New York
Mountains of the Mind
presented by
Ann Colley, Ph.D.
Wednesday Night Lecture, October, 10th , 7:30 pm
The 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke wrote that a sublime experience was one that mixed pleasure
with terror, at the same time opening the individual to a sense of connection with a larger consciousness. When people
in the nineteenth century looked at mountain scenery, the first word that came to their mind was "sublime."
Prof. Colley will first present and discuss examples from 19th century painting, prose, and poetry that responded to the
experience of the sublime as it was perceived in such settings as the Swiss Alps. In part 2 of her lecture, she will focus on how
increasing familiarity with these scenes caused late 19th century Victorians to subvert this perception of the sublime through
humor, ranging from cartoons and book illustrations to passages from travel books and satirical novels. Finally, she will
conclude by posing the question of whether it is still possible to have a "sublime" experience in the twenty-first century.
Ann C. Colley, Ph.D., is Professor of English at Buffalo State College. In addition to numerous articles in such journals as The Kenyon Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Victorian Poetry, her several books include: Tennyson and Madness; The Search for Synthesis in Literature and Art: The Paradox of Space; Edward Lear and the Critics; Nostalgia and Recollection in Victorian Culture, and most recently, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Colonial Imagination.
Lecture, $10; Members and Students, $8