ABSTRACT
In his work on Sterne, Jonathan Lamb has reclaimed an interest in theories of the sublime that have, in the last academic generation, been more or less the prerogative of critics of romantic and pre romantic literature. Lamb quite firmly assumes what is a fact, namely that Longinus's theories of the sublime have a distinct history in the eighteenth century, and are not necessarily anticipations of the romantic period to come. Combining intellectual or cultural history with formal reading, Lamb argues that the sublime is a figural way of marking eccentricity, a feature associated in the eighteenth century (and after) with the English. Because the sublime is a device for marking individuality, it is also a way to think about the individual's opposition to social norms, of the kind described by George Starr's general essay on the novel of sentiment (see Chapter 2 above). Thus Sterne's endemic figural playfulness is justified at almost every turn by Longinus's theories.
