ABSTRACT
The early modern sublime did not operate as a strictly codified concept that referred only to On the Sublime, but it was much more flexible and often operated with neighboring concepts. These concepts could be appropriated from ancient authors—Ovid's distinction between sublimis and humilis, Seneca's ideas about representing terror in the theater in order to rise above it, and Lucretius's metaphor of the shipwreck with spectator. As an effect of presentification, the sublime brings persons, events, nature, or objects directly before the eyes. Burke and Kant gave the possibility to question how in the visual culture of the Dutch Republic feelings of “delightful horror” or experiences of what goes beyond measure and substance can destabilize the beholder and question his fixed position as a subject. Basically, in profoundly affecting the viewers, in destabilizing them and evoking strong emotions, the seventeenth-century sublime revealed, in one way or another, vision itself as problematic and troublesome.
