Heroic Awe: The Sublime and the Remaking of Renaissance Epic

"Heroic Awe offers a searching, meticulously researched, and brilliantly argued account of the early modern history of the sublime and its fundamental but underappreciated relation to the Italian, French, and English epic. Combining deep cultural and linguistic awareness with acute theoretical insights, Lehtonen reveals how the sublime both informs and is shaped by the poetic and critical discourses of the era. Without doubt, one of the most urgent and original studies of the sublime of the past twenty years."

Robert Doran, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Rochester

"With erudition and insight, Heroic Awe makes the case for a Longinian sublime in Renaissance epic poetry. The sublime, in this sense, involves an overwhelming spiritual experience: an encounter with the divine that leaves the epic hero awe-struck or terrified. Lehtonen traces such encounters in the poems of Du Bartas, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton, and in the literary theory of the period. The result is a worthy contribution to Renaissance epic scholarship."

Tobias Gregory, Associate Professor of English, Catholic University of America

"Heroic Awe richly traces the influence of the Longinian sublime on Renaissance epic literature. Kelly Lehtonen shows how the epic heroes of Tasso, Du Bartas, Spenser, and Milton experience forms of ekplexis – awe, terror, rapture – in their encounters with the divine. Her probing analyses of these Christian heroes, as they stand before an almighty God, compel us to rethink the early reception of Longinus and the structures of feeling in Renaissance epic poetry."

Anthony Welch, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee