Sublime Union

Relying on the author’s established expertise in rhetorical theory and political communication, this book re-contextualizes Romantic rhetorical theory in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to provide a foundation for a Neo-Romantic rhetorical theory for our own time. In the process, it uses a unique methodology to correct misconceptions about many Romantic writers. The methodology of the early chapters uses a dialectical approach to trace Romanticism and its opposition, the Enlightenment, back through Humanism and its opposition, Scholasticism, to St. Augustine. These chapters include a revisionist analysis of the church’s treatment of Galileo in the course of showing how difficult it was for scientific study to be accepted in the academic world. The study also re-conceptualizes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Edmund Burke as bridge figures to the Romantic Era instead of as Enlightenment figures. This move throws new light on the major artists of the Romantic Era, who are examined in chapters seven and eight. Chapter nine focuses on Percy Bysshe Shelley and his development of the rhetorical poem, and thereby provides a new genre in the Romantic catalogue. Chapter ten uses the foregoing to analyse and reconceptualize the rhetorical theories of Hugh Blair and Thomas De Quincey. The concluding chapter then synthesizes their theories with relevant contemporary rhetorical theories thereby constructing a Neo-Romantic theory for our own time. In the process, this book links the Romantics’ love of nature to the current environmental crisis.

Follow Mary Magdalene on a profound journey into the world of sacred sexuality. "Sublime Union" presents Mary Magdalene's messages, given to author Mercedes Kirkel, on the techniques of sacred sexuality. Mary describes in detail the sexual practices of the Temple of Isis, including the advanced form she engaged with Yeshua (Jesus). Woven together with these communications is Kirkel's stirring story of applying Mary's teaching with her partner. Both a sacred sexuality manual and erotic memoir, "Sublime Union" brings the "master-awakening-the-student" genre into the bedroom. A fascinating narrative that will leave you changed!--Publisher.

Relying on the author’s established expertise in rhetoric and political communication, this book re-contextualizes Romantic rhetorical theory from the late 18th and early 19th centuries to provide a foundation for a Neo-Romantic rhetorical theory for our own time. In the process, it uses a unique methodology to correct misconceptions about the rhetorical theories of many writers. Using a dialectical approach, the early chapters trace Romanticism through its opposition to the industrial revolution and the Enlightenment, back through Humanism and its opposition to Scholasticism, to its roots in St. Augustine’s writing. These chapters include a revisionist analysis of the church’s treatment of Galileo in the course of showing how difficult it was for scientific study to be accepted in Scholastic circles. The study goes on to argue that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Edmund Burke were bridge figures to the Romantic Era. This move throws new light on exemplary painters, composers, writers and orators of the Romantic Era, who are examined in chapters eight and nine. Chapter ten focuses on Percy Bysshe Shelley and his development of the rhetorical poem, and thereby provides a new genre in the Romantic catalogue. Chapter Eleven turns to the Romantic rhetorical theories of Hugh Blair and Thomas De Quincey to empower those seeking to save the environment. The concluding chapter then synthesizes their theories with relevant contemporary rhetorical theories thereby constructing a Neo-Romantic theory for our own time. In the process, the book links the Romantics’ love of nature to the current environmental crisis.

Tracing ideas of the sublime in American literature from Puritan writings to the postmodern epoch, Rob Wilson demonstrates that the North American landscape has been the ground for political as well as aesthetic transport. He takes a distinctly historical approach and explores the ways in which experiences of the American landscape instill desire for other kinds of vastness: self-expansion, national expansion, and American political power. As Wallace Stevens put it, the American will takes "dominion everywhere." Wilson sets the stage for his "genealogy" with a discussion of the classical notion of the sublime (taken primarily from Longinus) and the ways that notion was pragmatically transformed by its American setting and appropriated by American poets. He follows this transformation in successive chapters on the Puritans (Bradstreet) through the Naturalists (Livingston and Bryant), from the epitome of the American sublime (Whitman) to the greatest of the modernists (Stevens) and its present-day incarnations (Ashbery and others). Writing today under the sign of Hiroshima, contemporary writers must struggle with the concept of the sublime within a context of spiralling technologies and nuclear force that calls into question the long-standing American sacralization of power. Throughout American Sublime, Wilson engages in an original theoretical inquiry into "the sublime" as term, topic, complex, and controversial idea in literary and critical history. Furthermore, he undertakes his historical study from an avowedly postmodern perspective, one that draws on and extends the work of Jameson, Lyotard, Foucault, Lentricchia, Harold Bloom, and others.