SOURCE: "The Argument of Longinus on the Sublime," in Modern Philology, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3, February, 1942, pp. 225-58.

In this essay, Olson analyzes the structures of the various arguments that lead up to On the Sublime's conclusions and, from this, concludes that Longinus intended sublimity to be bound up with the communication of spiritual nobility rather than with mere stylistic manipulation.

The brief and fragmentary treatise [Peri Hypsous] presents the spectacle, not too uncommon in literature, of a major critical document which has gained assent—in this case almost universal assent—to its statements while the arguments which developed and guaranteed those statements have gone nearly unexamined.¹ Since its publication at Basel by Robortello in 1554, and more particularly since Boileau's translation a hundred and twenty years later, the treatise has been frequently edited and translated, admired and eulogized, cited and discussed; but the quality of sensibility for which...