What does the sublime sound like? Miranda Stanyon traces competing varieties of the sublime, a crucial modern aesthetic category, as shaped by the antagonistic intimacies between music and language. In resounding the history of the sublime over the course of the long eighteenth century, she finds a phenomenon always already resonant.

ContentsList of AbbreviationsNote on Translations and ReferencesIntroductionPart I. He Rais'd a Mortal to the Skies; She Drew an Angel Down: English Literature, Circa 1670-1760Chapter 1. Music as a "Bastard Imitation of Persuasion"? Power and Legitimacy in Dryden and DennisChapter 2. "What Passion Cannot Musick Raise and Quell!" Passionate and Dispassionate Sublimity with theHillarians and HandeliansPart II. Hissing Snakes and Angelic Hosts: German Literature, Circa 1720-1770Chapter 3. Reforming Aesthetics: Bodmer and Breitinger's Anti-Musical SublimeChapter 4. Klopstock, Rustling, and the Antiphonal SublimePart III. Sublime Beauty and the Wrath of the Organ: English and German Literature, Circa 1770-1850Chapter 5. The Beauty of the Infinite: Herder's Sublimely-Beautiful, Beautifully-Sublime MusicChapter 6. The Terror of the Infinite: Thomas De Quincey's ReverberationsConclusionNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments