Tor Ulven’s Poetry in the light of Longinus
A Qualitative Study of the Sublime Reading Experience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v20i73.62Keywords:
Longinus, ekplexis, hypsous, Tor Ulven, empirical studies, transformationAbstract
How can the concept of the sublime contribute to an understanding of a life-changing reading experience, and how may qualitative interviews with ordinary readers give us deeper insight into the sublime? This article presents a single-case study of one reader’s transformative experience of reading a poem by Tor Ulven. Previous empirical inquiries into life-altering reading experiences have dealt mainly with unequivocally positive experiences, and how the reading helped the reader through a crisis. Overwhelming reading experiences that seem to elicit a crisis, however, have not been explored in depth. The case will be discussed in light of two passages from Longinus’ On the Sublime. The article argues that the ekplectic and the hypsotic may be useful concepts to help us understand transformative reading experiences.
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