Pimone Triplett: Something More on the Sublime (January 2006)

Pimone Triplett reflects on how contemporary writers have adopted and transformed conventional understandings of the sublime. She focuses on how diasporic writers and writers of color have radically altered the sublime’s definition to include the “engulfing weight” of lost home, human labor and historical ghosts. Drawing on Wordsworth’s Prelude and on writings by Kant, Triplett turns, for contemporary examples, to work by Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Srikanth Reddy, Pablo Neruda and Harryette Mullen.