The End of the Line

First published in 1985, The End of the Line brought together a series of essays tracing the notion of the sublime from Longinus’s inaugural treatise through its later exemplifications in eighteenth-century and Romantic writing (Kant, Wordsworth) and its inflections in works of nineteenth-century fiction (Flaubert, George Eliot) to its reappearance as “the uncanny” in Freud’s writings. In this new edition, Neil Hertz has added two more recent essays, one on Descartes and Samuel Johnson, the other on Paul de Man’s engagement with the criticism of William Empson.