“In Pursuit of the Sublime: De Quincey and the Romantics’ Metaphysical Conception of Crime”

Thomas De Quincey's essays on murder considered as one of the fine arts have been the object of several critical studies, often focussing on the connection between murder and the aesthetic category of the sublime, as developed both by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. On the other hand, De Quincey's narratives of crime deserve closer critical attention, having been studied mainly with regard to their Gothic roots rather than with an eye to their transitional character. To shed new light on the complex development of De Quincey's aesthetics, and of Romantic crime fiction, my essay will focus on less-know texts such as "Klosterheim; or, The Masque" (1832) and "The Avenger" (1838), which I consider to be at the fulcrum of some powerful energy fields of the Romantic imagination. My reading of De Quincey's work will therefore explore the relation between crime, power and the sublime, which is at the core of the author's aesthetics, and which he encapsulated in the definition of "literature of power", as opposed to "literature of knowledge".