Still Alice and the Burkean Sublime

It is hard to decide whether the words sublime and the sublimity used in the 18th century have still the same reverberations in the 21st century. The aesthetic reflections on sublime vary in the 18th century. There are three theoriticians on sublimity dating back to the past: Pseudo Longinos, Burke and Kant. In Pseudo-Longinos, the sublime has distinct moral implications. Burke’s theory is directed toward such situations where some elements or situations are felt painful or threatening. Kant’s sublime theory is based on a response of reason to an overwhelming excess of greatness or power. The romanticists including Schiller and Schopenhauer spread the sublime till the nineteenth century. Pathos, nobility, dignity and gravity are associated with sublimity. In this 21st century it is also possible to find some associations like urban, industrial, religious, supernatural, modern, postmodern, existential, poetic, gothic, feminine, masculine and so on. The purpose of this study is to delve into the Burkean sublime and find its traces in the novel Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, an American neuroscientist and author, who self-published her debut novel in 2007, which is concerned with Alice, a Harvard professor who suffers early onset Alzheimer's disease, which takes hold swiftly and changes her relationship with her family and the world.