French Literature Reviews - 2026
Yvon Le Scanff, Le paysage romantique et l'expérience du sublime
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
The Romantic Landscape and the Experience of the Sublime
Yvon Le Scanff
Paris, Champ Vallon, 2007
Publisher's overview:
The sublime landscape seemingly finds its origins in the ancient locus of horror (« locus horridus », « locus horribilis »), which contrasts with the locus of pleasure (« locus amoenus ») just as untamed nature opposes the pleasure garden. As the expression of an irregular, even disordered nature, the landscape of horror becomes the very site of the novelistic landscape at the end of the 18th century.
In redefining the sublime as an experience, Romanticism develops a poetics of landscape rather than a topical treatment of the commonplaces of the natural sublime: whether chaotic power (the volcano, the cataract, the storm, or the tempest) or the representation of the infinite (God, the sea, the mountain). Rather, this poetics unfolds in the direction of magnificence as the beauty of the sublime (wild nature), the sublimity of the beautiful (the grandiose landscape), and a natural synthesis between the beautiful and the sublime. It also acts as a space of negativity where the landscape is sublimated into an ecstatic reverie that simultaneously fulfills and annihilates it within the same movement of thought. The sublime likewise enables the author to conceive a metaphysics of nature as an apocalypse of the landscape—a revelation of the impossible (the fantastic), the possible (the nocturnal), and an experience of boundaries through the contemplation of the landscape's critical states (dawn, dusk). Thus, the sublime landscape becomes a mode of knowledge of nature, unfolding as a transcendence of the laws of instrumental reason, of representation (indetermination), of the principle of individuation (indistinction), and of non-contradiction (paradox).
Thus, the elements of this Romantic landscape can be defined essentially as the expression of indetermination: the transfiguration of description into apparition or vision, and the subversion of representation through the overflowing of the descriptive framework and the sensory disorientation of planes and viewpoints. This poetics of the landscape finds its echo in the poetics of the character, notably in the figure of the Romantic hero in search of a fundamental indetermination, of an unconditional and radical freedom. For Romanticism, therefore, the natural landscape is not detached from ethical investment or metaphysical contemplation; indeed, it is within this grand nature, commensurate with his excess, that the Romantic man defines himself as a brilliant and enthusiastic impetus, as revolt (following a sublime of evil and misfortune), or as renunciation (self-abnegation, resignation, repentance).
Born in 1968, Yvon Le Scanff teaches French language and literature at Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle. His research focuses primarily on description, the poetics of landscape, and the aesthetics of the sublime. He has published articles on George Sand's landscapes, Victor Hugo's gardens, Gustave Flaubert's country houses, Pirandesian poetics in Théophile Gautier's travel writing, novelistic representation in Jules Verne, and the emblematic landscape in Julien Gracq, among others. More broadly, his work also addresses the ideological stakes and representations of natural landscape, national territory, and space.
The concept of the sublime has long occupied a central place in aesthetic theory, tracing its roots to classical antiquity and the rhetorical tradition of the elevated style. By the late 18th century, thinkers began to distinguish the sublime from the beautiful, associating the former with overwhelming power, vastness, and terror. In The Romantic Landscape and the Experience of the Sublime, Yvon Le Scanff examines the transition from the locus horridus to a poetics of landscape where the physical environment becomes a site of metaphysical inquiry and ecstatic contemplation.
The work focuses on the interplay between natural phenomena and the limits of human perception, highlighting how the landscape functions as a space of negation and transcendence. It investigates the relationship between descriptive frameworks and the subversion of representation, addressing how the sublime challenges instrumental reason and the principle of individuation. It further considers how these aesthetic shifts mirror the development of the Romantic hero. Readers interested in 18th and 19th-century aesthetics may find this exploration of landscape and subjectivity relevant.