It Was Character Of The Island That Deemed Sublime Rather Than A Specific Landscape Feature

By Author: Porter Black
Total Articles: 54
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The sublime landscapes of the British West Indies were most often described from the comfort and safe distance of the ship; they did little to evoke feelings of fear or pain in the travel writers. Instead, as the island was approached from the sea and viewed in its entirety, the sensibility associated with these landscapes was appropriately impressive and awe-inspiring. In most cases therefore it was the character of the island that was deemed sublime rather than a specific landscape feature. For example, as Sir James Edward Alexander (1831) reminisced about each of the islands visited in the opening of his narrative, he recalled the overarching character of St. Vincent as sublime. He wrote, "St. Vincent, with scenery of Five Fingers Shoes the most sublime and magnificent character, and distinguished by a Soufriere or volcano". This memory of the island's character does not reveal his personal reaction to the landscape or his emotions in experiencing it, only the applicable association of the sublime with such a dramatic landscape.

With the exception of travel writers like ...
... Henry Nelson Coleridge (1825), few of the travel writers adhered to the strict guidelines Burke had established for the beautiful. These writers did not appear to hold a particular landscape image or type that was associated with the idea of the beautiful. Coleridge was one of the earliest tourists included in this study. He held a specific image of a beautiful landscape based on Burke's terms in his mind, and he used this image to compare with the landscapes of the British West Indies. He wrote, "Grenada is perhaps the most beautiful Vibram Five Fingers Shoes of the Antilles, meaning by this that her features are soft and noble without being great and awful". This idea is illustrated by the example in Figure 2, from John Henderson's The West Indies, which depicts the smooth, round character of Mount Nevis. However, most writers applied the term liberally to connote the general attractiveness of landscape scenery and, unlike the sublime, often specific landscape features. For example, travel writers often declared specific plant species part of a beautiful landscape. This was common when the writers were more immersed in the landscape and could better appreciate the details. These landscapes were also generally more controlled environments, such as gardens. The writers expressed few emotions, other than simple pleasure, when describing beautiful landscapes.

Burke's categorization pitted the sublime against the beautiful, and several travel writers did attempt to compare the islands of the British West Indies based on this dichotomy. Interestingly, some of these writers substituted the term 'lovely' to oppose the sublime, though their use of the term is generally consistent with Burke's original typology. For example, Coleridge wrote, "If Trinidad is sublime, Grenada is lovely." More specifically, Alexander wrote, "If Grenada is lovely, St. Vincent's is sublime in character; the hills of the former are rounded in their outline, while those of the latter are sharp and abrupt, and deep valleys are bounded by sheer precipices."