Home › Glossary › Letter S

sublime collapse

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The comic collapse from lofty or sublime expression into bathos.

Detailed Definition
Sublime collapse describes a poetic moment where awe-inspiring grandeur or transcendence suddenly gives way to fragmentation, silence, or emotional disintegration, reflecting the limits of language or human comprehension; rooted in Romantic and postmodern aesthetics, this trope enacts the failure of the sublime ideal, as in Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” where nature’s power overwhelms the poet’s capacity to articulate it, leaving only fractured utterance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sublime collapse occurs when awe gives way to disintegration: In “Ozymandias,” the grand statue collapses into “lone and level sands”; In “The Waste Land,” spiritual grandeur dissolves into “I can connect / Nothing with nothing”; Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” juxtaposes majestic peak with human insignificance; Collapse of divine presence in modern poetry (e.g., “The Hollow Men”) exemplifies this.
Additional Notes
sublime collapse|A poetic moment where a grand, elevated, or awe-inspiring concept (the sublime) suddenly breaks down, is undercut by reality, or fails to be sustained, often creating irony or bathos.
Also Known As
Collapse sublime Grand ruin Catastrophic sublimity
Skip to main content