Sacramental Commodities: Gift, Text, and the Sublime in De Quincey

by Charles J. Rzepka

This study argues that during the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries, with the rise of a modern market economy in which the text became commodified into a material object―the book―writers fought against a perceived loss of authority by developing a theory of the rhetorical Sublime. Like the sacramental presence in the Christian church, the realm of the Sublime allowed the reader an opportunity for incorporation in a spiritual communion with an immaterial text offered by a disembodied authorial presence.

Drawing on the phenomenology of reading and the cultural dynamics of gift-indebtedness and sacramentalism, Charles J. Rzepka advances his argument through a detailed examination of the life and work of writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey. The book offers both a psychobiography of De Quincey and a fresh study of the evolution of his ideas from early childhood up to publication of his masterwork, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

360 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995