The Western theory of tradition

"Sanford Budick reveals an operative concept of Western cultures that has been only partially understood: according to this concept, the act of freely receiving and handing on cultural tradition and the act of achieving moral and aesthetic freedom in sublime representation are the same phenomenon.

This dual phenomenon Budick calls the cultural sublime, and he traces it in literary, philosophical, and artistic works from Homer, Virgil, and the Bible to Rembrandt, Milton, Kant, Baudelaire, Freud, and Sarraute."--BOOK JACKET.