Why did Longinus’s On the Sublime become important to later critics?

On the Sublime, attributed to the writer known as Pseudo-Longinus, became significant to later critics because it challenged the prevailing focus on technical rules and decorum that dominated much of classical and Neoclassical criticism.12

While traditional criticism often attributed literary success to a balance of formal elements like diction and metaphor, the author of On the Sublime argued that true greatness arises from the moral, emotional, and imaginative depth of the writer—the "echo of greatness of spirit". This shifted the focus from the art itself to the innate qualities of the creator, suggesting that genius could produce effects that rules alone could not achieve.134

By the 18th century, as the rigid adherence to decorum began to wane, the treatise provided a vital critical foundation for Romanticism. It offered a framework for valuing the power of literature to provoke ecstasy and elevated feeling, effectively reversing the Aristotelian emphasis on the regulation of human passions.12