The Sublime

It takes much experience of literature to respond to it properly. so says a Greek critic whose treatise On the Sublime shows radically different approach from either Plato's or Aristotle's.

"Judgment of literature is the final fruit of ripe experience," according to Longinus who is concerned to distinguish those elements of style and structure which contribute to the effect of sublimity.
The ultimate function of literature, and its ultimate justification, according to Longinus (whose identity is uncertain), is to be sublime and have on its readers the effect of ecstasy or transport that sublimity has.
The Greek word which it has become traditional to translate as sublime in English means literally height or elevation.
Coming to psychoanalytic criticism, sublimation (Freud, whose works depends on the notion of the unconscious) is whereby the repressed material is 'promoted' into something grander or is disguised as something 'noble.' "For instance, sexual urges may be given sublimated expression in the form of intense religious experiences or longings." Repression, which is the `forgetting' or ignoring of unresolved conflicts ,unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events and sublimation are linked with the unconscious.

(Ref: Critical Approaches to Literature by David Daiches & Peter Barry's Beginning Theory, An introduction to literary and cultural theory).