In the 1980s the sublime was rediscovered in the context of the debates on postmodernism. The emphasis here was on the theories of Burke and Kant, which contrasted beauty and sublimity. Little attention was accorded to the history of sublimity in the early modern age. This study seeks to remedy this deficit. It proceeds on the conviction that in the early modern age the dichotomy between beauty and sublimity was not in fact the operative factor in the debate, but rather the opposition between two models of the sublime, that of Pseudo Longinus, on the one hand, and the three styles defined by classical rhetoric on the other.