The Beautiful and The Sublime:
Of the works of theory I’ve read, the one to stick closest to me has been A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke. This is the basic summary offered by Wikipedia:

“According to Burke, the Beautiful is that which is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us. The preference for the Sublime over the Beautiful was to mark the transition from the Neoclassical to the Romantic era.
The origins of our ideas of the beautiful and the sublime, for Burke, can be understood by means of their causal structures. According to Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, causation can be divided into formal, material, efficient and final causes. The formal cause of beauty is the passion of love; the material cause concerns aspects of certain objects such as smallness, smoothness, delicacy, etc.; the efficient cause is the calming of our nerves; the final cause is God's providence. What is most peculiar and original to Burke's view of beauty is that it cannot be understood by the traditional bases of beauty: proportion, fitness, or perfection. The sublime also has a causal structure that is unlike that of beauty. Its formal cause is thus the passion of fear (especially the fear of death); the material cause is equally aspects of certain objects such as vastness, infinity, magnificence, etc.; its efficient cause is the tension of our nerves; the final cause is God having created and battled Satan, as expressed in John Milton's great epic Paradise Lost.”


I like his idea to separate beauty from sublimity. It allows each word to gain more specificity. If a lamb and a mountain are both beautiful, as we commonly describe them, then what is beauty? No, the mountain is not beautiful, it is sublime. It is magnificent and vast. It compels us to consider our own insignificance. Having this word, Burke’s sublime, in your back pocket makes it easier to revel in common experiences. Suddenly, a clap of thunder, an old tree, a city skyline, all have the power to evoke the same reverence as the ocean, or a starry sky.