suggested readings on french revolution
TRANSCRIPT
Suggested readings on French Revolution
Jules Michelet ndash Revolution of the ldquopeoplerdquo Georges Lefebvre ndash Marxist interpretation
Social strainsEconomic deprivationsConflicting ambitions of groups and
individuals
The Three EstatesClergy ndash wealthy abbots poor parish
priests aristocracy who lived off church lands
Nobility ndash inherited titles landed property some with little money but important ranks enjoyed state privileges
Bourgeoisie ndash Wealthy merchants (as wealthy as the nobility) professionals small traders urban poor and peasants
Louis XVIMaria Antonia
(Marie Antoinette)
The buildup of French Revolution Montesquieu ndash LrsquoEsprit des lois (1753) ndash liberal
constitutional monarchy sharing of sovereignty between the Crown the aristocratic courts the Church the landed nobility and the chartered cities (the English example)
Locke ndash theory of the natural rights of man Jean-Jacques Rousseau ndash The Social Contract (read
Maxmilien de Robespierre ndash Jacobins and Terror) Voltaire ndash vision of progress Napoleon ndash modern French institutions ndash lycees
ecoles normales
Food shortage ndash bread and flour price riseRoyaltyrsquos profligacy Inefficient king ndash popular resentment and furySeven Yearsrsquo War French role in Am Independence movementHigh taxationStorming of the Bastille (symbol of state
excesses prisoners without trial) July 14 1789
EP Thompson The Making of the English Working ClassJames Livesay Making Democracy in the French RevolutionDavid Garrioch The Formation of the Parisian BourgeoisieJoan Landes Women and Public Sphere in the Age of the Fr Revolution
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
The Three EstatesClergy ndash wealthy abbots poor parish
priests aristocracy who lived off church lands
Nobility ndash inherited titles landed property some with little money but important ranks enjoyed state privileges
Bourgeoisie ndash Wealthy merchants (as wealthy as the nobility) professionals small traders urban poor and peasants
Louis XVIMaria Antonia
(Marie Antoinette)
The buildup of French Revolution Montesquieu ndash LrsquoEsprit des lois (1753) ndash liberal
constitutional monarchy sharing of sovereignty between the Crown the aristocratic courts the Church the landed nobility and the chartered cities (the English example)
Locke ndash theory of the natural rights of man Jean-Jacques Rousseau ndash The Social Contract (read
Maxmilien de Robespierre ndash Jacobins and Terror) Voltaire ndash vision of progress Napoleon ndash modern French institutions ndash lycees
ecoles normales
Food shortage ndash bread and flour price riseRoyaltyrsquos profligacy Inefficient king ndash popular resentment and furySeven Yearsrsquo War French role in Am Independence movementHigh taxationStorming of the Bastille (symbol of state
excesses prisoners without trial) July 14 1789
EP Thompson The Making of the English Working ClassJames Livesay Making Democracy in the French RevolutionDavid Garrioch The Formation of the Parisian BourgeoisieJoan Landes Women and Public Sphere in the Age of the Fr Revolution
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Louis XVIMaria Antonia
(Marie Antoinette)
The buildup of French Revolution Montesquieu ndash LrsquoEsprit des lois (1753) ndash liberal
constitutional monarchy sharing of sovereignty between the Crown the aristocratic courts the Church the landed nobility and the chartered cities (the English example)
Locke ndash theory of the natural rights of man Jean-Jacques Rousseau ndash The Social Contract (read
Maxmilien de Robespierre ndash Jacobins and Terror) Voltaire ndash vision of progress Napoleon ndash modern French institutions ndash lycees
ecoles normales
Food shortage ndash bread and flour price riseRoyaltyrsquos profligacy Inefficient king ndash popular resentment and furySeven Yearsrsquo War French role in Am Independence movementHigh taxationStorming of the Bastille (symbol of state
excesses prisoners without trial) July 14 1789
EP Thompson The Making of the English Working ClassJames Livesay Making Democracy in the French RevolutionDavid Garrioch The Formation of the Parisian BourgeoisieJoan Landes Women and Public Sphere in the Age of the Fr Revolution
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
The buildup of French Revolution Montesquieu ndash LrsquoEsprit des lois (1753) ndash liberal
constitutional monarchy sharing of sovereignty between the Crown the aristocratic courts the Church the landed nobility and the chartered cities (the English example)
Locke ndash theory of the natural rights of man Jean-Jacques Rousseau ndash The Social Contract (read
Maxmilien de Robespierre ndash Jacobins and Terror) Voltaire ndash vision of progress Napoleon ndash modern French institutions ndash lycees
ecoles normales
Food shortage ndash bread and flour price riseRoyaltyrsquos profligacy Inefficient king ndash popular resentment and furySeven Yearsrsquo War French role in Am Independence movementHigh taxationStorming of the Bastille (symbol of state
excesses prisoners without trial) July 14 1789
EP Thompson The Making of the English Working ClassJames Livesay Making Democracy in the French RevolutionDavid Garrioch The Formation of the Parisian BourgeoisieJoan Landes Women and Public Sphere in the Age of the Fr Revolution
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Food shortage ndash bread and flour price riseRoyaltyrsquos profligacy Inefficient king ndash popular resentment and furySeven Yearsrsquo War French role in Am Independence movementHigh taxationStorming of the Bastille (symbol of state
excesses prisoners without trial) July 14 1789
EP Thompson The Making of the English Working ClassJames Livesay Making Democracy in the French RevolutionDavid Garrioch The Formation of the Parisian BourgeoisieJoan Landes Women and Public Sphere in the Age of the Fr Revolution
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
End of the ancien regime Paris seize Louis XVI forced to accept constitutional
government Declaration of the rights of man and the citizen
Aug 1789 Division of sovereignty between the Crown and
legislature ndash 1789 Monarchy abolished 1792 King and Queen
sent to guillotine 1793 (See BBC documentary ldquoThe Romantics ndash Libertyrdquo)
Juumlrgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
British reaction Inspiration or terrorThe London Chronicle ndash lsquoIn every province
of this great kingdom the flame of liberty has burst forthrsquo
The English Chronicle ndash lsquoThus has the hand of JUSTICE been brought upon Francegreat and GLORIOUS revolution rsquo
Wordsworth ldquoPreluderdquo (1805) ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be aliverdquo
British hopeful about reforms away from the imperfect settlement of 1688
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Edmund Burke ndash Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 (Reign of Terror)Thomas Painersquos response ndash The Rights of Man (condemned as seditious) 1790 (rpt 1791)Mary Wollstonecraftrsquos defence of Paine ndash A Vindication of the Rights of Man 1791
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Reactions - radical and conservativeWorking class begin to organise into political groupsBirth of radical societies - London Corresponding Society (Thomas Hardy) 1792 ndash lsquouniting in an endeavour to recover those rightsrsquo1793 ndash War with France British govt clamps down on these societies for lsquonational securityrsquo compared to Jacobins
bullPerceived threat to British ConstitutionbullReeves Association ndash conservative propaganda Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More distributed among the poor ndash Christian morality hard work deference to authoritybullBurke proves effective widespread skepticism of revolutions and reforms fear of terror and bloodshedbullRadical societies dysfunctional
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Paris 1742 ndash Denis Diderot (reason Encyclopedia ndash a manifesto of pure reason no reason for God - HERESY) and Rousseau ndash ldquoTo feel is to existrdquo both preached liberty and freedom for the individual
1749 ndash ldquoMan was born free and everywhere he is in chainsrdquo (Rousseau) ldquoCivilised man is born and dies a slaverdquo
Man in natural state is essentially good (Rousseau) ldquoend of civilisationrdquo
The American Revolution and Independence ndash self-government and libertyndashTom Paine Common Sense 1776 ndash ldquoThe law is kingrdquo ndash a nation without a king an aristocracy and a national church
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
William Blake ndash ldquoThe Empire is no morerdquo1779 ndash being taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Br Artist) ndash the ldquoultimate establishment figurerdquo ndash classical principles order harmony rationality
Blake - Imagination the force that made great art ndash rebels against Reynolds ldquoinstinctive libertarianrdquo
1780 ndash painting ldquoAlbion Roserdquo ndash liberationRepresentative of revolutionary anger ndash ldquothe
mind forgrsquod manacles I hearrdquo ndash old order-imagination locked away
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Individual imagination ndash individual would decide the future
Wordsworth ndash ldquoBliss was it in that dawn to be alive and to be young was very heavenrdquo goes to France marries a French woman hopes for a new world
REIGN OF TERROR ndash Jacobins monarchy abolished thousands who were against the revolution but were for liberty were guillotined ldquorevolution devours its own childrenrdquo
Wordsworth leaves France for England ndash faith shaken one manrsquos idea of liberty is another manrsquos idea of tyranny becomes a ldquowandererrdquo ndash meets people their passions
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
1795 ndash meets ST Coleridge giving a speech in a corn market
Reads out to him ldquoThe Female Vagrantrdquo Both divert revolutionary zeal into poetry Both spied on The Lyrical Ballads ndash intimate accounts of rustic
lives in simple language authors held their names new poetic faith relocating dignity in common places same purpose as the revolutionaries to make the outcastes heard individual conscience and consciousness ndash individualism and uniqueness democratic approach ndash ldquoa revolution in 23 poemsrdquo
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
The French Revolution and onwardsRomanticism
18th-19th century England
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
The debate on poetic dictionRef Wimsatt and Brooks Literary Criticism A Short
History 1957ChaucerSpenser Sidney ndash Elizabethan sonneteers Faerie Queeneldquo18th c complexrdquo ndash Renaissance Latinism (scientific and philosophical ideas Ovidian and Virgilian meanings) more adjectives stock phrases
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Classical high middle and low styles ndash epic georgic and ecloguesMid-18th c ndash lofty and low Cf Addison
(Spectator No 285) Pope (trans Odyssey postscript) Johnson (Rambler passage on Shakespeare) Gray (letter Apr 1742)Drydenrsquos preface to Sylvae 1685 ndash
ldquodictionrdquoPope ndash Preface to Iliad 1715 ldquoWe
acknowledge him [Homer] the father of poetical dictionrdquo
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Two views against poetic dictionThe classicistrsquos protest ndash ldquohostile to pedantry and affectation appeal to polite idiom the educated spoken wordrdquoThe romanticrsquos protest ndash ldquoappeal to the primitive the naiumlve the directly passionate the natural spoken wordrdquoLyrical Ballads 1798
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Wordsworth in Advertisement ldquo to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasurerdquo
ldquothe very language of menrdquo ldquohellipbecause such men hourly communicate
with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derivedrdquo (Preface)
language of prose and metrical composition
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
ldquoa selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensationrdquoldquoa certain colouring of imagination
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual wayrdquo ldquoassociate ideas in a state of
excitementrdquoldquospontaneous overflow of powerful
feelingsrdquo
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Coleridgersquos Biographia Literaria 1815Language of metrical composition and
prose same ndash a truism poetic manner of combining words no different from prose
Use of images or figures ndash bad not because of repetition but because it in some way violates ldquorules of the IMAGINATIONrdquo ndash grammar logic psychology good sense taste
Education and not the lack of it makes a poet
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Wordsworth ndash artifice and natureColeridge ndash ldquodecorumrdquo ndash ldquopropriety and improprietyrdquo ldquocongruity and incongruityrdquo
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Wordsworthrsquos contribution to Lyrical Ballads
An expression of passions and values which stand apart from those of an exclusively aristocratic or urban civilization stands apart too from the embellished language of the pastoral tradition
Use of ballad form lsquohumble and rustic lifersquo because they lsquospeak a plainer and more emphatic languagersquo
Inspired by Burnsrsquos vernacular poems - vigour of a living dialect But the very provinciality of its language militated against Wordsworthrsquos professed ambition to begin a process of literary reform in the realization of which he might claim a place in a line of succession with Spenser Shakespeare and Milton
Wordsworthrsquos early poetry - attempts to shift a literary perspective away from false sophistication
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
-Bacon (Trinity College Cambridge science could free human beings) and Descartes (reason and maths universe the clock and god the clockmaker) ndash Fathers of Enlightenment Galileo ndash geo to heliocentrism-Scientific method ndash rational steps -Isaac Newton ndash calculus optics gravity laws of motion ndash Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy laws of physics on earth and in space-Robert Hook ndash cell William Harvey ndash blood circulation-Carolus Linnaeus ndash classification
NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS (Scientists)
Reason and Imagination
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Cogito ergo sum
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Hobbes ndash absolute monarchy John Locke ndash Political philosopher right to choose
government ndash three basic natural rights - life liberty and property freedom of press religious tolerance education
Voltaire ndash freedom of speech ndash ldquoI disapprove of what you say but will defend to death your right to say itrdquo
Separation of Church and State ndash Deists ndash Nature set in motion by a higher force Reason can help uncover the workings of NatureReason-1680s to 1800-ENLIGHTENMENT - Use of
reason to evaluate previously enunciated ideas critical questioning of traditional institutions and
beliefs
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Conceptions of Nature
Deism Romanticism
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Deism Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century Deists not anti-Christ a belief system that existence of
God can be proved by applying reason and that the world can be understood by observation experience and reasoning
1730s - Newtonrsquos physics- invoked God as powerful intelligent Creator who designed the system of natural laws)
Lockersquos philosophy (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Anthony Collins An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason 1701 Locke - Christ as messiah believed in Bible miracles Just Scriptures cannot reveal truth reason necessary
Voltaire ndash man could perceive God through the use of reason moral behaviour is not dependent on God but on onersquos conscience and reason
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690 ldquo Let us suppose the mind to be as we say white paper
void of all characters without any ideas--How comes it to be furnished Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge To this I answer in one word from EXPERIENCE In that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking These two are the fountains of all knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do springrdquo
Experience as the foundation of all knowledge
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Romanticism Reaction against reason and neoclassical
restraints freedom from ancien regimes Emotion (tranquility memory in Dickens)
feeling (undisciplined heart - Dickens) nature over civilisation lyrical lsquoIrsquo over culture The Romantic Lyric
Nature ndash organic entity (David Copperfield) Gothic ndash didactic moralism (DC Bleak House) French Revolution (A Tale of Two Cities) Human nature born again ndash return to an age
before corruption
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Romantic poetry ndash the lyric form Method in Romantic poetry ndash ldquothe cohesive poetic ordering
of emotionsrdquo ndash narrative procedures syntax vocabulary poetic devices symbolism and imagery (Wimsatt ndash vivid and intense) the poetic genre
- The lsquoeveningrsquo poems (Virgilrsquos eclogues and WWrsquos ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo Coleridgersquos ldquoThis Lime Tree Bowerrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoTo Autumnrdquo ndash evening a set of symbolic associations ndash solitude melancholy death temporal frame ndash sunset to twilight nightfall until sunrise adverbial markers ndash ldquoand nowrdquo ldquountilrdquo ldquowhenrdquo figure of compensation ndash replacement of daylight visions with nocturnal sounds (Ref Miltonrsquos ldquoll Penserosordquo)
- Topographical description (poet and landscape) ndash lsquolocalrsquo poetry (predecessors John Denhamrsquos ldquoCooperrsquos Hillrdquo James Thomsonrsquos ldquoSeasonsrdquo Romantics ndash actual ordinary landscape but ldquoextraordinary perspectiverdquo
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Continuous shifting back and forth between the lyrical self and the phenomenal world ndash deep affinity between mind and nature incorporates autobiographical experiences (WWrsquos ldquoPeele Castlerdquo ndash ref to his brother John)
WW and Coleridge ndash Poetic description should be familiar but original
Fusion of mind and nature in a single image rather than attribution of moral or aesthetic values to landscape
Romantic symbol ndash arises from the poetrsquos encounter with environment spontaneously rather than deliberately
The process ndash poet first situates himself in time and place temporarily departs through memory or imagination returns to the scene with heightened awareness sometimes in an attitude of benediction
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Wordsworth ndash ldquoTintern Abbeyrdquo ndash locodescriptive to meditative descriptive (ldquoAn Evening Walkrdquo) ndash subjective experience over natural description
Coleridge ndash reveries ndash representation of unusual states of consciousness (ldquoRime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo) poetry as drama (striking effective)
Keats ndash valedictory odes in a wholly material world dominated by the senses
Three examples
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
The Victorian Novel
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Contest between what it is to be French and English
French excess wallowing and English restraint (Sense and Sensibility ndash Austen)
Tale of Two Cities ndash generousness and criticism towards French Revolution Englishness ndash national quality and upholding Englishness
Victorian Age (1837-1901) ndash Queen Victoria Dickensrsquos (25 yr old) Nicholas Nickleby
- structured conservative repressive patriarchal society
- Mr Micawber ndash imaginative play against restrictions
- Great questioners ndash 1847 ndash Marx and Engels CM
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
1859 ndash Darwin ndashOrigin of Species Nietzsche ndash The Birth of Tragedy ndash questioning power Freud ndash The Interpretation of Dreams-Industrial expansion agriculture transformations loss of connection to land rural ways of life folklore (Dickensrsquos Great Expectations of London)-Age of Empire (Great Expectations)-Issues of labour working classes (Reform Bills)-Religious authority questioned (Dickensrsquos Christmas Stories)-Issues of gender
The Novel captures these complexities
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
David Copperfield ndash collection of books ndash ldquothat blessed little roomrdquo ndash refers to all those 18th century novels ndash ldquoreading as if for liferdquo (Dickens)
Victorian Novel ndash great documents of 19th cent Society
- Relation between self and society (Romantic self)
- Plot - Vocation ndash calling of life marriage coming of age (bildungsroman ndash novel of learning kunstlerroman ndash David Copperfield) finding onersquos place in the world (Great Expectations)
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Five pivotal moments in Dickensrsquos life 1824 ndash Father imprisoned Marshalsea Prison 12yr
Dickens in Blacking Factory beside the Thames 10 hrs a day 6 days a week end of childhood (Nicholas Nickeleby David Copperfield) haunts Drsquos imagination feeling of abandonment (DC)
1830 ndash Meets a bankerrsquos daughter (Davidrsquos love for Dorris) advances rebuffed strong infatuation the lady critical of Drsquos working class life (Great Expectations Pip and Stella)
1834 ndash Catherine Hogarth famous father Sketches of Boz Pickwick Papers Catherine gives him home and security 10 children ndash 1850s separation
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
1837 ndash Death of 17 yr old Mary Hogarth his wifersquos young sister object of Dickensrsquos strong affection D inconsolable kept her clothes a lock of her hair wore her ring (unexplainable) ndash loss of ideal childhood a time of innocence (Dickensrsquos heroines)
1858 ndash divorce Relationship with a theatre actor
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria
Literature and Revolution
Burkersquos ReflectionsPainersquos Rights of ManWollstonecraftrsquos VindicationWordsworthrsquos Lyrical BalladsColeridgersquos Biographia Literaria