lit survey 2: midterm – Flashcards

-bodies of work considered to be the most important and influential -authoritative list -anthologies and readers feedback shape canon -who IS important changes over time, fame varies throughout the decades -in Romantic era, Felicia Hemans was just as famous as Byron -now we know Byron, not Hemans -Charles Dickens got how celebrity worked, published in instalments in newspapers and magazines -reading to his audience, tours North America, becomes a celebrity -Byron also had a relationship with the public, readers feel like they knew him, his work feels personal -Linton Kwesi Johnson is one of the 2 living writers on Penguin Modern Classics (the other is Czeslaw Milosz) -Johnson says there is class/race at work in great classical tradition -uneducated people may find some of the canon un-relatable, you have to know this long history -always resistance when canon shifts -categorization and periodization is difficult, writers don't emerge with labels

-1980's-90's in academia, North American and British institutions -what to teach in the classroom? -Allan Bloom wrote "The Closing of the American Mind", (1987), wanted to keep the western canon -he thought relativism ruined education, which was about the pursuit of a good life, he thinks equality closed the American mind off -other side is multiculturalist, they win the war: women, writers of colour, minorities, LGBTQ authors, all previously thought to be trivial or immoral -canon has political stakes -Foucault says the canon forms the perspective of the dominant class -Deepika Bahri: problem of access to publishers, editors, some become big, others cannot, and not just because of literary value

-moral and aesthetic value, makes us better people -aesthetic education, see the world differently -enlarge the boundaries of our sympathy, say Victorians -George Eliot, woman writer with male pen name, champions the extension of sympathy idea -issue with this with modernists: unreliable narrators -Graham Greene, lit as shit-disturbed, it shapes democracy, concerned about totalitarianism -social arguments -contemporary writers are now skeptical about lit's influence of society

-close readings, the text in a vacuum -contextual readings -historical, long term approach, tradition and breaks with -Distant reading (franco Moretti), use computer tools to identify elements of a genre

-daniel defoe brings it to english -defoe writes sermons, travel narratives, pamphlets, combines all these in robinson crusoe -pamela (richardson), letters from a heroine -jane austen et al

-1793-1835 -very popular in her time, as much as byron -19 volumes of poetry published in her life -double standards: in 19th c, disparaging views of women poets -wrote lots of occasion poetry -she was taught to students, children recite "Casabianca" -volumes of her poetry made good gifts -Casabianca: battle poem, makes many parents cry when kids recite it -today we might consider her poems sentimental drivel, aesthetically imperfect, the rhythm stumbles -interest in historical context, what it means to be a woman writer -byron calls her mrs he-woman, gossips that her husband left her out of shame for her poetry -but hemans makes much money and educated her sons -meditations of death and failure -emphasis on God, home and country

-begins with Walter Scott epigraph -sets up link between land and desire to die to protect one's country -iambic trimeter -patriotism and pride, portrays positive aspects of country -shocking, as poverty is growing in this time -homes of England create figure of the whole -this is metonymy: homes as whole population -tame, domestic landscape, feminine universe: different facet of Romanticism -domestic values, roles of women, peaceful sense of belonging -the beautiful as aesthetic quality, but not the sublime

-b.1952 jamaica, lives in uk -caribbean artists movement 1966-1972 -wanted to address caribbean community in england, make poetry accessible to everyday folks with no classical training -oral and written relationship, write word-music -dub poetry: spoken words over reggae music or chanted speech -Voice of the Living Dead (1974) -Dread Beat an' Blood (1975) -Bass Culture (1980)

-easier heard than read to self, speaker/persona is 55 years old -worked on underground, didn't get ahead -dishwasher, but forgets to turn on clock -falls out of favour at factory after 15 years employment -can't make progress financially -talks about those things Hemans leaves out -Romantics, like Blake, also looked on social issues like poverty -Johnson: poor, also immigrant, doubly shut out of success in London -no sense of social mobility associated with the underground, or with hospitality industry -returns to poetry as performed genre -poetry aimed at the community -non-standard English, no lofty poetic diction -Jamaican Creole made into a literary language -also done by Sam Selvon

-certain experiences deliberately left out of the canon -Gikandi says: can't talk about certain topics until we have the terminology

-16th-19th century, contemporary estimate of 9-12 million slaves brought to the New World -British, french, Dutch, or Spanish slave companies, mostly from West and Central africa -huge economic profit, especially after the 7 years war in 1763: new france/eastern canada traded for guadeloupe -worked on sugar cane, coffee, cotton, cocoa plantations, gold and silver mines, construction -European lifestyle could not have been maintained without slavery -triangular trade between america/britain/west africa -caribbean islands just plantations, nothing produced there, only raw materials -all about economic advantages

-invention of warped forms of justification for enslavement -most europeans believe africans "predestined" to be slaves -interpret bible: Africans are descendants of noah's bad son, ham (mocked his fathers nakedness, no filial loyalty and respect, noah curses ham's children to be slaves to his other grandchildren) -long-term consequences: John Hanning Speke (1827-1864), Hutu/Tutsi hierarchy manufactured by colonial powers -Speke decides Tutsis look more european and should be given more power -pseudo-scientific explanations, hierarchies of human beings -Darwin: scientists read him, say we are not all equally evolved -19th c scientific racism: craniology, phrenology, etc. -Equiano fights against dehumanization of African slaves -negation of humanity: claims slaves don't have feelings of family attachment -"drapetomania": disease of the concept of freedom

-he says he's born in Igboland, Nigeria -research says he actually was probably born a slave in North Carolina -his narrative of the Middle Passage is still accurate, even if invented -kidnapped at 11, taken to West Indies and sold to a planter -sold to officer in British Navy, Henry Pascal, named Gustavas Vassa (after Gustav I of Sweden) -arrives in London 1757 -owner reneged on promise of freedom, sold back into slavery -bought by Quaker trader Robert King, purchases own freedom in 1766 -involved in abolitionist movement -as a freeman, is involved in slave trade -joins new movement of Methodism, helps former slaves to return to Africa, abolitionism

-1799, same year as French Revolution -9 british editions between 1789-1794, also pirated editions, very popular book -at the height of debate about abolition, British Empire abolishes slavery in 1833 -travel narrative, trying to make it interesting and convincing -most of his readers would already be abolitionists, but also religious people -uses religion to bolster the book -influences the next slave narratives to come

-wrote in argument structure, easily accepted -spiritual autobiography, like St. Augustin's Confessions, or Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress -slave narrative: a)idyllic life in africa, b)slavery, c)escape and d)freedom -parallels to spiritual memoir: Edenic life, sinfulness, conversion/turning to God, rebirth through spiritual freedom -some slave narratives have physical escape, his is a mental escape, religious awakening, and financial independence -role of baptism and faith in his freedom -awareness that all forms of christianity are different -he sees methodists work the hardest, very honest, he identifies with a preacher -influence of travel lit like defoe and swift -captivity narratives like Mary Rowlandson (1682) -sermonizing tradition (new England) -abolitionist treatises -travel lit: curiosity and inquisitive mind, also humanizes him to white readers, and tells them the situation they don't know

-vividly describe the evils of slavery without alienating white readers -must win them to his side -cant get too graphic

-"Oh, ye nominal Christians!...." -appeals to precepts of Christianity -reveals how slave traders/owners stray from them -emphasis on family feeling/kinship, appealing to audience (he's separated from his sister) -description of violence, but limiting it to not be too graphic -emphasizes that work is fine, but the other horrors are bad: buys into work ethic and values of English society -describes brutality to black and white people alike, white crew member beaten to death -turns the tables of dehumanization: white captors as evil spirits -suspicion of cannibalism, fears being eaten by whites (against stereotype of black caribbean cannibals) -rejects alcohol -ideas of lawfulness, aesthetics, "ugly men" -his desire to learn (anchors, buildings with storeys, horses etc.)

-reproduces certificate of manumission -emphasis on his feeling of great joy -slavery and freedom as metaphors in 18th century -reproducing certificate calls attention to his treatment as an object -meditating on power of legal documents and of words from white officials -document about his freedom is more about Robert King than Equiano, about his property being relinquished etc.

-enlightenment thinkers: freedom is the highest political value -john locke against "slavery" but what he means is authoritative government intrusion into british life -denial of real slavery altogether -just after french revolution, we have haitian revolution (1794-1800) -slaves take control, declare independent state of haiti, Toiussaint Louverture

-epigraph: derek walcott, "the sea is history" -impact of the middle passage -"the sea has locked them up", loss of life and the halting of the development of culture -3 meanings: literal loss, lost time, and denial of their achievements -Gikandi: how do we talk about something when we have no terminology? -we do not yet have to conceptual tools -culture of taste, European luxury always fed by slavery -these stories seem at odds with narrative of modern identity -how to bring slave history back into discourse of cultural history? -not just an explanation of equiano's function and importance, but approach to all literary texts and lack of vocabulary for some topics -how the assessment of lit happens, preconditions necessary -focus on loss in epigraph, something that doesn't exist in eurocentric view -african/caribbean interlocutor says our cultural milestones locked under the sea -bodies of people who died in middle passage are in the sea -also in the sense of lost time, these cultures not allowed to develop normally -denial of their achievements that happens even today, walcott addresses this -cultural achievements not in the form we expect, no cathedrals and monuments doesn't mean you haven't been building -oral lit is lit, different genres but it does exist -2 minutes of europe: pursuing freedom is important value (french revolution) but denying it to slaves (Haiti under Toussaint Louverture) -even when slavery is recognized as part of modern experience, we must see it as formative of our culture -painting of james drummond, his magnificence enhanced by presence of a slave, indicating wealth -slave fades into the dark background, just barely visible, not in the spotlight (1700's) -early 19th c, many slave figures in paintings get painted over, no one wants to be associated with slavery anymore -slavery as ghost haunting the idea of civilization, it has been painted over but is still there -slavery and culture of taste as nonidentical twins, causal relations: slavery creates material goods enjoyed by europe like coffee, sugar, tea, fabric, cotton -oblique relation: refinement and being against the idea of brutishness, always in slave culture -contradictory relation: notion of freedom

-Albert Eckhout: Dom Miguel de Casta, Envoy from the Kingdom of Congo (1643) -Sir John Baptiste de Medina: James Drummond and Slave (1700) -what happened in perception between the envoy from a kingdom, and chattel?

-outsider in society -vindication on the rights of woman, proto feminism -travelled a lot, scandalous lifestyle, gets poorer, and she and sister must teach, companion, governess, open a school -governess work can be very dull, demeaning -she begins to write: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, early book 1787 -1790: A Vindication of the Rights of Man, about human freedom, so she writes a response -1792, age 32, Vindication of Rights of Woman comes out (she wrote it quick) -1792, goes to Paris to see aftermath of French Revolution, disappointed as reign of terror begins -many innocent people beheaded in france, no one is safe -affair with american, Gilbert Imlay, illegitimate daughter, they return to England, he leaves; she attempts suicide twice -he sends her as envoy to Scandinavia: stunning! Scandalous! (with daughter and nanny) -comes home, gets with philosopher William Godwin, gets pregnant -Godwin writes anti-marriage pamphlets but wants to acknowledge his daughter, so he marries her -Mary dies in childbirth, daughter to become Mary Shelley -1798 Godwin publishes her letters, which brings a huge scandal to her name, she becomes a posthumous pariah

-defend them against blame -late 18th c, debate emerges on women's social status and education -"accomplishments": singing, playing instrument, needlework, painting in certain genres, possibly foreign languages -oil painting is dirty and for men -conservative thinkers: build traditional feminine values like piety, modesty, obedience -Hannah More: gender and class distinctions are God-ordained -maria and richard edgeworth: practical education 1798: set up double standard -girls must follow authority and not think for themselves -accept what IS, not what should be -be timid, efface yourself, say Edgeworths -Mary Wollstonecraft against all that

-women only taught to inspire love, not to get respect: extended simile "barren blooming" -woman as luxuriants, pretty plants that produce no fruit -women taught to be pleasing to catch husbands but suddenly after marriage they must run a household, they haven't been trained to do it -Wollstonecraft says we need to train women to what comes AFTER marriage, to be affectionate mothers and wives (todays feminism doesn't agree) -enlightenment: rationality (and utility) -not shy about taking on Rousseau etc. -she says women physically weaker but their virtues and intellect ought to be judged the same -she says idea of "masculine woman" is false enemy, women can't physically threaten and surpass men

-rise of bourgeoisie as class with economic and political influence -anti-aristocracy (French Revolution), republicanism -women in middle class most natural -England: influence of Protestantism, leading useful lives, sinfulness of laziness -naturalizes middle class as societal measuring stick

-by raising women for advantageous marriage, women are "legally prostituted" -women no other purpose than to be subservient sex object and procreator -infantilization of dependence, man and wife are one body under the law, and that person is the husband -Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Brief Summery of the Laws of England Concerning Women (1854) -vary hard for women to inherit property -marriage plot: Jane Austen -sisters can be dependent on their brothers if she cannot marry -Austen is contemporary of Wollstonecraft -common law term for wife: "femme coverte", (Norman French), "femme sole", dowager -married women can't own property, all her money belongs to the husband -no divorce until 1857, unless you can afford an act of parliament -for divorce, a man just needs to prove adultery; women must prove incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion -from whence comes wollstonecraft: do women have souls? then they must upkeep them, try not to sin, improve -women need a more rational education therefore -creatures of the senses, feelings, emotion: she wants to get rid of this extreme stuff -she wants us to be Elinors and not Mariannes (in Sense and Sensibility) -women can't be "blown about by every momentary gust of feeling", too much fainting and smelling salts -mary w says this is weak, to be too easily provoked -purely decorative women incapable of running a household, will be unprepared and boring as wives -advocates lit style, practical, utilitarian, unadorned: FORCE -criticism: unkind portrait of contemporary women, also eurocentric and islamophobic

-usually defined in contradistinction with classics and neoclassicism like Pope and Dryden -Augustan Age of neoclassical poets, reaching perfection and refinement, driven by reason and the search for the perfect form -aim for a simplicity akin to old greek and latin -romantics break with this -romance: medieval stories of chivalry, magic and love -in romantic period, the quest has been internalized -maybe it comes from "rome", but it breaks from Roman values and polished ideals (irony of development of terms) -not just Britain, but elsewhere in Europe in literature, painting and music -in british lit, wollstonecraft on the side of the rational, but had been very passionate in her own personal life -perhaps she was trying to prove women capable of rational thoughts, but she's probably Enlightenment -Blake is probably pre-romantic -canon: 5 male romantic poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats -now we also add: mary shelley, robert burns, hemans, barbauld etc.

-emphasis on feeling and sensibility -in touch with more intuitive type of truth, found in nature, in night, in dreams, outside the city -with exception of blake, romantics emphasize nature, environment and its effect on poet, self-knowledge thru observation -exchange between inner/outer world -industrialization keeps man away from nature -anti-science and utilitarianism, against Newtonian thought -technological advances as impediments to relations with nature -William Turner painting, The Fighting Temeraire (1838), from battle of Trafalgar in Napoleonic Wars -paints it tugged towards darkness, the past (left side of painting) is suffused in lovely golden light -capture different sense of understanding -much night setting, sometimes among ruins (connecting us to the past) -William Turner, "Melrose Abbey", inscribed by poem by Walter Scott -if you want to understand glory of the past, you must come at night alone, get in touch with nonrational aspects -individualism, blames the crowd for blunting the abilities of people -being in nature on your own is important -breaking down the patterns, get rid of rigid meter and rhythm -don't want to be followers, only want to express-- not in carefully, preset guidelines -rejection of formal religion, though interested in divinity, earlier forms of belief, myth, deity in nature -imagination: the most important mental function -ability to invent, create, but more importantly to get in touch with higher truth -poet as prophet, seer, like a priest, get readers in touch with higher reality (not modest) -reaching to grasp the muse which slips away, a hard-to-grasp creature -solitary, outcast poet, a dreamer and a genius -metaphors of mirror placed in front of nature, or society: realist novel-- copy what you see in society -but Romantics don't want to be a mirror: they want to be a lamp -Romantics believe they are the source of light -poet as man, muse as woman -apart from poet, the same understanding is had by children, solitary people and the "noble savage"

-want to reform society -love the french revolution -against poverty, slavery, political repression -byron dies in Greece fighting for their independence from the ottomans -rejection of rigid structures in literature AND society

-1789, Blake publishes Songs of Innocence and the French Revolution begins -1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge publish lyrical ballads -when does it end?

-poet and visual artist -not known in his era, inspires interest in his late life and is revived by pre-Raphaelites -in childhood, parents are religious dissenters, he is allowed to do self-study -childhood marked by visions, tree covered in angels (he gets a beating), or angels working with peasants in the field -some of his siblings said they had the same experience -he was apprenticed to an engraver, a derivative art -use intaglio etching, acid resistant ink on copper plate, carved -hand-coloured afterwards -Blake invents his own technique, illuminated painting -alludes to illumination of medieval manuscripts -labour intensive, books are expensive and unique -few copies: 28 of Songs of Innocence and Experience, 7 of marriage of Heaven and Hell

-social critique, political and social oppression -Industrial Revolution, steam engine, mills, factories -rise in urban proletariat -"dark satanic mills", poem Jerusalem -rejects the enlightenment, rationality and utilitarianism -painting, newton (1805), very muscular, tiny useful tools, unflattering toilet postured, uncomfortable -newton looking down while the poet looks up

-one from Innocence, the other from Experience -critiques low wages, poor living conditions, unregulated child labour -disjunction between harsh life and Christian consolations -role of conditional "if he'd be a good boy", God will be his father -religion as salvation -ambiguous wording, disturbing -"never want joy", what does this mean? he won't lack it or he won't want it anymore? -ambiguous how much it curses establishment -2nd one is more upfront -criticism of religion and family -child punished for happiness, "make up to heaven for our misery"

-blake is an abolitionist -hints on reversal of roles -begins with pacifying view of religion -little black boy gets to heaven, he sees he will have to shade white boy from heat of gods love until he can bear it

-clod vs. pebble -counter-argument -2 mundane pieces of nature engaging in philosophical discussion -milton reference (his influence is unavoidable) -parallel structure of 2 arguments -2 different mindsets to have about love -pebble as reason, love is action -the clod sees love as passivity, it acts ON you -clod is idealist, pebble is cynic

-idealism of clod could be image of popular main front, but pebble as abolitionist? -counter-ideology, alternative cynical reading as life -gendered perspective on life? man is active and reasonable, woman is passive and sentimental -romanticism as reaction to rationality of Enlightenment, Blake portraying both sides and both are correct -pro-clod: clod sings despite being trod and stomped on, optimism despite pressure, strength of sentiment -pebble as dominant Enlightenment logic, coming from a place of privileged stagnation but still cynical, the status quo -industrial revolution? religion?

-swedenberg: early 19th c mystic, occulist, self-labelled prophet -blake and his wife attend a conference he put on, eventually blake splits from Swedenberg because he didn't believe he was the sole prophet -blake believed in poet as prophet, Romanticism, many prophets -mysticism and orientalism present in blake -idea of ambiguity, present in all his poems; is the "rose" a person or a flower? -after the first line, all enjambed, linguistically ambiguous -what's the worm? -worm loved rose but also killing it -title is ambiguous, 2 ways to read it -one way: rose is diseased -could be the rose is twisted, "sick" -alternate reading, "rose" got up, sick people rose up (a metaphor? pun?) -sickness, infection, external worm invading beautiful pure Rose, external force screws up Edenic imagery -"his dark secret love / does thy life destroy" -is her life destroyed or is his love? linguistic, grammatical ambiguity -conceit, Rose is yonic imagery

-part of a political criticism series of poems, also a philosophical poem -same concerns of Wordsworth, social inequality affects material and spiritual lives -focus on more abstract layers of suffering -the word "dirty" changed to "charter'd" -mind-forg'd manacles, disturbing self sabotage -physical, social, legal, mental restraints -religion and monarchy, institutions hurt kids -every blackning church: adjective or gerund? -chimney sweep is child sold by parents, no one protects them -is church getting black (soot, or corruption-wise?) or blackening others? -breakdown of marriage through sex work, sex worker as symbolic for Babylon corruption and sin -"hearse", death in life, in marriage

-corresponding poem to The Lamb in songs of innocence; this is in songs of experience -poems focus on the act of creation -creator: God, artist, humankind? -the strength (physical and emotional) of the creator -made by God or Devil (2nd stanza)? -trochaic rhythm helps us visualize pacing beast -Tiger as rebellious angel Lucifer, Paradise Lost -tiger vs lamb, role of terrifying aspects of creation -what the hammer, chain, trochee helped rhythm of hammer -who created something bad? he who made the lamb made thee -why is the terrifying more attractive? lamb is dull, meek -tiger as experience: bright and energetic, like love? -creation reflects on the creator as well, what shoulder, what art? need power to create

-grew up in lake district, orphaned early in life, attached to sister dorothy (interlocutor in Tintern Abbey) -1791-1792 trip to France, sympathetic to the revolution -later in life becomes conservative -becomes poet laureate, admired -much of best work from youth -galvanize romantics with Coleridge, the Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802) -1797 moves to Somerset to be close to Coleridge -The Preface appears in both editions, a manifesto for Romantics -lit crit emerging

-what is poetry and the poet? what should they do? -new style and subject, "language really used by men" in a "state of excitement" -democratic: ordinary life and language -before this, casual language only in novels, satire, poetry exalted words -Romantic philosophy on role of language -poetry to come from powerful feelings -poets: normal, but more sensibility, know of human nature and meditate -interest in peasants and the little guy -ability to be affected by absent things -poet vs. scientist -poet as prophet, tell people of higher truths -"spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" -poet more important to society than scientists, all you need to know about the world -poetry emotionally arrests and grants pleasure to the reader -present incidents and situations from common life in an unusual way -blank verse seen as politically radical -milton against the modern bondage of rhyming, romantics love milton -focus on psychological aspects and philosophy -away from so-called poetic diction -not exactly peasant-speak, just not so lofty as Pope -similarities with prose, blank verse, generally iambic pentameter

-dated on the eve of bastille day, july 13, 1798, (beginning of french revolution july 14, 1789) -1798, publication of lyrical ballads -the role of memory, five years since on the Wye -landscape in front of his eyes and transcendent connections -the sky as universalizing -direction of sight, connect landscape with quiet sky -connection inward -emphasis on relationship with nature, allows poet to understand himself -German painter Friedrich, Wanderers alone in nature, you must be alone to get with nature as an individual -Monk by the Sea: spirituality through nature

-relationship with nature -axes open up in tintern abbey: horizontal (between nature and poet), and vertical (between reader, poet and universe) -memory of scenes on River wye, feelings of unremembered pleasures -landscape translates into moral influence, beauty seeps into our acts of kindness -being attuned to nature makes us better people -various forms of enjoyment of scene, between childhood (best kind of experience) and maturity -nature becomes all-encompassing in childhood through enjoyment, animal, sensual appreciation, feeling not supplied by thought -in adulthood, enriched enjoyment by thought but also produced distance and remoteness -also seen in "my heart leaps up", direct, unsophisticated, thoughtless bliss -the child is father of the man, childhood as space of innocence uncorrupted by artificial social institutions -see childhood/adult dichotomy in "we are seven" -repetition, revelation is that child has better understanding of relationship between life and death, you can have relationship with a dead person -mature reflection on nature

-remembrance, tintern abbey, line 88: "still sad music of humanity" -see this in poems "expostulation and reply" and "the tables turned" -nature can teach you more than all the books -nature is akin to knowledge of the divine -pantheism: belief hat god is present in every part of the material world -"sense sublime", "deeply interfused" in all things

-general iambic pattern -blank verse, milton influence -invokes milton in "London 1802" petrarchan sonnet model, Milton could correct social ills -enjambment, ideas can't be contained -syntactic inversion -sometimes slows us down with stress pattern

-speaker imagines drifting, seeing host of golden daffodils by a lake -moment of recollection -poets inspired lots of nature tourism, especially in the lake district -Jane Austen tours of lake districts today, popularized as a place to derive lofty thoughts -Wordsworth is taught in the colonies -children had to learn the poems by heart -Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Kenya after independence -watches his son unable to memorize poem, who doesn't know what daffodils are and thinks they are fish, cannot relate to abstractions -he said this syllabi continues imperialism in the neocolonial phase

-from poverty to "the sage of highgate" -rags to prestige (not riches though) -Pantisocracy: ideal of equalitarian community, wants to establish one in Pennsylvania -all Romantics have revolutionary ideas -abolitionist -co-author of the lyrical ballads, esp. the rise of the ancient mariner -biographia literaria, 1817

-romantic orientalism comes from dissatisfactions with western society -idealized view of other societies -idealism becomes cliche, art, very condescending -far east escape from ordinary life, voyage to the orient as travel in space and imagination -very few have actually been to asia -collection of stereotypes emerge -Eugene Delacroix, French painter, "death of Sardanapalus" -ideas of sensuality, despotism, violence -Sardanapalus portrayed killing his slaves and concubines so the enemy cannot have them -really lurid red painting, shoes careless to value of human life, indifference -meditation on things people had no idea of -byron has a play "Sardanapalus" 1821 -references to oppression, patronizing: wollstonecraft mentions women in harems but she didn't actually know what she was talking about

-has a preface, a fragment -written in the beginnings of coleridge's opium use lmao -dreams, nightmares, states of altered consciousness -myth of the lost poem -"vision in a dream", "fragment" genres, allude to difficulties of the act of creation -intrusion of the world upon the process of creation -once disrupted, everything is gone, what happened in the mind cannot be reproduced on paper -kubla: absolute power, a world not accessible to mere mortals, tribute to power of human work -fountain as symbol of creativity -creation of pleasure dome in Xanadu, sacred topography, inaccessible to most humans (high walls) -2nd stanza, humans can create, nature can create and destroy, darkening mood -fountain throwing up rocks with force, meditation on transience of human creations -ambiguous: marriage of human creativity and natural beauty? or fragility of human creation in face of nature? -stanza 3: compare khan's power to make things spring into being, and poets power to make images materialize -woman as muse with dulcimer, i would build that dome in the air -inspiration and divine madness -fears loss of inspiration, tentativeness, could i/would i/should i, vs. belief in power of creation

-keats originally a surgeon -talks a lot about individuality, avoids associating too closely with shelley -tries really hard not to sound like milton, even if he loves the guy -an ode is a song celebrating something or someone, from classical times, to be sung publicly -keats changes up some ancient rules -coleridge wrote odes meant to be read in private, keats was more traditional but structure is new -stanzas: all start with abab, then end with varying miltonic sestet -breaks away from conventional ode form -"still unravished bride", could mean still as in motionless, or as in not yet (ambiguity) -commas, given or taken, make a big difference -who is the bride? the urn? the poem itself? the woman depicted on the urn? permanence? -3rd stanza, super positive, or tongue in cheek? chill out with all these "happys" -is he being fake? -"leaves" in 2 senses, tricky -critical of positivity, "high-sorrowful", "parching tongue" -stuck in euphoric climax, "sexual" says this joker -he dreads the denouement, the comedown, so he likes the urn where the notes are forever new -5th stanza, chiasmus, solemn, a wrap-up (tone) -x structure as containment -requiring an audience, very public -could be defeatist, unfulfilling, it's all you need to know but he doesn't tell you there IS nothing else, so what is missing? what does he hold back? -miltonic: how do you deal with knowledge when there is a limit on what is knowable? -metaphor: poet is transient but poem is permanent -urn as summation of all human knowledge, celebrate art in general as proof of our existence -critical of poetry in comparison to the unspoken power of visual art, self-reflexive poetry -the speaker/persona: easily overwhelmed by his emotions -goes against romantics thinking themselves gods through poetry, less hubristic -aloof intellectual discourse with himself, hesitation

-speaker takes anodyne to deal with pain -not recreational drug, says earlier coleridge -later coleridge gets onto opium real hard, 1801 -consumption of drugs in 19th c affect lit -laudunum (liquid opium) for victor frankenstein -opium dens in late 19th c london -romantic belief in altered mind states, creativity -economic and political background, it could get you to a higher truth -opium wars, early 1840s, late 1850s, China vs. British East India Company -china, continue trade or blockade and create a monopoly?

-tortured by sleeplessness, nightmares -pindaric ode, greek antiquity, public poems, sung, celebration of athletic feats -18th c english lit, ode expresses lofty intellectual and spiritual ideas -incongruence: public life, private topics (depression, lack of creativity, infatuation with other women) -makes his private life into public interest -wrote this poem on the day of Wordsworth's marriage (gay) -relation between nature and the poet, downward movement on lack of creativity -in nature, lulling of the wind (symbol of inspiration) -wish storm to pick up and energize his activities -kubla khan, the failure of creativity -this is one of the prompts for the paper -correspondence between inner/outer world more complex, we receive but what we give -creative impulse comes from within

-born into wealth and privilege -radical political views, societal reforms -oxford, critic of monarchy, organized religion and privileges of aristocracy -believes in free love -long work: prometheus unbound (1820) -preoccupation with promethean myth

-egyptology as fashion in wake of napoleon 1798 -antiquity holds appeal, byron fought in Greece to save birthplace of western canon from muslim ottomans -craze in western europe with ancient ruins -volneys ruins of empires (1791), frankenstein's monster reads it, very popular in this age -even breaking bad references it -why do mighty deeds if everything after will shatter? -ozymandias is greek name for ramses II -egyptian culture concerned wit death and afterlife, possibility to immortalize -memento mori, human lives so fragile -contrast between ozymandias' commanding words and erosion of his monument -what goes on between ruler and artist, no one would remember deeds if no one built the monuments/wrote the poems -our bodies may die, what of works of art? -poem: artistic creation and its ability to survive -ambiguity: "the hand that mocked" -poems so well crafted that everything is deliberate -does shelley place the artist above the ruler? art can mock, satirize even the mightiest -meditating on transience of rulers and of uselessness of art for posterity

-1820, wind also a source of poetic vitality and of political renewal -not only destroyer (autumn wind) but messenger / prophet of the future (spring/rebirth) -post-napoleon europe and wish for political rebirth

-mother mary wollstonecraft dies in childbirth -dad william godwin, philosopher, raises her on her mother's writings -first published at age 10 -1814, elopes with percy shelley (whose wife is currently pregnant), europe 2 months, come back broke -percy doesn't believe in marriage but he marries mary 1816 after his previous wife drowned herself -percy also drowned in 1822 in his late 20's in italy -mary embraces the idea of free love, but her husband's infidelities still manage to make her suffer -everyone is sleeping together -mary keeps writing after percy's death, never up to frankenstein standards again (a teenaged work!)

-june 1816, mary godwin, claire clairmont (her half sister), percy, byron and polidori at Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva -horror story telling competition -convo on galvanism -percy comes up with "mont blanc" and "hymn to intellectual beauty" -polidori writes "the vampire" which goes on to inspire dracula, productive night for all

-frame narrative, set of letters from walton, an explorer, to sister mrs margaret saville -voyage from england to st petersburg to archangel -why begin with letters? -introduces another point of view, helps with narration after victor dies -why can't the creature have written? make it a page turner -letters (influence of epistolary novel, like Richardson's Pamela), authenticity function, multiplicity of perspectives -makes you think about who is the good guy, who is not -boxes of narratives, competing views undermine each other -letters allow more voices; first Walton -then we get to see what the creature thinks -lets novelist create doubles and mirroring -Walton and Frankenstein both scientific explorers, driven by mystery, curiosity -mirror between Frank and the creature: both die, cannot live without each other -Romantics preoccupied with doubling, emancipation from the self -Frank says "my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave" (cute things to call your significant other) -William Blake: "My Spectre around me night and day..." "Emancipation far within", playing with inside/outside -guardian angel type of role, wild beast -what is the function of the creature? -who is the protagonist? there are many -traditional plot as protag and antag, but who do we sympathize with here? the creature has more supporters among readers -scientist tries to make life from death, creature kills a lot of people (the circle of life) -often called the modern prometheus, noble guy risking the wrath of gods to benefit the people -romantics love this vision of themselves -role as creator: risk punishment from authority, isolation from society, to do something noble -love Paradise Lost (one of the books the creature reads) -thematic mirroring with Milton too -Prometheus is Titan who gave humans fire, mythology of the self, strive for newness and suffer

-found magnetic poles, but how did they act? -they think poles might have other kind of landscapes -Victor and Walton both driven by desire to find out new things -Walton trying to find about pole, Victor trying to create creature, creature trying to find human companionship in society -letters make it more subjective

-walton, Frankenstein, driven to explore -Frank warns Walt about curiosity killing the cat -biblical allusions, don't play god or the serpent will get ya

-shares an affinity with william blake -Tyger: who created you, God or the Devil? Did he smile? what is the responsibility of a creator? -Victor hasn't thought thru his act -unanticipated consequences -he picked beautiful pieces but the total is ugly -inheritance from the Enlightenment, thirst for knowledge thru silence -rationality to solve any mystery -Romantics favour imagination, nature of knowledge, power of art -anticipation of modernism: dark aspects of creativity and imagination -mary Shelley takes down a notch the vision of male romantics (yes drag them)

-novel has now existed 100 years in english -predecessors liked realism, while shelley to veer into fantasy -gothic novel in the late 18th century, lots of spooky tropes, catherine morland likes this sort-- Frank borrows this dark and brooding atmosphere -philosophical novel from France etc -Shelley interested not in the how (how to reanimate corpses) but in consequences of scientific hubris -what happens when imagination and the pursuit of knowledge are divorced from ethics? -novel appeals to us: cloning, genetic experimentation -draws on the bildungsroman tradition: creature reads Goethe's "the Sorrows of Young Werther" -mary shelley had just read Rousseau's confessions, he is also from geneva, a city republic -fascination with "the natural state," untainted by society-- Rousseau says this is a gentle state and that "primitive humans" are good, and civilization corrupts -the creature doesn't know anything, he has to learn things -mind as blank state, formation/education

-Paracelcus, Agrippa: medieval/Renaissance science on alchemy, transmuting metals -the elixir of life ooo spooky -this interests Frank, very disappointed by Krempe on the possibilities of learning -reduced scope of natural philosophu -M. Waldman, "guy from the forest", in touch with nature, shows Frank what science can do -"Krempe" suggests cramping, narrow -education of the creature: thru Safie's education -Milton's Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther -looks in on mini school where Safie, the Turkish girl, learns English

-okay, no elixir of life, but maybe essence of life has scientific source -many scientists: Franklin, Volta, looking on electricity -experiments with lightning, see Jane Goodall essay on "Electrical Romanticism" -Percy Shelley experiments with electricity at Oxford, static electricity for hair standing up -questions whether electricity was the force of life -Luigi Galvani: effects of electricity on muscles

-walton thinks it might be sunshine at the pole -not sure how magnetic pole of the earth works yet -thinks maybe a magic portal between the north and south poles -Walton driven by desire to help humanity -James Cook did this voyage too

-sublime, picturesque, and beautiful -Picturesque: nature on a human scale, enchants and comforts -sublime: astonishment, terror, vast scale, mountains, oceans and infinite sky -beautiful: balance, proportion, smoothness and delicacy -p.111, the sublime vista shifts into a picturesque view of the villages -you view rugged hills and ruined castles, the dark Rhine, dark atmosphere... and then toned down to these human pretty towns -challenged by the novel to consider what things fascinate us -beloved Elizabeth is beautiful, but let's face it: snore -creature is sublime even if ugly -Liz is like a puppet, background characters poorly developed, narrative is allegorical -here, the sublime is of interest: landscape and creature -image of the valley Chamounix, Mont Blanc -appropriate sublime setting for thoughts on life, death and creation: the big questions -appropriate setting to be confronted by his creation -plot gets us to a point where they can confront, and it has to be in nature, Victor in his right mindframe -Mont Blanc is also very inspiring to Percy Shelley (the other, less good Shelley) -his poem "Mont Blanc", an utterly forgettable yarn, is a dark vision of a hellish landscape of despair -between the serene and tormented attitudes -confront eternity: is there something beyond this emptiness?

-Safie and her decision to stay in Europe -"the treacherous Turk", her father -racialized images of the Creature, difference and monstrosity, beauty and morality -Safie unenthusiastic about her own culture -European beauty standards

-paradise lost references: "i should be your adam but i am rather a fallen angel"; botched creation rejected by the father -critiquing negative way in which scientific minds treated concept of life and creation during the Enlightenment (context of history) -this book was a period piece, set in the time of the Enlightenment (Victor as enlightened scientist) -need wisdom to temper your knowledge -Walton and Frankenstein both have fatal flaws, too much book smarts and not enough common sense -knowledge from experience, experimentation, knowledge from authority -knowledge as a tool of creation -where do you draw the line between helpful knowledge and destructive? -no one man should have so much unchecked power -too much belief in your own creative power can create arrogance, then leading to failure -Walton thought he'd be a great poet but failed, both creators lacked aesthetic in their creation (can we compare the monster to bad poetry?) -arguing against idea that you can rationally understand everything in the universe -Victor has interest in romantic, fantastic pseudo-science over natural philosophy -Vic and Walt are going after forbidden fruits, wish to be the first to do something, desirable element of novelty -romantic view WITHIN science -lack of knowledge of the past and hubris equals ouch -Mary Shelley was also a poet, reason to be opposed to science -creature as art/science bridge? can't find himself in literature though he can appreciate the ideas -in ancient past, science and art were not separable at all -"natural philosophy" also brings 2 together -Victor not meant to be a scientist, he was deprived of an artistic upbringing, but he was drawn to artsier science, godly aspect -hates science when he first attends lecture -criticism of science, or megalomania? -homoerotic between Vic and Clerval, Walton really also wants a buddy, a beloved male friend, someone to match him intellectually... a best guy -male dominated field, boy book: even though written by a woman -Mary: look at the folly of man and the arrogance of dudes -showing that toxic masculinity is not sustainable -creature asks for a GF and sustainability -OR is it a reflection of Shelley's reality? story wouldn't sell if it was about Victoria Frankenstein -womb envy? striving for creation? -why are parents so obsessed with Liz and Vic marriage?

-sublime moment, looks at the avalanche ruin and then the creature appears -creature as manifestation of Victor's excess of emotion -creatue asks for a new creation, sees the benefit of creation -Adam's rib, make another person, Biblical/Paradise Lost -satanically persuasive, well versed argument -Vic warms Walton, beware his persuasive power! -this is a fallen world, not Eden, it isn't a given here that Adam and Eve will have a perfect love -in Paradise Lost, Sin is created out of Satan

-Liz 2 just recently surpassed it (suck it Vicky) -prince Albert, impact on culture and encouraging the arts (not to mention scandalous piercings) -he was more liberal spirit in the marriage, she was conservative, stiff upper lip, don't talk about sex etc. -a time of social/scientific/art upheaval, also suffering and poverty -novels dominate the cultural scene -Dickens: "It was the best of times it was the worst of times. It was the combination best and worst times." (A Tale of Two Cities, 1859) -refers to Paris and London, takes place before and after the French Revolution (a period piece), but it can also refer to the day in which it was written -contradictions: innovation and industrial revolution, but poverty and squalor in English cities (Engels is all over this)

-Britain becomes the richest nation on earth, yet more than 70% of the British lives in poverty -conquer a quarter of the globe, the largest empire, and the first industrialized nation -political and social reforms -upwardly mobile middle class, bourgeoisie -land communally owned (people move from rural areas and Ireland, into cities) -moral corruption on all levels of society -season of light (progress) and darkness (preachers see religion in decline. Thanks Darwin) -Skepticism and incredulity lends to further experimentation -all the conditions to set up transformation (Hegelian perspective) -railways, telegraphs (1837), communication -imported goods brought by steamship -daily newspapers with large circulation, everyone reads the same thing at the same time -1840's, king and queen hear of trade exhibition to be held in France -Brits are pissed, so they hold triumphant 1851 exhibition -held at the Crystal Palace, building of glass and steel, really crowning achievement -then railway stations to be built of glass and steel-- this has some really tragic consequences -poets and writers love the airy structure, the power of man to conquer the elements through technology

-economic growth and democratization -Alfred Morgan, "An Omnibus Ride to Piccadilly Circus: Mr. Gladstone Travelling with Ordinary Passengers" -and yet: the poverty

-The People's Charter of 1838, curbing excesses enshrined in law -Irish Potato Famine, 1845-47 -a million dead, 2 million emigrate -Corn Laws made preferential tarifs, very little grain in Ireland when blight hits -famine all over Irish literature, devastation, much immigration to America and drowning in the sea -Darwinism: On the Origin of Species (1859) -utilitarianism, Bentham: morality is a number science, majority rules -but who votes on what is right or wrong? -ends up problematic -also John Stuart Mill theories; Marx and Engels (Manifesto 1848), Kapital -Fabian society

-Manchester, first manufacturing city in the world -exchange in centre, market street leads southeast from it -city partitioned according to class, Medlock river -bourgeoisie in mansions and villas in airy suburbs, never even see the working class -working class, hidden, crammed in dirty, overcrowded quarters -transportation from suburbs on omnibus comes 15-30 minute intervals -Dickens equates poverty to moral deficiency on the part of people in power -poor quarters crammed, no area to congregate publicly -often flooded by river, rats etc. -nowadays slums radiate out of city, not kept in the centre -warehouses empty on sundays, holidays -many American cities have no transportation at all

-George Eliot: art as mode of amplifying experience, extend our contact with others, paint the life of the people -Romantics: writer as secular clergy -Eliot: reading to teach sympathy, empathy -heavyweight is realist novel: everyday experience, psychological motivation, convoluted social plots, very complex -relations between individual and society -often omniscient narrator, or protagonist as narrator -novel as realist, but still has elements of fantastic, coincidence, miracles, improbable events propelling the plot -lingering from Romanticism and Gothic novel -elements in writings of C and E Bronte -social problem/industrial novels (Dickens) -domestic novels (George Eliot) -sensation novels (Wilkie Collins), popular literature to be forgotten -penny dreadfuls, describe terrible happenings

-triple decker: 1 book in 3 volumes so you can just take one from the lending library (for money) -cheap single-volume editions -serialized novels like Dickens "Pickwick Papers" (1836-37), end on cliffhangers every month

-family in debtor's prison for several months -at 12 he was sent as apprentice to a boot-blacking factory, abusive child labour haunts him

-new poor law, 1834, splits poor into Deserving (able-bodied hard workers, to be supported by the parish) and Undeserving (young, old, sick and disabled, lazy leeches) -Dickens writes against the general attitude of this Law -workhouses, he says, are worse than prisons -he says "dragon pauperism", criminalization of the poor -essay starts with church service that speaks of charity, then poor left to suffer in workhouse (contradiction, hypocrisy) -children make popular Victorian characters, this era invents childhood -before, kids seen as having same morals and judgement as adults -toy stores begin to appear with respect given to them, Wordsworth encourages the "innocence of children" idea -Dickens closed on image of burnt child -wrapped in linen, some terrible accident, we don't know the story: was he a chimney sweep? -Dickens shows reader: you just don't know, so don't pass judgement -Dickens began on image of dropped child, shows victims of workhouse system -long sentence structure means reader must slow down to read it and focus -seems stream of consciousness

-first image is the dead "dropped" (abandoned) child -workhouse not conducive for happiness of longevity, especially for burnt child -ignoring the source of burns is significant, this is not a terrible accident but an inevitable matter of course -childhood in this period asserted as period of concern, childhood as innocence, so how can we confront children with death? -wrapped in linen, a funeral shroud -sentence structure, long sentences, many clauses trapped in the sentence just as so many people trapped in social systems (workhouse is exploitation pretending to be charity) -no attempt at conversation with the child -pronoun "us" as counterpoint to "he" puts reader in the scene

-Victorian period also that of empire expansion -idea of Britishness in bloom -here is explanation for much of late 20th century writing, we see what everyone is writing against -looking at triad of bigoted essays and the poem -people referred to as a "question", a "problem" or a "solution" -influential racist writers in their time, not just angry cranks: considered wise and prophetic, especially Carlyle

-empires existed before colonialism in its modern form -Romans, Mongols, Austro-Hungarians etc. -17th century onward, uniting features -in tandem with capitalist system of exchange -East India Company (1600), get rid of intermediaries for spice trade in Asia -expansion of trade posts, greed -William Pitt's India Act 1784, curb activities of the abusive company -1857, First Indian War of Independence/Indian Mutiny, means the Brits ally more closely with the company -British Raj 1858-1947 -economic benefits for Britain -Gikandi: abusive forms like slavery and aggressive colonialism are "nonidentical twins" with the culture of taste -creation of race ideology, "natural difference", create groups based on visible factors -sexist exclusivism, colonialism as "man's enterprise", white women still complicit, but occupy a between position (between white men and colonized people) -white woman as "angel in the home"

-revolts against Carlyle's terrible racism -yet he had worked 30 years as EIC clerk -wrote on liberty, supports women's suffrage, anti-slavery, but he was not in favour of an independent India -did not believe the colonized could govern themselves

-seen as benevolent and profitable process until the end of the 19th century -late 19th century, early 20th century, criticism -JA Hobson, "Imperialism" (1902), on Boer Wars and mine owners like Cecil Rhodes -Lenin, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1917) -Berlin Conference, December 1884-January 1885 -Europeans decide to divide up Africa (there are no African representatives present)

-Ashis Nandi, "the Intimate Enemy", transition of colonizers from bandit kings to philosopher kings (colonizing the mind) -1823 General Committee of the Public Instruction (in Bengal), on education of subjects -European Orientalists: emphasized study of Sanskrit, Arabic etc. -but utilitarians: James Mill (John Stuarts dad) and Thomas Babington Macaulay -study English to build Empire -he says no other language has comparable body of work -likens English to impact of Greek and Latin in ancient world -Macaulay did not read Sanskrit, Urdu, but made statements on their paucity based on assumption -also argues for teaching of English subjects, history, geography etc. -thought Indian history was all false and not scientific -of course, English legacy is also full of mythology -not engaging with texts truthfully, interprets on his own terms -predicted English to be overall language of the world -his argument slips from cultural realm to economic, uniting colonies in commerce in English

-"class of interpreters", Anglicized Indians -imitators of the English, share the same tastes, but remain degree of difference -racial difference also at heart of the discourse between Carlyle and Mill

-slave trade in british colonies abolished 1807, slavery itself in 1833 -slaves older than 6: "apprenticeship", for 4 years, part slave part "free" -during "free" time they can do their own work -slaves have no choice of employer, power to negotiate salary -loss of life: government compensates owners, not slaves -plantation owners agitate, say they are surrounded by angry insubordinate slaves -plantations failing, no sugar for tea -preferential tarif on west indies sugar

-reputation on as sage despite racism -concept "telescopic philanthropy" -economic rationale: lost to English society -he says wanting to free slaves is too far away, help the suffering closer to home instead -he said serfdom would be the answer -discourse on degeneration: allegory of social decay -wants slaves tied to the land, glamourized view of feudal society (clear roles) -use of word "arab" for the English poor, saying poverty makes you less white (in status) -says English society destroyed by encouraging philanthropy in the wrong place -apocalyptic imagery of England's collapse -thinks former slaves should be in forced serfdom because they are lazy, advocates violence -racial inequality based on supposed behavioural difference and work ethic -puritanical streak: laziness and leisure is moral degradation, wasted lives -"the white enchanter", skill of the English to turn nature in the Caribbean into agriculture and prosperity, wake the land into productivity

-subverts with his own essay -says Carlyle has done some great damage for Brits AND americans -questions the idea of a pre-established hierarchy -challenges idea of labour: why must people work all the time? why is it morally wrong? -acknowledges backbreaking slave work, compared with the sort of work Carlyle does (writing, probably at his mahogany desk in his leather armchair) -invokes the natural sciences -brigs up conditions causing supposed differences -religion against slavery -50 years after Equiano had been writing his narrative, presenting the horrors of slavery while not alienating his white audience -who are literary critics and why trust their judgement? -Gikandi, slavery and culture of taste are nonidentical twins -Carlyle speaks of pumpkins but illustration depicts watermelons

-well known during his lifetime -1850, hits it big with "in memoriam", but the quality of his work declines -poet aware of his own shortcomings -wrote on Arthurian legends, revival of medievalism -Lady of Shallot, fraught with conundrum: is the artist isolated by self or society? -issues of isolation, art and reality -(a)temporality -she's trapped in a tower but is she there by free will? -word "curse" comes up a lot, never really explained -rules: not allowed to look at Camelot -how realistic? -artist needs to keep creating or they will loose grasp on the self, cannot stop working -cave allegory a la Plato: reality is false shadow -art and the artist, longevity, Ode to a Grecian Urn -art movements constantly change, go in and out of style -begins with production of art desired by civilization, then at the end she makes natural visceral song -farmers etc., entranced by the mystery of her life and art: allure of the hermit artist

-poem addressed to usa, jump in on this colonialism action, buddies -end of spanish-american war, spain ceded guam, puerto rico and Philippines to the usa -beginning of the Philippine-American war -white people and Americans by extension have tasks under this burden -"civilizing" thru education -economic benefits disguised as a thankless task -condescending and racist views -victimizes the white man in the title, makes him seem noble, selfless love for everyone, white saviour mentality

-iambic trimeter: military march suggestion -traditional rhyme pattern cd fh -archaic forms, biblical language suggests Moses parallel with colonizing mission -colonialism as servitude -infantilizing, dehumanizing, parent-child metaphors -"sons": masculine task (sexist exclusivism in 19th c colonialism) -half-devil half-child image, dehumanizing, infantilizing, also classical era evoked -makes it seem like God ordained task -Kipling is first winner of Nobel prize for literature -mark twain asked who will sing the brown man's burden -Phelps also criticizes him, "the gold-fields of the Rand", gold in South Africa, fought over by the Dutch and British -kipling obviously supports cecil rhodes -"white man's burden" in ads for Pear Soap -moralized thought, equating cleanliness with morality -"brightening the dark corners of the earth" -admiral in white jacket, white hair and moustache, on his ship, merging economic and moral aspects of colonialism -missionary handing out soap like its a bible

-Father Polish nationalist, opposed Russian imperialism, loses his parents -he has seen imperialism up close and he's not impressed -becomes a sailor in British Merchant Navy and is naturalized as a British subject -known for having a huge vocabulary, non-native speaker takes control -description of map-gazing in youth is autobiographical -europeans see global exploration as heroic exploit -1890, steamboat captain on Congo River Kinshasa to Katanga, arrives too late -instead goes on a boat to Stanley Falls -realizes he is close to a place he dreamed of visiting, but it was not as he had dreamed -Henry Morton Stanley's search for Livingstone in 1871 -Livingstone gets found, staged the meeting -illustration: only the Europeans are coloured in -calls exploration vile, looting -Congo Free State (1885-1908), controlled by Leopold II of Belgium -rubber, ivory, minerals for Belgium -cruelty and greed -high quotas for rubber for tires, important for industrialization, don't fill quotas, hands severed -you get bonuses for killing wrongdoers, so supervisors did it a lot -1899, the heart of darkness -1902, Removes "The" for ambiguity -his novels share a love for travel, especially sea voyages -lot of Heart of Darkness: quintessential modernist text, accusations of racism by Chinua Achebe

-unnamed narrator -Marlow's story (quoted from memory by the narrator) -a story about kurtz -kurtz's life, Marlow's opinion, narrator's view and Conrad's take -story within a story, frame narrative, mise en abyme effects -importance of memory, reliability -frame narrative distances reader from Marlow so you can look at him better -also insulates Conrad against Marlow's take, we don't know how narrator or Conrad feel about it -Ian Watt writes on similarity between Conrad and Impressionist painters -Marlow sees meaning outside a tale, like a halo or haze, not a kernel inside -monet painted one cathedral in many lights -imitations of human understanding -sense impressions, delayed meaning -the light with which we portray objects is as important as the objects themselves -Kurtz has a haze around him -Conrad is traditionalist, realist, hates impressionism -mystery of Kurtz left with an echo of horror, what was it? -takes awhile for us to see that these are arrows

-ambiguity of the title: person with dark personality? -place of physical or metaphysical darkness (the Congo) -Henry Morton Stanley: Thru the Dark Continent etc. -or is it Europe/Europeans whose hearts are dark? -Hegel had placed Africa outside of history, he thought they had no concept of time -compares Africa with London in time of Roman conquest -temporal distance, calling Africa regressive in 19th c

-common Marlowian writing on atrocities in Congo by Western journalists -description of hellish region, senseless violence (makes it seem like "civilized" wars are justifiable, have higher purpose)

-Achebe accuses Conrad of being a racist -does the fault lie with mad Kurtz or did Congo make him go mad? -Stanley is a worse racist, says Achebe -what is Kurtz/Marlow relationship? -Marlow fears "going native" -Kurtz's brain/head is an ivory ball (ivory is all measure of wealth for Europeans in Congo) -Kurtz interaction with wildness is sexually described

-Achebe says Africans depicted as inarticulate, no clear identity -Marlow acknowledges connections between 2 groups, but thinks Europeans have progressed farther -says boat crew all cannibals, how would he know? -pay their crew in copper wire-- ?? useless -so Marlow worries what will they eat? -crew has been starving but clearly have not started eating anyone yet -metaphors of cannibalism, being "eaten" by another culture, sounds like colonialism my guy -so just how imperialist IS Conrad? -marlow criticizes French shooting projectiles, greedy European "pilgrims", shitty trade -he believes in noble colonialism, the redemptive idea -church of greed, Europeans venerating ivory -Kurtz believes in civilizing mission but admits it has gone wrong

-his last words are "the horror" -marlow hates lying, seeks the truth -interested in kurtz's intended -LIES to her, tells her last words are her name -she can't handle the truth? -he thinks women have beautiful perception of the world and he wants to protect this -keep them out of it

-kurtz's supposed "mistress", no words, but powerfully spiritual -material presence, a lot of wealth and bling -"pilgrims" want nothing to do with her -also presented as an apparition in shadow -embodiment of African landscape for Marlow, colonial perspective: "it all adds up to a couple of elephant tusks" -animalistic, described as part of the landscape, reductive language -they all rise dramatically out of the ground like geographical features

-extended parallel metaphor -the Fates? of antiquity, cutting your string -European women? the only ones we see in Marlow's Tale -secretarial function -women in the colonialist project -women as markers of thresholds, checkpoints -aunt gets him job, knitters get him gone -the mistress, then intended -liminal reading of women in novel -kurtz's disciple, godlike man -pilgrims go in search of him -the kurtz in Europe is not the same as the one in Africa, he could never have returned to europe -no part of kurtz-in-africa could return to europe, not even his last words

-edwardian era, continuity with victorian era -woolf: december 1910 human character changed -death of edward vii, 1910 -end of a political and aesthetic era -parents/children, master/servant, gender relations change -Bloomsbury group: Roger Fry 1910 "Manet and the Post-Impressionists", Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso -changing their tastes, shock the public -Stravinsky's Rite of Spring 1913, riot -Picasso paints sex workers, drawing on aesthetics of other cultures-- kind of a big deal to be showing nudes of contemporary European women -"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", controversial, because that's where the Pope used to live (kind of a holy city), and the women are all naked but angular and have faces looking like African masks (outright racism and exoticization)

-WW1 great war, millions died thanks 2 new war tech -Sir Edward Grey said "the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime" -lull of the 1920's, then economic depression and WW2 -women get the vote in Britain in 1918 for over 30's, and women over 21 by 1928

-karl marx effecting novelists, role of economic forces and class struggle -Dickens: solution is charity -Marxists: need radical change of system -effect of Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin, dictatorship -Einstein, "the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (1905), special theory of relativity -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell: relationship between words and their referents are unstable: language is no longer transparent -we can't agree on what words stand for anymore -Freud: importance of sexuality and the unconscious, Interpretation of Dreams 1900 -much modernist art owes a debt to Freud, especially surrealists like Dali -pretty much the whole first half of the 20th century is hecked up on Freud

-modernism is umbrella term for related phenomena -move away from the linear, decorative and sentimental -high modernists pre ww2, then late modernism and weirdos who don't even fit the mould -global modernisms: it's not just a western trend -reality fractured in compound pieces -era of isms, cubism, post-impressionism, surrealism, expressionism, futurism -Blast, 2 issues of British Vorticist movement -manifesto, Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound -masculinist stream in much modernist work -virile artist ideas -blast the decorative, the sentimental (19th century art was too ornate, betrays reality by being too realistic) -bless allusion, juxtaposition, fragment, impersonality -blast linear, form, etc. -open-ended novel comes to the foreground -imagism: Ezra Pound and others, in a Station of the Metro -no simile or joining, just juxtaposition, put together relationship by yourself -influenced by Japanese prints and compressed form of haiku -loss in confidence that identity and value are knowable -lack of trust that science can explain the universe -reality is internal, focus on perception, interior, symbolic landscapes -perspectivism in fiction, narrative from narrow perspective of one character, or multiple narrators (clashing perspectives) -no longer omniscient narrators, withdrawal of the author -no longer sequential, cause/effect relations in fiction: replaced by discontinuous relations (allusions, symbols) -open-endedness of works

-no center, yeats the second coming -yet: attempt to find an ontological or epistemological grounding -james joyce and his epiphanies -art as privileged site for such insight, high culture -tightening of form: parallels, careful juxtaposition

-phenomenology -lived experience, philosophical study of structures of consciousness as experience

-transition to modernism, 1865-35 -build mythology of Ireland: in early, mythical image -occultism, folklore, theosophists -irish nationalism, impetus and ambivalence

-massacre of irish nationalists by britain -tribute to nationalism yet conflicted sentiments -transformation thru participation, beyond "the usual comedy" of life -a terrible beauty is born -end: prediction of lasting memory, or formation of nationalist myth? -certain ambivalence -stanza 3 "enchanted to a stone to trouble the living stream"

-After ww1, Russian Revolution, middle of Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) -things fall apart, the centre cannot hold -reading history in cycles, the gyres (2000 years) -transformation of Christian vision into ominous prediction: "rough beast", "slouching towards Bethlehem to be born" -rocking cradle, ambiguous imagery -history advancing in gyres, expanding from a tight centre, cycles of 2000 years -yeats presenting history at beginning of 20th c, things beginning to fall apart and unravel -a revelation to come, but not that foretold in the bible -uses biblical language, but transforms christian vision into an ominous prediction -"rocking cradle" ambiguous imagery -ww1, Russian Revolution (1917), Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) -dactyl, then falling apart, getting more irregular -why be vexed with nightmare at 2nd coming of christ?

-resists romanticism, not morally but realistically -imagery of pervading darkness surrounding his epiphany of the narrator criticizes idealizations of exotic figures like the bazaar and Mangan's sister -not didactic, it just is what it is

-born in suburb in Dublin, 1882 -raised Catholic, broke from the faith -nonconformist, anti-marriage (only married partner late in life so that their kids can get inheritance) -friends with Yeats, Pound, who helped him get the funding to write Ulysses -lives on continent, comes back to Dublin to manage the first cinema there, but it fell through -dies of surgery complications for an ulcer -Dubliners, 1914 -Ulysses, 1929 -important for modernism and all 20th c

-who is she -presented flatly, he refers to her image, not a fully developed character: could be any girl -it's about him, not her -she has no name: her name is a summons to him, but he never gives it -only names given belong to minor characters -main characters: the girl, the aunt, uncle, narrator (no names) -physical manifestations of his love: security blanket for his thoughts, always something to think about -Petrarchan suffering lover, he has no control over his love -all about him, he never wonders what she thinks or feels -confounds his love with religious devotion, all he's been raised to know how to love -religious ecstasy -pubescent confusion of God and sexuality -devotion not to her, but to a feeling that belongs only to him -his body like a harp she plays, harp as Irish national symbol, though her actions never directed at him -girl described in parts, not as a full person

-normal small urban space, but he personified the buildings, which face each other -childhood neighbourhoods very active, have personality -all about character experience, not plot -tribes of cottages, running the gauntlet

-money comes up and messes up all his plans -story devolves into money trouble -becoming more real and tangible than his vague feelings -epiphany comes from religion, uses some biblical language -able to see himself suddenly in a monstrous way -gazing into darkness he sees himself -knowledge leads to seeing you'll never know everything -relatable story about futility, abrupt end -witnesses convo between men and women which is empty and meaningless, happening in the space where he expected a culmination of his romance -idealization of adult interaction with which he has no experience, all coming to nothing -always gazing out the window onto the world, going to the bazaar is an adult undertaking -realizes that it doesn't get better -adults at bazaar have English accents, don't see him as an equal, infancy of Ireland

-position of artists in society -differences between world of young and of ageing poet -alliteration "f", fish flesh and fowl -contradictions: "dying generations", live for senses only -lots of yeats phrases become important: Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold, No Country For Old Men -Byzantium as ideal place: Hagia Sophia (religious works) and mechanical birds (secular artifacts) -contrast feeling/sensation world of the young to ageing artist -world of the eternal art is defined as Byzantium -journey of the mind toward an ideal (irony) -still serves a world that may not understand his art

-born adeline virginia stephen, educated at home under her fathers tutelage with no formal education, read widely -struggles with depression and other mental illnesses, probably bipolar disorder, which she explores in fiction -breakdowns after death of her parents -struggles with depression and mental illness, which she explores in fiction -Bloomsbury group 1904-1905 in woolf home -vanessa bell her sister gathers literary people from cambridge -keynes, leonard woolf essayist, EM forster -the woolfs marry, 1912, form Hogarth Press, many translated works -Forster, Katherine Mansfield, TS Eliot, translate Freud -she could write what she wanted since she owned the press -productive through 1920's -Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, the Waves, to The Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own

-a room of one's own, treatise on women in fiction -women can only write with money and privacy -late 1920's, love affair with vita sackville west, Orlando as love letter biography -orlando changes gender throughout their immortal life, unfixed nature of gender -addressed stuff Freud talked about -uses the word "sex" where we would use "gender" -revolutionary at the time

-called originally "the hours" -also had short stories preceding about clarissa -mrs dalloway in bond street, 1923, less sympathetic characterization -about being hostess, party consciousness, woolf considers it to be superficial at first, but her opinion changes -you need to be a hero to be socially successful, courage (from her journals) -develops topic into a novel, insanity and suicide -splits character into clarissa and septimus smith -septimus has shellshock, PTSD, psychology of the day had not caught up

-woolf innovates by exploring traumatized consciousness -both experience london on a june day in 1923 -they never meet and are indirectly connected -sometimes cross paths, in proximity: both hear car backfiring on Bond Street -traumatized by the noise, Septimus more so -clarissa hears of his suicide at her party -dr. bradshaw wants him institutionalized, and Septimus kills himself -clarissa had influenza, thoughts of death common -she imagines the physical sensation he must have had, being killed by his fall -wonders why had he done it? wonders at the meaning of such a death -she feels like Septimus too and is glad he had thrown life away in efforts to take control of his life

-"fear no more the heat o' the sun..." Cymbeline -"If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy", Othello -modernists asks us to put together the meaning of it all -she thinks of othello while in love with Sally Seton

-1st sentence is its own paragraph: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Why set it apart? -sense of duty, but also frivolous: a fun outing but also an act of duty -she is dutiful to what she thinks are her obligations in high society -buying flowers seems light, inconsequential -"she said", implies that she is in dialogue with an unknown other, and calling her "Mrs." means she's seen mainly as a wife by this other, not as herself -buying the flowers is the only thing she can do herself, hosting realm allows her to be the master -implies that usually someone else would buy the flowers, she has hired help and money -"what a lark! what a plunge!"; bird, joke -ambiguity to open the narrative to the past

-modernists: the novel imitates the movement of the human mind, stream of consciousness -belief in art and its transformative abilities -19th c, novel is pedagogical -but what if the world cannot really be known? -present fragmentation of reality, but there IS a way to put things back together, in art -but the READER must work to put things back together from fragmented literary work -not sequential or event-based, not chronological; many things going on in the brain, coherence -the mind does not focus easily or naturally

-introduced by william james, Principles of Psychology 1890 -continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, impressions -eavesdropping on someone's mind -thoughts arrive unprompted, memories compete for attention -james joyce, ulysses, molly bloom's soliloquy is not punctuated at all -woolf to control this shapeles stream, turn it into art without betraying reality -mrs dalloway: shift between various characters thoughts and remarks, interior monologue, free indirect discourse -hope that art will assemble all that material to reveal transcendent truth -free indirect discourse: such fools we are, she thought -indirect/reported speech: she thought that all people are fools -sometimes we go to one characters mind just to bridge into another mind, just go into a mind to carry us to a new place where our other character of interest is

-sounds mark time, clocks chiming -clarissa as force in time, going back AND forward -different experiences of time, different personal dimensions -time moves different speeds based on personal factors, subjective experiences of time -elaborate simile: clarissa and st. margaret's church -imitation of death

-originally called The Hours -time and space not experienced the same way by all characters, experiential richness of some moments, time seeming to stand still -Henri Bergson, for science time is made of discreet, measurable entities: not so in real life

-septimus -1916, battle of somme, 60.000 britons dead, huge shock -shell shock, also called male hysteria (only women were thought to have hysteria before now), silencing of veterans trauma and lack of knowledge about mental health, specifically PTSD -marginalization of vet experiences, Septimus expected to function normally -Karen DeMeester: modernist lit post-ww1 is a literature of trauma -from replicates psychological trauma of survivors, stream of consciousness, incoherence -lack of meaning in the world, Septimus fears

-disenchantment with social roles, ideas, family, romance -septimus went to france to save an england of shakespeare and ms isabelle pole in a green dress -what is worth fighting for: idealized picture of England -loses his friend Evans for whom he feels homoerotic desire -everyone expects him to act normal again -new world as oppressive system, embodied by dr. bradshaw, imposing on people what they have to do, eugenicists who "forbade childbirth" (woolf bitter against doctors who told her not to have children) -economic rationale, william bradshaw not only prospers but makes england prosper -woolf criticizing society -he has a crime, comes close to confessing -septimus tries to express himself, "I- I-" and doctor says to think less of himself -what is septimus' crime? mass murder of the war? being gay with evans?

-london as character in novel -reference to landmarks, details and soundscapes -jean moorcroft wilson: external scenes and objects as narrative technique to switch from one character to another -mysterious car, backfire, airplane puts message in sky -clarissa's view of city: it means immortality -interpretation is not settled, symbols can mean different things to different people -peter walsh views london in terms of class and the role of empire -the city will go on when clarissa is dead, they will survive in things, we last beyond our lifespans -peter dislikes empire enterprise but the things he likes in london are all results of empire: gikandi and the culture of taste