First I must say that it is quite handy to be living in the ‘Google Age’ where typing in ‘John Keats’ and clicking ‘Search’ yields so many fascinating results. I thought I would check out the Wikipedia entry on John Keats to get some basic information on the man that Wiki described as “one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement.” If you are like me and have heard about John Keats but don’t know, or remember, much about him it is a good place to get a general overview.

John-Keats.com is an interesting site to peruse as well. The introduction to the site has a wonderful little opening on “Virtual Romanticism” which acknowledges that "It may seem odd to read romantic poetry on a 17-inch Computer-Screen," and goes on to give brief introductions to the different aspects of the site. It also offers a suggestion of how to read poetry that I found fairly interesting,

“Of course, one can accept this poem without any further word about it. And that may even be the best way to get in contact with any piece of art: solely, leaving behind all prejudice, opinion and theory. However, in reality, we often feel rather helpless confronted with a poem with its mysterious beauty. A book - even one written on elephant-skin - stays silent at our awe.”

John-Keats.com has a biography, links to poems and letters, and even biographical context links for certain ones. If you find yourself really enthused, there is even a forum.

A site entitled The Life and Work of John Keats also has links to biographies, poems, and letters, but you can also view images of portraits of him, as well as original manuscript images.

There are many other interesting links on the page to investigate as well such as The Final Months: Keats on his Deathbed, and for those reluctant readers a ‘Why read John Keats’ section.

So if you have any spare time here near the end of term, or perhaps just need a subject for procrastination that makes you feel a little less guilty for putting off writing a paper or studying for an exam take a look at a these sites and hopefully you’ll find something interesting.

Fun with Romanticism

With finals drawing near, it becomes all the more important to de-stress. I thought I'd share a few amusing, Romanticism-themed links for everyone to enjoy. Take a break and have fun!

First, Ben Kingsley recites Percy Shelley's Ozymandias for a Swiss bank. Their slogan is: "Here Today. Here Tomorrow." Missing the point? You decide.

If you want to kill a few braincells, check out Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - The Video Game. Victor Frankenstein's Creature battles zombies. Unfortunately, this game is no longer in print. I can't imagine why.

This short comic strip about Mary Wollstonecraft's life is actually informative, if not as amusing as the other comic we were given in class. It comes from a series of comics about philosophers called Action Philosophers Giant-Size Thing Vol. 3 and you can check out of few of the other pages here (but be careful, the 'Foucault Circus' segment may scar you for life).

Finally, the crown jewel of all of my Google searches: A WILLIAM WORDSWORTH RAP. I can't make these things up.

Good luck with finals everyone!

Thomas de Quincey: 1785-1859

Although the Wu Anthology provides a dead link to a gallery of Piranesi's works, I thought I would begin this entry by adhering to the volume's best intentions. As such, here is a collection of his complete pieces, including the "Imaginary Prisons" which (understandably) trouble de Quincey. More on the art later.

I've located some websites which the aspiring devotee of de Quincey might find useful. Dr. Robert Morrison's de Quincey "Home Page" includes a biography and chronology of the writer's life, and a truly immense bibliography of writings related to him. The Thomas de Quincey Electronic Library compares the writer to Borges (cute), and offers a collection of his writings in zipped PDF format. And the link to the book on the Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish on the right column of the page is, at the very least, eye-catching. Project Gutenberg pulls through once again with a cornucopia of works. Other essays are linked at de Quincey's Quotidiana page. And to prove that I'm not totally Wikipedia-dependent, here are some critical articles on the Confessions, and an interpretation of his life and work by Hugh Sykes Davies, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

I've always been fascinated by narratives dealing with the experience of drug use or addiction, so I was able to navigate this reading extremely smoothly. Indeed, my greatest struggles related to restraining myself from forming connections between the Confessions and the numerous texts similar to it which I read before being given this assignment. At first, de Quincey's surreal descriptions, objective considerations of the addicted mind, and candid portrayals of himself at his lowest reminded me--as if by kneejerk--of William Burroughs's writings, specifically Junk and the (impossible to locate, to my overwhelming consternation) Yage Letters, which document his travels through the Amazon to find and consume ayahuasca, one of the most powerful hallucinogens in the world. Then, because Burroughs was something of an obvious choice--and nobody really reads him, anyway--I started to think of other writers and artists who might be relatable to the Confessions. First up is Aldous Huxley, whose Doors of Perception treats the perceptual changes wrought by drug use in a withdrawn, scientific manner similar to that of de Quincey. Another more recent (and still more unstable) correlative is Daniel Pinchbeck, whose Breaking Open the Head tries awfully hard to keep its distance despite its status as a personal hallucination narrative before digressing into a prolonged contemplation of how hallucinogens are doorways to a shamanic reality which most people (misguided Puritans such as ourselves included) will never contact. Finally, the philosopher and comedian Robert Anton Wilson's (for this class, aptly titled) Prometheus Rising focuses to some extent on psychotropic drugs in its analysis of the inner workings of the human mind, and, as with de Quincey's writings, treats consciousness like a laboratory of sorts, where any number of interesting innovations can occur.

To some extent, these writers all echo de Quincey's pioneering exploration of the fragile, transitory lifestyle of the addict--they treat drug use as an observable state of mind as well as a formal framework which can be described in prose. I'll close by linking to an artist who flawlessly embodies the logical progression of Piranesi's work, who may seem to be an obvious choice considering de Quincey's commentary on space--yet whose work is just too germane to this reading to dismiss: M.C. Escher. Peruse. Luxuriate. There remain spaces unexplored even by the greatest of minds.

Letter from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Thomas Love Peacock [Scanned from Shelley's Selected Poems, Essays, and Letters at the library]

Weekly Response #6

A Defence of Poetry

Although Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry" has been moved to the end of the term, I've decided to post on the piece. As Gina said in class, Shelley's is not the only defence of poetry. It does, however, seem to be the most popular, or perhaps, it might merely be the most available. One such defence is from Sir Phillip Sydney. The following information is from the site:


"Sidney's famous essay is said to be a response to an attack on poetry and stage plays, which had been dedicated to him without his permission, by Stephen Gosson, a former playwright: The Schoole of Abuse, 1579. Another reply, inferior but interesting, had been published by Thomas Lodge in 1580."

The following is an abstract of Kate Mcdonald's essay:

"Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was inspired to write his most famous work of prose, A Defense of Poetry, by the inflammatory work of a friend, Thomas Love Peacock. Peacock's treatise, entitled Four Ages of Poetry (1820), criticized contemporary poetry and incited Shelley to write his passionate Defense in the early spring of 1821. Despite the debate, the two authors remained friends and Shelly sent Peacock manuscripts of the essay upon its completion. Later, after Shelly's death in 1822, Peacock was to send these to publisher John Hunt. Hunt's edited version of A Defense of Poetry eliminated all references to Peacock's Four Ages and was never published. In 1840, 1845, 1847, and 1852 Mary Shelley printed her own editions of Defense, each one absent of allusions to Peacock. Eventually, as more manuscripts were discovered, some of these references were readmitted into the treatise and Peacock's influence again became apparent. The close connection between Defense and Four Ages is significant because in Defense, Shelley argues that all literature derives from the same creative human source and that, because poetry is a part of this vital encompassing web, it represents an integral part of human nature."

The Instrument

By: Les Murry

Who reads poetry? Not our intellectuals:

they want to control it. Not lovers, not the

combative,

nor examinees. They too skim it for bouquets

and magic trump cards. Not poor schoolkids

furtively farting as they get immunized against it.

Poetry is read by the lovers of poetry

and heard by some more they coax to the cafe

or the district library for a bifocal reading.

Lovers of poetry may total a million people

on the whole planet. Fewer than the players of

skat.

What gives them delight is a never-murderous

skim

distilled, to verse mainly, and suspended in rapt

calm on the surface of paper. The rest of poetry

to which this was once integral still rules

the continents, as it always did. But on condition

now

that its true name is never spoken. This, feral

poetry,

the opposite but also the secret of the rational,

who reads that? Ah, the lovers, the schoolkids,

debaters, generals, crime-lords, everybody reads

it:

Porsche, lift-off, Gaia, Cool, patriarchy.

Among the feral stanzas are many that demand

your flesh

to embody themselves. Only completed art

free of obedience to its time can pirouette you

through and athwart the larger poems you are in.

Being outside all poetry is an unreachable void.

Why write poetry? For the weird unemployment.

For the painless headaches, that must be tapped to

strike

down along your writing arm at the accumulated

moment.

For the adjustments after, aligning facets in a verb

before the trance leaves you. For working always

beyond

your own intelligence. For not needing to rise

and betray the poor to do it. For a non-devouring

fame.

Little in politics resembles it: perhaps

the Australian colonists’ re-inventing of the snide

far-adopted secret ballot, in which deflation could

hide

and, as a welfare bringer, shame the mass-grave

Revolutions,

so axe-edged, so lictor-y.

Was that moral cowardice’s one shining world

victory?

Breathing in dream-rhythm when awake and far

from bed

evinces the gift. Being tragic with a book on your

head.

[Conscious and Verbal, 1999]

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock

October 18, 1785 – January 23, 1866

Thomas Love Peacock was born in Weymouth, England and was raised by his mother until he was sent to private school at age eight. He started writing poetry but later, around the age of thirty, began to publish the satirical novels for which he is most well-known. Three years before the publication of his first novel, “Headlong Hall”, Peacock met Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom he would share an influential friendship. “Nightmare Abbey”, in which Shelley was featured as a character, was published in 1818. This same year Shelley left England; he and Peacock would never meet again in life. When Shelley drowned in 1822, Peacock attended and played a key role in his cremation. Later, he was active in securing money from Shelley’s father, Sir Timothy, to provide for both Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley.

Putting aside the question of the literary merits of his texts, Peacock’s works were known predominantly for their satire. Peacock’s comedy is often described as Aristophanic, or following in the tradition of the Greek playwright Aristophanes. The modern knowledge of Peacock’s life at various points in his personal history is often only accessible through his relationship with his contemporaries. He was in contact with many of the great minds of his age and despite living through various intellectual movements, his work remains very much independent of the signs of the times.

This short bit of background information was complied from both Thomas Love Peacock’s Wikipedia article and the Biographic & Critical Excerpts provided on the Thomas Love Peacock Society Website. The Society’s website also contains links to many of Peacock’s prose, verse and miscellaneous works, as well as fun goodies like songs that appear in Peacock works set to music by Society members, a list of uncommon words, quotations and reviews.

The Thomas Love Peacock Society was formed in 1996 to promote and study the works of Thomas Love Peacock and his contemporaries. The Society established its website in 1998 and held its first conference in Hobart, Tasmania (where the Society was founded) in July of 2002. The Society plans to hold its second conference in 2010 in either Great Britain or Australia and is currently seeking submissions for papers on all topics concerning Peacock’s life and works. Membership to the Thomas Love Peacock Society is open to all who appreciate Peacock’s works and subscriptions are available for both annual and lifetime membership.

Weekly Response

I’d like to take apart Shelley’s response to Coleridge’s review in the Prometheus Unbound preface because it clarifies how Shelley wants to view poetic process and tradition. He first summarizes the issue as “the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition,” a flattering interpretation, given that Coleridge calls him “an unsparing imitator,” (1093). This immediately establishes Shelley’s divergent moral outlook on “mimicry,” which he believes innate to the poetic art (ibid). The poetic geniuses work within forms that are “the endowment of the age in which they live,” making the art and its intellectual movements a collective experience (ibid). This collectivity is reflected in his historical characterization of English literary traditions. Shelley’s period-oriented summary sounds very like other triumphalist progressive nineteenth-century histories: “we owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion,” (ibid). To parse this sentence: “we,” the current collective, are indebted not to the writers in the golden age of “our” literature, but to “that fervid awakening of the public mind.” The responsible party is oddly given a passive role in Shelley’s sentence, further dodging problems of causation and authorship. The “public mind” fuses all the English into a single operating entity, a generalization that attributes some unifying intellectual feature to the people in that period. This “spirit of the age” concept, common to other nineteenth-century philosophies may have influence Shelley’s conviction that authors are ‘products of their time.’

It interests me that he emphasizes the conditions under which one writes and thinks to such a degree:

“the circumstances which awaken [capability] to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who… have never been surpassed,” (ibid).

This statement again fails to fully elucidate the cause for genius work, implying in a quasi-scientific manner that if all the variables remain unchanged, tests should produce consistent results. He does not flesh out fully why these particular institutions encouraged such enduring work. Are there discernable characteristics inherent to the republican system or to city-state diversity that foster great thinkers? Shelley had an overt aversion to his contemporary institutions, so he could have planted this as social criticism. After all, “the great writers of our own age are… forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition,” (ibid). Writers thus have an unusual awareness about the world in which they live, particularly its social aspects. Although Shelley says it is “a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform,” it could still be argued that he finds change to be a writer’s duty (1094). He references contemporaries who will enact these mass periodical changes, “restoring” the “equilibrium between institutions and opinions,” (1093). Yet the individual is only a portion of “the cloud of mind” that “is discharging its collected lightning,” functioning as one brain and one action (ibid). Further, the successful poetic device is not new, but “has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them,” exactly what Prometheus Unbound attempts to accomplish by reworking a classical source-text (1093-1094). Although I am willing to accept the argument that the poet’s mind is reflective, “modified… by every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness,” I am unsatisfied by his silence about how and why circumstances affect the writer so supremely (1094). In a writing culture that worships individuals, process, and craft, it is difficult for me to accept a model that characterizes writers as passive vehicles impressed by their environment.

My Weekly Response... [RESPONSE #5]

is provided as a comment to this post. NOTE: BECAUSE I'D RATHER NOT BE LAMBASTED FOR CONFUSING ANYBODY, THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL PLACE TO POST YOUR WEEKLY RESPONSES. DO NOT POST ANY COMMENTS HERE, AT ALL, EVER.

Thank you.

***

CORRECTION FROM GINA: Please post response #5 HERE, in the comments section!

***

The Other Side of Mary Shelley Criticism: Steering Away From Frankenstein

After Gina had mentioned that there is a lack of criticism and exploration on Mary Shelley's works besides Frankenstein, I took it upon myself to find what I could scrounge up for those interested in Mary Shelley's lesser known pieces (and any criticism that surround them).

Starting with what we're, as a class, familiar with, there is Mathilda. As expected, most criticism focuses around the biographical relation between the story and Mathilda's relationship with her father. But, if possible let's avoid those predictable biographical readings and find more intriguing criticism...

Unfortunately, this link on this criticism on Mathilda requires a FREE Trial subscription to read the rest of the article (“Mary Shelley's Mathilda: Melancholy and the Political Economy of Romanticism" by Tilottama Rajan) but it sounds promising. Although it seems to touch on the father-daughter incestuous (we can't get away!) relationship, it also explores the parallels of this novella to Shelley's other novels and the exploration of psychoanalysis circulating around the combination of feminism and Romanticism.

This last article references Mary Shelley's novel Valperga. If you would like to check out this novel, it is magically all available online for your desire. Also, for a quick summary if you would like a taste of the book check out this website. Like most of Shelley's novels, this novel focuses on love and death while keeping to a historical context in 14th century Italy surrounding the love and turmoil of the of the prince of Lucca. I have been able to find an interesting, full-text article on this novel entitled "Mary Shelley and the Therapeutic Value of Language" by William D. Brewer. The article uses a psychoanalytic approach considering the use of voice and language in the Shelley's characters, helps them recoup (temporarily) from their psychological trauma. Without using language to discuss their traumatic situations, the characters fall into depression and agony.

Last, but not least (for this blog anyway) is Shelley's The Last Man. This novel received the worst reviews because the novel was seen as repulsive and the product of a cruel mind. I did find an article on this novel (it does parallel Frankenstein a little, be warned) entitled "Mary Shelley's The Last Man: Monstrous Worlds, Domestic Communities, and Masculine Romantic Ideology" by Julie K. Schuetz (a student, I believe, at the University of Notre Dame, but worth it). Some other interesting essays include this one (Mary Shelley's anti-contagionism: The Last Man as "fatal narrative" by Anne McWhir) that explores how disease is used as metaphor and literally in The Last Man alongside a critique by Shelley of the Romantic ideology behind disease.
**The is also a 2007 movie version of The Last Man and it looks...odd so check out the trailers! or IMDB of course**

So, steer away from Frankenstein and happy Mary Shelley essay hunting!

Mary Shelley's Journal

I know that Shelley’s life does not really matter that much in terms of reading Mathilda, but I was curious anyways as to what Mary Shelley actually wrote about the death of her children so I went to the library to do some research on the background of the Shelleys and I found a copy of their journal. It’s pretty interesting especially when Mary talks about Maie, her first daughter who died because she talks about her very briefly. On March 6^th, 1815, she writes: “Find my baby dead. Send for Hogg. Talk. A miserable day. In the evening read ‘Fall of the Jesuits.’ Hogg sleeps here” (39). Her sadness continues into other passages:

“Monday, March 13. Shelley and Clara go into town. Stay at home; net, and think of my little dead baby. This is foolish I suppose; yet whenever I am left alone to my own thoughts, and do not read to divert them, they always come back to the same point – that I was a mother, and am so no longer.” (40).

Her entries sometimes are very brief and sometimes her thoughts about her baby are mixed together with things that she does that day. Another entry I found interesting was this one:

“Sunday. Mar. 19. Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been a cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits.” (41).

Later on when she talks about Clara’s death, she says even less: “On Thursday [September 24], I go to Padua with Clare; meet Shelley there. We go to Venice with my poor Clara, who dies the moment we get there” (105). She says almost nothing the days following this event.

So, I have it checked out right now but I’ll check it back in after a couple of days if anyone wants to read it.

On another note, I found this website that might be useful that has a lot of links to authors. It’s written by Jack G. Voller, a professor at Southern Illinois University: http://www.litgothic.com/index_fl.html

References:

Ed. Jones, Frederick. Mary Shelley’s Journal. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman, Oklahoma. Copyright 1947.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Christian Griepenkerl (1839-1916) Befreiung durch Herakles. Photo © Maicar Förlag-GML

Hercules Frees Prometheus

According to this site, it "includes links to online editions of Shelley's poetry, prose, and letters; hypertext critical editions of specific poems; and other Shelley resources currently available on the web." And this one , "includes a select listing of books devoted to criticism and interpretation of Shelley; biographies of Shelley; editions of Shelley's poetry, prose, fiction, and letters; and a select database of over 600 journal and book articles from 1980 to the present." Both sites are a product of the University of Maryland and are a valuable resource for quick access to some of Percy Shelley's writings.

After reading Shelley's "On Love" and the Preface to Prometheus Unbound, Percy I have a strong urge to say Percy Shelley is an idealist with an inclination to express an intense tenderness and commiseration for the human race, as do many romantics-perhaps part of the required qualifications for inclusion.

"On Love" is particularly interesting in paragraph three where Shelley writes, "We see dimly within our intellectual nature a miniature, as it were, of our entire self, yet deprived of all that condemn or despise. . . . To this we eagerly refer all sensations. . ." (1080). There is a connection here to Edmund Burke's idea of beauty/love for another human as being a projection of one's self; although, Shelley furthers the idea to include nature in the absence of humanity.

In the Preface of Prometheus Unbound, I cannot help but think of Urizen. For the most part, Shelley's statement, "the only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan" places me on that path of no return; hopefully, the actual text will delve into this subject deeper. Additionally, in the previous statement, Shelley uses the word "imaginary" to place both Prometheus and Satan into the realm of "fiction"--though I hate to use that word when speaking of a poet. Satan as a fictional character also puts forth Shelley's view on religion.

A Summary of Criticism on Godwin and Mary Shelley

After Monday’s lecture, I was interested in learning more about Mary Shelley’s relationship with her father, both personally and intellectually. I read a few articles from books in the library, and it seems that there has been some debate about whether Mathilda was autobiographical or not, and whether this has pertinence. The earliest article I read, published in 1988, followed in the feminist tradition Gina mentioned, using extensive biographical information to draw conclusions not only about the novella, but Mary Shelley herself. “Fathers and Daughters, or ‘A Sexual Education’” from Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters says in Mathilda: “Mary Shelley projects and displaces her deepest and most ambivalent feelings toward her father,” (193). The novella becomes Mary Shelley’s “pure wish-fulfillment” and “fantasy” as Mathilda “embodies Mary Shelley’s most powerful, and most powerfully repressed, fantasy: the desire both to sexually possess and punish her father,” (194-195). As for this temptation to analyze the author, I am in agreement with Betty T. Bennett, who argues “the assumption that a female writer must personally experience a subject to write about it suggests that Mary Shelley was also a murderer or a warrior or lived in America or drowned at sea, as did the central characters in her other novels,” (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction, 51). Diagnosing Mary Shelley, the long-dead individual, from print materials (letters, novels, journals) makes me uncomfortable because this evidence does not seem enough to prove that these were her intentions, conscious or unconscious. Though one could be swayed by Godwin’s dismissal of Mathilda’s “disgusting and detestable” subject matter or Mary’s confession to a friend in an 1834 that she had an “excessive & romantic attachment” to Godwin as a child, interpreting her book as a revenge fantasy misses the more interesting connections between this father and daughter (Mary Shelley: Her Life, 254-255).

In “Frankenstein, Mathilda, and the Legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft,” published in 2003, Pamela Clemit similarly acknowledges and dismisses the psychological analyses of her critical predecessors.

“The autobiographical format of Matilda… together with its emotionally intense language, has traditionally led critics to read the work as an uncontrolled expression of Mary Shelley’s psychological anxieties following the deaths [of her children] in September 1818 and June 1819… yet to read Mathilda merely as an expression of psychic crisis is to overlook her self-consciousness as a literary artist. The exploitation of autobiographical material and the use of a self-dramatizing, histrionic narrator are established features of the Godwinian novel,” (37).

Clemit here refers to Godwin’s interest in “sincerity,” enacted not only by his novels, but also in Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which “shocked rather than liberated… [and] provoked widespread hostility from the conservative press,” (27-28). Sincerity and frankness are employed and critiqued, according to Clemit, during Mathilda’s confession scene. “When her father continues to resist her entreaties, [Mathilda] exclaims, ‘You do not treat me with candour,’ invoking the Dissenting principle which formed the moral underpinning of Godwin’s notion of the duty of private judgment,” (39). This becomes a critique when private judgment and sincerity lead not to improvement, but “in the breakdown of community, and, finally, death,” (39). The failure of sincerity and “Godwin’s belief in the individual’s duty to exercise his or her talents in pursuit of the general good…may suggest the limitations of utopian social theories in the face of individual suffering,” (40). While Clemit uses biographical information in her analysis, it is largely to indicate Mary Shelley’s influences, through her journal.

It’s clear that I prefer the non-personal analytical approach to the “psychobiographical” one employed in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (194). Though it makes me uncomfortable to pin down something so slippery as an unconscious Freudian intention, articulating psychological intimacies has the potential to be interesting, if not open to an objective (thus morally justified) proof. “Fathers and Daughters, or ‘A Sexual Education’” was most novel in its arguments for Mathilda as social commentary. For example, the chapter points to a portion in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which noted that women “were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone,” (198). Given this relationship formula, the divisions between bride and child are broken down, and this bourgeois “generational hierarchy… produces father-daughter incest,” (199). It’s considerations like this one that I think bring something unique to interpretations of this text.

Works Cited:

Anne K. Mellor. “Fathers and Daughters, or ‘A Sexual Education’” in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. (New York: Methuen Inc., 1988).

Pamela Clemit. “Frankenstein, Matilda, and the legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft” in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, edited by Esther Schor. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Betty T. Bennett. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

A Brief Return to Wordsworth

I’d like to take a brief step backwards before continuing to Mathilda. First, attached is an online text of the complete The Borderers, primarily for its introductory note in which Wordsworth provides an interesting contextual description for the play, and secondly in case anyone would like to read the entire text. Also attached is an essay by Judith W. Page that explores Wordsworth through a biographical and Feminist approach. Some subjects of the essay have already been discussed in class, however, it supplies a different reading of Wordsworth than we have primarily discussed and touches on thematic connections to Mary Wollstonecraft.

http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/William_Wordsworth/william_wordsworth_120.htm

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft1t1nb1dd&chunk.id=0&doc.view=print

I bring up Wordsworth again because his text seems to take part in a dialogue with Matilda. We have already discussed Godwin’s influence on The Borderers, but may also draw parallels between the Rivers/Oswald character and Mathilda, as both characters follow a sort of Romantic tragedy model: an initial tragedy occurs in either character’s life, forcing his/her mind inwards towards superstition and repetition, in which both texts may be read as only another repetition of the initial tragic tale.

As Coleridge describes at the close of the Ancient Mariner:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

As an aside: if anyone knows a good place to look for video/audio recordings of The Borderers, I am interested in what the Rivers character looks like on stage, but haven’t been able to find anything.

And finally, a sad endnote for our discussion on the whereabouts of Jonathan Wordsworth:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1827932,00.html

Mary Wollstonecraft & Early Feminism

The previous post focuses on the life of William Godwin, briefly mentioning the influence of Mary Wollstonecraft. Therefore, I suppose it is suitable to look at her life, works, and launching of early feministic thought.

In our text, there is a small biography, hinting at Wollstonecraft’s relationships with her sister, friends, fellow authors and artists, and subsequently, with William Godwin. In terms of marriage, the text notes that it is interesting that they married, especially because of their proclaimed thoughts on marriage and its relation with identity and bond.

In Wollstonecraft’s life, literature had become something of a constant and she came to depend on it in order to express her frustration and overall disturbance with women’s social and political position at that time (mainly the latter half of the 18^th century). Her essays concentrated on her disapproval of the male-dominated system that had a history of running England. In stressing equal opportunity for both men and women, Wollstonecraft was physically proposing something that was mostly unheard of at this time; women were not writing about this topic, and if they were, it wasn’t with the same language that Wollstonecraft had come to master. However, her words were radical and her name became tainted in her time and for a short time, afterwards. She was not given the high regard that she has earned in modern times.

Looking at a few sites, the History Guide does a nice job organizing her works as well as giving her credit in her efforts to “bridge the gap between mankind's present circumstances and ultimate perfection.” Her French Revolution knowledge is also mentioned. In 2002, the BBC did a special on Wollstonecraft entitled “Mary Wollstonecraft: A Speculative and Dissenting Spirit.” Janet Todd’s in depth exploration of her life and her influences is fascinating because it brings to light new ideas of Wollstonecraft’s reason behind her writing. Her traveling brought about a different understanding of the way that the world worked, inspiring her to write about these injustices – mainly on the injustice of women’s rights and their inferior place in society.

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/wollstonecraft.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/wollstonecraft_01.shtml

Mary Wollstonecraft’s legacy is one of debate, but ultimately helping to define the root of published feministic thought and dispute.

William Godwin (1756-1836)

Because we are all most likely still standing in the Flunk Day’s shadow, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at William Godwin who was considered the father of philosophical anarchism. While our book goes into this slightly, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy goes into this further.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/

Mark Philp, the author of the page explains how Godwin thought that politics and government in general only served to cause more dependency on a system that can offer very little. This is turn causes the citizens who follow to have no understanding of why they follow the laws and practices of their government. Godwin did not believe in a giant revolt or uprising to get his point across, but rather the spreading of knowledge from individual person to person, which would ensure a real grasp of the concepts.

Although our book only focuses in on Godwin’s “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” (1793), this site goes into more detail about his other works as well as giving a very thorough biography that goes into much more detail than just where he lived and when he wrote. Oddly enough, there was a period of time when Godwin wrote children’s books under the name Edward Baldwin when he wasn’t writing books about politics or philosophy. He had a wide range when we take into consideration that he went from writing “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” to writing fables and bible stories for children.

This biography also focuses in on Godwin’s relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft as well as his own daughter Mary and son-in-law Percy Shelley. It is interesting to note that although Percy Shelley and Mary’s elopement caused the beginning of hardships in Godwin’s life, this did not stop him from taking advantage of the money his son-in-law had at his disposal.

This site also has an equally thorough biography and explanation of both Mary Wollstonecraft by Sylvana Tomaselli that would be just as beneficial to scroll through.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/

Response # 4

Sam Coleridge

This is a picture of the portable Venture Grant Aeolian Harp in South Carolina.

Sam Coleridge

In honor of tonight's poetry slam, I have posted a link to a slam poem titled, "So Edgar Alan Poe was in this Car" this slam poem also includes Sam Coleridge as a character. The poem is more funny than poetic, but "slams" are about the perfomance--at least someone cleaned up the language on this version before putting it on you tube.

Coleridge inspired many of the "gothics." An excerpt of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" appears in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein after Victor has accomplished his goal of reanimation, and he walks through the streets of Ingolstadt from night to early morning fearing his creation:

Like one, who on a lonely road,

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turn'd round, walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

I always find it odd, however, that Victor would burst into "Ancient Mariner" while recounting his story to Walton, but that's another story.

Wordsworth links

Hey all,
I've got a couple Wordsworth links here for your enjoyment. They are more analytical in nature, rather than biographical, but I figure that's helpful too.

This page has a number of links to articles and various other Wordsworth resources.
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Authors/W/Wordsworth,_William/

And this one is a short biography or Wordsworth:
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Literary/Wordsworth.htm

In Light of Charlotte Smith...

Born May4 1749-Died October 28 1806

I can honestly say that I am not satisfied with the yielded results on Charlotte Smith seeing as how her sonnets were compared to Shakespeare and Milton. I did manage to find out that Smith had a very demanding life with plenty of struggling along the way. She married Benjamin Smith, an initially wealthy mean who lost the wealth and was put into prison where he left her with one of his illegitimate children (and some of their own). Eventually she moved into debtors prison with him. She wrote the novels to gain money for the family.

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For those of you looking further into Smith's work there is actually a fair amount of literary criticism on her if you look hard enough.
This article by Daniel Robinson gets more interesting and detailed about Smith's Elegiac Sonnets toward the middle. This is an interesting article looking into the melancholy and paradox of her poetry.
Oh! I just found this and it's very exciting....The British Women Romantic Poets Project at UC Davis. You can look up anyone, but if you look up Smith you can find some engraved picture copies of the title pages from the sonnets and more.
When you didn't think it could get anymore exciting there's this article on considering medical discourse and the problem of sensibility in Smith's sonnets. Apparently "Charlotte Smith’s representation of melancholia in her Elegiac Sonnets returns to the mid-eighteenth-century understanding of the illness, which portrayed the melancholic as a person of both sensibility
and rationality". Read on!
One last tidbit: This is a longer overview from Huntington Library Quarterly on Smith's life with a lot of focus on her struggles and all of the different types of literature she wrote including a comedic play, children's books, and anti-war poems.

Wordsworth Images

This is a link to a web site that shows different images of William Wordsworth spanning a number of years. It also gives a brief description of when each painting was done in relation to what he was writing at the time. This site also links back to further biographical information about Wordsworth.

http://members.aol.com/wordspage2/images.htm

Willliam Wordsworth

Although the point is debatable, the production of William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads is considered by some as the beginning of the Romantic period. The end of the period is said to be around the mid 1800s, but it can be (and has been) argued that the Romantic period is continuing even today. The Lyrical Ballads turned away from the era's accepted topics of poetry, and moved toward a humanistic approach verging on existentialism--one argument of the continuation of the Romantic Period. The following is a great example:

The Tables Turned: an evening scene, on the same subject (by Wordsworth, composed probably 23 May 1798)

Up, up, my friend, and clear you looks!
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up, up my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double!

The sun above the mountain’s head
A freshening luster mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife;
Come hear the woodland linnet —
How sweet his music! On my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark, how blithe the throstle sings!
And he is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless —
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things —
We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art,
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

Wordsworth's writings heavily influence "Western" literature. If you click here, this site provides many links to Romantic Literature: lectures, scholarly articles, readings and the like. In the section "Poets on Poets" you can hear recitations. Hearing the poems of Romantic Poets adds another dimension to their beauty. At the same site you can listen to Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading William Wordsworth's poem "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802"

Response #3: Smith, Wordsworth

Here is an excellent resource on Charlotte Smith that includes scholarly articles, images, and primary texts.

Ann Yearsley and the British Abolitionist Movement

Ann Yearsley 1753-1806
Like most Romantic period writers, you can find a rather vague overall description about this female writer on Wikipedia with a good overall bibliography of her work. Yearsley married into the farming community and continued her love of literature from her mother's faithful acts of bringing books home for Ann to read.
Yearsley lived a very hard-working and laborious lifestyle before she became discovered as a writer. You can learn extensively about Yearsley leading up to her discovery as a writer in an excerpt from Ann Yearsley's Biography on BookRags. Yearsley was controversial during her time due to her interaction with Hannah More (a patron of Yearsley with higher social status) during the time that she was forced to leave her cottage with six children and one on the way. You can find more information on this interaction between these two women in a shorter biography. Yearsley's interaction with More was detrimental to her writing because More was a member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. There is a wonderful and descriptive biography on Hannah More in the Brycchan Carey website with various links to her poetry like "Slavery, a Poem" which is similar to Yearsley but, in my opinion, a lot more authoritative, powerful, and forceful.

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Yearsley and More are only a few of the women (and men) involved in the British Abolitionist Movement. A lot of these participants were also radicals in favor of the French Revolution. There is a wonderful page on the Anti-Slavery website that gives a rather extensive History on the British Abolitionist movement for those students that find themselves intrigued by the powerful voice of abolitionists like Yearsley. There is also a great description in this website about Charles Buxton: a radical trying to make an act in 1833 on Slavery Abolition.
One last resource to look at as a means to understand the roles of Romantic authors and poets with the British Abolitionist Movement is one on Abolitionist Literature from this era; "the Poetical Milkwoman of Bristol" (aka Yearsley) is just one among the many frustrated authors fed up with the skewed perception of Christianity in society and the mistreatment of others.

Friday response #2: Blake or Yearsley

Post it here, by these Blake engravings commissioned for a project entitled: Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 1777

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And if you recall, there was a plate I wanted to show you of Urizen in fetters, but had loaned out. This is Urizen in his dream of infinite divisions. It's one of Blake's most poignant images of "mind forg'd manacles": slavery.

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Blake and Taoism

Alright y’all, this may be a little incoherent (and for some reason the text changes throughout -now you all know i'm computer illiterate), but here goes.

When reading the two syllogisms of Blake’s that we read (No Natural Religion and All Religions Being One), something that jumped out to me was what struck me as a great number of connections to the East Asian philosophy of Taoism. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell struck me in the same way. After searching a little bit online, I found this is a connection that has been explored before, though to what depth I couldn’t say. Anyway, I thought I’d just point out a couple of connections that I found. The texts being used are a work of Chuang Tzu (Discussion on Making All Things Equal) , a taoist writing around 4^th century BCE (more at the wikipedia site (yes, it’s wikipedia, but it’s a fine introduction)) and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

First up is Plate 4 of Marriage

THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL

All Bibles or sacred codes, have been the causes of the following Errors.

1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.

2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True.

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight. (pg xvi)

This is clear an echo of a sentiment of Chuang Tzu’s

The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth (pg 38).

In both these statements, the authors are saying that humans cannot be divorced from their bodies. Just as Chuang Tzu urges we cannot find the seat of consciousness, Blake argues that our bodies are “portion[s] of Soul.”

The conflation of two things usually viewed as separate is one of the most important themes of both of these works. Chuang Tzu presents one of the most effective images on the problems that arise with making clear distinctions between two things:

Everything has its "that," everything has its "this." From the point of view of "that" you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, "that" comes out of "this" and "this" depends on "that" - which is to say that "this" and "that" give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven.6 He too recognizes a "this," but a "this" which is also "that," a "that" which is also "this." His "that" has both a right and a wrong in it; his "this" too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does he still have a "this" and "that"? Or does he in fact no longer have a "this" and "that"? A state in which "this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity (pg 39).

And, much more succinctly,

What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable (pg 40).

This is a belief very evident in Marriage as well. Blake praises Milton by saying :

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it (plate 6)

And when Blake criticizes Swedenborg saying “Swedenborg has not written one new truth” and “he has written all the old falsehoods,” the reason he gives is this: “He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions” (plate 22). This is also evidenced in plate 20 in which the Angel showing Blake his fate says his “eternal lot” is “between the black and white spiders,” and is further tied to Blake’s critique of reason seen in plate four, above. Perhaps the best example of this in Blake, however, is in the third plate, in which he says

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.

And finally, also tied into all this, in plate 19, when Blake is shown his future, he sees the true nature of his fate after the angel leaves him. Here, he says, “All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics,” then Blake takes the angel to show him his fate, after which the angel says, “thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou oughtest to be ashamed.” To which Blake replies, “we impose on one another.”

All this is simply a further example of the questions raised about labels (“this” and “that”) and ideas of right and wrong. It is exemplified in Chuang Tzu in the section deemed

Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Chin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? (pg 47).

So that’s the gist of it. Just giving you a taste of the connections I think are pretty obvious. I definitely recommend checking out the rest of Chuang Tzu’s work (the entirety of them are provided in a link below (in a pretty sweet translation to boot)).

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. London: Oxford University Press,

1975.

Tzu, Chuang. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Trans. Watson, Burton. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1968.

Complete works found at these sites, for convenience.

http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html

http://www.gailgastfield.com/mhh/mhh.html

William Blake: 1757-1827

First, Blake's Wikipedia entry should provide a (very, very) brief introduction to the poet's life and work. A better starting point especially for those aspiring Blake scholars who have taken a strong interest in the visual accompaniment to the poetry might be the William Blake Archive, which, along with displaying an absolutely beautiful example of the artist's work on its main page, contains an impressive database of plates, including the material unforgivably omitted from the Wu Anthology. Accompanying some helpful biographical details, Turning the Pages offers a stunning direct copy of one of Blake's notebooks, and explains the content of each of its pages--thus the website title--with a fair amount of detail. Fellow students who find themselves fascinated by the poet's various quirks might want to take note of the observation on the introduction page that Blake turned his notebook upside-down when he ran out of space in order to continue working. To go with the images I linked to earlier, here are Blake's complete works, edited by David V. Erdman.

Now, because I believe that contextualization never hurts, I've decided to bring up a contemporary artist who I've associated with Blake or his artistic lineage, as it were, since I discovered him. The artist Joe Coleman, distinguished by his meticulous, disturbing work and his unhealthy obsession with geek acts and freak shows, which I won't link to in the spirit of civility, shares several uncanny stylistic and philosophical tendencies with Blake. Like the poet, he believes that creation and destruction are directly related, and that order and purity are not only undesirable, but unachievable. His art also relies on a highly personalized vision and symbolic order--and on a nightmarish eschatological mentality which is equally thrilling and terrifying. Picking Coleman's contemporary works apart over the years has, I think, prepared me for the intense personal involvement called for in reading Blake. The poet doesn't just demand analysis and explication--his work calls for introspection, and at least for me, a revision of perspective. I believe that the work is as influential as it is because it was written to a certain extent for the poet's own sake, because it aims not to reinterpret but to create anew, and with Blake's imagination as its source. This is the poetry of the self, and it imposes self-evaluation on the reader just as its composition must have transformed the thoughts of the poet.

Some Swedenborg

An excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and its Wonders and Hell from Project Gutenberg to give you a better sense of the text that Blake is parodying in Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

553. All spirits in the hells, when seen in any light of heaven, appear in the form of their evil; for everyone there is an image of his evil, since his interiors and his exteriors act as a one, the interiors making themselves visible in the exteriors, which are the face, body, speech and movements; thus the character of the spirit is known as soon as he is seen. In general evil spirits are forms of contempt of others and of menaces against those who do not pay them respect; the are forms of hatreds of various kinds, also of various kinds of revenge. Fierceness and cruelty from their interiors show through these forms. But when they are commended, venerated, and worshiped by others their faces are restrained and take on an expression of gladness from delight. [2] It is impossible to describe in a few words how all these forms appear, for no one is like another, although there is a general likeness among those who are in the same evil, and thus in the same infernal society, from which, as from a plane of derivation, the faces of all are seen to have a certain resemblance. In general their faces are hideous, and void of life like those of corpses; the faces of some are black, others fiery like torches, others disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers; some seem to have no face, but in its stead something hairy or bony; and with some only the teeth are seen; their bodies also are monstrous; and their speech is like the speech of anger or of hatred or of revenge; for what everyone speaks is from his falsity, while his tone is from his evil. In a word, they are all images of their own hell. (257)

(Click on text for the online book; click "next page" to keep reading)

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