P-105 Assignment

Difference Between Enlightenment and Romanticism

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper- History of the English Literature

Roll no-07

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

Introduction

Both enlightenment and romanticism were key players in reforming ideologies in contemporary history, especially in the 18th century. These are two important periods which began in Europe and had produced notable individuals who contributed knowledge and works which are being currently studied and applied. However, enlightenment is focused on reason which grew in response to the middle ages while romanticism centers on emotions in opposition to the age of reason. The following discussions further delve into these distinctions.

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment, otherwise known as the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment, was a very influential philosophical movement which started in Europe and later spread in North America.  This took place from the late 17th to the18th century (late 1600s to the end of the 1700s) which is dubbed as the “Century of Philosophy” since it was a time of increased interest and the desire to be “enlightened” on various fields specially epistemology, individual perspectives, and natural science.  This was in response to the “Dark Ages” or Middle Ages in which religion and superstitions were given primary power; hence, it was also called the “Age of Faith”.

 

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism, also referred to as the Romantic Era, was a movement that focused on subjectivity, inspiration, and human emotions as expressed in arts, literature, and music. This started during the late 18th century (approximately 1770) in Europe in response to the rational views of the age of enlightenment. The romantic thinkers felt that reason was overemphasized and that they should put more focus on the attributes of being human such as aesthetic experience, irrational feelings, and free expression.

The works of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron were closely associated with this period especially in England. Victor Hugo, the author of the popular, Hunchback of Notre Dame, led the romanticism movement in France.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a writer and statesman, was also one of the key influencers in Germany. Specifically, the remark of the German artist, Caspar David Friedrich, “the artist’s feeling is his law”, aptly illustrates the nature of the Romantic Era.

Difference Between Enlightenment and Romanticism

Main Focus

The main focus of enlightenment is discovering knowledge and emphasizing rational reasoning. It saw the individual as capable of something more and able to know more than what was previously thought of during the dark ages. As for romanticism, the highlight is the free expression of emotions and human subjectivity. It views the person as capable of irrational impulses and a believer of mythic symbols.

Etymology

Enlightenment came from the Old English word, “inlihtan” which means “to illuminate”. As its name suggests, the age of enlightenment seeks to illuminate reasons which give rise to innovations in various social agents. Romanticism was based on the English “romantic” and the French “romantique” which pertained to adjectives used for beauty found in nature such as rainbows and sunsets. 

What it Contradicts

Enlightenment contradicts the dark middle ages which emphasized superstitions and religion while romanticism opposes enlightenment which focused on irrational feelings and their subjective expression.

Time

The period which enlightenment covered was longer since it started from the late 17th century until the 18th century. On the other hand, romanticism began in the 18th century, with its peak from 1800 to 1850.

Most Related Fields

Enlightenment is more closely related with concrete sciences such as physics and mathematics while romanticism is more associated with the arts and humanities like music, painting, and poetry.

Some of the Key Proponents

The key individuals during the enlightenment period include Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The proponents under romanticism include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Woodsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Allan Ramsay, and Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand.

Relevant Statements

Enlightenment was inspired by dictums such as “I think therefore I am” (Cogito, ergo sum), and “Dare to know” (Sapere aude) while romanticism was expressed through statements like “the artist’s feeling is his law”.

 Literature, for the Enlightened, mostly followed the same pattern. Rationalism required a simple yet thorough format that paralleled the scientific method, which allowed nothing to be left unnoticed. This format was a perfect template to be followed by intellectuals. For example, volumes and volumes of encyclopedias such as those by Diderot, scientific papers like the ones of Newton, and philosophical works all followed similar schemes. On the contrary, literature of the Romanticism era was highly diverse in form and content, all meant to evoke emotion. And sometimes the most irrational of emotion like horror. The Gothic aspect of Romanticism very much contrasted the ideals of Enlightenment. Gothic literature focused on emotions of horror and suspense. (Brians, "Romanticism") From an Enlightened point of view, these emotions were unnecessary and almost a polar opposite of what rationalism stood for; however, it is exactly what Romanticism stood for, unnecessary, idealistic literature purely for emotion. Emotion comes from the imagination, which opposes fact. Where Enlightenment tried to define reality, Romanticism tried to make up reality.

 Another way Romanticism opposed The Enlightenment was over religion. The Enlightenment intellectuals had worked to eliminate the irrationalities of organized religion. Discoveries that the earth was not the center of the universe had sparked notions that the Catholic Church was not the source of truth. This caused a great deal of philosophers to question the church and come up with their own answers to religion. One common belief that became popularized was deism, the belief that there is evidence of a god but one such god has no interaction in the universe. (Pailin, "Deism") There were people considered extreme Enlightenment thinkers who postulated the existence of no god, but overall most of the philosophers agreed that humans were a product of god. Romanticism, however, promoted that every man is divine in his own right. Again, Romantics used emotion rather than logic to express their opinions. The art of the Romantic era emphasized the individual and portrayed the human in an idealized way. Paintings like The Morning by artist Philipp Runge displayed humans in heavenly settings conveying the divinity of mankind.

Nature was handled much differently between the two eras. The chaotic essence of nature had perplexed scientists of the Enlightenment period. The philosophers were motivated to discover and publish the ways in which nature worked: how the planets moved, how earth was molded into what it was, how chemicals reacted. Additionally, the Enlightenment thinkers were well aware of the powers of nature and the dangers it proposed. On the contrary, Romantic artists were aware of the inherent power, but they were not concerned of dangers, but the beauty and spiritualness of nature. They looked to capture the awe of nature with fantastic paintings. Many authors wrote of the cleansing aspect of nature. Transcendentalist works like Thoreau’s Walden highlighted the benefits nature had on the human mind. It showed nature could serve as a vehicle for self reflection which could improve one’s character. Overall, the Romantics opposed the Enlightenment thinkers will to define how nature worked and instead cherished the complexity of nature. Romanticism had been a reaction to the excess of strict rationalism of the Enlightenment period just as The Enlightenment had been a reaction to a state and church overrun with ignorance. While the Enlightenment movement had thought faith and feeling distorted truth, the Romantics felt truth destroyed emotion. Inherently, each’s ideals were opposite. Nonetheless, out of the two came Modernism, a different movement that used both reason and emotion to create change; a time where science and art could coexist. Modernism, like the previous periods, had devoted itself to overturn traditional values. New inventors and scientist like Edison and Einstein revolutionized the world with their discoveries, and radical new forms of art, experimental in nature, were popularized by people such as Picasso. In addition, Modernism rejected religion as its conformity limited scientific progress and human feeling. ("History of Modernism") Lastly, once again, the Modernist period promoted the individual just as Romanticism and Enlightenment had done before. The uniqueness of humankind was emphasized and progress was made. Romanticism had opposed the Enlightenment, yet a combination of the two had been produced.

To Conclude we can summarize that.....

 Both enlightenment and romanticism were key players in reforming ideologies in contemporary history.

 The proponents of enlightenment argued that ignorance regarding the sciences was detrimental to the society.

 The romantic thinkers felt that reason was overemphasized and that they should put more focus on the attributes of being human.

 Enlightenment is the age of reason while romanticism is focused on human emotion.

 Enlightenment (late 17th to 18th century) contradicted the dark ages while romanticism (late 18th century) opposed enlightenment.

 Enlightenment is more associated with natural science while romanticism is more closely linked with arts and humanities.

 Some of the key persons under enlightenment are Descartes, Newton, Bacon, Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau while those under romanticism are Goethe, Woodsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Ramsay, and Chateaubriand.

 Enlightenment was inspired by the statements: “I think therefore I am” and “Dare to know” while romanticism was best illustrated with: “The artist’s feeling is his law”.

References:

• Heath, Duncan and Boreham, Judy. Introducing Romanticism. North Road, London: Icon Books Ltd., 2014. Print.

• Hill, Jonathan. Faith in the Age of Reason: The Enlightenment from Galileo to Kant. Downers   Grove, IL:  IVP Books, 2004. Print. 

• Mee, Jon. Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.

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P-104 Assignment

A Shadow from the Past: Little Father Time in Jude the Obscure

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper-Literature of the Neo-classical Periods

Roll no-07

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

Significance of little Father Time in "Jude the Obscure"

Little Father Time is Jude and Arabella's son. He is called Little Father Time because, although he is young in body, his spirit is old. He has a strong sense of time as transitory, meaning he is sad that nothing stays the same. For instance, he mourns that he can't enjoy the flowers in their full bloom because all he can see is that they will soon die.

Little Father Time simply can't live in the present: he is always looking to the future, and he is always seeing it as depressing. He represents a grim, almost hopeless outlook on life. Nothing will get better, he thinks. It will, however, get worse.

This mindset causes him to kill himself and Sue and Jude's children because he thinks there are too many of them and that they will be a burden. (To an extent, the pregnant Sue is also responsible for this for complaining bitterly about their economic woes to Father Time.)

Little Father Time as symbol

Little Father Time is a character in the novel, but he also acts as a symbol of coming of age and Hardy’s apprehensive view of the generation to come. Little Father Time lacks personality except as an excessively morbid, unexcitable child, but when he kills himself and Sue’s children it is the climax of the novel. As a symbol, Little Father Time represents the depression and amorality that Hardy sees as the inevitable result of the injustices in his society. Father Time is driven to despair by how poorly Jude and Sue are treated for being unmarried, and by his lack of love from Arabella and her parents. After Little Father Time’s death, the doctor actually diagnoses his murder-suicide as “in his nature” and “the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.” In this way Hardy horrifies his readers and makes his social critiques seem that much more urgent, implying that the injustices of his generation will lead to tragedy in the next.

Little Father time is Hardy's Jude the Obscure who hangs himself and his younger brother and sister, has provoked considerable critical commentary over the years. He has been variously interpreted as a grotesque monster, a Christ figure, a prophet of Doom, the choric voice of History, and a symbol of the Modern Spirit.! He is, to a degree, all of these. But, perhaps more significantly, he is an extension of his father's personality and temperament. In his essential loneliness and isolation, his hyper-sensitivity, his pessimistic outlook, and his suicidal bent, Father Time is clearly Jude Fawley's child. As such, he appropriately functions to advance the plot and to symbolize the significance of the mistakes Jude has made in the past. The similarity between Jude and Little Father Time is readily apparent. Sue is the first to comment on the likeness just after the boy comes to Aldbrickham to live with his father. Noting the resemblance between parent and child, Sue exclaims to Jude, "I see you in him!"2 Though Sue sees Arabella in the boy as well, the resemblance between mother and son is only physical whereas the likenesses between father and son are physical, situational, and psychological.Both Father Time and the young Jude are described by the narrator in similar terms. Jude, as a child, is presented as slender-framed, "puny and sorry"

Difference betewwn Father and Son:

The principle difference between father and son lies in the fact that in Jude periods of depression are offset by hopeful expectations. At the age of eleven, Jude appears "an ancient man in some phases of thought, [yet] much younger than his years in others" (p. 27; italics mine). Despite the overwhelming odds against his admission to a college, the young Jude continues to dream of Christminster and to plan for his future there. Several years after Jude has finally abandoned the goal for himself, he remains forward-looking. He idealistically imagines living out his dreams through his newfound son. Ironically, he makes plans to have the boy christened Jude and tells Sue, "Time may right things. . . . We'll educate and train him with a view to the university. What I couldn't accomplish in my own person perhaps I can carry out through him?" 

Significance of the death of other two children:

Much harder to understand for Sue and Jude-as well as for the reader - are the deaths of the other two children. John Holloway is not alone in condemning the gruesome scene. Holloway considers the hangings "an unparalleled literary disaster," partly "because the whole incident interrupts the novel almost like a digression, since it seems a far more elaborate disaster than any reader needs to prepare him for the only significant result, Sue's fit of remorse."8 Yet, just as Father Time's suicide is in keeping with his character, so too is his hanging the other children. Once again, comparison with his father helps to show the truth of this. Like his father, the boy feels responsible for the misfortunes of those around him. Jude first gives up his dream of Christminster and marries Arabella to protect her honor and then forsakes a secure job and his intention of becoming a clergyman to shelter Sue after she leaves Phillotson. Similarly, Little Father Time sacrifices himself and his siblings, thinking he can thereby alleviate the sufferings of his parents. When manifested in his son, Jude's misfortunes and personal weaknesses become exaggerated. Thus, Father Time's childhood is bleaker than Jude's; his outlook is unrelentingly pessimistic. Jude's attempts to assist others are sometimes simplistic, foolish, and self-damaging; but Father Time's attempt is twisted, bizarre, and self-destructive.

A Shadow from the Past:

Sue accurately describes Father Time as the only "shadow" on her relationship with Jude. His dark countenance does cast an ominous shade over their lives, one that foreshadows the doom of their relationship. As the product of a conventional marriage, Father Time represents the long-term ill effects of blind adherence to social convention. He also, paradoxically, serves as a dismal reminder of social conventions Sue and Jude cannot escape - social conventions which threaten to destroy them from without, in the form of public opinion, and from within in Sue's inability to feel secure in her nonconformity.

 After Father Time's death, Jude and Sue gaze upon the small corpse that embodies these messages:

 "The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. On that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents, mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their focus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of those parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and for the misfortunes of these he had died"

Senseless and tragic as the children's deaths are, they are made still more senseless and tragic by their profound effect on the lives of Sue and Jude. Not only does the loss of their children increase their misery, contrary to Father Time's childish intentions, but it also leads to a grim repetition of their earlier mistakes. Sue "voluntarily" gives herself to Phillotson a second time, and Jude is duped into repeating his marriage to Arabella to once more preserve her honor. Sue, transformed by her grief, concludes that she and Jude have been punished for "loving each other too much . . .” The couple cannot see their misfortune for what it is- a lesson from the past, but equally a lesson about the harshness of reality. Determinism accounts for much of the agony Jude and Sue experience. Part of it they unintentionally bring upon themselves, but much of it is unavoidable in a world such as that of the novel where, as Sue tells Father Time,

 "All is trouble, adversity, and suffering!"

David Lodge explains that in Jude the Obscure, life is presented as "a closed system of disappointment from which only death offers an escape."12 Perceiving the truth of this before the adults do, Little Father Time asks Sue, 

"It would be better to be out 0' the world than in it, wouldn't it?"

 After all his sorrows, the "predestinate Jude" shares his son's opinion and welcomes death, longing to "put an end to a feverish life which ought never to have been begun!" . On his deathbed, Jude curses his birth with his last words by repeating the verses from the third book of Job, "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man-child conceived." He closes with Job's question to God, "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?". In Jude the Obscure, father and son have acted out twin roles in a harsh arena where Crass Casualty determines each man's destiny. Sue, Arabella, and Phillotson have all been recognized as projections of Jude. 13 Surely, Jude's own son is as well. Because he "inherits" so many of his father's weaknesses, though in more exaggerated form, Little Father Time is a fitting reminder to Jude of the errors of his own past and of the grim perversity of each nan's fate.

Reference 

• Edwards, Suzanne. “A Shadow from the Past: Little Father Time in Jude the Obscure.” Colby, vol. 23, Mar. 1987.

• Thomas Hardy (1949). Jude the Obscure. Macmillan. p. 738. ISBN 978-1-60303-779-2.

• Gordon, Walter K. “Father Time's Suicide Note in Jude the Obscure.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 22, no. 3, 1967, pp. 298–300. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2932443. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.

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P-103 Assignment

Compare and contrast :Wordsworth and Keats

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper-Literature of the Romantic Periods

Roll no-07

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

Introduction

Romantic poetry, despite the name, is not always about love and relationships. The theme of Nature is predominant in a lot of Romantic poetry, where questions arise as to what that nature is, what it symbolizes, and how it is interpreted. There are many different views on nature, and each poet explores them differently. Two poets that romanced nature during this era were: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and John Keats (1795-1821). This assignment has been written to compare Wordsworth and Keats treatment of theme as well as portrayal of nature.

Both Wordsworth and Keats are romantic poets; they express ideas on nature and send us the message to respect it. They say we have to admire the beauty of nature in different ways. Wordsworth uses simpler language in his poems whether to express simple or complex ideas, by which we understand he aimed his poems to lower classes. Keats instead, uses much more complex language to describe and express his ideas, so we know he aimed his poems to the educated. During the romantic period, poets would mainly send out the message to admire nature and see the beauty in it that we should fine joy in nature and nature should be our teacher.

Background

Individualism was brought by Romantic poets. These poets showed their respect not only in natural world but also in idealism, physical and emotional passion. Their interest in mystic and supernatural elements was also keen. Romantic poets opposed order and rationality of neoclassical poets.

They did this to get freedom in art and politics. English Romantic Movement was started by some famous poets like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Lord Byron, and John Keats.

Similarities between Wordsworth and Keats

Wordsworth and Keats took nature as an infinite source and for them it was like lovely imaginings. In his poetry Wordsworth portrayed mountains as the symbol of loneliness and Keats’ portrayal of darkness reflecting glooms and windy mossy ways made both the poets different from other poets who wrote about nature.

For example, from Keats’s poem,

 ‘I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill’:

“The breezes were etheral, and pure,

And crept through half closed lattices to cure

The languid sick; it cool’d their fever’d sleep,

And soothed them into slumbers full and deep.

Soon they awoke cleared eyed: nor burnt with thirsting,

Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting”:

In above lines Keats is showing compassion how air affects physical health.The most important feature of the English Romantic Movement, which is very popular, is ‘Return to Nature’ that will be analyzed in relation to Wordsworth 

The main feature of Romantic poets was to use time and memory in their poetry. Wordsworth and Keats also used these two themes in their poetry. In his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ Keats description of pastoral imagery which is painted on an urn shows his thoughts about nature of time.

Similarly, Wordsworth is also recalling his previous visit to the banks of the River Wye in ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’. In both the poems the similarity of thoughts about nature between both the poets can be seen clearly. In both poems both the poets enjoy the time spent with nature. In ‘Tintern Abbey’ Wordsworth becomes sentimental and the opening lines of the poem establish the tone of the whole poem.

“Five years have past; five summers with the length

of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.” (1-4)

In the whole poem Wordsworth has used the combination of time, memory and nature. He is very definite about using the length of time. He is connected with past in ‘Tintern Abbey’ and makes all the time frames important in this poem like: seasons, years, days, hours and minutes.

But here we can find some difference in Wordsworth and Keats of using time in their poetry. As Wordsworth is connected with past, Keats is more related with future. The following lines from Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ depict his thoughts on time.

“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” (15-20)

Difference between Wordsworth and Keats

All six great Romantic poets are divided in to two groups. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott belong to the elder group, while Byron, Shelly and Keats are of the younger group. The first group poets were all similar in many ways but the younger group had differences due to belonging to different generation and age. The ideas and aspirations which Wordsworth first embraced had kindled humanitarian passions even in the artist Keats.

 William Wordsworth

Wordsworth is the leader of Romanticism and true son of Romantic Revival. Wordsworth’s historical background and his poetry are the best introduction of 19th century Romanticism. “Both Wordsworth and Coleridge formulated that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful human feeling”. They believe that the subjects of the poetry should be only nature and human nature and its objects should be the reflection of emotions stimulated by the World and humanity. Wordsworth’s lyrics odes and sonnets make him a great romantic poet 

Wordsworth’s Romanticism gives an extraordinary contrast because he categories the sublime and the ridiculous. He has a kind of middle style; at its best it has grace and dignity, a heart-searching simplicity, and a certain magical enlightenment of phrase that is all his own.

His position and influence are due partly to the fact that he greatly enlarged the boundaries of poetry giving it, as subject matter; themes varying from the joys and sorrows of the simple, homely lives to the transcendental interests of soul in communion with nature and God, partly to his development of a poetic style befitting such material.

The instinct to perceive nature and human life in transcendental terms was early manifested in Wordsworth. This habit of mind sobered and strengthened by reflection, pervades all his poetry and gives to it a peculiarly stimulating character .His Romanticism is deeply rooted in realism. His great poems are saturated with the very breath and spirit of life. In a lonely highland meadow Wordsworth saw the solitary girl, making hay and heard her singing at her work. Normally, there was nothing unusual in those rustic notes of the peasant girl to quicken thought or inspire expression.

But to Wordsworth imagination, the doleful strains of the forlorn reaper seemed to derive a pensive sorrow from memories of old, unhappy, for off things and battles long ago. He has the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. Wordsworth always saw beauty in nature rather than any man-made objects.

 John Keats

John Keats was essentially a Romantic poet. His poetry is the meeting ground of old Hellenism and medieval romanticism and even his Hellenism is romantic. His romance is largely derived from English and Italian romancers of the Middle ages.

Keats always admired Spenser and Boccaccio and his imagination was always influenced after reading both the poets’ poetry. Keats poetry showed the romance of three worlds: the antique; the medieval and the modern where his poetry had rich and pictorial expressions.

The Romantic element in Keats appears less in his choice of subjects than in his manner of treating them. ‘Hyperion’, ‘Endymion’, ‘Lamia’ are old classical in story but at the same time they have romantic element too. On the other hand, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, ‘Isabelle’, ‘La Belle Dams Sans Merci’ are drawn from the Middle of ages in which romance breathes more freely.

Keats had no interest in men. In the passion and struggle of ordinary human life he discussed his feelings for poetry. To him poetry was the world of the imagination only, realm of enchantment where only those might dwell who saw visions and dreamed dreams- a land of voluptuous languor, where magic filled the air and life passed like a dream, measured only by the exquisiteness of its sensations and the intensity of its delights.

Keats’ principle was “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”. He was passionate about beautiful things in an intellectual manner not in a sentimental way. Keats had intense romantic fervor. His Romanticism had an outlook different from that of his colleagues Byron looked around and criticized; Shelly looked forward and aspired; and Keats looked backward into the romantic past and sighed.

In the Romanticism of Wordsworth there is the consciousness and will of a return to natural sources. The disease that is preying upon poetry is the artificiality of the language in which the external and explicit means of conveying intensity have been worn out by the deadening effect of custom. The romantic idea had crystalized round these themes and these rhythms, which are still pregnant with the old time vigor of the English genius.

Wordsworth’s original creativity lies in the revolutionary faith. He has been the promoter which revolution made him. He says that he not apathetic with anyone. His use of rural life in his poetry gives us a sensitive receptivity. Wordsworth’s poetry conveys the message of intensity.

Wordsworth is the psychological poet par excellence; and by constantly shifting the domains of art into the realms of the implicit he has prepared the way for the supreme enrichment of modern literature .Wordsworth always believed that the poetry should be the voice of a common man that is why he has focused on mentioning rural life in his poetry and he never support the voice of an educated man in his poetry .

Keats is the poet of sensations. His intellectual work includes working on notions, images and qualities. His balance between perfect classicism and romantic intensity is remarkable.

The favorite themes in Keats’s Romanticism are set in the ‘Odes’ in short and elaborate forms, constructed with harmonious skill, sculptural grace of Greek attitudes, the nostalgia of the charming myths of Hellas, the changing seasons and the joys of the earth

English Romanticism attains in Keats the final stage of its progress, and this pessimism is deeper and more significant. It has not its secret source of any Tragic Mystery and it is thus much more inevitable. It springs from the satiety of a soul which yet has made no demands upon the more common joys of life; it is made up of the unconquerable feeling of the fragility of beautiful forms, as of the vanity of the effort through which desire seeks to transcend itself .

Keats when he died, gave promise of becoming the greatest poet of his generation, and one who better than any other, would have united the free inspiration of Romanticism with the formal principle of the schools of the past .

Keats does not think nature as noble as other phases of development but on the other hand he does not challenge nature’s importance. That is why nature imagery is an important element in many of his poetry.

His choice of subjects differs from that of most of the other major romantic poets. His love of nature is intense and is constantly to be seen in the imagery of his poems but it involves none of the mystical worship of the ‘mighty being’ which we have seen in Wordsworth. Unlike Wordsworth, Keats made no attempt at a systematic formulation of his views on his art. His letters however give a clearer insight into his mind and artistic development than any formal treatise could have done.

Conclusion

Romanticism is not a pure psychology. English Romanticism cannot be considered as one artistic principle which stands in conflict with other principle. It does not have its own victory over other principles. The personality of the poet is its main characteristic as it depends upon the poet’s sensibility and imagination though one’s intelligence is a general thing.

Reference:

• Albert, Edward. “A History of English Literature.” 2000, Oxford University Press, London, p.664.

• Dr. Sen. S. “John Keats: Selected Poems.” 2009. Unique Publishers. New Delhi Goodman, Wr. “History Of English Literature.” Vol. 2. 2007. Doaba House. New Delhi “John, Keats, Romanticism.” n.d. Scribd. Web. “Keats 2, Lamia.” Power Point Slide, 53.

• Terrall, Erin. “Time and Memory in the Poetry of Keats and Wordsworth.” Associatedcontent. 2008 Web.

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P-102 Assignment

Jonathan Swift and 'A Tale of a Tub'

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper-Literature of the Neo-classical Periods

Roll no-07

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

 Jonathan Swift and “A Tale of a Tub”

Introduction:

Jonathan Swift's Tale of the Tubis a brilliant failure. It is a prose satire intended as a defense of the Anglican church, but it was widely interpreted by contemporary readers as an attack on all religion. At the time of writing it, Swift was a junior Anglican clergyman hoping for substantial preferment in the Church. The appearance of the Tale, and its assumed message, was a serious obstacle to his promotion.

The Title and Structure

The first thing that's puzzling about A Tale of a Tub is its title. The preface explains that it is the practice of seamen when they meet a whale to throw out an empty tub to divert it from attacking their ship. The whale that this tub is thrown out for most obviously represents Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Swift's tub is intended to distract Hobbes and other critics of the church and government from picking holes in their weak points.

A Tale of a Tub, he also seems to have been extraordinarily proud of his satire. The one comment that we have on record from Swift about the Tale comes from a letter transcribed for the Earl of Orrery:

'There is no doubt but that he was Author of the Tale of the Tub. He never

owned it: but as he one day made his Relation Mrs Whiteway read it to him,

he made use of This expression. 'Good God! What a flow of imagination had

I, when I wrote this.'

There is a strange paradox here: Swift wanted to disavow his connection with the work, yet at the same time he wanted the genius evident in the satire to be recognised as his.

Religious Orthodoxy

Swift says in the 'Apology' that was added to the 1710 edition that A Tale of a Tub was partly intended to attack the religious groups that he saw as threatening the hegemony of the Anglican church. In the Tale, Swift uses the analogy of the three brothers - Martin, Peter and Jack - to represent, respectively, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, and the Low Church, or Dissenters. In doing so, he is trying to demonstrate that the spiritual practices of the Catholic Church and dissenting sects were based on a false interpretation of the true Word, the Bible. However, the sweep of Swift's irony in the book, and, the destabilising and confusing nature of its changes in satiric personae meant that many of his contemporaries read the Tale as an attack all religion.

“I do here make bold to present your Highness with a faithful abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts and sciences, intended wholly for your service and instruction.”

(Chapter 4, Page 19)

Originality:

The idea of originality is vexed by A Tale of a Tub. As we've seen here, Swift both dismisses the importance of authorship and fiercely defends it. These ambiguous and contradictory concerns are is mirrored within the text, which in some ways it seems to push the boundaries of what can be called an original. A Tale of a Tub is profoundly postmodern in its intertextuality, its play with literary forms, and its changes in speaker and genre and that constantly undermine readerly expectations of the text. It parodies bookseller's catalogues, scholarly treatises, scientific works, effusive dedicatory prose, and it borrows, magpie-like, from a wide and disparate range of sources. A Tale of a Tub is a patchwork of unattributed quotations to Dryden, Marvell, Richard Bentley, Thomas Browne, and Joseph Addison.

After the Tale appeared in 1704, William Wotton, an Anglican clergyman incensed by what he saw as Swift's impropriety, published a critique of the work. It was entitled Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, With Observations upon The Tale of a Tub(1705). In the critique, Wotton offered an explication of the story of the three brothers, attempting to demonstrate that the Tale was a work of radical impiety. When Swift brought out his revised 5th edition in 1710, he cheekily copied the explanatory material of Wotton's attack and had them printed as notes to the new edition his own text. Thus, from 1710, part of the Tale was made up chunks of Wotton's attack on it, cut and pasted in as the Tale's textual apparatus. So in one sense, since it derived so many bits and pieces from other authors, none of the Tale is original. Yet on the other hand, Swift used these other works to compose a wholly new text, one he asserted roundly in the apology was 'an Original, whatever its Faults might have been' and which he later declared was the product of a magnificent 'flow of the Imagination'.

The Ancients and Moderns

How do Swift's concerns about originality and authorship reflect on contemporary cultural debate? 'The Battle of the Books' along with the Tale, was perhaps the most impressive English contribution to the so-called quarrel of the Ancients and the moderns. The history of this quarrel can be traced back to the Renaissance. Rediscovery and publication of the philosophers and poets of ancient Greece and Rome generated a huge sense of intellectual and cultural liberation for many sixteenth century writers. But with this revival came a questioning of assumptions about the value of the classical texts.

In literary terms, the debate polarized around the question of whether present civilizations could hope to outdo the achievements of the ancient world in the arts, and in science and technology. Some contemporaries, 'the Moderns', were excited by this possibility. There were moderns who were classical scholars, like Richard Bentley (who is satirized in 'Battle of the Books'), who believed that there was nothing sacred about classical texts. He believed that the classical past should be seen as a body of material that could be dated and analyzed, and above all historicized. The classics were not a body of transcendent truths for all time, but an historical source about a much less advanced classical past. So he produced editions of classical texts with endless footnotes and appendices re-contextualizing and analyzing the poetry in terms of this historical past, not unlike modern critical editions of the works of Shakespeare.

Parody and Allegory

In addition to the 'digressions' that form a satire on modern learning and print culture, A Tale of a Tub's more obvious satire is that on abuses in religion. The satire works through the allegory of the three brothers: Martin, Peter, and Jack. Martin symbolizes the Anglican Church (from Martin Luther); Peter symbolizes the Roman Catholic Church; and Jack (from John Calvin) symbolizes the Dissenters. Their father leaves each brother a coat as a legacy, with strict orders that the coats are on no account to be altered. The sons gradually disobey his injunction, finding excuses for adding shoulder knots or gold lace, according to the prevailing fashion. Martin and Jack quarrel with the arrogant Peter (the Reformation), and then with each other (the split between Anglicanism and Puritanism), and then separate. As we might expect, Martin is by far the most moderate of the three, and his speech in section six is by the sanest thing anyone has to say in the Tale.

Both parody and allegory work by implicitly, or explicitly, comparing one sort of book with another. As a broad generalization, they are concerned with intertextual relationships, and how you can use one text to invoke or critique another. But the distinction is that allegory teaches its readers to see beyond appearance to recognize truth, while parody teaches its readers to see beyond appearance to recognize error.

In the case of the allegorical story of the three brothers, the ultimate pre-text is the Bible: the father's last recorded words take the form of a will, a dead letter, defining and confining the ways in which the sons are to live their lives:

'You will find in my Will (here it is) full Instructions in every Particular

concerning the Wearing and Management of your Coats; wherein you must be

very exact, to avoid the Penalties I have appointed for every transgression

or Neglect, upon which your future Fortunes will entirely depend'.

The later subversion of the will provides us with an allegory of misreading. The abuse of the living coats (the Church) provides an allegory of desire and corruption. The brothers abuse and misinterpret the will as a way of figuring misuse and misinterpretation of the Bible. The attack on Jack, representing Dissenters, is particularly biting: it targets the sectarian groups who exalted the individual worshipper or small congregation with their claims to inner light and private conscience, unchecked by tradition and institutional authority.

In the case of the satire on writing and scholarship, as we have seen in the first half of this lecture, texts like Dryden's Virgil and scholarship of Bentley that are being undermined. They are working whose claim to authority is spurious, and whose authors fail to pay homage to the only true originals of classical civilization.

In this reading of The Tale of a Tub, then, there seem to be clear distinctions between parody of lesser forms and allegory of higher forms, which roughly corresponds to the twin foci of Swift's work. Both the parody and the allegory are concerned with discerning true and false models of textual authority.

But perhaps there is more overlap between parody and allegory than there seems at first glance. If we think about the brothers and their coats as an allegory of misreading, we can see that the notion of the Bible as sacred pre-text is complicated by the fact that what the brothers can so misread and misconduct the words of the will that they are able get it to justify whatever they want it to do. We slip out of allegory and into parody, as Swift mocks as his ludicrous pretext false exegetical analyses of the Scripture. Initially, the Will has the power to protect the brothers from their fallen nature, but slowly and insidiously, the relationship of masterful text to obedient interpreter is turned around. Led by Peter, the Catholic, the brothers subvert the terms of the Will by means of willfully self-seeking interpretation. The simple, explicit dictates of the Will are twisted to serve as a canonical sanction to justify shoulder knots on the cloaks. Flame-coloured satin is said to be 'found' in a codicil of the will, a dangerous supplement, which corresponds to apocryphal additions to the Bible. Embroidered images are forbidden, so they are excused by the sophistry that the new fashion in images is different from that which existed in the father's time, and is therefore acceptable.

By the time the brothers have finished, the Will, or the Word that they are authorizing their actions with is no longer the true, original, sacred word, but their corrupt and self -serving version of it. The pre-text underwriting the allegory of the coats is no longer the Bible, but a distorted misreading of it, a fallen text that must be discredited. Thus, we have moved across into parody. The impact of an allegory is to reveal the privileged status of the pretext, while a parody aims at undermining the value of the pretext.

One of the implications of the shifting and unstable nature of the satiric forms employed in the Tale is that it makes it difficult to establish what Swift does take to be his ideal point, the true perspective against which the follies satirized can be measured and found wanting. Because we're not sure of the interpretative framework we're working within, allegory or parody, it's hard to be confident about the moral thrust of the work. It is no wonder that contemporary readers so frequently misinterpreted Swift's intentions, to Swift's professional detriment.

Conclusion :

In nutshell we can say A Tale of a Tub is the greatest  satire by Swift. 

References

•

• Ross, Angus and David Wooley, eds. A Tale of a Tub and Other Works: Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-283593-2

•Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub and Other Works. Marcus Walsh, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

• 
  
• William, Abigail. “Jonathan Swift and ‘a Tale of a Tub.’” Great Writers Inspire, 4 May 2010.

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P-101: Assignment

WOMEN’S FREEDOM IN APHRA BEHN’S “THE ROVER”

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper-Literature of Elizabethan and Restoration Periods

Roll no-07

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

     WOMEN’S FREEDOM IN APHRA BEHN’S “THE ROVER”

Introduction:

One of the greatest dramatists of the restoration period, Aphra Behn was the first professional woman writer. She was the first woman to earn her bread through her pen. The Rover being one of her greatest plays also has a deep connection with her own life. Story of Aphra Behn’s early life is differently told by different people. One of the stories about her life tells that like the protagonist of her play in the Rover namely “Hellena” she was also tailor made to be a nun. In a way it can also be said that while writing the rover, in the name of Hellena she was trying to write the story of her own life as to how she broke the shackles, abandoned nunnery and became a secret agent for the king.

Aphra Behn:

Aphra Behn, (born 1640 Harbledown, Kent, England—died April 16, 1689, London), English dramatist, fiction writer, and poet who was the first Englishwoman known to earn her living by writing.

The play set up in Naples, Italy, premiered to such a great success in 1677 that Behn was encouraged to write a sequel of the same. The play is an extraordinary popular example of restoration comedy. Behn turned to writing after the king refused to pay her expenses and this play gave her a fair income due to its popularity and extended run in the theatres.

The rover undoubtedly contains some powerful female characters in the two sisters Florinda and Hellena. Both Hellena and Florinda since the very first scene is seen defying their patriarchal gods and are shown aware of what they want and the way to achieve it. Since the very first scene of the play both the sisters are shown to contain a kind of strongness which helps them pass their way through their brothers to their ultimate aim which in Hellena’s case is leaving nunnery (which she was designed to become as stated earlier) and in Florinda’s case was to marry a man of her choice, Belville, defying both, her father and her brother to do the same. Both the sisters are not ready to accept the kind of life their father and brother have assigned to them and are very much ready to disobey their parental (and fraternal) commands. The sort of rebellion instincts which are shown to be present in Florinda and Hellena is out of the ordinary for the female characters in the seventeenth century theatre.

The play also proposes a kind of change in the way women speak or spoke in the seventeenth century drama. Behn distinguishes her female characters by giving them very witty and bawdy lines. The “chaste” women are seen doing repartee with their male counterparts which is totally opposite to the structure which was being carried throughout the seventeenth century drama.

Another very important difference which is seen in Behn’s female characters is that not only they are shown to be knowing their destinies but they are also seen taking initiative to get what they wish for. This demonstrated motivation to advance the plot means that the female character take a higher degree of agency and authority in The Rover than the male cavaliers and courtesans. Consider Hellena as the prime example of this agency. From the very beginning of the play, she is portrayed as a woman with confidence and drive. her leadership and bold defiance as well as her ability to manipulate others, are all put on display when she manages to convince Callis to allow both her and her sister Florinda to attend the carnival, despite being ordered by her brother to be locked up in her room for the evening. Not only does Hellena actively disobeys her brother’s orders but she also convinces her sister Florinda to join in rebelling against the restrictive commands of their brother.

Hellena is perhaps the strongest of all female characters present in the Rover with all the boldness and wit she possesses but the kind of women “strongness” which Behn is trying to propose is also visible in the way Lucetta designs and executes the clever albeit to cheat Blunt out of his possessions. Like Hellena, Lucetta also knows what she wants, she knows how to get it and most importantly she actively pursues that which she desires. The men of “The Rover”, on the contrary take more of a back seat. They are shown to be easily manipulated and cheated by the female characters of the play very often. Consider Belvile for example who spends time lamenting for his predicament. Although later he is shown very actively working for a future with Florinda, but it is Florinda and not him who takes the initiative. She is the one who largely designs the plan which leads to their marriage.

Evaluating Women's Social and Sexual Options:

Each woman begins the play bound one of the three fates: Florinda to marriage, Hellena to the nunnery, and Angellica Bianca to well-paid prostitution.  Through Carnival, however, these women abandon their prescribed positions with disguises to “be mad as the rest, and take all innocent freedoms,” including to “outwit twenty brothers”. The masquerade serves multiple purposes.  First, disguise equalizes the class distinctions, and…even [satirizing] the difference between the categories available to women” When lost in the festivities, the ladies join all that “are, or would have you think they’re courtesans,” the most sexually liberated women. Their initial costumes as gypsies allow them to approach men in a feminized, desirous way.  Gypsies already occupy the role of outcast on the liminal edge of society; by taking on their looks, Florinda and Hellena put themselves and their sexuality outside the confines of cultural expectation.  Their decision implies Behn’s opinion that her peers should seek to escape the restrictions that define them.

Hellena and Angellica also take on the appearances of men during the play.  Such costumes permit them to alter their lovers’ choices and lives.  “Dressed in man’s clothes,” Hellena can punish Willmore for his infidelity with “something does to vex him” She interferes. in a meeting of Willmore and Angellica by informing the courtesan of “a young English gentleman” who wooed another woman and then “paid his broken vows to you”.  Seeking revenge an act later, Angellica Bianca dons “a masking habit and vizard” and threatens Willmore with a pistol. Her choice of weapon—guns were used almost exclusively by men during Behn’s time—is “symbolic of her attempt to usurp phallic control” of her own sexual desires. Instead of feminizing her lust, Angellica masculinizes herself.  By masquerading as men, both women demonstrate how ladies may take ownership of rights associated only male Cavaliers, romance, justice, and sexuality.

The “obligatory happy ending” of The Rover reveals the unfairness of the libertine system and the demand—indeed, the unquestioned assumption—that women would fit into the socially set role of prostitute or wife.  Florinda and Hellena’s attempts to challenge their brother’s arrangements are successful; the former marries her lover and the latter escapes a future as “handmaid to lazars and cripples” in the nunnery. However, their enterprising boldness in chasing men leads them into the same wifely duties of most women.  Their challenge to “the repression of their autonomy and …desires” still leads to the hierarchical man-woman relationship of Puritan wedlock.

Angellica’s attempt to unite her sexuality with true love fails.  She is initially immune to “the general disease of [the female] sex…that of being in love”.  She can sleep with whomever she wants and has found a way around Behn’s observation that women need reliable male support.  However, her life lacks the romantic passion of the hedonistic lifestyle.  Moreover, Angellica’s sexual liberation, for which lovers must pay to experience, contributes to her inability to snag Willmore’s long-term affection.  His lust could have been satiated with her portrait since someone else would “have the thousand crowns to give for the original”. Her relegation back to courtesan shows how transgressive, premarital sex and proper marriage cannot mix.  As a sexual female, Angellica has no place in world when in the throes of libertine love: she can be neither indifferent courtesan nor devoted wife.

Portrayal of Restoration Women

Florinda’s character encompasses the Restoration woman’s struggle to gain agency in marriage. Before arriving at carnival, Florinda is trapped in the midst of a battle between following her own desire and the desires of her family. She wants to marry the English colonel Belvile, but must obey the patriarchal orders of her father and brother to marry who they see fit for her.

With Florinda’s sister Hellena, Behn exposes the struggle of self-identification, specifically in terms of faith. Hellena has been set on the path to become a nun, and as she ventures off to carnival with her sister, the masquerade is a tool for her to free herself from societal restraints and experience real love. As noted earlier, the Church of England was very influential during the Restoration. Behn incorporated religion into The Rover, but she presented a critical view of church customs by portraying such strong libertine ideals from a devout character like Hellena. In the first scene Hellena tells Florinda that she would like to see her and Belvile together.

Hellena’s libertine values are very apparent when she meets Wilmore. Their courtship begins immediately and she tells him that vowing to die a maid is “foolish”. Wilmore and Hellena are both looking for an escape at carnival. When he arrives on shore, Wilmore tells the cavaliers that his “business ashore was only to enjoy [him]self a little this carnival” hinting that he is looking for female companionship to occupy his time on the island.  Hellena’s feelings of oppression, curiosity and yearning for male companionship connect the libertine elements of these two characters together.

Despite their increasing agency in choosing a marriage partner, women in the Restoration were nonetheless valued as commodities. Angellica Bianca is an example of this as her struggles stemmed from social perspectives of value within the marketplace. The Staves article mentions that Behn was intrigued by the “’value’ of women in her society and experiment[ed] with dividing and isolating elements of conventional female value” . In her profession, Angellica usually takes on the dominant role in choosing a mate.

Angellica’s role reflects a need for representation and agency for women during the Restoration. She wears no mask, unlike Florinda and Hellena when they go to carnival, and has a reputation outside of carnival based on her profession.

Though each of these women was a valuable social commodity in their respective situations, Florinda began with no sense of agency, and the power shift in her patriarchal environment gave her more agency to choose who she would marry. Hellena began with the same level of agency as her sister, being forced into a life as a nun, but the shift in power allowed her to take on a new identity with a man which in turn gave her more agency in her devotion. Angellica, on the other hand lost power by falling in love. It left her vulnerable and decreased her level of agency which lowered her social value and self-worth.

Conclusion:

Through Florinda, Hellena, and Angellica, Behn was able to bring to life some of the ideals of the Restoration while also critiquing popular movements within the era. Each of these characters endures a social struggle that fits into a bigger picture for the time. Marriage, self-identity and social representation are all topics that women of the Restoration were faced with and characterized what it meant to be a woman during that time. Behn’s execution of these elements makes The Rover a critical part of the history of Restoration Theater.

Reference:

• Behn, Aphra.  The Rover.  Restoration Comedy.  Ed. Trevor Griffiths and Simon Trussler.  London: New Hern Books, 2005.  129–224.

• “Portrayal of Restoration Women in The Rover.” Magnificata Journal of Undergraduate Nonfiction, 2014, commons.marymount.edu/magnificat/portrayal-of-restoration-women-in-the-rover.

• Staves, Susan. “Behn, Women, and Society.” The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. By Derek Hughes and Janet M. Todd. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2004. 12-28. Print.

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