Monday 7 December 2009
Really useful video on how to write good essays
ow to write an essay. Amazing system on how to write an essay using pattern based writing. Essay writing for elementary and middle school students. How to write a good essay and essay writing tips in this free video
Sunday 6 December 2009
Notes on Modernism and Ezra Pound, fragmentation of the modernist period
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Sarah Robinson
London Southbank University
AHS, English and Creative Writing
DISCLAIMER:
These are only notes and not part of my essay, but feel free to use the ideas here in your own work if you find them helpful. Note there are some quotations here so please refer to Havard referencing system to use these.
discuss how the work of one or more poets studied on the course reflects the scepticism and fragmentation of the modernist period
ezra pound - his ultimate ambition was to communicate a feeling or an image perfectly in the fewest possible words (metro)
- imagism, against victorian sentimentality, celebrates free verse and clear concise images in literature
Modernist poetry is a mode of writing characterised by two main features: the first is technical innovation through the extensive use of free verse and the second a move away from the Romantic idea of an unproblematic poetic "self" directly addressing an equally unproblematic ideal reader or audience.
skepticism is shown in the way that modernists such as pound did not believe that metaphorical language such as the romatic era was not the best form of communication
he thought literal, clear meanings of words without metaphor or underlying meaning were the best forms of communication
eg
From A retrospect
1. Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.
4. Complete freedom of subject matter.
5. Free verse was encouraged along with other new rhythms.
6. Common speech language was used, and the exact word was always to be used, as opposed to the almost exact word.
ezra Pound’s early poetry exhibiting a purposely diminished quality – their symbolism and imagism as ways to scale poetry down to a concrete point, to avoid abstraction, to avoid the sentimental tug - a time when 'experience was fragmented' and 'alienation and ironic detachment became common responses to the human predicament' (Moore, Lisa , 'Modernism' The Harper handbook to literature second edition, 301)
pound advocates the idea that modernist poetry is diminshed romanticism. IN HIS EARLY WORK- this was the foundations of imagism
modernists tend to value form over content in order to portray the most powerful image - however ironically this use of form tends to alienate the reader making this modernists idea of 'the best possible way to communicate' inaccesible to anyonme outside of the academic circle - 20th century wheni t was written this was more pronounced
we can see more detail into this skepticism of the understanding of the world, and the skepticism of the usefullness(other word) of communication via language and the romantic idea of self within literature.
Fragmentation, plurality, the dehumanisation of the subject, the aestheticisation of experience--all of which remain key elements within the modernist movement, even at its most radical and challenging--emphasise the sphere of individual refusal as the only meaningful sphere
-G Jenkins, op cit, pp114-115.
this opinion of (who) again shows us the modernist idea of drawing the poem away from the world and the idea of self and addressing an equally self concious audience and b ringing it down to the bare minimum in fragments of moments and dehumanising subjects and the aestheticisation of experience. all these elements are clear in the station of a metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough
quote
Pound moving to the longer clusters of lyrics that are simultaneously diminished/personal and and epic - moved onto this in later work (examples)
through pounds changes in his work we can see the complexity and ambivalence in the Modernist attitudes, the desire to approach grand themes paired with skepticism about poetry’s ability to evoke real change and understanding in regards to those themes.
after this change of pounds
post war disillusionment then - modernism in english tended towards a poetry of the fragment that rejected the idea that the poet could present a comfortingly coherent view of life. this itself shows us the skeptic view of modernism and the fragment refers to the modernist idea - capturing fragments of moments
go on to use examples of fragments of moments in pounds poetry
t
thinking of fragmentation as a form within modernism an emphasis on discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials, we can also think of pound:
(examples of collage in his poetry)
the layering of different images and ideas
example of discontinuous narrative in pound
fragmentation as a DISruption at the level of form - pounds ambition was to communicate a feeling or an image perfectly in the fewest possible words and to do this he had do destroy the idea of form within poetry, and create his own
form - a few donts
'
relying on free verse and stream of conciousness narratives. pound actually felt language was an imperfect medium for communication, as did other modernists but it was all they had. abandonment of rhyme for best possible communication of their own thoughts.
example of free form
The use of sensibility in poetry - some other notes on romanticism and Sensibility, cult of feeling, Keats
Susan Matthews defines ‘sensibility’ as ‘the cult of feeling [which] arose in the eighteenth century in response to philosophical theories that investigated the power of feeling to communicate directly between people.’ (Bygraves,S. ed. 1996 Romantic Writings p. 101). Discuss the representation and function of ‘the cult of feeling’ in the work of any two poets on the unit
An earlier definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling#
In visual art and literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and "pure" nature
he poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.
..Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world is a source of goodness and human society a source of corruption
Originating in philosophical and scientific writings, sensibility became an English-language literary movement, particularly in the then-new genre of the novel. Such works, called sentimental novels, featured individuals who were prone to sensibility, often weeping, fainting, feeling weak, or having fits in reaction to an emotionally moving experience. If one were especially sensible, one might react this way to scenes or objects that appear insignificant to others. This reactivity was considered an indication of a sensible person's ability to perceive something intellectually or emotionally stirring in the world around them. However, the popular sentimental genre soon met with a strong backlash, as anti-sensibility readers and writers contended that such extreme behavior was mere histrionics, and such an emphasis on one's own feelings and reactions a sign of narcissism. Samuel Johnson, in his portrait of Miss Gentle, articulated this criticism:
She daily exercises her benevolence by pitying every misfortune that happens to every family within her circle of notice; she is in hourly terrors lest one should catch cold in the rain, and another be frighted by the high wind. Her charity she shews by lamenting that so many poor wretches should languish in the streets, and by wondering what the great can think on that they do so little good with such large estates
To designate a body of literature “the poetry of sensibility” aligns it not only with a kind of feeling but with a cultural movement. An intricate culture of sensibility flourished in late eighteenth-century Britain. It affected the behavior of men and women, the conception and development of social reform, and the nature of prose and poetry. It expressed a set of assumptions and values that operated in philosophy as well as fiction and influenced even politics. It had profound consequences long after it had largely disappeared as a social movement.
If we can start by defining the idea of sensibility; The idea of writing to an audience who is sensitive, someone who is easily affected by emotion and the sublime. Someone 'moved to feel' by images and situations of enstrangement and poverty, ideally and traditionally this ideal audience is a woman and sensibility was originally constructed towards feminine response. Originally, the idea of sensibility was to keep thought and emotion seperate, keeping women uneducated and fixed in the idea and position of a maternal and domestic role. The 'cult of sensibility' was focused entirely on emotion and it encouraged the female audience to feel instead of think.While rationalism pervades the analytic mind, sentimentalism hinges truth upon an intrinsic human capacity to feel. So, with this idea of sensibility we can see how it can be used to construct and become a way to communicate directly between people and also to control.
Control of women and sensibility - poet who does this?
As far as the representation of sensibility goes, Wordsworth is a fantastic example of the use of it. Wordsworth uses sensibility throughout his poems but he changes its function. If we think of 'The Ruined Cottage':
Also, in the last decades of the eighteenth century, anti-sensibility thinkers often associated the emotional volatility of sensibility with the exuberant violence of the French Revolution, and in response to fears of revolution coming to Britain, sensible figures were coded as anti-patriotic or even politically subversive
In 'Ode to a Nightingale' the nightingale itself is used to represent escape, to be above life, death and time. The poem was inspired by a bird that built a nest in Keat's roof in his home in Belsize Park and Keat's is inspired by this, as he writes the poem he is literally in his garden and is transported to other worlds via the nightingale - building a life and having an experience that is not his, this is what the poem is all about, being above reality. Keat's conjures imagery via the nightingale. He was inspired by the nightingales song:
'In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless'
Here is an example of what is sometimes calles Keatsynthaestisia - the combination of the sound and sights makes the grass seem like it is singing, the melodious plot is the nightingales song but he combines it with rich natural imagery giving it a whole new meaning.
He uses the nightingale as a symbol of freedom, stanza 4 is a key stanza:
' Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret........
....Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies'
We have the negative imagery of death, however the nightingale is above this, he is using the nightingale as a supreme idea of nature as being above life and death, as all seeing and away from time, he expands this image:
'Away, away! For I will fly to thee
Not charioted by Bacchus or his pards,
But on the viewless wings og Poesy'
Here Keats is using the idea of the nightingale to escape reality, to join him and also be above life, death, time and reality and uses fairytale natural imagery to enhance this image.
'Tender is the night,
And haply the Queen Moon is on her throne,
Clustered by all her starry fays,
But here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown'
Using the universe as his escape as traditionally the universe operates on a different time scheme as the Earth and also contains connotations of God and supreme beings inhabiting it that are transcendent and immortal, he uses real imagery too with the moons and stars which gives the audience epic imagery of the universe to relate his experience to. He uses the absence of light - perhaps literal (to his imaginative experience) that the moon/stars do not give enough light and this symbolises the fact that he is finding it difficult to harness his imagination to create this alternate reality using nature and the nightingale's inspiration.
Finally, Keat's is drawn back to reality via the nightingales song, or a symbol of this:
'Folorn! The very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adeiu! The fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, decieving elf.
Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hillside, and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music - do I wake or sleep?'
This symbolises his journey home, the journey of the nightingale and the journey of him; back home and to reality. The meadows, streams and hillside of which the nightingale has freedom to fly above, but he does not. We feel Keat's sadness that this imagined fairyland has gone, the use of the word 'elf' brings a magical element to the poem which has been evident throughout, the nightingale itself being a magical type of nature, the references to 'fays' enhancing this, letting the audience know this is not reality. He is transported back across time and across space by the nightingale and the song and idea still echoes in the final words 'Fled is that music - do I wake or sleep?' Which also touches upon the idea of negative capability mentioned earlier; the idea of being between two constants, in this instance wake or sleep.
Bibliography:
On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller, http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html
To Autumn as Ecosystem, Johathan Bate
'To Autumn is not an escapist fantast which turns its back on the ruptures of Regency culture; it is a meditation on how human culture can only function through links and reciprocal relations with nature. For Keats , there is a direct correclatio between the selfs bond with its environment and the bonds between people which make up s ociety.' - ode to autumn as ecosystem
'
'To Autumn offers only a At the close of the poem, th e gathering swallows and rhe full grown lamb are already reminding us of the next spring.. famoulsy keats gives up on the earlier odes quest for the aesthetic transendence, embracing instead the immaanence of natures time, the cycle of the seasons'
autumn transitional poeriod to winter
death of summer - negative capability in a way - devoid of certainty, like death, like keats life. using nature to convey t his transition and experience.
'With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth
That i might drink and leave the world unseen
And with thee fade away in into the forest green'
..'Tasting of flora and the country green'
An earlier definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling#
In visual art and literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and "pure" nature
he poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.
..Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world is a source of goodness and human society a source of corruption
Originating in philosophical and scientific writings, sensibility became an English-language literary movement, particularly in the then-new genre of the novel. Such works, called sentimental novels, featured individuals who were prone to sensibility, often weeping, fainting, feeling weak, or having fits in reaction to an emotionally moving experience. If one were especially sensible, one might react this way to scenes or objects that appear insignificant to others. This reactivity was considered an indication of a sensible person's ability to perceive something intellectually or emotionally stirring in the world around them. However, the popular sentimental genre soon met with a strong backlash, as anti-sensibility readers and writers contended that such extreme behavior was mere histrionics, and such an emphasis on one's own feelings and reactions a sign of narcissism. Samuel Johnson, in his portrait of Miss Gentle, articulated this criticism:
She daily exercises her benevolence by pitying every misfortune that happens to every family within her circle of notice; she is in hourly terrors lest one should catch cold in the rain, and another be frighted by the high wind. Her charity she shews by lamenting that so many poor wretches should languish in the streets, and by wondering what the great can think on that they do so little good with such large estates
To designate a body of literature “the poetry of sensibility” aligns it not only with a kind of feeling but with a cultural movement. An intricate culture of sensibility flourished in late eighteenth-century Britain. It affected the behavior of men and women, the conception and development of social reform, and the nature of prose and poetry. It expressed a set of assumptions and values that operated in philosophy as well as fiction and influenced even politics. It had profound consequences long after it had largely disappeared as a social movement.
If we can start by defining the idea of sensibility; The idea of writing to an audience who is sensitive, someone who is easily affected by emotion and the sublime. Someone 'moved to feel' by images and situations of enstrangement and poverty, ideally and traditionally this ideal audience is a woman and sensibility was originally constructed towards feminine response. Originally, the idea of sensibility was to keep thought and emotion seperate, keeping women uneducated and fixed in the idea and position of a maternal and domestic role. The 'cult of sensibility' was focused entirely on emotion and it encouraged the female audience to feel instead of think.While rationalism pervades the analytic mind, sentimentalism hinges truth upon an intrinsic human capacity to feel. So, with this idea of sensibility we can see how it can be used to construct and become a way to communicate directly between people and also to control.
Control of women and sensibility - poet who does this?
As far as the representation of sensibility goes, Wordsworth is a fantastic example of the use of it. Wordsworth uses sensibility throughout his poems but he changes its function. If we think of 'The Ruined Cottage':
Also, in the last decades of the eighteenth century, anti-sensibility thinkers often associated the emotional volatility of sensibility with the exuberant violence of the French Revolution, and in response to fears of revolution coming to Britain, sensible figures were coded as anti-patriotic or even politically subversive
In 'Ode to a Nightingale' the nightingale itself is used to represent escape, to be above life, death and time. The poem was inspired by a bird that built a nest in Keat's roof in his home in Belsize Park and Keat's is inspired by this, as he writes the poem he is literally in his garden and is transported to other worlds via the nightingale - building a life and having an experience that is not his, this is what the poem is all about, being above reality. Keat's conjures imagery via the nightingale. He was inspired by the nightingales song:
'In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless'
Here is an example of what is sometimes calles Keatsynthaestisia - the combination of the sound and sights makes the grass seem like it is singing, the melodious plot is the nightingales song but he combines it with rich natural imagery giving it a whole new meaning.
He uses the nightingale as a symbol of freedom, stanza 4 is a key stanza:
' Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret........
....Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies'
We have the negative imagery of death, however the nightingale is above this, he is using the nightingale as a supreme idea of nature as being above life and death, as all seeing and away from time, he expands this image:
'Away, away! For I will fly to thee
Not charioted by Bacchus or his pards,
But on the viewless wings og Poesy'
Here Keats is using the idea of the nightingale to escape reality, to join him and also be above life, death, time and reality and uses fairytale natural imagery to enhance this image.
'Tender is the night,
And haply the Queen Moon is on her throne,
Clustered by all her starry fays,
But here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown'
Using the universe as his escape as traditionally the universe operates on a different time scheme as the Earth and also contains connotations of God and supreme beings inhabiting it that are transcendent and immortal, he uses real imagery too with the moons and stars which gives the audience epic imagery of the universe to relate his experience to. He uses the absence of light - perhaps literal (to his imaginative experience) that the moon/stars do not give enough light and this symbolises the fact that he is finding it difficult to harness his imagination to create this alternate reality using nature and the nightingale's inspiration.
Finally, Keat's is drawn back to reality via the nightingales song, or a symbol of this:
'Folorn! The very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adeiu! The fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, decieving elf.
Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hillside, and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music - do I wake or sleep?'
This symbolises his journey home, the journey of the nightingale and the journey of him; back home and to reality. The meadows, streams and hillside of which the nightingale has freedom to fly above, but he does not. We feel Keat's sadness that this imagined fairyland has gone, the use of the word 'elf' brings a magical element to the poem which has been evident throughout, the nightingale itself being a magical type of nature, the references to 'fays' enhancing this, letting the audience know this is not reality. He is transported back across time and across space by the nightingale and the song and idea still echoes in the final words 'Fled is that music - do I wake or sleep?' Which also touches upon the idea of negative capability mentioned earlier; the idea of being between two constants, in this instance wake or sleep.
Bibliography:
On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller, http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html
To Autumn as Ecosystem, Johathan Bate
'To Autumn is not an escapist fantast which turns its back on the ruptures of Regency culture; it is a meditation on how human culture can only function through links and reciprocal relations with nature. For Keats , there is a direct correclatio between the selfs bond with its environment and the bonds between people which make up s ociety.' - ode to autumn as ecosystem
'
'To Autumn offers only a At the close of the poem, th e gathering swallows and rhe full grown lamb are already reminding us of the next spring.. famoulsy keats gives up on the earlier odes quest for the aesthetic transendence, embracing instead the immaanence of natures time, the cycle of the seasons'
autumn transitional poeriod to winter
death of summer - negative capability in a way - devoid of certainty, like death, like keats life. using nature to convey t his transition and experience.
'With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth
That i might drink and leave the world unseen
And with thee fade away in into the forest green'
..'Tasting of flora and the country green'
English Literature essays, Wordsworth and Keats, Ode To Autumn, The Ruined Cottage, Romanticism essays
DISCLAIMER:
Feel free to use any of the material on this website in your essays but DO NOT PLAGARISE. Your lecturers will be able to tell immediately if you have entirely plagarised a piece of work.
Please use the Havard Referencing system when using any information found on my blog.
Thank you,
Sarah Robinson
London Southbank University
AHS, English and Creative Writing
Discuss the representation of nature and the natural world; Refer to the work of TWO poets studied on the unit.
'There are moments in our life, when we dedicate a kind of love and touching respect to nature in its plants, minerals, animals, landscapes, just as to human nature in its children, in the morals of country folk and of the primeval world, not because it is pleasing to our senses, not even because it satisfies our understanding or taste (the opposite can often occur in respect to both), but rather merely because it is nature. Every fine man, who does not altogether lack feeling, experiences this, when he walks in the open, when he lives upon the land or tarries beside monuments of ancient times, in short, when he is surprised in artificial relations and situations with the sight of simple nature.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
As Schiller displays with this above quote, nature is the essence of our lives. We appreciate and relate to nature, perhaps without knowing it at times, but it is always a part of us no matter how complex or simple. Touching on the idea of sensibility and nature, he addresses the fact that all man appreciate and relate to the sight of nature.
How is this relevent? Wordsworth's 'The Ruined cottage' uses this connection of humanity to nature to create a beautiful poem which uses sensibility, but also changes it to have its own, unique meaning and philosophy. By using mans intrinsic connection to nature to do this, we are moved to feel and moved to experience emotion via nature in 'The Ruined Cottage'.
Her cottage in its outward look appeared
As cheerful as before, in any show
Of neatness little changed - but that I thought
the honeysuckle crowded round the door
And from the wall hung down in heavier wreaths,
And knots of worthless stonecrop started out
Along the window's edge, and grew like weeds
Against the lower panes. I turned aside
And strolled into her garden. It was changed.
The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 305-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The above quote, if we look at the surface meaning is representing nature in a negative way, there is negative language associated with the natural imagery. Such as 'unprofitable', 'dragged', 'bend', 'worthless' and 'crowded'. Underneath this meaning it is still connecting humanity with nature, the fact that Margaret; the wife who passed away is now gone but nature is living on, it still continues to grow and progress and its existence is in itself and is continual and her cottage, her life still exists. This also is an example of sensibility. The nature is representing continual life after death and the exsistence of something in itself and is appealing to the readers emotions because we empathise with Margaret who is represented via this natural imagery.
'What would even a plain flower, a spring, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of bees, etc., have in itself so charming for us? What could give it any claim upon our love? It is not these objects, it is an idea represented through them, which we love in them. We love in them the quietly working life, the calm effects from out itself, existence under its own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity with itself.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
There is an idea represented through nature in this poem - nature has eternal unity with itself and the way Wordsworth links nature with Margaret means she also gains this attribute. Especially with Wordsworth's subtle ways of linking Margaret with nature:
'She is dead,
The worm is in her cheek, and this poor hut,
Stripped of its outward garb of household flowers,
Of rose and sweetbriar, offers to the wind
A cold bare wall whose earthy top is tricked
With weeds and the rank speargrass. She is dead'
(Page 280, Lines 103-108, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The imagery behind 'the worm is in her cheek' is powerful. Conjuring imagery of death and burial in the soil and the worm; part of nature of which Margaret is now eternally part of. But it is not necessarily negative, the idea of the worm can be seen as her becoming food and livelihood for the worm, who will live because of her and making her entirely a part of nature and the circle of life thus she is absorbed within the idea of the eternal and united with nature itself.
The recurring theme of negative language combined with natural imagery is not always to be interpreted as entirely negative, although it represents the destruction of Margaret's mind and life, it also, particularly towards the end of the poem represents continuity of life and the idea of 'the circle of life' which Margaret is now a part of. The idea of the cottage as Margaret and her life being covered by overgrown weeds and nature is encompassing her previous life, covering it and creating a new one.
Something to take note of from 'The Ruined Cottage' is that the cottage has not become a wasteland, there has been a lot of growth, however it has been the wrong thing as it has mirrored Margaret's decline, her personality deteriorating and changing; subtle irony reflecting Margaret's situation using nature as the vehicle of expression. This is an example of a pathetic fallacy, the idea of nature being aware of and of mirroring life; Margaret's life.
Sensibility plays a big part in this poem, where we see Margaret initially in a traditional female role as a maternal, domestic figure, provider for her husband and child and it is this being taken away from her which initiates her destruction. This plays on the traditional appeal to a female audience, which is what sensibility was originally based upon. Wordsworth does use the ideals from sensibility such as using emotion to express experience, to feel rather than to think and using estrangement and poverty to move the reader to feel. But what he does differently to traditional poetic sensibility is he changes this emotion into an intellectual response. If we think of the following quote from 'The Ruined Cottage':
'The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 314-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
We can gain the experience of this decaying rose and we can feel the emotion behind it of death, decay, the slowing and cease of life and the relation to Margaret's decay and end of life and in sensibility this would be its purpose, but with Wordsworth we can also use this emotion to feel our connection with nature in relation to life and this transforms into a philosophy - an intellectual response from the reader. For example we can interpret the said quote as Margaret, metaphorically speaking, as the rose, although this rose is decaying and bending down to earth, in its death it will become part of the earth again and will continue in the above mentioned circle of life; in death nature is renewed. This way of using sensibility along with nature creates a new philosophy and intellectual response to emotion and feeling, previously containing only emotion itself.
'They are what we were; they are what we ought to become once more. We were nature as they, and our culture should lead us back to nature, upon the path of reason and freedom. They are therefore at the same time a representation of our lost childhood, which remains eternally most dear to us; hence, they fill us with a certain melancholy. At the same time, they are representations of our highest perfection in the ideal, hence, they transpose us into a sublime emotion.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
This is exactly what Wordsworth does in 'The Ruined Cottage'. Even though the imagery of nature may be melancholy at times nature represents the cycle of life and existence and this creates a sublime emotion in the audience. Through the use of sensibility to move the reader to feel the emotion from Margaret's tragedy Wordsworth then allows the reader to interpret the tragedy via nature and transform it, tragedy is displaced by intellectual interpretation of events.
Moving on to the Keats, we can see the use of nature extensively in his poetry and the way he uses it gives us full, rich imagery of experiences that some have said are 'too happy by far, too full by half' (Levinson). This could be interpreted in a number of ways. It may be indicating that Keat's poetry is not from experience, as he was not well travelled and a lot of his poetry was inspired by imagination or art that he had seen. Keats' poetry is also often described as overflowingly sensuous, an attack on the senses and an overflowing of imagery and richness. For example in 'To Autumn' Keats uses nature at its fullest point:
'..fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later glowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has oe'r-brimmed their clammy cells'
(Page 1080, Lines 6-11, To Autumn, Keats )
The use of natural imagery at its ripest conveys this image of rich fullness, the use of connotative words such as 'swell', 'plump', 'budding' and the repetition of 'more' and 'oe'r brimmed' is overflowing from the poem and almost forces upon the reader this idea of fullness which can overload the senses. Maybe this was because Keats had not physically seen these things, as he was not travelled and perhaps due to this he was over compensating for this lack of experience, using nature too much to express has given the feeling of 'too happy by far, too full by half' as we can see too much yet still feel something is lacking.
It may be ironic that Keats wrote this poem as his most productive part of his life was coming to an end, this is clearly represented in nature within the poem. The above quote shows the nature at it's most ripe, at its most bountiful, then it dies. 'To Autumn' has similarities to 'The Ruined Cottage' in that there is a theme of nature and death paralelling each other. 'To Autumn' emphasises the idea that death is a natural function in life. It is honest and positive, welcoming of death because with that deaths brings a renewal and that is Spring. This may again reflect Keats' current state of mind, aware that death was imminent and using nature to express his positivity towards his own death and the naturalness of it.
We can also see that Keats may have chosen to use Autumn as it is a transitional period within nature. Life is coming to an end and the poem itself creates a still image of
'momentary suspension upon the completion of harvest' (Page 260, To Autumn as Ecosystem, Johathan Bate) and we can again mirror this with Keats life and this is called negative capability, an uncertainty, a grey area, an openness of mind and 'a heightened receptivity to reality in its full and diverse concreteness' this may also explain how Keats' poetry is sometimes described as 'too full'. Negative capability is also defined as negating the ego and Keats himself said he wanted to achieve poetry that appealed to so many senses there was no character inside of it, but it is also full of uncertainty - this may be representative of Keats' personal life at that time and the transition he was about to face from life to death, mirrored in the poems static image of Autumn's end, transitioning to Winter.
'To Autumn' may also be interpreted as a celebration of harvest and a connection of humanity with its reliance on nature to survive - like an ecosystem where every part is intricately linked. It should be noted that when Keats wrote this poem there was a beautiful Autumn in 1819 whereas the previous Autumns had been terrible with failed harvests. The idea of humanities reliance on the weather is also apparent - not only for harvesting crops but also for existence. We can see Keats' link to the weather in his letters from the same period he wrote 'To Autumn':
'The delightful weather we have had for two Months is the highest gratification I could recieve - no chill'd red noses - no shivering - but fair Atmosphere to think in'
(Keats, Letters 2.148, August 1819)
If we think of Keats' personal life we know that in this year he was suffering from tuberculosis and the most important thing was to have clean air and after so many years of poor weather the fact that 1819's Autumn was good for weather literally gave Keats a new lease of life and this is reflected in 'To Autumn' as we can see the new life forming on the trees, the crops, the bees and flowers; they are ripe and fresh in static image although there is still the underlying thought that as soon as they fall or are harvested they will die - this is again representing Keats' fate and illness itself via nature.
If we think of ecosystem as living organisms that interact with every other element in their local environment we can soon start to see how this can become relevent to 'To Autumn'. The poem itself represents nature linked - starting with:
'Seasons of mist and mellow fruitness
Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless'
(Page 1080, Lines 1-3, To Autumn, Keats)
This shows the relationship between the sun, the seasons; it represents them as interacting with each other and linking together closely which is what an ecosystem is.
Johnathan Bate says:
'There are not only links within the biota - flower and bee, the food-chain that associates gnat and swallow - but also links between the discourses which the modern Constitution sought to seperate out. The poem not only yokes etneral and internal marks of biological process (the visible bending of the apple tree, the invisible swelling of the gourd), it also yokes community and chemistry (bosom-friend and sun), physics and theology (load and bless), biology and aesthetics (a link which we may express through the two halves of the word which describes the closing images of the poem:bird-song). And crucially, it refuses to sign the Cartesian constitution which splits apart thinking mind and embodied substance'
(Page 259, To Autumn as ecosystem, Johnathan Bate)
This factor - that mind and body are not seperate, that they are working as one, using the examples shown above is the exactly what an ecosystem is based upon; every single thing working together. In 'To Autumn' we have, as stated above - the biological process of nature being demonstrated: 'Summer as o'er brimmed their clammy cells', another biological process that has occurred due to the weather, another subtle linking together of all nature as ecosystem. We then have the idea of community - as stated above; the seeming interaction of natural elements eg the sun. The physics behind 'load and bless' literally mean to ripen, but using the words load and bless gives nature almost a personified element as using the word 'bless' in conjunction with the phrase 'conspiring with him' links together the idea of community within nature and again interaction between the two. Also the quote 'And still more, later flowers for the bees/Until they think warm days will never cease' - another example of nature and the food chains reaction to the weather and its affect on them; making them grow more and the flowers to be pollenated by bees which is an example of the cycle of the food chain and intricate links between all natural aspects from weather to animal.
But underneath this surface analysis we can see Keats' personal life is being represented via this. He is central to the poem (not his intention), if we look at his letters and personal life at that time he is affected by the weather and he is, ultimately, working within this ecosystem as part of a food chain and reliance on weather for health, food and harvest as well as personal pleasure, this may be linked to the air, atmopshere, ozone, water, wind, sight of trees and nature which are all in themselves part of our natural ecosystem.
'Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.'
(Page 1080, Lines 27-33, To Autumn, Keats)
In the final stanzas I feel there is the idea of all parts of nature linked, all animals with parts of nature. For example the gnats linked to the river, the lambs to the hill bourn and the swallows to the skies they are all closely linked to their habitat and they are also linked together with sound. Keats uses the sound of each species within the ecosystem, combined with their natural habitat to link them all with each other in song; the song of Autumn.
Finally if we look at what Keats says himself, that idea of negative capability; the idea of removing a central person from the poem - the idea that Keats wanted to achieve, this fact Johnathan Bate has highlighted in his essay 'To Autumn as ecosystem' we can again see how this poem can be intepreted as an ecosystem using this idea:
'There is no 'I' listening to a nightingale or looking at an urn: the self is dissolved into the ecosystem'
Typically there is no centre in an ecosystem, as Bate says it is 'a network of relations' and 'To Autumn' is just this, there is no central person or thing to the poem, it is simply nature interconnected with one another within an environment that is serving one sole purpose; existing within itself and perhaps also representing Keats' personal life.
MY Bibliography:
Schiller, F, 'On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry' Part I, The Schiller Institute, 2005, Retrieved from http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html on November 2009
Wu, D, 'Romanticism an Anthology', Second Edition, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998
Bate, J (Foreword), Coupe, L (Editor), The Ode 'To Autumn' as Ecosystem' Chapter 43, from 'The Green studies reader: From Romanticism to ecocriticism', London: Routledge; (3 Aug 2000)
COPYRIGHT SARAH LOUISE ROBINSON, LONDON
Feel free to use any of the material on this website in your essays but DO NOT PLAGARISE. Your lecturers will be able to tell immediately if you have entirely plagarised a piece of work.
Please use the Havard Referencing system when using any information found on my blog.
Thank you,
Sarah Robinson
London Southbank University
AHS, English and Creative Writing
Discuss the representation of nature and the natural world; Refer to the work of TWO poets studied on the unit.
'There are moments in our life, when we dedicate a kind of love and touching respect to nature in its plants, minerals, animals, landscapes, just as to human nature in its children, in the morals of country folk and of the primeval world, not because it is pleasing to our senses, not even because it satisfies our understanding or taste (the opposite can often occur in respect to both), but rather merely because it is nature. Every fine man, who does not altogether lack feeling, experiences this, when he walks in the open, when he lives upon the land or tarries beside monuments of ancient times, in short, when he is surprised in artificial relations and situations with the sight of simple nature.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
As Schiller displays with this above quote, nature is the essence of our lives. We appreciate and relate to nature, perhaps without knowing it at times, but it is always a part of us no matter how complex or simple. Touching on the idea of sensibility and nature, he addresses the fact that all man appreciate and relate to the sight of nature.
How is this relevent? Wordsworth's 'The Ruined cottage' uses this connection of humanity to nature to create a beautiful poem which uses sensibility, but also changes it to have its own, unique meaning and philosophy. By using mans intrinsic connection to nature to do this, we are moved to feel and moved to experience emotion via nature in 'The Ruined Cottage'.
Her cottage in its outward look appeared
As cheerful as before, in any show
Of neatness little changed - but that I thought
the honeysuckle crowded round the door
And from the wall hung down in heavier wreaths,
And knots of worthless stonecrop started out
Along the window's edge, and grew like weeds
Against the lower panes. I turned aside
And strolled into her garden. It was changed.
The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 305-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The above quote, if we look at the surface meaning is representing nature in a negative way, there is negative language associated with the natural imagery. Such as 'unprofitable', 'dragged', 'bend', 'worthless' and 'crowded'. Underneath this meaning it is still connecting humanity with nature, the fact that Margaret; the wife who passed away is now gone but nature is living on, it still continues to grow and progress and its existence is in itself and is continual and her cottage, her life still exists. This also is an example of sensibility. The nature is representing continual life after death and the exsistence of something in itself and is appealing to the readers emotions because we empathise with Margaret who is represented via this natural imagery.
'What would even a plain flower, a spring, a mossy stone, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of bees, etc., have in itself so charming for us? What could give it any claim upon our love? It is not these objects, it is an idea represented through them, which we love in them. We love in them the quietly working life, the calm effects from out itself, existence under its own laws, the inner necessity, the eternal unity with itself.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
There is an idea represented through nature in this poem - nature has eternal unity with itself and the way Wordsworth links nature with Margaret means she also gains this attribute. Especially with Wordsworth's subtle ways of linking Margaret with nature:
'She is dead,
The worm is in her cheek, and this poor hut,
Stripped of its outward garb of household flowers,
Of rose and sweetbriar, offers to the wind
A cold bare wall whose earthy top is tricked
With weeds and the rank speargrass. She is dead'
(Page 280, Lines 103-108, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
The imagery behind 'the worm is in her cheek' is powerful. Conjuring imagery of death and burial in the soil and the worm; part of nature of which Margaret is now eternally part of. But it is not necessarily negative, the idea of the worm can be seen as her becoming food and livelihood for the worm, who will live because of her and making her entirely a part of nature and the circle of life thus she is absorbed within the idea of the eternal and united with nature itself.
The recurring theme of negative language combined with natural imagery is not always to be interpreted as entirely negative, although it represents the destruction of Margaret's mind and life, it also, particularly towards the end of the poem represents continuity of life and the idea of 'the circle of life' which Margaret is now a part of. The idea of the cottage as Margaret and her life being covered by overgrown weeds and nature is encompassing her previous life, covering it and creating a new one.
Something to take note of from 'The Ruined Cottage' is that the cottage has not become a wasteland, there has been a lot of growth, however it has been the wrong thing as it has mirrored Margaret's decline, her personality deteriorating and changing; subtle irony reflecting Margaret's situation using nature as the vehicle of expression. This is an example of a pathetic fallacy, the idea of nature being aware of and of mirroring life; Margaret's life.
Sensibility plays a big part in this poem, where we see Margaret initially in a traditional female role as a maternal, domestic figure, provider for her husband and child and it is this being taken away from her which initiates her destruction. This plays on the traditional appeal to a female audience, which is what sensibility was originally based upon. Wordsworth does use the ideals from sensibility such as using emotion to express experience, to feel rather than to think and using estrangement and poverty to move the reader to feel. But what he does differently to traditional poetic sensibility is he changes this emotion into an intellectual response. If we think of the following quote from 'The Ruined Cottage':
'The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldly wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bent it down to earth.'
(Page 284, Lines 314-317, 'The Ruined Cottage' Wordsworth)
We can gain the experience of this decaying rose and we can feel the emotion behind it of death, decay, the slowing and cease of life and the relation to Margaret's decay and end of life and in sensibility this would be its purpose, but with Wordsworth we can also use this emotion to feel our connection with nature in relation to life and this transforms into a philosophy - an intellectual response from the reader. For example we can interpret the said quote as Margaret, metaphorically speaking, as the rose, although this rose is decaying and bending down to earth, in its death it will become part of the earth again and will continue in the above mentioned circle of life; in death nature is renewed. This way of using sensibility along with nature creates a new philosophy and intellectual response to emotion and feeling, previously containing only emotion itself.
'They are what we were; they are what we ought to become once more. We were nature as they, and our culture should lead us back to nature, upon the path of reason and freedom. They are therefore at the same time a representation of our lost childhood, which remains eternally most dear to us; hence, they fill us with a certain melancholy. At the same time, they are representations of our highest perfection in the ideal, hence, they transpose us into a sublime emotion.'
(Part I, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller)
This is exactly what Wordsworth does in 'The Ruined Cottage'. Even though the imagery of nature may be melancholy at times nature represents the cycle of life and existence and this creates a sublime emotion in the audience. Through the use of sensibility to move the reader to feel the emotion from Margaret's tragedy Wordsworth then allows the reader to interpret the tragedy via nature and transform it, tragedy is displaced by intellectual interpretation of events.
Moving on to the Keats, we can see the use of nature extensively in his poetry and the way he uses it gives us full, rich imagery of experiences that some have said are 'too happy by far, too full by half' (Levinson). This could be interpreted in a number of ways. It may be indicating that Keat's poetry is not from experience, as he was not well travelled and a lot of his poetry was inspired by imagination or art that he had seen. Keats' poetry is also often described as overflowingly sensuous, an attack on the senses and an overflowing of imagery and richness. For example in 'To Autumn' Keats uses nature at its fullest point:
'..fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later glowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has oe'r-brimmed their clammy cells'
(Page 1080, Lines 6-11, To Autumn, Keats )
The use of natural imagery at its ripest conveys this image of rich fullness, the use of connotative words such as 'swell', 'plump', 'budding' and the repetition of 'more' and 'oe'r brimmed' is overflowing from the poem and almost forces upon the reader this idea of fullness which can overload the senses. Maybe this was because Keats had not physically seen these things, as he was not travelled and perhaps due to this he was over compensating for this lack of experience, using nature too much to express has given the feeling of 'too happy by far, too full by half' as we can see too much yet still feel something is lacking.
It may be ironic that Keats wrote this poem as his most productive part of his life was coming to an end, this is clearly represented in nature within the poem. The above quote shows the nature at it's most ripe, at its most bountiful, then it dies. 'To Autumn' has similarities to 'The Ruined Cottage' in that there is a theme of nature and death paralelling each other. 'To Autumn' emphasises the idea that death is a natural function in life. It is honest and positive, welcoming of death because with that deaths brings a renewal and that is Spring. This may again reflect Keats' current state of mind, aware that death was imminent and using nature to express his positivity towards his own death and the naturalness of it.
We can also see that Keats may have chosen to use Autumn as it is a transitional period within nature. Life is coming to an end and the poem itself creates a still image of
'momentary suspension upon the completion of harvest' (Page 260, To Autumn as Ecosystem, Johathan Bate) and we can again mirror this with Keats life and this is called negative capability, an uncertainty, a grey area, an openness of mind and 'a heightened receptivity to reality in its full and diverse concreteness' this may also explain how Keats' poetry is sometimes described as 'too full'. Negative capability is also defined as negating the ego and Keats himself said he wanted to achieve poetry that appealed to so many senses there was no character inside of it, but it is also full of uncertainty - this may be representative of Keats' personal life at that time and the transition he was about to face from life to death, mirrored in the poems static image of Autumn's end, transitioning to Winter.
'To Autumn' may also be interpreted as a celebration of harvest and a connection of humanity with its reliance on nature to survive - like an ecosystem where every part is intricately linked. It should be noted that when Keats wrote this poem there was a beautiful Autumn in 1819 whereas the previous Autumns had been terrible with failed harvests. The idea of humanities reliance on the weather is also apparent - not only for harvesting crops but also for existence. We can see Keats' link to the weather in his letters from the same period he wrote 'To Autumn':
'The delightful weather we have had for two Months is the highest gratification I could recieve - no chill'd red noses - no shivering - but fair Atmosphere to think in'
(Keats, Letters 2.148, August 1819)
If we think of Keats' personal life we know that in this year he was suffering from tuberculosis and the most important thing was to have clean air and after so many years of poor weather the fact that 1819's Autumn was good for weather literally gave Keats a new lease of life and this is reflected in 'To Autumn' as we can see the new life forming on the trees, the crops, the bees and flowers; they are ripe and fresh in static image although there is still the underlying thought that as soon as they fall or are harvested they will die - this is again representing Keats' fate and illness itself via nature.
If we think of ecosystem as living organisms that interact with every other element in their local environment we can soon start to see how this can become relevent to 'To Autumn'. The poem itself represents nature linked - starting with:
'Seasons of mist and mellow fruitness
Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless'
(Page 1080, Lines 1-3, To Autumn, Keats)
This shows the relationship between the sun, the seasons; it represents them as interacting with each other and linking together closely which is what an ecosystem is.
Johnathan Bate says:
'There are not only links within the biota - flower and bee, the food-chain that associates gnat and swallow - but also links between the discourses which the modern Constitution sought to seperate out. The poem not only yokes etneral and internal marks of biological process (the visible bending of the apple tree, the invisible swelling of the gourd), it also yokes community and chemistry (bosom-friend and sun), physics and theology (load and bless), biology and aesthetics (a link which we may express through the two halves of the word which describes the closing images of the poem:bird-song). And crucially, it refuses to sign the Cartesian constitution which splits apart thinking mind and embodied substance'
(Page 259, To Autumn as ecosystem, Johnathan Bate)
This factor - that mind and body are not seperate, that they are working as one, using the examples shown above is the exactly what an ecosystem is based upon; every single thing working together. In 'To Autumn' we have, as stated above - the biological process of nature being demonstrated: 'Summer as o'er brimmed their clammy cells', another biological process that has occurred due to the weather, another subtle linking together of all nature as ecosystem. We then have the idea of community - as stated above; the seeming interaction of natural elements eg the sun. The physics behind 'load and bless' literally mean to ripen, but using the words load and bless gives nature almost a personified element as using the word 'bless' in conjunction with the phrase 'conspiring with him' links together the idea of community within nature and again interaction between the two. Also the quote 'And still more, later flowers for the bees/Until they think warm days will never cease' - another example of nature and the food chains reaction to the weather and its affect on them; making them grow more and the flowers to be pollenated by bees which is an example of the cycle of the food chain and intricate links between all natural aspects from weather to animal.
But underneath this surface analysis we can see Keats' personal life is being represented via this. He is central to the poem (not his intention), if we look at his letters and personal life at that time he is affected by the weather and he is, ultimately, working within this ecosystem as part of a food chain and reliance on weather for health, food and harvest as well as personal pleasure, this may be linked to the air, atmopshere, ozone, water, wind, sight of trees and nature which are all in themselves part of our natural ecosystem.
'Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.'
(Page 1080, Lines 27-33, To Autumn, Keats)
In the final stanzas I feel there is the idea of all parts of nature linked, all animals with parts of nature. For example the gnats linked to the river, the lambs to the hill bourn and the swallows to the skies they are all closely linked to their habitat and they are also linked together with sound. Keats uses the sound of each species within the ecosystem, combined with their natural habitat to link them all with each other in song; the song of Autumn.
Finally if we look at what Keats says himself, that idea of negative capability; the idea of removing a central person from the poem - the idea that Keats wanted to achieve, this fact Johnathan Bate has highlighted in his essay 'To Autumn as ecosystem' we can again see how this poem can be intepreted as an ecosystem using this idea:
'There is no 'I' listening to a nightingale or looking at an urn: the self is dissolved into the ecosystem'
Typically there is no centre in an ecosystem, as Bate says it is 'a network of relations' and 'To Autumn' is just this, there is no central person or thing to the poem, it is simply nature interconnected with one another within an environment that is serving one sole purpose; existing within itself and perhaps also representing Keats' personal life.
MY Bibliography:
Schiller, F, 'On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry' Part I, The Schiller Institute, 2005, Retrieved from http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/Schiller_essays/naive_sentimental-1.html on November 2009
Wu, D, 'Romanticism an Anthology', Second Edition, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998
Bate, J (Foreword), Coupe, L (Editor), The Ode 'To Autumn' as Ecosystem' Chapter 43, from 'The Green studies reader: From Romanticism to ecocriticism', London: Routledge; (3 Aug 2000)
COPYRIGHT SARAH LOUISE ROBINSON, LONDON
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