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
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'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'
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