Homeplay for Tuesday, January 20^th:

· Read the Introduction to the Romantic Age (pages 1-15) and answer these questions:

1. What was the Industrial Revolution, and what effect did it have on where people lived, on the living and working conditions, and on who was rich and who was poor?

2. What was the big thing that happened in 1789? What is the Bastille? What is the “Declaration of the Rights of Man”? What eventually happened to this revolution?

3. There was a new “spirit of the age,” especially among the poets. What was this new spirit, and how was it different from what came before?

4. Poetry, especially as directed by William Wordsworth, became very different. How was it different in these areas:

Ų Language used;

Ų How it was composed;

Ų The place of the poet in the poem;

Ų Subjects written about;

Ų Types of poems written.

5. What was the Romantic poet’s attitude toward children, ordinary men, wonder, imagination?

6. What was this era’s attitude toward the individual, and how was this different from what came before?

· Read “The French Revolution and the ‘Spirit of the Age’” (pages 117-118)

o There are 10 writers in this section. To ease your homeplay, rather than read them all, let’s divide the class up so that each of you only has to read one. On Tuesday, you’ll briefly be that person, and you’ll tell the other 9 in your group these things: what your beliefs are, and a few bits of your writing that you’re especially proud of having written.

Ų Richard Price, pages 118-121

Ų Edmund Burke, pages 121-128

Ų Mary Wollstonecraft, pages 128-133

Ų Thomas Paine, pages 133-137

Ų Winchester/ Priestley (preachers), pages 139-144

Ų Blake, 145-147

Ų Southey, 147-149

Ų Wordsworth, 149-153

Ų Coleridge, 153-156

Ų Shelley, 156-161

o I think I’ll attach my notes on this section. Read these notes and then, after deciding who looks interesting to you, read one more author.

· Wordsworth:

o Read his introduction (pages 219-221)

· In the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth writes about the type of language he chooses for his poetry. It’s superb. To save you a lot of reading time, and to at least get a taste of his prose style, read pp. 244-45.

· “The Tables Turned” (p. 228) and “Lucy Gray” (p. 254). These two poems embody the language and subject that Wordsworth writes about in the “Preface.”

· 5-minute free write: What do you think of these poems?

· 5-minute free write: Do you think nature can teach us anything?

· “Lucy Gray” reminds me of a Yeats’ poem, “The Stolen Child”; go ahead and read it (p. 2090).

· “The world is too much with us,” p. 297. This is a tougher poem, so be nice to yourself and do your best. It continues his familiar theme of being so overwhelmed with the burdens and materialism of life that our connection to Nature is often muted.

· 5-minute free write: Is that true for you?

· 5-minute free write: What do you think of this poem? What are some of your favorite lines?

· “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” p. 296. This gorgeous poem pays tribute to the beauty of London as it wakes up. This is one of the things I love about Wordsworth: He’s inconsistent. At one point he blasts cities, at another point he honors them.

· 5-minute free write: Have you ever felt this way about a city?

· 10-minute quick draw: Draw (in a primitive way with crayons) what it is he’s writing about.

· 5-minute free write: What do you think of this poem? What are some of your favorite lines?

That’ll be it for Wordsworth, though there is so much more that I want you to read. No, that’s a partial lie. There’s so much more that I want to read. My vague intention is to taste each of these six Romantic poets, and then give you time to more fully explore the one you like the most. Yee-bloody-haa!

My Notes to the French Revolution and the “Spirit of the Age” (pp. 117-160)

Intro: the Revolution gave to English writers an “electric life”

· An age of “boundless promise” and then tragedy. Greatly shaped the “images forms, modes of imagination and feeling” among poets

· Some even saw this in Biblical terms: the promise to return to Paradise after period of violence.

· Even after failure, “they transferred the basis of that hope to…an inner revolution in the moral and imaginative nature of the human race.”

· To news of the Bastille, English liberals ecstatic but to most, it was confusing and frightening (think of modern-day Communist Russia).

· Issues of essayists: hereditary rule; ownership of property; constitution; rights of men and women.

· And tones:

· Price: celebratory

· Burke: blatantly sensationalist

· Wollstonecraft: forthrightly contemptuous

· Paine: pointed and plain

Richard Price (118)

· Celebrates the bloodless revolution in England in 1688; but also sees its limited freedoms (what’s the Test Laws?) Sounds like freedom of religion, but limited. And “inequality of our representation”—and he froths at that.

· Froths at Fr. Rev: “nations panting for liberty” “I see the ardour for liberty catching and spreading”—laws over kings, reason over priests

· Great last 2 paragraphs: “The times are auspicious. Your labours have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms…breaking their fetters and claiming justice from their oppressors!”…

Edmund Burke (121)

· …his conviction that the French Rev. was a disaster and the revolutionists “a swinish multitude.”

· On English inheritance: crown, peerage, house of commons…from ancestors. This policy came from “following nature” and “result of profound reflection.” It follows the “symmetry and order of the world.” Unchangeable constancy!

· “All men have equal rights but not a right to equal things.”

· Graphic description of the revolution!—124

· Attacks Price—125—for not feeling for king and children…

· He praises the queen: “glittering like the morning star, full of life…”

· “The glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex.” “All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.”

· “This barbarous philosophy…is void of all wisdom and destitute of all taste”-126

· Two principles now thrown away: the spirit of the gentleman and spirit of religion.

· Oh, how all belong in their proper place.

· “Their humanity is savage and brutal.”

Mary Wollstonecraft, 128:

· This is a response to Burke. “She was outraged at the weakness of his arguments and the exaggerated rhetoric with which he depicted the revolutionists as violators of royalty and womanhood.”

· She starts by directly calling Burke vain and inflexible; his essay “folly.” She puts him down!…”a servile reverence to antiquity.” “contempt for the poor.”

· His argument is valid for the “rich and short-sighted.” Why should status quo of liberty continue when its original foundation was faulty? It’s set up for the strong to gain riches. Amid it, men have ceased to be men—the multitude.

· All progress has been stopped by hereditary property and honors.

· (I’m finding her full of passion but hard to follow her arguments. Unconvincing.)

· If Burke right, then slavery ought to go on—by hereditary rights.

· “It is possible, Sir, to render the poor happier in this world, without depriving them of the consolation which you gratuitously grant them in the next. They have a right to more comfort than they at present enjoy.”-132

· Her point is that all, including the rich, will be better with the improvement of all.

Thomas Paine,133

· Most effective propagandist for American independence. Strongest statement against hereditary monarchy

· “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”-134 “When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him.”

(God, I love his writing! His clarity and his reasoning and his rhythms!)

· The revolt was against the king because of his deeply-rooted principles and his despotism. And the despotism not just in king, but all over the gov’t and aristocracy.—monarchy, church, parliament: “a rivalry of despotism”

· It’s all about principles, but Burke is about people and governments.

· He says Burke writes for “weeping effect.” He is all Quixotic!

· His last paragraph is beautiful!

Winchester and Priestley: the preachers (136-144)

· Basis for enthusiasm for Fr. Rev. in Bible: apocalyptic revelations. The fierce destruction is a cleansing one, giving way to a new millennium: peace, plenty, equality, happiness.

· Winchester: Bible prophecies the Fr. Rev., and with it a restoration. He very literally interprets Revelations according to the events of the Fr. Rev. (Nonsense!). In the end,…(142): all earth full of plenty, all in harmony and love, etc.

· Priestley: ****His nonsense is that in Revelations it says that the attack will happen where there is anti-christian power: France is Catholic, so that’s why there.

· Again, all foretold in Revelations.

Poets: Blake, Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge

Blake (145-47)

· Fr. Rev. a portent of the apocalypse.

· Note his wild style! Most like Whitman! Full of energy, unrestrained, long lines that run over, strong images! Love him. He’s nuts.

Southey (147-49)

· Same ideas, but told poetically: fall of humanity through greed, then rebirth.

· Personification, iambic pentameter. I think he’s mediocre poet.

Wordsworth (149-153)

· Same: wild hope for Rev.; when it failed, he still held out hope in man.

· Powerful poetry, great rhymes, personification.

· Note his run-ons and dashes, his energy. I love him.

· He combines two prophecies: biblical one and Virgil’s: a golden age of humanity during the reign of Saturn.

Coleridge (153-156)

· His poetry here is very formal and contorted; changes to ordinary a bit later.

· Same pt: Period of violence precedes earthly millennium.

· Worth looking at 154-55 to see how language can be fast, clotted, ugly, beautiful—apart from the meaning of the words. Note the change of end punctuation.

Shelley (156-161)

· A bit different in that his vision is not biblically based, but secular. Still, its origins are the Bible. A “taintless humanity in a renovated world.”

· His approach is to have Queen Mab visits a person and takes on journey of past, present, future. Mab is in Romeo/Juliet: dreams.

· Images of nature and man, before and after.

· Speaks to slavery.

Finally, there’s an essay by the ever-wordy Mary Wollstonecraft on the rights of women. It’s essence, I think, is that women are the “frivolous sex” because of how men perceive them, how education is set up, how many women agree to it. Yes, there’s a physical difference, but not so elsewhere. It’s worth reading page 167.