FROM%20ROMANTIC%20QUEST%20TO%20VICTORIAN%20ANTI-QUEST

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BRITISH LITERATURE III

• FROM ROMANTIC QUEST TO VICTORIAN ANTI-QUEST

Kate Liu, Fall 2012
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OUTLINE

1. General Introduction
2. Romanticism
3. William Blake
4. About the Course

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WHAT IS ROMANTICISM? AND VICTORIAN SOCIETY?

• WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM?
• CAN YOU FIND THEIR TRACES IN TAIWAN/TAIPEI?

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ROMANTIC TAIPEI????
Of/For Romance, Emotional, Passionate, Fanciful

????-?????? ???, 2011
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CONSTABLE, THE HAY WAIN, 1821

• INTRODUCTION TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION (AN
  INTERPRETATION)

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ROMANTICISM IN CHINESE/TAIWANESE LITERATURE

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• ???
• ?????????

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THE VICTORIAN IN TAIWAN

• ????????????? ???????
• (2011/12/08 1157 (source NOWnews)

• Google -- ?????????
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IN POPULAR CULTURE

• Victorian House
• Victorian Gothic
• (e.g. Jane Eyre and ????)

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OUR VICTORIAN SOCIETY

• Social Earnestness (Pretentiousness) vs. Doubts
• Rich vs. Poor
• Sex as a Taboo and Discursive/Media Focus

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ANOTHER THING IN COMMON?

• QUEST AND ANTI-QUEST

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HISTORY

• The Romantic Age 17981832
• -- Industrial Revolution 1789 French Revolution
  
• -- 1798 the publication of Wordsworth
  Coleridges Lyrical Ballads
• -- Byrons death (1824)
• -- to Sir Walter Scotts death (1832) the
  passage of the first Reform Bill in the
  parliament.
• The Victorian Age 1832 ( 1838-1870)-1901
• The early period (1832-1848) a time of social
  unrest
• The middle period (1848-1870) a period of
  economic prosperity religious controversy
• The last period (1870-1901) a period of decay
  of Victorian values.

Workers Strike 1811s - 1818
The Romantics (2005) The Victorians (2009)
--Opening
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1. MODERNITY

• (from medievalism, feudalism and agriculturalism
  to)
• A Society dominated by
• Industrialism Science
• Capitalism
• Secularization
• Rationalization
• Building of Nation-State
• Phases
• 16th-18th centuries early modernity
• 19th century classical modernity
• 1901-1950s late modernity

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QUEST AND ANTI-QUEST

• Romantic Quest

• Victorian Anti-Quest

• for love, self-identity, poetic beauty, natural
  supernaturalism, and individual freedom/heroism

• frustration and transformation of quest
• Done through some extreme measures or vicariously

Instead of the holy grail, the objective is
usually to reach beyond human limits.
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WOMENS POSITIONS AS OBJECT OR SUBJECT OF QUEST

• Jane Eyre

• Alice in Wonderland
• A girls quest?

• Social critique (e.g. the religious hypocrisy of
  charity institutions) and a womans quest?

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ROMANTICISM

• QUEST FOR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AND POETIC IDEALS

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NEOCLASSICISM(MS. WEN-LING SU)

• The Grand Manner
• (Joshua Reynolds)
• Reason // clarity // order // restraint
• Goodness // virtue // truth

• Moral
• Simple // austere // monumental
• Balanced // symmetric // geometric

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THE ROMANTICS (1) LIBERTY (BBC)

• 1902 Joshua Reynold vs. William Blake
• London
• Blake ? the other radicals (e.g. Brissot)
• 3442 Wordsworth Annette and their child The
  Great Terror (killings of the supporters of the
  King)
• 4330 Wordsworth, a wanderer in Nature
• 4730 Wordsworth and Coleridges friendship and
  cooperation.
• 5100 The Lyrical Ballads (poetry of and for
  individuals)

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THE ROMANTICS (2) NATURE (BBC)

• Opening
• 130 Age of industrialization Mans relation
  with Nature in an increasingly mechanized world
• 340 vision of Blake as a child Childs
  imagination
• vs. Chimney Sweeper

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THE ROMANTICS--FEATURES

• Against Industrialism/Materialism
• Idealistic,
• Revolutionary, Iconoclastic,
• first generation Sympathetic with Peasants
• Quest for
• -- poetic imagination
• -- being one with Nature or
• -- some supernatural vision (the sublime).

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ROMANTICISM

• (1) Subjectivism poetry as the spontaneous
  overflow of powerful feelings which expresses
  the poets mind. Emphasis on imagination.
• (2) Spontaneity This emphasis on spontaneity is
  opposed to the rules and regulations imposed
  on the poets by neo-classic writers
• (3) Singularity love for the remote, the
  unusual, the strange, the supernatural, the
  mysterious, the splendid, the picturesque, the
  illogical. (source teaching notes)
• (4) Nature As a source of spiritual
  replenishment and guidance.

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WILLIAM BLAKE
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William Blake

• an English writer, poet, and illustrator of the
  Romantic period
• Had visions of angels as a child
• 1787 ? the technique of "illuminated writing," or
  relief-etching.
• Songs of Innocence (1789)
• 1797 Songs of Innocence and of Experience ("the
  two Contrary States of the Human Soul." )

• Image source http//members.aol.com/lshauser2/wmb
  lake.html

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Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)

• "Innocence" -- the state of the unfallen man
• "Experience" -- man's state after the Fall.

• e.g. the two "Chimney Sweepers," the two "Nurse's
  Songs,
• the two "Holy Thursdays"
• "Infant Joy" vs. "Infant Sorrow,"
• "The Divine Image" vs. "A Divine Image."The
  Lamb" vs. "The Tyger"

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"Infant Joy" (1789)

1. Who are the speakers of this poem? What do they
   talk about? Can a baby be talking to its mother?
   
2. What are the functions of repetition in this
   poem?

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"Infant Joy" (1789)

• "I have no name,
• I am but two days old."
• What shall I call thee?
• "I happy am,
• Joy is my name."
• Sweet joy befall thee!
•  
• Pretty joy!
• Sweet joy, but two days old.
• Sweet joy I call thee
• Thou dost smile,
• I sing the while--
• Sweet joy befall thee.

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"Infant Joy" (1789)

• the speakersthe mother and her baby (imagined to
  be speaking)
• About its namelessness, and how it is named after
  its joy.
• Repetition
• a. How the mother is attentive and caring
• b. The interchange (beyond words) between the
  baby and the mother.

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Infant Sorrow

• 1. Who is the speaker, considering his/her
  usage of the words 'groaning,' 'weeping' and
  'fiend.'  What is his tone like?
• 2. Again, pay attention to the sound effects.
  What do we make of the end rhymes?
• 3. Why does the infant 'sulk' but not 'suck' upon
  the mother's breast?  Are there any words with
  the same effects?
• 4. Main idea Is this infant seeking freedom, or
  just food, in all its struggling and striving and
  sulking?

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Infant Sorrow

• My mother groaned, my father weptInto the
  dangerous world I leapt,Helpless, naked, piping
  loud,Like a fiend hid in a cloud.Struggling in
  my father's hands,Striving against my swaddling
  bands,Bound and weary, I thought bestTo sulk
  upon my mother's breast.

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Infant Sorrow

• 1. The speaker an adult, who knows the parents
  hardship and what they think about a kid.
• 2. the end rhymes shows the contraries of the
  fathers weeping and the infants leaping, the
  latters loudness and its being in a cloud
  struggling in the first two lines vs. sulking
  in the third and fourth.
• 3. 'sulk-- 'suck best breast
• 4. Main idea 1) Poverty dooms the family 2)
  this infant seeks freedom against the constraints
  imposed on it.

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INFANT JOY INFANT SORROW
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INFANT JOY INFANT SORROW

• 1. Please try to compare the two poems both in
  terms of their line and sound patterns. 
• 2. Is an infant joyful by birth? Why is the
  infant in Infant Sorrow not 'sorrowful'?
• 3. Are there other ways of reading them? Can
  there be causes for sorrow in "Infant Joy" and
  spaces for joy in "Infant Sorrow"?

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TYGER AND SICK ROSE
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THE SICK ROSE

• O Rose, thou art sick!
• The invisible worm
• That flies in the night,
• In the howling storm,
• Has found out thy bed
• Of crimson joy,
• And his dark secret love
• Does thy life destroy.

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TYGER

• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
• In the forests of the night,
• What immortal hand or eye
• Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
• In what distant deeps or skies
• Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
• On what wings dare he aspire?
• What the hand dare sieze the fire?
• And what shoulder, what art,
• Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

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TYGER (2)

• What the hammer? what the chain?
• In what furnace was thy brain?
• What the anvil? what dread grasp
• Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
• When the stars threw down their spears,
• And water'd heaven with their tears,
• Did he smile his work to see?
• Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
• In the forests of the night,
• What immortal hand or eye
• Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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NEXT WEEK

• Review/Quiz Blakes Poems
• Your discussion Wordsworths Short Poems
• My Role Tinturn Abbey and Immortality Ode

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REF (1) THE ROMANTICS (1) LIBERTY (BBC)

• Opening
• 1902 Joshua Reynold vs. William Blake
• London
• Blake ? the other radicals (e.g. Brissot)
• 3442 Wordsworth Annette and their child The
  Great Terror (killings of the supporters of the
  King)
• 4330 Wordsworth, a wanderer in Nature
• 4730 Wordsworth and Coleridges friendship and
  cooperation.
• 5100 The Lyrical Ballads (poetry of and for
  individuals)
• 5400 --The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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REF (2)THE ROMANTICS (2) NATURE (BBC)

• Opening
• 130 Age of industrialization Mans relation
  with Nature in an increasingly mechanized world
• 340 vision of Blake as a child Childs
  imagination
• vs. Chimney Sweeper
• 5100 -- Mary Shelley and Frankenstein