Weeks 7 to 9: The Romantics
1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the ideological, conceptual and linguistic construction of the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples...
2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
Q2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
ReplyDeleteCharacterised by abnormal weather events, summer of 1816 in Europe was referred to as the year without summer (Veale & Endfield). With reference to Veale and Endfield (2016), the volcanic eruption that occurred in Indonesia in 1815 has resulted in climate variability in the following year, notably across Europe. During this period in June 1816, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori gathered for a house party in the holiday home of Lord Byron on Lake Geneva, Villa Diodati, where they were subsequently confined indoors due to the unprecedented stormy weather (Britton, 2015). According to Polidori (2008), they kept themselves entertained by reading ghost stories, which inspired them to spin similar horror tales. The novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is widely known to have emerged at this point of time (Phillips, 2006). The following passage suggests strongly that the storm was responsible for the monster, Frankenstein’s, existence: “A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy demon, to whom I had given life” (Shelley, as cited in Phillips, 2006). Phillips (2006) also identified that the film versions of Frankenstein correspond to Mary’s portrayal of the scene, where the weather and its frequent electrical storms that kept all indoors, was the source of the monster’s emergence.
References:
Britton, R. (2015). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: what made the Monster monstrous?. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 60(1), 1-11.
Phillips, B. (2006). Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's" wet ungenial summer". Atlantis, 59-68.
Polidori, J. (2008). The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre. OUP Oxford.
Veale, L., & Endfield, G. H. (2016). Situating 1816, the ‘year without summer’, in the UK. The Geographical Journal, 182(4), 318-330.
This week I’ll be doing a personal response to the songs of innocence and experience - The Chimney Sweeper poems by William Blake.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Blake (1757 – 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker (Wikipedia). Blake lived through the time of the Industrial revolution (1760), The American Revolution (1765 – 1783), and the French Revolution (1789 – 1799). He was greatly influenced by what he had witnessed during it (Kline, 2009). He opposed the industrial revolution as he thought that mechanization would destroy the soul. Thus, becoming convinced that the artist had to take the role of being guardians of the spirit and imagination in society (Klein, 2009). Many of Blake’s books and poems were inspired by the social and political events of the time. Such as the two versions of the Chimney Sweeper; where Blake delves in to the exploitation of children in the 1800’s. The fate of the children was a cruel one. Being sold off at ages as young as six and working in environments not fit for any human being.
“And my father sold me” … “So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep” (Critical reader).
The first version of the chimney sweeper is in the songs of innocence and is all about the ‘absence of innocence’. These children have been robbed of their childhood. Their time of innocence. Where now they are forced to live a life covered in black soot and face early death. Soot is a dangerous substance which can cause cancer. The speaker in this version of the poem is a boy who is consoling another crying boy known as Tom. A thing to be noticed in the text is that the boy doesn’t talk about himself and his feelings. He’s talking to Tom and consoling him. Telling him to stay positive.
“Hush tom never mind it, for when your head’s bare. You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair” (Critical Reader)
Tom has a dream about an “angle who had a bright key” opening the “coffins” within which the “thousands of sweepers… were all them lock’d in a coffin of black”. The angel “told Tom, if he’d be a good boy. He’d have god his father and never want joy” (Critical Reader).
DeleteTom’s Innocence is seeping out through every word Blake wrote in stanza’s 3-5. However, is can be assumed that the boy who was consoling Tom thinks otherwise. He knows the reality of the world. He knows that Toms dream – was just a dream. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t tell Tom of the reality of their world but rather gives him a sense of hope to protect his innocence a little bit longer.
The second version of the chimney sweeper Blake wrote was in the songs of experience. It displays an evident contrast from the songs of innocence. In this version of the chimney sweeper, I believe that Blake wanted to emphasis the fact that not only did the parents abandon the boy but also society. Such as churches, who are more focused on this all divine being that can provide the world with peace but fails to recognise the problems right outside it’s church walls.
Compared to the songs of innocence chimney sweeper which only had one narrator. The songs of experience chimney sweeper as two. First is a person who spots the boy “A little black thing among the snow: crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!” and asks him “Where are thy father & mother? Say?”. Then there is the boy who tell him “they are both gone up to the church to pray” (Critical Reader). Back in the 1800’s children didn’t a voice. The option to speak their mind. I mean they were sold off by their parents and didn’t have a say in it. So perhaps Blake wanted to have the voices of these children heard through this poem. Earlier, I talked about how in the songs of innocence chimney speaker. The boy narrator does not share his thoughts and feelings but rather shares positive words to little Tom. In the Songs of experience, the boy is telling this man how he really feels. He is telling this man his “experience” and the reality of being a boy abandoned by his parents to do a job that will potentially kill him. And nobody cares. As he states, “because I am happy, & dance & sing, they think they have done me no injury” (critical Reader).
In the last 2 lines “And are gone to praise god and his priest and king, who make up a heaven of our misery” (Critical Reader). I think Blake was trying to say that while there is so much suffering in the lives of these children. Society is playing ignorant to it all. So, this boy’s parents have gone to praise the priest, and the king who are the “designated” rulers of the people by god. But these rulers do not care about these children because if they did. Let’s say their chimneys would be full of soot.
Reference:
Wikipedia. (n.d). William Blake. Retrieved 16th May, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
Sonja, k. (2009). The human element in the sublime. Retrieved from http://www.liceoasproni.it/laboratory/sublime/node10.html
William, B. (n.d). The songs of innocence and experience: chimney sweeper. Retrieved on 16th May, 2017, From https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/bbcswebdav/pid-4027427-dt-content-rid-6652318_4/institution/Papers/ENGL600/Publish/Desire_Critical%20Reader_2014.pdf
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DeleteAdding to your comment about Blake, his primary medium of communication is through paintings and poetry. Amongst them, I find his critique of empirical science to be most intriguing. This subtle attitude can be recognised in his painting, Newton (1795). Rather than seeing Isaac Newton as a hero or god of science, he directs the eye of man to the obsession of measurement and detail.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteQ2. And Q4.
1816 is commonly known as ‘The Year Without A Summer’ because of the terrible weather in the northern hemisphere where temperatures dropped between 0.4 – 0.7 degrees (Stothers, 1984). This extreme weather caused problems such as food shortages and the forming of ice dams and notably led to many pop culture landmarks that are still relevant and influential today.
One of the most notable events during the summer of 1816 was the holiday in Switzerland that writers Mary Shelley, John William Polidori and their friends spent at Lord Byron’s Vila Diodati. Because of the weather the people at the Vila Diodati challenged each other to see who could write the scariest ghost story as a means of passing the time. It was this challenge that led to Mary Shelley writing ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ and led Polidori to write ‘The Vampyre’. (Roberts, 2009)
Stott (2014) states that the year without summer and the feelings at the Villa Diodati had a major influence on the writing in the texts produced during this time. Stott writes that “Like Frankenstein, “The Vampyre” draws extensively on the mood at Byron’s Villa Diodati. But whereas Mary Shelley incorporated the orchestral thunderstorms that illuminated the lake and the sublime mountain scenery that served as a backdrop to Victor Frankenstein’s struggles, Polidori’s text is woven from the invisible dynamics of the Byron-Shelley circle, and especially the humiliations he suffered at Byron’s hand.”
The texts written by the Shelly and Polidori at Vila Diodati have proven to be very influential and acted as the birth of the gothic genre. From its inception here, it is gone on to become a mainstream style with many themes, characters and ideas used in modern film, tv and literature. These texts influenced novels such as Bram Strokers Dracula (1897), which in turn influenced films like Nosferatu (1922). Modern examples of the gothic and vampire genre are films such as the Twilight series.
References:
Roberts, M. M. (2009). The handbook of the gothic. New York: New York University Press.
Stothers, Richard B. (1984). "The Great Tambora Eruption in 1815 and Its Aftermath". Science. 224 (4654): 1191–1198. Bibcode:1984Sci...224.1191S. doi:10.1126/science.224.4654.1191. PMID 17819476.
Stott, A. (2014). The Poet, the Physician and the Birth of the Modern Vampire. Retrieved June 06, 2017, from https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/16/the-poet-the-physician-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-vampire/