Weeks 7-9: Romantic Revival
1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples from Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
2. How do Blake and Rousseau's ideas align and differ (themes to consider are slavery, religion and education)?
2. How do Blake and Rousseau's ideas align and differ (themes to consider are slavery, religion and education)?
3. See what you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
4. 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).
5. 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).
7. How does Frankenstein a) reference the Bible, b) foreshadow the Death of God and c) juggle genres as well as narrative points of view in its storytelling?
4. 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).
5. 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).
7. How does Frankenstein a) reference the Bible, b) foreshadow the Death of God and c) juggle genres as well as narrative points of view in its storytelling?
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).
ReplyDelete1. Gothic (1986, directed by Ken Russel)
The classic Ken Russel film is a fictionalized retelling of Shelleys' visit to Lord Byron in Villa Diodati. There, the classic writings of the two famed books come alive, establishing a different and interesting retelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8qH_3qk_dY&has_verified=1
2. Haunted Summer (1988, directed by Ivan Passer)
The film follows a very similar story line as Ken Russels, Gothic. The film was made in 1988 and is 15 minutes shy of the 2 hour mark. The characters are ultimately portrayed as swaggering rock like figures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2P0hFI2k
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095280/
3. Frankenstein (1910)
Frankenstein is a film made in 1910 by Edison Studios. The landmark film was written and directed by J. Searle Dawley. The short piece is 16 minutes long and was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A film that broke un-treaded ground and paved the way for many more adaptations of the classic novel.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLxsOJK9bs
4. Frankenstein (1931), directed by James Whale.
This extremely successful and incredibly highly rated film was made in 1931. Boris Karloff’s performance as the monster stands out even in today’s standards. A great film revolving around Shelley’s classic novel.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20ehpq
5. Rowing with the Wind (1988, Directed by Gonzalo Suarez)
The film directed in 1988, starring Hugh Grant as Lord Byron, retells the story of what happened at the Villa Diodata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgQwca6QNg0
See what you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
ReplyDeleteIt was a bright, fine summer day in Switzerland in 1816. Oh, wait. No it wasn’t. 1816 was known as ‘the year without summer’. In Indonesia, Mount Tambora had quite the significant eruption. As a result a vast quantity of volcanic dust was released into the atmosphere creating a drop in average temperature around the world and dimming the sun’s visibility In Europe the cooler temperatures and heavy rain caused crops to fail, governments failed to cope with the situation and the people in Switzerland rioted and starved.
This was the backdrop to the famous meeting at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816. The main players of this moment were Lord Byron, his personal doctor; John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (Shelley), and Claire Clairmont. Each of these people were escaping or brought with them some element of scandal.
Lord Byron was escaping scandals in England. He was separated from his wife, rumours were circulating of a sexual liaison with his half-sister, and he was escaping debtors in Britain. With him came his personal doctor John Polidori who was escaping an oppressive father, but already disliking his role as employee to Byron who he felt was sucking the identity and life from him. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a well-known poet who had caused some scandal among his family by eloping with a lower-class woman. He had then come to resent this action and while still married, he started up a relationship with Mary Godwin, the daughter of a literary mentor and then ran off with her to Europe. They had a son in January of 1816. Mary Godwin was part of a blended family, with her father remarrying after the death of her mother. Her half-sister, Claire Clairmont, apparently feeling envious of Mary’s poet lover, wanted one of her own and through subterfuge managed to seduce Lord Byron, who at the time was getting separated from his wife. Claire became pregnant, and Mary and Percy took her to Europe and Switzerland in an effort to find Byron to get him to acknowledge the parentage of the unborn child so she would have some support. They found him at the Villa Diodati which had once been owned by John Milton. Byron, while acknowledging the child as his did so on the condition that he would have nothing to do with Claire.
During the course of the summer, which was dark, wet, and miserable, The group amused themselves by reading Fantasmagoriana, a French anthology of German ghost stories. Lord Byron then issued his challenge to the group to come up with their own stories. After listening to conversations at the Villa about galvanism and drawing inspiration from the lousy weather, storms, thunder, and lightning, Mary Godwin had the inspiration for Frankenstein. John Polidori, drew his inspiration from the relationships with Byron that he observed, both his own and others, to create a being who drains the life away from victims while mesmerising them through force of personality.
Subsequent to the summer, Bysshe Shelley & Godwin go back to England where they marry. Percy’s first wife has his child and commits suicide while pregnant with the second. Percy has boating accident and dies and Mary keeps writing but never anything as spectacular as Frankenstein. Polidori saw his work published under Byron’s name and killed himself by drinking poison at 26. Byron carried on writing and romancing until while he was involved in the Greek war of independence, he died of sepsis.
References:
DeleteBuzwell, G. (2014). Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati.
Curran, S. (Eds). (n.d.). The summer of 1816. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/MShelley/summer16.html
Clubbe, J. (n.d.). The tempest-toss’d summer of 1816: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Curran, S. (Eds). (n.d.) Frankenstein; or the modern Prometheus. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/MShelley/summer16.html
Drummond, C. (2014). Lord Byron, 19th-Century bad boy. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/lord-byron-19thcentury-bad-boy
McConnell Stott, A. (n.d.). The poet, the physician and the birth of the modern vampire. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/16/the-poet-the-physician-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-vampire/
Mullan, J. (2014). The origins of the gothic. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-origins-of-the-gothic
Wikipedia. (2018). Lord Byron. Retrieved May 12, 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
Well put together summary! I liked how you added in the end the facts about what happened to the three, and there careers. The inspirations igniting all of there stories on that stormy period must of being something special. The suicides that circulated the group are an uncomfortable trend, possibly so common back than, than now? I never knew Polidori committed suicide because Byron published his workings under his name. Interesting! The personal investment he must of put into that work must of being more than meets the eye.
DeleteAfter finding out about Polidori's history, my opinion of Byron dropped considerably. Polidori's tale of vampires cuts a little close and finding out Byron died while spurned by his latest love interest provided some sense of minor justice. The whole tale was more convoluted than the soaps.
DeleteHow 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).
ReplyDelete1.Gothic (1986 directed by Ken Russell) is a British horror film which is about a fictionalized retelling of Shelley’s visit to Lord Byron in Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva which was shot in Gaddesden Place.
YouTube Clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8qH_3qk_dY&t=200s
2.Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1994 directed by Kenneth Branagh).This film is considered the most faithful film adaption of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. The film had some good cast like Robert De Niro as Kenneth Branagh.
YouTube Clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5obUToW8k
3.The Vampyre (1819 written by John William Polidori). The Vampyre is a short fiction story. The story is about a young Englishman Aubrey meeting Lord Ruthven a vampire, who has mysterious origins who has entered London’s society. The two travels around Europe where both got connected with different woman. Aubrey travelled to Greece, where he becomes attracted to Lanthe. But later killed by a vampire after Aubrey told her about the legends of the vampire. The two were attacked by bandits and Ruthven was mortally wounded. Ruthven left Aubrey an oath on not to tell anyone about his death for a year and a day. The story had a plot twist at the end where Aubrey returned to London finding Ruthven alive and well. Ruthven reminds Aubrey about his secret. Then later Ruthven was attracted to Aubrey’s sister which they got engaged and to marry on the day the oath ends. Aubrey died but writes a letter to his sister about Ruthven’s history but doesn’t arrive in time. Ruthven and Aubrey’s sister got married but later on the wedding night, Aubrey’s sister was found dead, drained of her blood and Ruthven disappears.
YouTube Clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A87RedNOtjg
4.Haunted Summer (1988 directed by Ivan Passer). Haunted Summer has similarities with its story line with Ken Russell 1986 film Gothic. The movie was set in the 1816.
YouTube Clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQwwVThTuZM
5.Rowing with the Wind (1988 Directed by Gonzalo Suarez). The film Rowing with the Wind was situated in the time when Mary Shelley wrote her novel “Frankenstein. The film tells a story about the relationship between Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley when they were travelling through different European countries.
YouTube Clip- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgQwca6QNg0
2. How do Blake and Rousseau's ideas align and differ (themes to consider are slavery, religion and education)?
ReplyDeleteBoth Blake and Rousseau have being extremely influential writers and illustrators. Even to this day, hundreds of years from there time, they are still well documented and studied writers, both with flourishing ideas and concepts that have moulded different aspects of literature and society today.
But as great as they both were, they were different, in many ways. Blake’s work mainly circulated around poetry and painting. His work gaining true admiration and appreciation in the years after his death, his legacy being one of the strongest in writing history. Rousseau was a philosopher, writer and composer. Mainly known for his philosophy which shaped governments with his ideas of a social contract and the importance of individual freedoms (Bardina, 2017). When it comes to several large topics of social structure in the past and present, Rousseau had a firm thought on slavery. He denounced slavery, stating, "From whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive(¶1.4.14), (Rousseau, 1762)”. On the other hand, William Blake’s thoughts on slavery were more ambiguous than Rousseau’s clear stance. Blake believes in racial equality, but referring to his famous poem from (Songs of innocence) “The little Black Boy” the exclamation of the Black boy, “And I am black, but O! my soul is white,”(Blake, 1979) indicates despair and genuine longing to be recognized and understood. Blake’s use of disambiguation comes within this poem. As he spreads clear light on the racial issues by conveying the little black boy’s longing for validation from the (white) English boy and his own mother’s attempt to educate him about equality and the lasting effects that religion can have on his life. Both men are anti-slavery, just conveying there stances in much different ways and implementing different types of coping mechanisms (Blake; religion, Rousseau; political righteousness).
When it comes to another main concept within society, religion holds its hand up high. William Blake was a religious seeker but not one that was joined to the hip with a faith. He was raised a Christian. Blake didn’t conform to the ‘Christian way’, or believe in all Christian beliefs. For example, he believed children were born innocent (Ankarsjö, 2009), as resembled within his book, “Songs of innocence”. Thus, not coinciding with the church’s beliefs at the time, that being of ‘original sin’,of which children were born with sin thus needed it beaten out of them in one way or another. Blake more than not tried to see the positives in religion. Rousseau on the other hand believed in a civil religion. In Rousseau’s (Social contract, 1762) the religion of the man is informal and unorganized, centering on morality and the worship of God (p.181). Rousseau defined civil religion as a group of religious beliefs he believed to be universal, and which he thought governments had the right to uphold and maintain the belief in a deity, the belief in an afterlife in which the virtue of good is rewarded and bad punished and belief in religious tolerance, (Griswold, 2015). Both of these men have legacies that shape both of their respected fields, and inspire future generations with their landmark theories and workings.
References
Ankarsjo, M. (2009). William Blake and religion. A New Critical View.
Bardina, S. (2017). Reconciliation of Natural and Social. Rethinking Rousseau's Educational Theory, 49(14), 1300-1390.
Griswold, C. L. (2015). Liberty and Compulsory Civil Religion in Rousseau’s Social Contract. 53(2), 270-300.
Richardson, A. (2017). Colonialism, race, and lyric irony in Blake's `The Little Black Boy'. 26(2),.
Cole, G.D. (1913). Translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, 1762
A Rousseau, J.J. (1762), Emile.
How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that?
ReplyDeleteMost of the accounts I found were movies and generally only gained a mediocre reception. Personally I found the Drunk History the most interesting and entertaining.
Gothic. A 1986 film by Ken Russell. From reviews, not a great watch. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091142/?
Villa Diodati. An opera and a film by Mira J. Spektor in 2012. Reviews said it was a bit dull.
Mary Shelley. A 2004 TV movie by Guylaine Dionne. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816573/?ref_=nv_sr_7
Haunted Summer. A 1988 film by Ivan Passer. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095280/
Remando al viento. Another 1988 film about the villa events by Gonzalo Suarez. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093840/
The Vampyre which is a movie in development for release in 2019 about the events, looking more at Polidori’s story.
Mary Shelley. A 2017 film by Haifaa Al-Mansour which focuses more on the Shelley’s perspective. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3906082/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Drunk History - Lord Byron - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rawk6jsILQ.
Drunk History – Mary Shelley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNcwpHw_Oa0. Not so much about the events of the stories being conceived and written but about why the characters were there at the villa.
The Romantic notion of the sublime as Pateman (2004) describes, seeks to transport the reader from a mere state of pleasure to that of wonder. At the core of this notion is a lurking paradox, that the sublime both encapsulates us in a state of pleasure through terror (Pateman, 2004). Pateman (2004) suggests that this paradox is dissolved by rationalising the depiction of pain as an imagined encounter to live vicariously through in order to find pleasure we normally would not experience. According to De Luca (2014) “astonishment marks the intervention of sharp discontinuities in the spheres of both nature and the mind… where normal relations to subject and object are abolished” and “terror and astonishment are kindred states”, outlining the sublime. Material sublimity is presented within the pictorial form, often influenced by nature and its immense beauty juxtaposed with its terrifying magnitude (Pateman, 2004). Towards the Romantic era however, sublimity moved away from materiality of the external object and relocated to the self-conscious into the textual sublime (Vine, 2002).
ReplyDeleteWilliam Blake’s poetry reflects the sublime in both these states; the textual and the material, which, as De Luca (2014) claims, are inextricably linked within Blake’s poetry. This is evident within Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience where his poems were scribed onto pieces of Blake’s own art pieces. Blake’s textual sublime is achieved by his hectic crowding of characters and reference and its sheer material density which, when combined, produce the tension necessary for the sublime experience (Vine, 2002). His material sublimity is achieved through “undercutting representational appearance of particular forms and endow them with an abstract, stylised existence independent of the natural images with which they are identified to move towards the realm of language, operating as arbitrary signs, emblems, or hieroglyphics" (De Luca, 2014). The combination of the two media “intersect so inextricably that the language takes on so many other attributes of spatial form and visual images seem more like an extension of words” (De Luca, 2014). For example, Blake’s The Sick Rose in its eight lines has the ability to transcend mere simplicity and connote the relationship between corporeal love and humans as ignorantly destructive (“does thy life destroy”). The connotation is furthermore extrapolated through the representation of the rose which is merged with the forms of humans.
The parallel is further extrapolated through the analysis of sister poems between the two volumes. For example, Blake’s The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Innocence represents the pre-Romantic notion of the divine as a means of solace for despair and hardship (“And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father & never want joy.”) Juxtaposing this is Blake’s The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience which abides by the Romantic philosophy of secularity and denounces the power of the ecclesiastic (“And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King Who make up a heaven of our misery.”) The former represents the bisection of the sublime that seeks to pleasure us in the solace of a divine being and afterlife whereas the latter terrifies us in the perception that we are alone in the universe surrounded by misery.
In the contemporary context the term sublime is scarcely used and denotes a different meaning to the Romantic sublime. Therefore, the notion of the sublime is a socio-temporally positioned and, according to Pateman (2004) can only be achieved by those artists who are able to form grand conceptions. In this sense, the ability of a piece to be considered sublime reflects the social context in which it was conceived. Blake’s pieces were conceived in the emergent Romantic era and thereby were considered sublime through the issues he contemplated. Such issues include the shift away from religious sovereignty towards a secular society. For example, Blake’s Infant Joy challenges the Christian belief that all humans are born with original sin and aligns with the secular belief that all humans are born innocent and corrupted by society (“Sweet joy but two days old. Sweet joy I call thee.”) By disturbing aesthetic harmony and order by promoting dispute over agreement, dissensus over consensus, and heterogeneity over homogeneity the sublime, rather than provide scenes of representations, provides areas of intellectual discourse (Vine, 2002).
DeleteReferences
De Luca, V. A. (1991). Words of eternity : Blake and the poetics of the sublime. Princeton,
New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1991].
Pateman, T. (2004, 1991) ‘The Sublime’ in Key Concepts: A Guide to Aesthetics, Criticism
and the Arts in Education.London: Falmer Press
Steve, V. (2002). Blake's Material Sublime. Studies In Romanticism, (2), 237.
doi:10.2307/25601558
Artist and poet William Blake and political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau projected ideas that both intersected and diverged at certain influential philosophical principals, albeit through different spheres. While Rousseau’s ideas were overtly projected through principle publishing’s, Blake’s were implicitly communicated through the mode of poetry and art. Rousseau’s leading books The Social Contract and Emile: On Education establish his perspective on the themes of slavery and religion, and education. Conversely, Blake’s poems themselves create a basis of implicit debate over his philosophy regarding the same themes. At the core of the manifestation of similarities between their philosophies was their common interest in radical humanism (De Luca, 1991).
ReplyDeleteRousseau’s book The Social Contract outlines philosophical debates revolving around themes of slavery and religion. On slavery, Rousseau claims that freedom is not simply just a human right but also humanity itself as “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man”. However, to Rousseau chattel slavery was not the sole form of slavery but also used the term as a metonym for political and moral domination (Klausen, 2013). In this regard we can establish through his concept that “Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it.” This concept can be delineated within Blake’s poem The Chimney Sweeper within Songs of Innocence where “my father sold me” and “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep”, resulting in an overt form of slavery wherein the child had no other means of existence but also a political structure which removed the term from a rhetoric and displaced it to the realm of productive labour (Makdisi, 2003).
On religion, Rousseau and Blake align in the sense that both challenged Christianity, namely the notion of original sin, where each human is born into sin. For Rousseau it is “an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are al- ways right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered”. Congruently, Blake’s positively connotative language in Infant Joy supports this natural state of goodness. The difference however is that Rousseau in opposition to Christianity proposed a new religion of civil religion. “The object of civil religion for Rousseau is to foster sentiments of sociability and a love of public duties among citizens, extending those bonds throughout a citizenry and its membership. Civil religion identifies gods and tutelary benefactors to assist with that great aim, and its successful inculcation is supposed to help maintain stability, order, and prosperity for the country” (Swaine, 2016).
Rousseau’s stance on education was that it was “the art of forming men” which consisted of three phases; “first into a natural and self-sufficient; then into a social and moral; and finally into a civic and political, being” (Wain, 2011). Rousseau’s book Emile: On Education proposes philosophical debates regarding domestic education of man from adolescence and the idea of natural education. He claims that “the early education of man is also in a woman's hands; his morals, his passions, his taste, his pleasures, his happiness itself, depend on her”. “The infant child must be treated as a “nascent shrub” and nurtured in accordance with its intrinsic nature, not formed or forced into a shape by the direct intervention of an adult” (Wain, 2011) which contradicts the contemporary education system. Concurrent to this is Blake’s view on natural education of adolescents through his poem The School Boy in Songs of Innocence. He achieves this by posing a juxtaposition of stanza’s between a boy in nature, with positively charged words (“I love to rise in a summer morn”), contrasted with a boy in the education setting, with negatively charged words (“But to go to school in a summer morn/O! it drives all joy away”) (Scott, 1992). According to Scott (1992), he reads Blake’s poem as a criticism on the effects of formal organised education as opposed to natural activities on a person’s life. Both Rousseau and Blake offer an alternative of natural education however ultimately Rousseau “describes how a boy could be educated with his nature preserved, how his passions could be reconciled with reason and, in fact, utilized to establish a more natural civilization” (Müller, 2011). Blake on the other hand connotes the superiority of natural education but does not propose an alternative or reason.
DeleteReferences
De Luca, V. A. (1991). Words of eternity : Blake and the poetics of the sublime. Princeton,
New Jersey : Princeton University Press.
Klausen, J. C. (2014). Fugitive Rousseau : slavery, primitivism, and political freedom.
New York, [New York] : Fordham University Press.
Makdisi, S. (2007). William blake and the impossible history of the 1790s. Retrieved
from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Müller, S. (2011). Freedom and authority in alexander s. neill's and jean jacques
rousseau's philosophy of education : pädagogik. Retrieved from
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Scott, R. (1992). A Stylistic Analysis of "The School Boy". Journal of the College of
International Studies, (8).
Swaine, L. (2016). Civil religion. Retrieved 30 May, 2018 from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/civil-religion
Wain, K. (2011). On Rousseau : an introduction to his radical thinking on education and
politics. Rotterdam ; New York : SensePublishers.
4. 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).
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of gothic horrow genre films, the first wave of gothic novels estimated 1765-1820, which helps explain why there were a lot of gothic films in that time frame rather than in today’s time.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Directed by Francis Ford Coppola https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlDbxogHPao
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Directed by James Whale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Izq-E3o7Y
Reference:
The Gothic Experience. (2008). The First Wave of Gothic Novels: 1765-1820. Retrieved from
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/history.html