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Stephanie LaPlante
ENG 557
Dr. Wilson
Fall, 2005
The Painted Poem: The Connection Between Art and Literature During the
Pre-Raphaelite Period
In John Ruskin's third volume of Modern Painters, he claims that "painting
is properly to be opposed to speaking or writing, but not to poetry"
(qtd. in Landow "Ruskin's Theories" 1). Here, Ruskin is arguing
that these two forms of expression are inextricably linked because both
attempt to elicit emotional responses from their audiences by means of
its own demonstration of personal feeling. Landow, reflecting on Ruskin's
thoughts, concurs that "painting had to depend upon poetry, both
as model and source, for subject, content, and purpose" (Landow "Ruskin's
Theories" 1-2). This connection is illustrated with particular clarity
in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, artists who unmistakably saw the
link between these two forms of expression. During the second half of
the nineteenth century, Pre-Raphaelite artists found inspiration for their
works in the principles of form and verse of Medieval and Romantic poetry.
Likewise, Pre-Raphaelite poets found inspiration in the artwork created
by this group of disaffected young artists determined to rebel against
piety and the refined glossiness that had come to be associated with British
painting. Others attempted to combine both forms of artistic expression,
by writing poetry and painting images that corresponded to those created
with words. Jerome Bump asserts that Pre-Raphaelite art can be characterized
by its naturalism, natural supernaturalism, deliberate Medievalism, use
of subjects that are innately poignant, melancholy, or morbid, and tendency
toward narrative, all of which contribute to creating the effect of a
spell or a dream (Bump 1-2). While Pre-Raphaelite art tends to be characterized
by a fusion of the realistic and the idealistic, Pre-Raphaelite painting
simultaneously appears flat through the use of preternaturally bright
pigments. In poetry, these same traits are apparent through the emphasis
of "lush vowel sounds, sensuous description, subjective psychological
states, elaborate personification, and complex poetic forms" (Landow
"Pre-Raphaelitism" 1-2). Landow argues that the aesthetic Pre-Raphaelites,
those emerging in 1856 and including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris,
and those of the third wave of Pre-Raphaelitism emerging in the last 20
years of the nineteenth century and including Swinburne and J. W. Waterhouse,
often drew “upon the poetic continuum that descends from Spenser
through Keats and Tennyson” (Landow "Pre-Raphaelitism"
1). Thus, many Pre-Raphaelite paintings can be seen to find their inspiration
in the works of these poets, notably including Keats’ “La
Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott.”
The pairing of these paintings and poems clearly illustrates the close
affiliation between visual art and poetry as they provide mutual inspiration
for one another.
Because many writers during the Romantic period also found inspiration
in the imagination, nature, the emotions, and myth, it is no wonder that
the Pre-Raphaelites found stimulation in the works of poets such as Keats
and Tennyson. Further, William Morris writes that the Pre-Raphaelites
were dedicated to the “conscientious presentment of incident”
(qtd. in Bump 1), thus explaining why many of them turned to literary
subjects for their paintings. For example, Keats' poem "La Belle
Dame Sans Merci" inspired artists like Sir Frank Dicksee, J. W. Waterhouse,
Henry Maynall Rheam, Walter Crane, Arthur Hughes, and Frank Cadogan Cowper
to paint visual renditions of the poet's words. Keats, who in a letter
to his brother claims to have been inspired to write this poem as the
result of a dream, tells the story of a knight who meets a mysterious
and ethereally beautiful woman who captivates and enthralls him to such
an extent that he is left wandering aimlessly in the woods, the captive
of her snare. Keats' poem incorporates an eroticized Medieval tale, a
stunning woman, and a dream - all of which made the poem attractive to
the Pre-Raphaelites. Also, the simplicity of the ballad form employed
by Keats in this poem matches the Pre-Raphaelite style of painting, using
simple and consistent techniques to convey complex emotions, tones, and
narratives. Despite the fact that a number of artists were inspired by
Keats' words and compellingly poignant and romantic story, their depictions
referenced different sections of Keats' ballad or incorporated his own
views concerning the events in the poem. Three artists though, Hughes,
Crane, and Dicksee, all chose to represent the scene in Keats' ballad
during which the knight explains to the narrator that "I set her
on my pacing steed, / And nothing else saw all day long, / For sidelong
would she bend, and sing / A faery's song" (Keats 1). In all three
of these visual renditions, the knight seems truly rapt. The landscape
and light in all three paintings is suggestive of sunset, rather than
sunrise. This further adds to the sense of loss and potential foreboding
in the painting. In the poem, Keats accomplishes this same goal through
his use of meter. While he remained true to the ballad form in “La
Belle Dame Sans Merci,” in terms of rhyming four line stanzas, Keats
alters the regular meter in the final lines of each stanza, ending them
with spondees instead of the predicted iamb. Because of the extra stressed
syllables, these lines still take as long to read as the other lines,
but the added slowness is an authorial technique designed to remind the
reader of the knight’s loss. The fallen leaves on the ground and
the changing foliage in these three paintings also reinforce this theme
of loss. Keats tells us that the knight in his poem is wandering “when
the sedge has withered from the lake / And no birds sing” (Keats,
1). Here, as in the paintings, nature is used metaphorically to emphasize
the “fading” and “fast wither[ing]” pallor of
the knight. Thus the landscape seems to foreshadow the fading of the man
even as the daylight fades into night and the summer fades into fall and
winter.
Despite the fact that in each of these three painted versions of Keats'
poem a gaze of adoration is shared between the two lovers in the painting,
the darkling landscape threatens the knight's impending loss. This impending
loss is further exacerbated in Arthur Hughes' and Henry Maynall Rheam's
depictions as they capture images of the "pale kings, and princes
too, / Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; / They cried - 'Ls Belle
Dame sans merci / Hath thee in thrall!" (Keats 1). The depiction
of these ghostly figures is another characteristic of Pre-Raphaelite art.
Jerome Bump articulates this as a “tendency toward mysterious, unreal,
incantatory reverie, toward a vague intangible mood created by colors
and sounds alone, toward the effect of a spell or a dream” (1).
Both Keats’ poem and Maynall Rheam’s painting by the same
name achieve the dream-like effect described. Stanzas IX and X of Keats’
poem describe the fitful slumber of the knight and the dreams he experiences.
Keats describes how the lady “lulled me asleep / and there I dreamed”
(1). Maynall Rheam achieves this effect not through words, but through
his depiction of mist and ghostly apparitions hovering bluely and transparently
in the background - the “pale kings and princes” who warn
the knight. In Arthur Hughes’ portrayal of “La Belle Dame
Sans Merci,” above the Lady’s shoulder can be seen the faint
image of a ghostly specter. The ghost over her shoulder foreshadows the
destruction wrought by a love both unrequited and tragic.
The issue of love and the portrayal of women in Pre-Raphaelite art and
literature can be termed problematic, at best. Many of the Pre-Raphaelites
used the Medieval backgrounds and tales to provide a frame for their comments
and criticisms concerning their own society. In the case of the poem and
paintings inspired by the story of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci,"
the Medieval subject is clearly apparent, evidenced by the presence of
the knight, his charger and his burnished armor. However, what seems almost
more noteworthy is the way in which the paintings suggest the melancholy
tone that is clearly evident in the poem’s language. The light is
fading, the lady is bewitching, the knight is bewitched. In terms of social
commentary, the portrayals of "La Belle" by J. W. Waterhouse
and Frank Cadogan Cowper shed the most light on the emerging "Woman
Question" and the power that the Lady has to enchant and enthrall
the apparently unsuspecting knight. Cowper’s visual rendition of
“La Belle" portrays the lady as a terrible seductress. The
knight is clearly the victim of her charms, as he can be seen prostrate
at her feet. She is clad in bright crimson, a color that signifies all
things passionate and intense, while simultaneously connoting ideas associated
with blood and danger. The Lady in the painting is also intent on coifing
her hair, which is long and serpentine, indicative of her ability to ensnare.
This same motif can be seen in Waterhouse's representation of the Lady,
as the knight is entangled in the Lady's long locks. Despite the gaze
of love they share, the knight is still her captive. The portrayal of
woman as a source of male terror because of her sexuality is a recurrent
theme in Pre-Raphaelite works as Victorians are increasingly drawn into
the “Woman Question,” which some interpret as a threat to
the patriarchal order of society as women achieve more agency.
In this way, the works of the Pre-Raphaelites reveal much about Victorian
conceptions of love and womanhood. Yet, unlike Cowper’s or Waterhouse's
depiction of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” as a femme fatale
of sorts, Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott,” according to
Elizabeth Nelson “perfectly embodies the Victorian image of the
ideal woman: virginal, embowered, spiritual and mysterious, dedicated
to her womanly tasks” (1). She is embowered within the private sphere
of the home, but is cursed should she attempt to escape. Like Keats' "La
Belle Dame Sans Merci," Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"
inspired a great number of artists to depict the embowered Lady. From
William Maw Egley to Harold Meteyard, William Holman Hunt to Charles Robinson,
Elizabeth Siddall to John Atkinson Grimshaw, William A. Breakspere to
Arthur Hughes, and from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to three separate paintings
of the Lady by J. W. Waterhouse, "The Lady of Shalott" was a
much considered literary source of inspiration for many a Pre-Raphaelite.
Tennyson's Lady, inspired by the character Elaine of the Arthurian legend,
is the quintessential embowered woman, ensconced deep within the private
female sphere.
In the poem, Tennyson conveys this fact to his readers by deliberately
indenting the final lines of each stanza, lines alternating with mentions
of “Camelot” and “Shalott.” The indentation seems
to suggest that both places are set apart from the rest of the world and
from each other. Tennyson writes that:
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot....
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott (1).
The first time Tennyson mentions the character of the Lady is also indented,
similarly indicating her separation from the rest of the world. She dwells
in a single, isolated tower as compared to “many tower’d Camelot”
(Tennyson 1). This parallels the contrast between the Victorian conceptions
of the public world inhabited by men and the private sphere populated
by women. In the artistic renditions of Tennyson's Lady, she is depicted
as a solitary figure, lone in her tower as compared to the bustling sights
of Camelot as reflected in her mirror. The private interior of the Lady's
tower can be seen as the embodiment of proper Victorian womanhood which
is further reinforced by Tennyson's description of Shalott as being surrounded
by lilies, symbolizing the Lady’s purity, chastity, and innocence.
William Maw Egley's imagining of the poem further reinforces this idea
as he portrays the interior of her woman’s world as shrouded in
shadows and dark hues in contrast to the brighter shades of the landscape
that can be glimpsed through the window or reflected back by her mirror.
Tennyson describes that "moving through a mirror clear / That hangs
before her all the year, / Shadows of the world appear" (1). Thus,
in the lyric as well as in the painting the bright world of the romance
is juxtaposed against the interior of the Lady’s tower.
Further, Egley’s painting of the Lady of Shalott portrays the Lady
on the right-hand side of the canvas only. The focus of his painting is
her window, through which a vision of Lancelot can be seen. The gaze on
the woman’s face is wistful, as she yearns for love. This love,
however, is doomed, for Tennyson reveals that “a curse is on her
if she stay / to look down to Camelot” (1). The curse is significant,
not only to the Lady's own story, but also in terms of the Victorian notion
of chaste womanhood and the Pre-Raphaelites' comment on that societal
belief. If the Lady chooses to remain ensconced in her bower, alone and
virginal, she will survive. If, however, she is tempted to experience
the pleasure of love and romance firsthand, she is doomed.
Through the first half of part two of Tennyson's poem, the lady is still
innocent, “she knows not what the curse may be,” and so devotes
her time to her craft, “she weaveth steadily” (1). As such,
the artists Waterhouse, Siddall, Holman Hunt, Robinson, and Meteyard all
depict the Lady at her loom, a traditionally feminine task that has connections
to the domestic sphere of the woman’s world while it simultaneously
alludes to the notion of fate as it is spun by the Moirai, or three fates.
Similarly, the Lady’s mirror can be viewed as an instrument of portent,
as well as a gateway to self-knowledge. It is the tool through which the
Lady comes to see her fate and her desires.
One of Waterhouse’s versions of the Lady of Shalott takes its title
from a line in Tennyson’s poem: “I am half-sick of shadows.”
The Lady comes to this realization at the conclusion of part two of Tennyson's
poem just after she catches the reflection of "two young lovers lately
wed" (1). Here, Tennyson hints at what the Lady may be lacking in
her own life, indicating that there may be something more beyond her chaste
artistic existence. In Waterhouse's depiction, too, she is restless. She
stretches at her loom, a contemplative gaze on her face. The laid-back
posture of the Lady emphasizes the “key-hole” technique employed
by Waterhouse to draw the viewer’s attention to the scene outside
the window. This may be, as Nelson explains, an attempt to “heighten
the tension between the Lady’s cloistered existence and the exterior
world by opening up the space in the painting” (1). Further, the
brightness of the window stands in stark contrast with the darkness of
her room, and the “two young lovers” on the bridge, an indication
of what she is without.
Meteyard’s painting of the Lady at the loom carries the same title
as Waterhouse’s: “I Am Half-Sick of Shadows,” yet Meteyard
portrays the source of the Lady’s disenchantment as her newly awakened
and as yet unfulfilled sexual desire, rather than any vague notion that
she may be missing something significant in her life, namely romantic
attachment as suggested by the presence of the "two young lovers
lately wed" (Tennyson 1). Interestingly enough, these two young lovers
are the first image the Lady has viewed of heterosexual erotic love. At
the point in Tennyson’s poem that the Lady admits that she is “half-sick
of shadows,” she has not seen Lancelot. She has seen “a troop
of damsels glad,” an abbot, “a curly shepherd-lad, / or long
hair’d page in crimson clad,” or “knights come riding
two and two” (Tennyson 1). The newlyweds are the first romantic
couple the Lady glimpses, and at the close of Part II of Tennyson’s
poem, it becomes evident that the Lady really is “half-sick of shadows,”
and is perhaps ready to experience life for herself rather than living
vicariously through the individuals she sees and subsequently weaves into
her tapestry. It is important to note, however, that Meteyard’s
painting does not show the two lovers in the mirror he paints, but rather
what is apparent is Lancelot’s figure in the “web” she
weaves. Meteyard’s portrayal of the Lady signifies the idea that
she is ready for love, erotic love. In his painting, she is reclined,
eyes heavy-lidded, swan-like neck extended upon satin pillows, emphasizing
the blatant sensuality of the scene.
Once the Lady has seen Lancelot's figure, she is enchanted by his stunning
physique, the light glinting on his armor, his melodic "tirra lirra,"
and she prepares to abandon her art and her tower. Tennyson writes that
upon viewing Lancelot, "She left the web, she left the loom, /
She made three paces through the room, / She saw the water-lily bloom,
/She saw the helmet and the plume, /She looked down to Camelot" (Tennyson
1). Several of the artists inspired by Tennyson's lyric chose this moment
to depict, the moment at which she brings the curse down upon herself
in exchange for love. Holman Hunt’s depiction of the Lady of Shalott
also depicts her entanglement in the loom and the threads, symbolizing
her own fate. This perhaps demonstrates the conflict the Lady feels at
abandoning her art in favor of love. When Tennyson himself asked why Holman
Hunt had shown the Lady “with her hair wildly tossed about as if
by a tornado,” he was told “that I had wished to convey the
idea of the threatened fatality by reversing the ordinary peace of the
room and of the Lady herself,” in order to enable the viewer to
understand that “the catastrophe had come” (Leng 1). In another
painting of the Lady of Shalott by Waterhouse, he captures the moment
when she realizes “the curse is come upon me” (Tennyson 1).
In reference to Waterhouse’s painting, Thomas Jeffers describes
“her rising body, momently stayed by the golden threads wrapped
round her knees, is disturbingly like a taut bow. Her deftly foreshortened
bosom accentuates the centrally-placed rounded zone of her abdomen and
hips, the clasped curves of which repeat the shapes of the roundels on
her warp, the back of her chair, the tiled floor, the balls of yarn, and
or course the circular mirror behind all” (Jeffers 248). Like Holman
Hunt’s Lady, Waterhouse’s Lady is also imprisoned by her loom,
which can be read as her fate or as the constraints that Victorian society
places upon women in general. It is important to note, however, that in
giving up her art in exchange for love, she is rebelling against social
morays and placing herself in mortal danger. Charles Robinson makes a
similar comment in his version of The Lady of Shalott. Here, as in Holman
Hunt and Waterhouse, the Lady is entangled in her loom, the threads constraining
her even as they allow her self-expression. The Pre-Raphaelites here are
able to mingle social commentary about the “Woman Question,”
even as they fulfill their own artistic credo of Mediavalized romanticism
inspired by literature.
Elizabeth Siddall’s version of Tennyson’s Lady, a Pre-Raphaelite
drawing rendered by a woman privy to the inner workings of the Brotherhood
differs from the depictions of her male counterparts. For example, her
Lady’s room is bare and austere as compared to the lavish decorations
painted by Waterhouse, Holman Hunt, Egley, and Meteyard. Siddall’s
Lady lacks Meteyard’s blatant sensuality and Holman Hunt’s
suggestive curves. Further, instead of suggesting the entrapment of societal
rules from which the Lady must escape, Siddall’s painting captures
the moment following the Lady’s glimpse of Lancelot and presages
her ultimate demise as “the mirror crack’d from side to side”
(Tennyson 1). The cracked mirror indicates the onset of the curse brought
about by the Lady’s desire to abandon her safe and virginal domestic
sphere in exchange with the public realm of men and erotic love. Siddall
successfully captures not the Lady’s dream of romantic love, but
the consequences that befall her after making the choice to abandon her
art in favor of love.
Part IV of Tennyson’s poem describes the Lady’s departure
from her tower as she embarks in search of romantic fulfillment. He writes:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott (Tennyson 1).
In another of J. W. Waterhouse’s renditions inspired by Tennyson’s
poem, the Lady, dressed in glowing white, a color representative of her
own virginity and purity, is depicted inside a yonnic-looking vessel that
is found beneath a willow tree, a symbol of femininity and death. Having
looked upon Lancelot with desire, she is no longer an innocent maiden,
and is doomed as a result. This is most certainly a comment about the
consequences women face upon abandoning the private sphere in exchange
for the public sphere, or the consequences woman face upon their sexual
awakening in Victorian England. John Atkinson Grimshaw’s portrayal
of the Lady portrays her dressed in white as well, closely aligning his
work with Tennyson’s description:
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right -
The leaves upon her falling light -
Thro’ the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot (Tennyson 1).
Breakspere’s work accomplishes a similar goal, depicting the Lady
clad in what might be described as her wedding dress, a garland of flowers
in her hair. Her face has an angelic appearance, but the folds in her
gown accentuate her feminine curves, indicating her figurative if not
physical sexual awakening.
Arthur Hughes and Dante Gabriel Rossetti both depict the Lady upon her
death and subsequent discovery as she makes her fatal voyage from Shalott
down to Camelot. As Tennyson describes it:
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott (1).
In a sort of suicide note, the Lady paints her name across the prow of
her death-barge, and “Knight and burgher, lord and dame, / And round
the prow they read her name, / The Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson 1).
Hughes’ painting a crowd of women who have come to behold the Lady’s
descent into Camelot, and perhaps learn a lesson from the example she
teaches. The women in Hughes’ painting look aghast as the Lady’s
corpse floats by, perhaps shocked by the deathly visage of the Lady, perhaps
scandalized by what she represents. Rossetti’s painting depicts
Lancelot himself looking into the still lovely face of the now deceased
lady of Shalott, not realizing that it was his own self that directly
or indirectly caused her demise. Tennyson’s Lancelot, upon coming
face to face for the first time with the Lady, now pale and dead, merely
acknowledges that “she has a lovely face,” and asks God to
bless her (1). In fact, both Tennyson and Rossetti portray Lancelot’s
gaze upon the Lady as pitying. Lancelot, the object of the Lady’s
affections and the immediate catalyst for her abandonment of her loom
remains forever ignorant of her sacrifice. There are no consequences for
the man when the woman gives in to her latent sexuality. Here, as in several
of the other visual depictions of Tennyson’s Lady are the Pre-Raphaelite
artists able to combine their artistic manifesto with their desire to
comment upon contemporary societal issues facing the Victorians.
In terms of the artistic manifesto embraced by many Pre-Raphaelite artists,
there was a distinct move backward in time both in art and literature
as these artists sought to capture the imagination of an earlier and simpler
time. The Pre-Raphaelites were attracted to both Medieval mythology and
to the tendencies of the Romantic poets that preceded them. In an attempt
to include a narrative voice in their paintings, many of these artists
drew their inspiration from literature, pinpointing and depicting distinct
characters and scenarios with brush and color rather than with words.
Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and Tennyson’s
“The Lady of Shalott” are merely two examples of this phenomenon.
Because of the drive to depict Medieval settings in a manner both at once
natural and supernatural, coupled with the desire to illustrate eroticized
women and to comment on issues facing their own society, the Pre-Raphaelite
artist was naturally drawn to literature as a source of artistic stimulation
and inspiration. Keats and Tennyson were natural choices, as both poets
incorporate those Romantic tendencies that are closely aligned with Pre-Raphaelite
sensibilities. Thus, these two poems become painted, visually rendered
in a way at once true to the poet’s words and also true to the artistic
sensibilities of the Pre-Raphaelites. The connection between the written
and painted message becomes inextricable, and the one informs and inspires
the other.
Works Cited
Bump, Jerome. Pre-Raphaelitism: Some Characteristics of Pre-Raphaelite
Painting and Poetry. University of Texas. 12 Dec. 2005 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/oxford/pre.html>.
Jeffers, Thomas L. “Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott and Pre-Raphaelite
Renderings: Statement and Counter-Statement.” Religion and the Arts.
6:3 (2002): 231-256.
Keats, John. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." The Poetical Works
of John Keats. Bartleby.com. 12 Dec. 2005 <http://www.bartleby.com/126/55.html>.
Landow, George. "Chapter One: Ruskin's Theories of the Sister Arts,
Ruskin and the tradition of 'ut pictura poesis.'" The Aesthetic and
Critical Theories of John Ruskin. 25 July 2005. The Victorian Web. 1 Nov.
2005 <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/1.1.html>.
Landow, George. Pre-Raphaelitism in Poetry. 20 Oct. 2004. The Victorian
Web. 13 Dec. 2005 <http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/4.html>.
Leng, Andrew. "The Lady of Shalott 1857: 'The Moment of Catastrophe.'"
Word and Image. 4 Dec. 2001. The Victorian Web. 11 Dec. 2005 <http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/whh/leng/3.html>.
Nelson, Elizabeth. "The Embowered Woman: Pictorial Interpretations
of 'The Lady of Shalott.'" Adapted from "Tennyson and the Ladies
of Shalott," Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts,
Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979. 30 Nov. 2004. The Victorian Web.
12 Dec. 2005 <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/losbower.html>.
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. The Lady of Shalott. 11 Jan. 2005. The Victorian
Web. 12 Dec. 2005 <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/los1.html>.
Salomé
A Tragicomedy of
Gender Performativity and
Patriarchal Subversion in
One Act
Kristin M. Stelmok
Professor Jack Wilson
English 557
December 16, 2005
The Salome PowerPoint
Amanda Kimball
ENG 557
Paper # 1
December 13, 2005
Wordsworth’s Gendered Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
In looking at the works of Romantic poet and philosopher, William Wordsworth,
one must note his intellectually and aesthetically astute grasp on the
common ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful as they are employed within
his poetry. In comparing these respective ideas within his works to those
of philosopher Edmund Burke in the essay, A Philosophical Inquiry into
the Sublime and the Beautiful, the reader can gain a clear understanding
of how such terms work to emphasize the important ideals of this time
period, making them on the one sense revolutionary in their standards
of art and society, but on the other, somewhat confining and primitive
in their gendering of such concepts. The reader can see how Wordsworth
promotes a gendered idea of a masculine Sublime vs. a more feminine Beauty,
with the former having an ability to be dominated and molded in its feminine
form by the poet, allowing him an enlightened and elevated status as male
poet.
In his work A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the
Sublime and the Beautiful, Burke maintains that the Sublime is found in
anything that invokes strong feelings of awe, terror, and fear, causing
man to be reverently humbled. In Burke’s definition of the sublime,
he maintains that it is the strongest emotion that the mind is capable
of feeling:
WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger,
that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about
terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source
of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which
the mind is capable of feeling.
(Burke, p. 7)
He also goes on to define it in a more physical realm by intimating that
“the great ought to be solid, and even massive.” (Burke, p.
27). Burke clearly employs a more masculine vernacular when discussing
the issue of the sublime and its effects and characteristics. On a more
subtle level, he maintains that the Sublime can inspire, in man, a feeling
of astonishment, admiration and respect for its subject. Burke goes on
to talk of the Sublime as a passion instilling factor created by God so
that men may maintain a sense of ambition and strive for conquest. Here
he does not talk of a mankind, which would include both male and female
genders; rather, he asserts that his reader is of male gender. He insists
that “God has planted in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction
arising from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something
deemed valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men…”
(Burke, p. 17). Here, the idea of the Sublime is directly associated with
the masculine, as it was said to have been divinely created for men. Burke
then goes on to say that “whatever…tends to raise a man in
his own opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph…this swelling
is never more perceived, nor operates with more force, than when without
danger we are conversant with terrible objects; the mind always claiming
to itself some part of the dignity and importance of the things which
it contemplates” (Burke, p. 17).
In Book II of The Prelude, Wordsworth emphasizes this understanding of
the masculine Sublime. “With faculties still growing, feeling still/
that, whatsoever point they gain, they yet/ Have something to pursue”
(Wordsworth, lines 321-323). It seems to instill in him, a sense of what
he does not have and what he would seek to gain. It reminds him that he
is not whole in this sense, but lacking. At points, the reader can sense
an uncomfortable Wordsworth when dealing with the issue of the Sublime.
It would seem that Wordsworth does not derive Burke’s same “pleasure”
from the feeling of fear as it reminds him that he is not of elevated
or enlightened status among mankind. Thus, Wordsworth’s value in
the Sublime lies only in the fact that it instills an ambition to attain
a higher status, not in the Burkean fact that the Sublime would allow
him elevated status through pleasure of it.
In contrast, Beauty remains for both Wordsworth and Burke as having a
feminine quality through the ways in which it shows weakness. In A Philosophical
Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful, Edmund Burke maintains the
definition of Beauty as “that quality or those qualities in bodies,
by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it” (Burke,
p.10). He continues on to emphasize the fact that Beauty contrasts itself
with the Sublime through the way in which it is not perfect, nor does
its subject seek to be perfect. “So far is perfection… from
being the cause of beauty, that this quality, where it is highest, in
the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and
imperfection” (Burke, p. 9). Burke not only directly associates
this quality with the female gender, but he also insists that the very
imperfection and weakness of women is inherent in the idea of the Beautiful.
This contrasts directly with the idea of the Sublime which instills a
sense of ambition in men. Where men would seek perfection through attaining
what they do not have in strength and power, women would tend to avoid
perfection as it is not deemed beautiful or weak. “Women are very
sensible of this; for which reason; they learn to lisp, to totter in their
walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness” (Burke, p. 9).
In direct contrast with the masculine idea of the Sublime, Burke states
that “beauty should be light and delicate” (Inquiry, p. 1)
again ascribing a more feminized nature in Beauty.
Wordsworth was also aware of this idea and frequently employs it when
talking of Beauty. In his poems, Wordsworth often associates Beauty with
a pastoral, domestic scene, in which he portrays his voiceless women as
innocent virgins, contented housewives or nurturing mothers. In “Three
Years She Grew” Wordsworth talks about his prized “Lucy”
by comparing her to an innocent and voiceless fawn: “She shall be
sportive as the fawn/ that wild with glee across the lawn/ or up in the
mountain springs;/ and hers shall be the breathing balm,/ and hers the
silence and the calm/ of mute insensate things” (Wordsworth, lines
13-18). Here, Wordsworth aligns Lucy with softer and weakened imagery.
Wordsworth does not let his female beauty become aware of the trials and
pains of life. In this way, the feminine form of the poem is weak and
innocent and it is through this that she is considered Beautiful in Burkean
standards. He also aligns her with silence and the muted scenes in nature.
Here, the reader gains the sense that Lucy’s beauty is not found
in her voice, but through her weakened and more innocent state of silence.
In another poem, Wordsworth again references the silence of women when
talking of Beauty: “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free/ The
holy time is quite as a Nun…” (Wordsworth, lines 1-2). It
is implicit within this poem that Wordsworth’s evening of Beauty
is best described through employing the metaphor of the silent woman figure
in its holiest form, a Nun.
Wordsworth’s female figures in his poems often take on the form
of a housewife and/or mother, through which they are considered Beautiful.
In another “Lucy poem,” Wordsworth describes his ideal woman:
“Nor will I quit thy shore/ A second time; for still I seem/ to
love thee more and more./ Among thy mountains did I feel/ the joy of my
desire;/ and she I cherished turned her wheel/ Beside an English fire”
(Wordsworth, Lines 6-12).
Again in another poem of pastoral Beauty, Wordsworth creates this idea
of stability through portraying the woman as a contented housewife. In
“Michael, A Pastoral Poem,” Wordsworth shows the wife of Michael
as a woman twenty years his junior, contented in doing nothing more than
housework. “She was a woman of a stirring life,/ Whose heart was
in her house: two wheels she had/ Of antique form: this large, for spinning
wool;/ That small, for flax…” (Wordsworth, lines 81-84). Wordsworth
clearly views this domestic, subservient woman as an ideal of Beauty.
Women rarely frequent his poetry in positions other than in these stereotypical
Victorian ideals.
One critic associates Wordsworth’s tie with this domestic life as
an effort to make up for his early childhood experience which lacked in
security and family structure. Judith W. Page conveys in her essay “Gender
and Domesticity” that “this might seem like an intimate girlish
fantasy, but its valuing of a secure home and its gender-based distinction
between their needlework and his ‘instruction’ seems prophetic
of Wordsworthian households to come” (Page, p. 127). She maintains
that the women in Wordsworth’s life willingly accepted roles of
support and domesticity.
After Wordsworth’s marriage to Mary Hutchinson in 1802, Wordsworth
and his career became increasingly the focal point. It was no longer just
William and Dorothy, sharing and collaborating, but a whole household
of (mostly) women who revolved around William.
(Page, p. 128).
Wordsworth does allow for Nature in his poems to function as the feminine
ideal of Burkean Beauty. He does so, insofar as he is able to ascribe
to it its beauty and use it as his God-given faculty for his poetic genius.
Nature is allowed a more powerful voice in his poetry, however it must
be said that although Wordsworth at times feels governed by it, he attributes
its beauty to his own poetic genius and his divine ability to perceive
it. In this way, the feminine form is, once again, subservient and exists
primarily for male pleasure. In Book II of “The Prelude,”
Wordsworth shows how [her] Beauty has existed to give him a “superadded
soul,” through which “an auxiliar light/ Came from [his] mind
which on the settings sun/ Bestowed new splendor; the melodious birds,/
The fluttering breezes, fountains that ran on/ Murmuring so sweetly in
themselves, obeyed/ a like dominion” (Wordsworth, lines 360-374).
Here, he talks of his God-given ability to ascribe beauty to Nature. In
this way, Wordsworth takes part in its creation and asserts a dominant
role on another feminine form.
Throughout “The Prelude,” Wordsworth intimates the idea that
Nature was given to him from the masculine God. It may be said that this
serves as an allegory for the biblical book of creation, Genesis. In the
story of Genesis, God was said to have made Eve for Adam’s pleasure
and company. By confining this idea of domicile feminine Nature to typical
Victorian conventions, Wordsworth as the male poet can use her at his
own discretion. In his poetry, nature exists for him as he has taken a
part in its creation. It becomes a part of him. Wordsworth shows this
idea in Book III of “The Prelude:” “Unknown, unthought
of, yet I was most rich;/ I had a world about me; ‘twas my own,/
I made it; for it only lived to me, / And to the God who sees into the
heart” (Wordsworth, lines 143-146). It is clear to the reader that
Wordsworth adheres to the idea of Beauty as it allows him to be divine
conqueror who has had “The sanctity of Nature” given to him
as man.
In Wordsworth’s poetry, he does not employ both the Sublime and
Beauty in the same light. In this way, he intimates that they are polar
opposites in form. Readers may notice Wordsworth’s affinity for
Beauty in lieu of the Sublime. He often feels threatened by the masculine
presence of the Sublime and tends to use the Beautiful as his release
from it. In his ability to assert dominance in its presence, he finds
Beauty the more appealing of the two concepts. In his essay, Edmund Burke
also asserts that the Sublime and Beauty cannot coexist together in such
a way that would highlight both effects. He argues that one feeling would
be stronger than the other and thus lead that object to be either Sublime
or Beautiful. He then goes on to say that even if equally mixed in a subject,
the product would not inspire feelings stronger than if they were separate:
If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found united,
does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they are any
way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and contradictory?
Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the
same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with
different colours, is the power of black as black, or of white as white,
so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished
(Burke, p.27).
In an essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful, William Wordsworth further
explains the appeal of the feminine Beauty over the Sublime in his poetry.
Though it is impossible that a mind can be in a healthy state that is
not frequently and strongly moved both by sublimity and beauty, is more
dependent for its daily well-being upon the love & gentleness which
accompany the one, than upon the exaltation or awe which are created by
the other- Hence, as we advance in life, we can escape upon the invitation
of one more placid & gentle nature from those obstrusive qualities
in an object sublime in its general character
(Qtd. In Page, p.27). In “The Prelude,” Wordsworth again explains
this idea: ““To fear and love,/ to love as prime and chief,
for there fear ends,/ be this ascribed; to early intercourse/ in presence
of sublime or beautiful forms…/ all lasting grandeur, by pervading
love;/ that gone, we are as dust (Wordsworth, lines 162-169). Wordsworth
intimates the idea that love stems from Beauty as it is associated with
both female passivity and security. Love is a more pleasurable experience,
and although it may not be as strong as the terror and awe caused from
the Sublime, he holds it to be the more important passion in life.
In his poetry, William Wordsworth uses both the Sublime and the Beautiful
in order to gain an enlightened status among writers during the Victorian
period. In ascribing a male and female gender to the Sublime and the Beautiful
respectively, he is able to convey these ideas in an esoteric sense to
his readers. His epic poem “The Prelude” best employs these
feminine traits of the Beautiful, giving him as a poet, an awareness and
a much prioritized sense of control of the metaphysical realm which he
passionately engages.
Works Cited
“A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime
and Beautiful.” Harvard Classics, Vol. 24. Part 2 ed. 2005. Bartleby.Com.
3 Sept. 2005 <http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/
Abrams, M. H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York,
NY: Norton & Company, 2000.
Page, Judith W. “Gender and Domesticity.” The Cambridge Companion
to Wordsworth. Ed. Stephen Gill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2003
Page, Judith W. “Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women.”
Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.
Angela E. Khorll
ENG557
Final Paper
Perception, Memory, and Desire in the
Imagination of Romantic Poets under a Changing World View
The desire of man being infinite the possession is Infinite
& himself Infinite
--Blake
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
--Wordsworth
When a man seeks to comprehend the enormity of existence and the length
of eternity, he challenges the existence, shape, and role of a possible
higher power. When a poet finds harmony between man and nature and embraces
experiences in nature as moral guide, he forces examination of the conventions
of religion. When a man finds secret ministry in the ice on the window
and etches the power of inward reflection into a poem, he breaks through
the barrier that had separated the educated and versed in the conventions
in poetry from the common man. Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century were revolutionaries
who broke open the doors to validate the experiences of any individual
and gave to all people license to create poetry. Their cumulative efforts
and explorations of the connections among feeling, perception, memory,
and imagination and the ways each of these elements factors into the creation
of poetry changed the realm not only of literature and its creation but
of the place of man in the changing world.
With the thinking of John Locke in the end of the seventeenth century,
namely “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” a roadmap
to the mind was drafted. Philosophers and thinkers stepped onto new territory
to challenge preconceived notions of the role of man: those controlled
by the Christian view. In 1757, Edmund Burke published his “Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful,”
putting onto paper definitions which invited audiences of literature and
art alike to view a work through an emotional and psychological lens rather
than according to strict rules and conventions as with the Neo-classical
ideals preceding the emergence of the Romantic and subsequent Victorian
Age. With Darwin’s published essay On the Origin of Species in 1859,
the Christian world view as grounds for answering all questions of existence
and experience of humankind in this physical world was essentially invalidated.
The discovery of fossils meant the possibility, even the likelihood, that
all known life forms have evolved on earth. Humanity now possessed cause
to see the Infinite and to grasp the meaning and purpose of living on
earth in entirely new ways.
Shifts of thinking were occurring on many levels and at various times
in the Modern era, yet these changes in Europe in discovery and industry
all propelled the poet into a new realm of creativity which did not, could
not, exist before the emerging changes. Science became specialized with
categorized studies in areas named geology and biology, for example. Religion
became a separate field of theology and no longer could encompass with
assurance the study of the natural world. In effect, the early Romantics
journeyed into the places that did not exist wherein they could dive into
the relation between the poet (as creator) and the poem (as his creation)
and wherein they could embody the poetic imagination as an outpouring
of feeling and response to the world around him. No longer was a poet
the master of a craft to be judged according to rules of meter, form,
and content, as the seventeenth century writers held. Now, a poet could
be any individual who sensed a truth in a feeling or experience, rather
than having to enter truth through logic and reason.
William Blake explores man’s perceptions in his poem “There
is No Natural Religion” and challenges the reader to follow his
lead in pondering desire and the infinite. Blake expresses that mere reason
is inferior and that it, in fact, limits man in a realm of philosophy
and experiments that would continue to find the same answers again and
again while poetry and prophecy allow comprehension of the infinite:
Conclusion, If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. The Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
(lines 16-21)
Blake’s ideas in this poem correspond to the new possibility that
man can consider infinity, what has existed for an incomprehensible amount
of time prior to the years he lives and what will continue for an immeasurable
length after a man no longer lives. People could now question the existence
of a God. Blake also gives man permission to attain whatever it is that
he may desire in order that he will not suffer endlessly: “If any
could desire what he is incapable of possessing, /despair must be his
eternal lot” (lines 12-13). Christianity taught the opposite—that
a man should not act on his desires but rather deny them in order to keep
the Commandments and suffer, without joy, in order to earn admittance
into Heaven. In the middle of these changing times, Blake stood out among
his contemporaries. He wrote about his visions and interaction with the
spiritual and divine. He incorporated prophecy and invented a mythological
world to delve into spiritual and political ideas for a new world. Clearly,
the time was ripe for revolution.
In Blake’s world of Albion, a pantheon is created which identifies
the four Zoas, one of which is Luvah, the entity that is love, passion,
and emotive faculties. A Christ-like figure known as Orc is the most amorous
and rebellious form (en.wikipedia.org) signals the go-ahead for others
to celebrate love, passion, and emotion—to rebel against the religious
conventions and moral codes. One of Blake’s prophetic poems, “America:
a Prophecy,” tells the story of the daughter of Urthona (also known
as Los: inspiration and the imagination), a virgin who is overtaken by
Orc’s fierce embrace. Urizen (intellect, a cruel Old Testament-style
god) is the character who degrees the ten commands that the virgin has
gone against, though not by choice. Orc (love, passion, emotion) had been
wrapped around the tree (as the tree of Knowledge in a clear allusion
to Paradise Lost) and overcomes this helpless girl. The poem goes on to
explain the resultant destruction as the red flames of Orc sweep the shores
of America (14.25-27), the founders of which had left Albion (England).
Urizen is left full of tears at the fall of “the stern Americans”
(16.12). Blake gives this imaginative account of the American Revolution
that is a result of the pursuit of religious and political freedom. In
this prophecy, the spirit of revolt (Orc) sets the state for universal
revolution (blakearchive).
The use of imagination in the works of Blake, though unique at the time
Blake was publishing, was truly the foundation for subsequent poets and
their frontiers of reacting to the natural and the supernatural with imagination.
Starting with Wordsworth, the ways a poet could view both him and the
world and then create poetry as response were limitless. “Emotion,
imagination, expression, sincerity, and imagination are among the chief
concerns of all other English romantic poets and theorizers of Romanticism
(such as Coleridge, Shelley, Blake, Haslitt, Keats, Mill, Carlyle, [and]
Arnold)” (unizar.es). Wordsworth valued the imagination and sought
to distinguish it from the idea of “fancy,” which was more
associated with “wit” (unizar.es). This distinction is imperative
in moving toward understanding the power of the poet to make statements
in the category of stating truths and understanding the human heart and
soul, as Wordsworth sought to do. He tried to push the boundaries of the
literary world beyond manipulation of words on a page in certain patterns
and with certain skill.
Finding a witty pun could serve as a typical operation
of fancy. Imagination, however, is a higher and more
fundamentally active faculty: it does not deal with
fortuitous affinities, but with the essential relationships
between objects, their underlying unity. This unity
which is not perceived by discursive reasoning, but
rather by feeling; imagination is a subjective
re-fashioning of appearance.
(unizar.es, p. 4)
Feeling becomes the key component in poetry. Acknowledging that an individual’s
feelings can lead to literary creation, rather than the adherence to rules
and conventions regarding the formulation of poetry removes the power
to write from the pens of the educated and passes it to the rough quills
of the common folk. The essential power to give voice to that communion
that occurs between man and nature is what marks the Romantics beginning
with Wordsworth. Imagination, for Wordsworth and Coleridge, acts on experience
(unizar.es). Thus far in history, mankind communed in holy prayer with
God. Agency of an individual to use imagination and respond with feeling
to a source of stimulus broadens the scope of human thinking.
A representative poem of Wordsworth’s practice of this idea of imagination
acting on experience is “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey.” After five years away from the banks of the River Wye, Wordsworth
takes his sister to walk in this natural landscape with seeming mystical
powers. What results from his walking tour is a poem that proves Wordsworth’s
use of memory and communion with nature both as teacher and guide. In
the busy and heavy bustle of living, “’mid the din/Of towns
and cities,” Wordsworth recalls his experience in the Wye River
valley and is granted “tranquil restoration.” His feelings
of awe and the “serene and blessed mood” he felt at the time
of communion with nature put to rest his body and partition his existences
to becoming in that moment “a living soul” who senses the
“deep power of joy” and “see(s) into the life of things.”
The transcendence of the physical world and suspension in a moment so
powerful that the emotional and psychological effects linger on for years
to come is revolutionary. Wordsworth as a “worshipper of Nature”
recognizes that the various parts of nature when read with “the
language of the sense” act as “anchor of (his) purest thoughts,
the nurse,/ The guide, the guardian of (his) heart, and soul/ Of all (his)
moral being.” Rather than clinging to religion and its higher power,
this Romantic poet recognizes that “Nature never did betray/The
heart that loved her” and “lead(s) (one)/From joy to joy.”
The reality that nature can offer joy contests the Christian belief that
the promise of heaven offers. Wordsworth states that
neither evil tongues/Rash judgments, nor the sneers
of selfish men, /Nor greetings where no kindness is,
nor all/The dreary intercourse of daily life, /Shall e’er
prevail against us, or disturb/Our cheerful faith, that
all which we behold/Is full of blessings.
(Tintern Abbey, 4. 18-24)
What adds to this new worldview is the incorporation of the purpose of
memory in
achieving this joy:
In after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
They memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations!
(Tintern Abbey, 4.27-36)
No longer does the moral directive come from the Church, but from the
lecture of a brother to his sister about the power of nature to shield
and protect an individual from any of the harm that humanity can inflict.
The comfort that Wordsworth finds in nature is similar to the way Coleridge
finds ministry in nature in what is perhaps one of his most reflective
poems.
In “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge shows the power of a moment
of reflection in which one’s imagination and memory can offer deep
calm and meditation even on a seeming inconsequential product of nature.
As a father sits awake at the fireside next to his infant cradled at his
side, he is ministered to. The rest of the family is asleep, and the speaker
experiences a calm “so calm, that it disturbs/ And vexes meditation
with its strange/and extreme silentness.” He reflects on the motion
of the “thin blue flame” and how “its motion in this
hush of nature/Gives it dim sympathies with (him) who live(s).”
The low fire on a still night and the frost on the windows, together,
allow the “idling Spirit” to interpret its own moods. As with
Wordsworth, Coleridge here demonstrates the power of nature to teach and
awe and to offer comfort and joy. Whereby the father in the poem was raised
in the city and saw nothing more beautiful than the night sky, his child
will “wander like a breeze/ By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the
crags/ Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,/ Which image in their
bulk both lakes and shores/ And mountain crags.” Clearly, what nature
offers through its “lovely shapes and sounds” is thought to
bring one closest to God, the universal Teacher. Like with Wordsworth,
the speaker records his thoughts with a wish for a beloved person to know
and appreciate nature in all its seasons. To know God in nature and to
recognize the ministerial powers of frost puts the human experience in
this new world of experience and imagination.
Coleridge’s comments on the purpose of poetry are centered in “the
communication of truths…pleasure and that of the highest and most
permanent kind may result form the attainment of the end” (Coleridge’s
Literary Theories on the Imagination). Coleridge offers that
A poem is that species of composition which
is opposed to works of science by proposing
for its immediate object pleasure, not truth, and
from all other species it is discriminated by
proposing to itself such delight from the whole
as is compatible with a distinct gratification from
each component part.
(Coleridge)
Clearly, the concept of experiencing pleasure goes against the Puritanical
teachings of Christianity. The link between thoughts and emotions within
the poet himself, in reaction to any outside stimuli is where the poet
now stands.
This platform of emotional response to nature and the creation of literature
out of feeling and perception deflate the safety and predictability of
Neo-Classical thought. At the onset of the Romantic period, the influences
of political revolution and emergence of the theory of evolution remove
the ideas that had been fixed until then. When humanity recognized the
possibility of the infinite and the opportunities for an individual to
seek artistic expression of his or her passions because the controlled
climate of reason and conservatism were shattered, poetry became personal.
It became real in the sense that any person could feel and experience
and sense and, therefore, could create. To grant that a workman, even,
could express individuality and in his experience name some truth to which
any other individual could relate, regardless of education or background,
allowed for a leveling of the playing field. On all levels, this is revolution.
A poet is empowered to dive into the meaning of all things. A poet is
allowed to create his own story and speak to any of those conditions considered
universal human experience. The freedoms of the individual to feel, experience,
and create diminished the hold of logic and reason, Puritanical norms,
and confining conventions in literary creation.
…so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
--Coelridge
Works Cited Khorll
Blake, William. “There is no Natural Religion” [b].
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Frost at Midnight.”
http://www.blakearchive.org/cgi-bin/nph-dweb/blake/Illuminated-Book/AMERICA/@Gen...
October 3, 2005.
https://webct.umaine.edu/36048_O_061_ENG557/Readings/Coleridge_Poetry_
October 25, 2005.
http://en. Wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake’s _mythology. October
3, 2005.
http://www.unizar.es/departamentos/filologia_inglesa/garciala/hypercritica/05.Romantic/
Untitled Document. December 18, 2005.
Wordsworth, William. “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798.”
Erin D. Sproul
Burne-Jones
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