Category: Romanticism

Romantic?

Jeff

Who needs a masters voice when you have your own?

Supernatural, or at Least Romantic

PENSIVE at eve on the hard world I mused,
And my poor heart was sad; so at the MOON
I gazed, and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass
That wept and glitter’d in the paly ray:
And I did pause me on my lonely way
And mused me on the wretched ones that pass
Oe’r the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath’d in mine ear: “All this is very well,
But much of ONE thing, is for NO thing good.”
Oh my poor heart’s INEXPLICABLE SWELL!

— NEHEMIAH HIGGINBOTTOM

Nelson News

Jeff
Construction of Nelsons Column by Henry Fox Talbot

Nelson’s Column News

A CACHE of previously unknown letters written by Admiral Nelson’s wife has revealed the full heartache that she suffered over his affair with Emma, Lady Hamilton.

The letters are among a collection of artefacts kept by Alexander Davison, a confidant of the three members of the love triangle.

Fanny Nelson was eclipsed by the glamorous Lady Hamilton after she stole her husband, and historians have struggled to gauge her reaction to Nelson’s cruelty from the few remaining scraps of her writing. Although Lady Hamilton believed that Fanny “never felt in her life”, the tortured letters of the abandoned wife tell a story of “extreme misery” battling with undying loyalty.

—Times Online via NASSR-L

Reason to Believe

Jeff

Reason to Believe

Reason to Believe: Romanticism, Pragmatism, and the Teaching of Writing by Hephzibah Roskelley and Kate Ronald promises to be an interesting read.

The subheading on the title page doesn’t match. It reads: “Romanticism, Pragmatism, and the Possibility of Teaching.” Perhaps this reflects an earlier working title. I like it better, myself. This situates the book in the continuing debate (since Plato) regarding the very possibility of education. Indeed, the title of the first chapter reflects concern over these issues— “Is Teaching Still Possible?”

What lead me to this book was its engagement with Romantic ideology. While the book is specifically focused on American Romanticism, Emerson in particular, the general principles are of importance to me. This book is the only rhetorical scholarship listed in the Bedford Bibliography that deals with Romanticism and pedagogy in a positive light. Elsewhere, Romanticism is a demon to be slain. Here, the authors propose that engagement with the issues debated during the Romantic period can be a redemptive force in writing pedagogy.


Preface — 7/10
Chap. 1 & 2 — 7/12
Chap. 3 & 4 — 7/13
Chap. 5— 7/15
Chap. 6 & 7 — 7/17

Chapter one opens with contemporary theory. Chapter two continues the discussion, and procedes into American history. The third chapter provides careful consideration of Emerson, Thoreau, Fredrick Douglass, and Margaret Fuller. The fourth deals with pragmatism, and the fifth, neo-pragmatism. Chapter six deals with the presentation of romantic pedagogy in Dead Poet’s Society, and the final chapter presents real world examples of teachers using the romantic/pragmatic method.


Continue reading “Reason to Believe” →

Reason

Jeff

Friendly Observations

I must warn against an opposite error—namely, that if Reason, as distinguished from Prudence, consists merely in knowing that Black cannot be White—or when a man has a clear conception of an inclosed figure, and another equally clear conception of a straight line, his Reason teaches him that these two conceptions are incompatible in the same object, i.e. that two straight lines cannot include a space—the said Reason must be a very insignificant faculty. But a moment’s steady self-reflection will shew us, that in the simple determination “Black is not White”—or, “that two straight lines cannot include a space”— all the powers are implied, that distinguish Man from Animals—first, the power of reflection—2d. of comparison—3d. and therefore of suspension of the mind—4th. therefore of a controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark instincts.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Locke and Blake

Jeff

Wood s lot uncovered Romanticism on the Net.

Might I further suggest Romantic Circles, which has published an article written by my mentor, Dr. R. Paul Yoder, on the language philosophies of John Locke and William Blake:

Unlocking Language: Self-Similarity in Blake’s Jerusalem

Blake’s system differs from Locke’s in significant ways. First, it accepts, indeed insists upon a human standard, the standard of the human form rendered divine by the incarnation. Blake does not seek to remedy the obscurity to which language is “naturally liable” as Locke puts it. Instead, he sees this obscurity as having been appropriated by the Savior for the work of redemption when he took on the human form. Second, Blake’s system is not based on an atomistic object-reference language in which one must always use the same word for the same idea.

Sometimes that grain of sand is a whole world; sometimes that one man is a multitude. As is so often the case for Blake, it all depends on perspective, the expansion or contraction of the organs of perception. And third, Blake’s system respects the integrity of the minute particulars; it does not celebrate the general terms that Locke says are so essential to human thought. (21)

Generalities, though essential, are not all there is to theory. This issue, from March 2001, dealt with Romanticism and complexity. There is an odd relationship between complexity and obscurity. I like Yoder’s take on “fractal self-similarity” in all aspects of Blake’s work. The more deeply I studied Blake, the further my jaw dropped to the floor with his mastery of the manipulation of a reader. Most authors that write on Blake tend to play a similar game, insisting that Blake must be read as obscure and difficult to unravel. That’s what keeps the Blake industry in business.

It depends on your perspective, I suppose. A great deal of Blake’s work is frightfully simple— though fractured through levels of reference that seem to recede into infinity. Once you “get it” it’s actually fairly easy.