Romantic Quests vs. New Criticism

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Romantic Quests vs. New Criticism

• Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson and Felicia Hemans

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Outline

• Starting Questions Romantic Quest Defined
• Tinturn Abbey Wordsworth
• John Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci the
  images
• Tennyson The Lady of Shalott
• New Criticism
• Keats and New Criticism Ode on Melancholy as
  an example
• Felicia Hemans

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Starting Questions

• What do you think about the poems youve read
  (Tinturn Abbey La Belle Dame Sans Merci Lady
  of Shalott)? Do you appreciate their concerns
  or find them boring?
• What does Quest mean? Are you in any kind of
  quest?

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Romantic Quests
The Sublime Transcending the human Truth in
Nature, Democracy

Beauty
Art
Women, Nature, Medievalism
The poets
Romanticism Defined
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Wordsworths Tinturn Abbey

• What is it about? How is this poem similar to
  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud?
• To understand the poem, you need to
• pay attention to changes of tenses
• Syntax (where subjects and verbs are) and
  conjunctions (e.g. such as, so that, nor)
• reading

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Visualization

• Cliffs

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Visualization

• Cottages, Orchards, Hedgerow

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Tinturn Abbey Structure

• 1. Re-Visiting
• 2. The influences of memories of the natural
  scenes --from sensations to vision on life
• 3. Addressing the Wye river
• 4. Back to the present moment, to think over the
  future and the past.
• 5. Turn to his sister, to find hope in his sister
  and to strengthen her against future decay.

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Wordsworths Tinturn Abbey

• 1. Pay attention to the many repetitions in this
  poem. Do they correspond to the content of the
  poem? Are there beautiful lines in this poem?
• 2. What do you think about the speakers views of
  
• 1) natures influence on us (ll. 122-134), and
• 2) our different experiences of nature at
  different ages of our lives (stanza 3)?
• 3. What role does the sister play in this poem?

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Wordsworths Quests in Tinturn Abbey

• Functions of repetition
• 1) (once again, how oft, ) to show changes
• 2) (in which, in thy voice, so so) to
  reinforce his beliefs
• 3) alternates with the vivid descriptions.
• Attempts to deal with aging, losses and even
  death.
• Seeks comfort in nature, but ultimately in the
  sisters remembering him. In this way, Nature
  is finally displaced.
• Actually, there are more displacements in this
  poem.

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Tinturn Abbey in Context

• French revolution in 1789, which inspired
  Wordsworth to visit France in 1791. He returned
  in despair in 1792.
• Two visits 1793 1798 Ws trip to Salisbury
  Plain and North Wales in the summer of 1793, and
  his return visit particularly to the abbey, on
  July 13, 1798.
• 1793 the publication of his first poems.
• 1798 the conception of the idea for Lyrical
  Ballads and then its publication. ? The poem, in
  this sense, is an important example of his poetic
  quest (for Nature or for Poetic Self).

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Wordsworth Tinturn Abbey

• In the poem not a word is said about
• the French Revolution,
• the impoverished and country poor, orleast of
  allthat this event and these conditions might be
  structurally related to each other. (J. McGann
  85-86)

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Tinturn Abbey in 1790s

• A favorite haunt of transients and displaced
  personsof beggars and vagrants of various sorts,
  including female vagrants.
• ? Wordsworth observes the tranquil orderliness
  of the nearby pastoral farms and draws these
  views into a relation with the vagrant dwellers
  in the houseless woods of the abbey.
• The poems method to replace an image and
  landscape of contradiction with one dominated by
  the power/Of harmoney or a picture of the
  mind.

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John Keats (1795-1821 age 26)

• His poetic quest is both difficult and brief.
• Family His father died in a riding accident his
  mother involved in a lawsuit against her own
  mother over inheritance. Keats nursed her mother
  when she was ill with T.B., and, later, his
  brother with T.B. Then finally he contracted the
  disease.
• clip on Keats

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John Keats (1795-1821 age 26)

• 1810 -- Keats started out as an apprentice to an
  apothecary (pharmacist).
• 1813 -- He was inspired by Spenser and Homer.
• 1816 promoted to assistant surgeon but also
  started to publish his poems.
• 1817 publishes his first book met Wordsworth,
  but didn't like him.
• 1818 nursed his brother met Fanny Browne
• 1819 The Great Odes, and several other poems.
  Engaged to Fanny Brown Fell ill.

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Keats Main Concerns in his Poetic Quest

• Truth and Beauty vs. Mortality (vale of
  soul-making)
• Intense but Transient Sensual Pleasures in Nature
  
• He is always keenly aware of, or even
  relishes, the possible contradictions.

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La Belle Dame reading

• 1. Plot Theme Is the woman real or not? What
  does she represent? Can you think of any similar
  experience to this? In other words, can the
  woman be symbolic of some ideal you pursue?
• 2. Plot Theme What are the functions of the
  dream(s)?
• 3. Structure Beginning, middle and end?
• 4. Narration/Narrative Frames Why doesnt the
  knight tell the story to us directly in a
  first-person narrative? Why is there another
  speaker in the poem? What does this speaker add
  to the poem?

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La Belle Dame sans Merci?

• Theme Unrequited love, or obsession in an
  impossible quest?
• The woman beautiful and weak, to be protected
  and decorated, love,.
• Impossible quest offers sweetness love a
  fairys child as she did love strange
  language sigh full sore. sweet moan?

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Images of la Belle Dame
John William Waterhouse

The latter painting reveals Waterhouse's growing
interest in themes associated with the
Pre-Raphaelites, particularly tragic or powerful
femmes fatales.
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Images of la Belle Dame

Left Sir Frank Dicksee (British, 1853-1928)
Right Arthur Hughes (British, 1832-1915)
Pre-Raphaelite Painter.
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Images of la Belle Dame

Frank Cadogan Cowper, the last of the
Pre-Raphaelites
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La Belle Dame theme structure

• The latest dream not the only dream, not only
  dreamed by him.
• The stranger describes the knight as well as the
  environment, thus provides a sense of reality
  (which can be abundant).

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La Belle Dame vs. traditional ballads

• Traditional ballads (Thomas the Rhymer) lack
  of self-consciousness.
• Keats estranged personsthe knight by virtue of
  his experience with the elfin lady, and the
  balladeer by virtue of his narration of that
  experience. ? the irrevocable loss of an entire
  area of significant human experience as well as
  its meaning.

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Tennyson

• Representative of the Victorian views of
  literature/arts social functions.
• The Lady of Shalott significance
• reflects The Womans Question
• Two versions 1833 and 1842
• The most favoured of all Tennysonian subjects
  among the PRB.
• Question I what is the story about and how does
  the form help convey its meaning?

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The Lady of Shalott

• 1. Structure
• Part 1 1) Setting the river the fields, the
  road and the island
• 2) Lady of Shalott observed and
  listened to
• 3) Form alternation of short and long lines.
• Part 2 Shalott in her tower, weaving and
  looking at the shadows on the mirror sick when
  seeing funeral procession or lovers pass by.
• Form long lines with mellifluous sounds.

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The Lady of Shalott

• 1. Structure
• Part 3 Lancelot passes by and Shalott turns to
  see him.
• Form explosives alliteration images of
  light ends with rep. of she in action.
• Part 4 Shalott leaves her tower to go to
  Camelot. Action (writing her name and singing).
  
• Form explosives mellifluous sounds and
  feminine rhymes.

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The Lady of Shalott

• 1. Theme What can the mirror be symbolic of?
  What does the lady want?
• 2. Does it matter why we dont know why the lady
  is cursed?
• 3. There are two versions of this poem 1833 and
  1842 versions. Compare the endings of these two
  versions.
• 4. Compare this poem with La Belle Dame by
  Keats. What aspects of Quest are presented in
  these two poems? Does gender make a difference
  here?

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The Lady of Shalott

• 1833 version the ending.
• They crossd themselves, their stars they blest,
• Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.
• There lay a parchment on her breast,
• That puzzled more than all the rest,
• The wellfed wits at Camelot.
• The web was woven curiously,
• The charm is broken utterly,
• Draw near and fear not,--this is I,
• The Lady of Shalott.

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Images of Shalott
William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott,

• allegorical elements  Please pay attention to
  the wall's dark tapestries, "upon which swirl the
  twisting bodies of angelic and allegorical
  figures, while the two roundels supporting the
  great mirror feature scenes of the Fall and the
  nativity Wadsworth" (Pearce 79) exotic
  elements  sandals samovars (Russian urn)

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Images of Shalott
William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott,
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Images of Shalott
Elizabeth Siddal, The Lady of Shalott
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Images of Shalott
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Lady of Shallott,
1857 Wood engraving, 35/16 x 31/16 in. Victoria
and Albert Museum, London
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New Criticism Methodology (1) Poetry
Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Figurative Language
• Denotations,
• connotations
• and etymological roots
• Allusions
• Prosody
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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New Criticism Methodology (2) Narrative
Whole Themes harmonized pattern, tension,
ambiguities, paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Narrator
• (Point of view),
• dialogue,
• setting,
• Plot
• Characterization
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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John Keats -- the New Critics

• T.S. Eliot cited Ode to a Nightingale a case of
  impersonal art that he elevated over the
  Wordsworthian effect of expressing a
  personality.
• Keats poet as camelian
• Wordsworthegotistical sublime
• Keats negative capability (an ability to negate
  self-interest)
• The Great Odes integration of intellect and
  emotion form and content.

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Ode on Melancholy

• Note To the Romantics, the word no longer
  signified a state of clinical gloominess,
  strangeness, and solitary wanderings. It implied
  a positive, heightened sensibility which could,
  of course, bring inspiration to the artist.

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Ode on Melancholy

• 3 parts
• Part I Do not use drugs or poison (traditional
  symbols of death melancholy) to ease your
  pains
• Part II Rather savor melancholy to the fullest
  (through appreciating transient natural beauties
  or the mistresss anger).
• Part III. Because melancholy is inseparable from
  transient beauty, joy, painful pleasure,
  appreciated only by the one with fine palate.

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Ode on Melancholy

• Paradoxes
• 1. Negative imperative active verbs active
  pursuit of these easy means of escape will, in
  the end, get the soul drowned.
• 2. Paradox of birth death beauty transience
  observation eating
• 3. Active pursuit of pleasures and pains ? turns
  the poet into something passive.

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Keats Odes in the Eyes of New Critics
Deconstructionist

• Its density suitable for close analysis
• a totalizing principle as the guiding impulse
• Ironies a discontinuous world of reflective
  irony and ambiguity ? Paul De Man Almost in
  spite of itself, this unitarian criticism finally
  becomes a criticism of ambiguity, an ironic
  reflection of the absence of the unity it has
  postulated. (Wolfson 191-92)

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Keats Odes in the Eyes of New Critics
Deconstructionist

• Example
• Ode to a Nightingalean organic form, a unity
  encompassing the interrelation of its parts,
  its formal elements and its subject. (Brooks)
• a turmoil of disintegration (Wasserman)
• Keats Odes engagement with a state of
  perpetual indeterminacy

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Womens Roles in Romantic Quests?
Felicia Hemans -- seen as angel by her
contemporaries She seems to me to represent and
unite as purely and completely as any other
writer in our literature the peculiar and
specific qualities of the female mind. . . The
delicacy, the softness, the pureness, the quick
observant vision, the ready sensibility, the
devotedness, the faith of woman's nature
(source http//digital.library.upenn.edu/women/he
mans/rf-hemans.html ) -- Poetess, whose duties
are to sing of domestic bliss e.g. The Homes of
England -- exception Casabianca
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Note Romanticism

• A movement in art and literature in the
  eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt
  against the Neoclassicism of the previous
  centuries . . Imagination, emotion, and freedom
  are certainly the focal points of romanticism.
  Any list of particular characteristics of the
  literature of romanticism includes subjectivity
  and an emphasis on individualism spontaneity
  freedom from rules solitary life rather than
  life in society the beliefs that imagination is
  superior to reason and devotion to beauty love
  of and worship of nature and fascination with
  the past, especially the myths and mysticism of
  the middle ages.
• (source http//www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/ )

Outline
Back
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References

• Walfson, Susan J. Formal Charges The Shaping of
  Poetry in British Romanticism. Stanford 1997.
• McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology A
  Critical Investigation. Chicago U of Chicago P,
  1983.
• Pearce, Lynn. Women/Image/Text. London
  Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1991.
• Images of La Belle Dame Sans Meric
  http//www.artmagick.com/themes/theme4.aspx