Wordsworth train of thought

While reading the Prelude, I found myself very scatter brained. I do like the fact that Wordsworth explains the feelings that we have during an experience are connected to the objects in which our memory holds on to. Wordsworth says, " Far other feelings were attached- with forms that yet exist with independent life, and, like their archetypes, know no decay." He talks about certain memories he has in his life that he began to connect those feelings with the objects around him to remind him of how he felt and the obstacles he had throughout his life. Wordsworth elaborates that there is times in our lives that have virtue, even bad memories. Our moods change by our good and bad experiences, but the imagination lightens the bad experiences. He begins to talk about how, "The mind of a man is fashioned and built up even as a strain of music", signifying that he believed that the mind is made up with parts and experiences like music, meaning that there is a rhythm to the way that people think. He also mentions again how Nature is what makes our mind at peace and harmony.

Better understanding of the Giaour

After discussing the poem in class, I seem to understand the poem more intensely as opposed to the previous reading on my own. I seem to grasp the concept more elaborate about the sense of hero that the giaour seems to be portraying in the poem. The giaour seems to be troubled himself when it comes to becoming or playing the part of a "byronic hero". The definition of a byronic hero according to the dictionary is,"a Byronic hero is a melancholy and rebellious youngman, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past." This definition of the byronic hero is considerably showed in the Giaour. The Giaour is seen by the slave lover as an escape from the master and trouble in her life, but the Giaour has some unresolved issues within himself that make him very flawed in his title as being a hero. For instance, when the slave lover is thrown over the boat into the lake, the Giaour first instinct is to take revenge on the Hassan master for the murder he committed. Later on the Giaour talks about if he had been the Hassan Master he would have done the same out of hate. The Giaour is also confessing his sins to the monk, proving that he knew that he distressed about events in his life and wanted to confess his wrongful thoughts about the death.




Also, the teacher stated the metaphor for these three characters as countries. The two men characters were fighting over the young frail Greece. Without the problem of Greece, then there would be no reason to fight. Like what the Giaour was confessing to the monk, but he knew and loved the slave lover, but the reason for her death was because of the hate that the Hassan master possessed. The Giaour was torn between doing right and what his mind was telling him to believe. The Giaour fought with himself constantly through the whole confession, emphasizing that he was really unsure of what he thought and what he felt.

Lord Byron- who's the narrator?

I had a little trouble trying to figure out who the narrator was in each stanza. The whole thing was fragmented and I was very confused about where his train of thought was going. I understood that the piece was about revenge for a slave lover that was thrown overboard by her master for her affair. I was just really confused due to the footnotes and the actual thought process behind the work. I enjoyed that the rhyme scheme and meter made it easier to read, but the fragmented thoughts had me trying to figure out if the narrator was the Giaour or an observer. I found that he has very few pictures of him facing forward, this must be his better side for a portrait.

Thalaba The Destroyer/ religious

At the beginning of the piece, all I could think about was how it was a lot like Aladdin the disney movie, because the palace was in a desert and it vanished at the end. The poem had many lessons to learn involving religion and that it was mostly about pleading to God for rain. It made me feel really depressed when the mother asked to be taken away by the Angel of Death, leaving the child alone to fend for himself to avenge his father and spread to word to others. The poem was interesting to read and the preface introduced what was to read and how to take the new style of writing like Wordsworth did, but it was a lot less boring! This poem was very interesting and I liked that it wasn't that hard to follow except for the names of the characters...that was crazy, but I did like that it taught a moral lesson, even though it was long because of the footnotes. Overall, it was great.

—William Wordsworth Presentation: Lyrical Ballads, 1800 Volume II —“Old Man Travelling"

Biographical Info

—William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

—Born: April 7, 1770, Cockermouth

—Died: April 23, 1850, Ambleside

—Siblings: Dorothy Wordsworth

—Education: St John's College, Cambridge, Hawkshead Grammar School, University of Cambridge 

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Wordsworth and Coleridge

—1795 - Moves to Dorset with his sister Dorothy and meets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two become close friends.

—1797 - Friendship with Coleridge: Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy move closer to Coleridge. For a year, the two poets are in daily contact with one another, a period that proves to be a vital creative period for both of them. Wordsworth produces the poem "Tintern Abbey," and Coleridge writes "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." They collaborate on a groundbreaking collection of poetry.

—1798 – Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written in "language really used by men," free of the "gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers."34 The book sparks the Romantic Age of English literature. In a preface to the second edition, Wordsworth warns the audience that they will either love or hate his new style of poetry.

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Images

Lyrical Ballads, 1800 Volume II

About the 1800 Edition 2nd vol of “Lyrical Ballads”

—In the second, two-volume edition of 1800, Wordsworth... expanded the Advertisement into a Preface which justified the new poetry not as experiments, but as exemplifying the principles of all good poetry... The Preface deserves its reputation as a revolutionary manifesto about the nature of poetry... [It serves] not only as a turning point in English criticism but also as a central document in modern culture" (Norton Anthology of English Literature).

—Contains all the poems in the first edition plus one additional poem in the first volume, and the first printing of the forty-one new poems in the second volume.

—Written in Grasmere, England along with the work written in Germany.

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Publication

—Published by Joseph Cottle and Biggs of Bristol firm.

—This time the authors could not oversee the printing process because they were in the Lake District.

—They hired chemist, Humphry Davy to assist with the editing and printing. However, he did little as he was unfamiliar with the poets’ intentions with regards to the printing inquiries and was ill much of the autumn of 1800.

—Wordsworth’s communication with the printer was through letters in which he requested that the arrangement of the poems be changed after the printing process had already begun and even tried to change the title of the volume. The most significant change was the withdrawal of Coleridge’s Christabel, and was substituted by Wordsworth Michael.

—Biggs and Cottle had canceled the first print run mentioning Christable in the “Preface” delaying the publication of the new edition.

—Delays meant that Longman could not distribute the volumes in time to take advantage of the 1800 Christmas trade, and Biggs and Cottle had to rush "Michael" through the press. Inevitably, they made a big mistake: fifteen lines of the poem, crucial to the plot, were omitted, and Wordsworth complained that the volume "is throughout miserably printed," while Coleridge fumed over "an infamous Blunder of the Printer" (Butler & Green 26-31, 123-125; Healey 6).

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1798 & 1800 Editions of “Old Man Travelling”

— In the 1798 edition, lines 17-20 are in quotation marks and spoken by the old man rather than paraphrased by the narrator.

—Title in the 1798 edition is Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquility and Decay, A Sketch.

—In the 1800 edition, removes the quotation marks from lines 17-20 so that they are spoken by the narrator.

—Title in the 1800 edition was shortened to “Animal Tranquility and Decay: A Sketch”

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Reception

—The immediate effect on critics was not well received overall, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry.

—Not a best seller but sold well overall and extended in four editions between 1798-1805.

—1798 edition was not a large run, about 200 copies were sold within two years.

—The reviews were mostly favorable and the poems were reprinted many a times in magazines and miscellanies.

—1800 edition included an addition of a preface, second volume and an additional 227 pages of newly composed verse (all by Wordsworth).

—George H. Healey, "bibliographically the most complex of all Wordsworth's books.”

Current auction price for “Lyrical Ballads”

—WORDSWORTH, William; and COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Lyrical Ballads. London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800. Small octavo, contemporary full calf with original red and green morocco labels. Two volumes. Housed in custom half-leather box. $14,000.

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Sources

How Revolutionary Was Lyrical Ballads (1798-1800)?

ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/download/262/259

http://wordsworth.classicauthors.net/

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The "1798 Lyrical Ballads" and the Poetics of Late Eighteenth-Century Book Production Alan D. Boehm ELH , Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 453-487

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030228

http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/preface.html#history

http://www.manhattanrarebooks.com/lyrical.htm

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Gothic themes

I enjoyed reading Matthew Lewis because it is more of a gothic theme. Gothic themes seem to interest me a lot and I found myself actually caring what happens next unlike some of the other things we have read. I think that Lewis did a great job with keeping the reader interested by throwing in drastic changes like when the monk stole her and held a dagger to her neck in "Bathwell's Bonny Jane".  That is just something that we normally don't read about during this time. I was caught by surprise, but very intrigued at the same time.

Dictionary time!

I found myself constantly looking up words that I have never hear of before while reading The Lay Of The Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott. It was interesting to me that he used the Spirits of the River and the Mountain in order to communicate with the Ladye. He took a lot of time describing the armor of the  knights and the horses in preparation for the revenge. It reminded me of epics during the middle ages. It wasn't that long of a read, but having to look up most of the words was a little annoying.

Keats losing spirit

After reading "On Seeing The Elgin Marbles", I decided to break down and figure out what he was saying. He has a lot of metaphors and similes throughout the poem that could get confusing to the reader. I feel that he was trying to tell the audience that he was ultimately troubled by the dark thoughts running through his head. He writes that he feels he must die and , "My spirit is too weak-mortality." This could infer that he has lost hope in trying to fight the battles within his heart. He finds luxury in sadness, while dark glories swarm his brain. To me, Keats seems really confused and just wants to escape because he thinks it is a complete waste of time.

Clarity in Smith

When reading "To the fire-fly of Jamaica" I found myself wondering what was going on. The clarity in that poem is tremendously different form the clarity in "Beachy Head". In "Beachy head" I found it to be very descriptive of the nature and the surroundings of the beach. I could see how she used personification to explain a lot of movements within nature and scenes that were taken place among the beach. She talks about wanting her mind to return to a state of peace. She describes nature so precisely that I can almost picture myself right there watching everything happen by seeing what she sees through her writing.

Fragmented Timothy

As I was reading Timothy, I found myself constantly jumping around because of the constant use of fragments throughout the work. I liked that it was from the point of view of a tortoise instead of the point of view of a person. The reader was able to understand the descriptions of nature and see the influence that nature has on people. I got a sense that the reader was supposed to see that people and nature react to seasons and death differently. Nature should be protected and people should try to learn from nature.

Finding Peace and Beauty Within Nature

Wordsworth describes finding peace and quiet while observing nature. He mentions running away from the chaos that he witnesses outside of nature. Wordsworth elaborates tremendously about feelings of restoration, guidance, and the sadness that he inhabits from observing human life versus the nature that he observes and loves. He describes himself worshiping and finding a friend that never betrays him within nature. He also describes remembering the nature scene for a place to find peace and heal. Wordsworth definitely painted a picture in my head and gives me the impression that nature is his "happy place."

Darwin's The Loves of the Plants

I found it very interesting that Darwin would use sexual concepts while trying to describe the plants that he observed. While reading the poem, I pictured a very vast collection of plants being carefully inspected by Darwin. He takes his time to distinctly mention each plant and its sexual orientation. I found it very easy to relate to and understand because of the certain personifications he gave to each plant described. The personalities of humans and mating strategies were enforced upon the plants probably to make it easier for the reader to relate to, but then at times it gets in great detail and a bit erotic. All in all, I enjoyed Darwin's attempt to explaining the natural world.