Notes 3/30

Postmodernism

It's collage-like, juxtaposing passages without explaining how and interested in disrupting what is ordinarily thought.

Genre - "kind"; genre fiction - formulaic

-novel 18th century (1700)

-short story Romantic era (1800)

-canon of great literature - selected works of literature. In recent years, the canon has been blown apart - supplanted by cultural studies. People became aware of the politics of reading nothing but canon and started to get away from strictly using it. However, the politics may have gone too far. There is great art! But also explain why! It's too narrowly defined currently that people can't see great art in everything.

By worshipping a "great" artist, it's a form of alienated majesty; people see their own greatness projected in that artist and that is why they believe it's great. "Forms of Attention"

Attention is a limited commodity, and the canon is a way to compartmentalize that commodity. However, it has gotten out of hand which is why people are now trying to escape it. We need to find a steady balance between "great" art and "all" art.

Notes 3/27

The Child and Flowers by Mrs Hemans


The poet is writing to our inner child. An ekphrastistic poem is a poem written about an image. In the poem, the child went to the meadow and brought back some flowers. "Nature hath mines of such wealth--and thou/ Never wilt prize its delights as now!" As we grow, we lose our childlike wonder of nature, even though that wonder never fades. We change, not nature.


Some questions...

Is the meaning 0f the poem the same in all the different versions? Does the format affect the meaning?


The content is the same in all the different versions but the reading experience will be different due to the reader's preference. The format can affect the meaning. With poems, the flow and breaks in poems can be important and if that flow is disrupted or changed the meaning could be altered.


How is the visual image of the poem helpful to understanding?


Some poems are meant to be seen and read, rather than heard and understood. Seeing a poem, how its put together, the way in which it's constructed, all adds to the poem's experience. If we lose the ability to visualize poems, either by digitizing or by putting them in books, we'll lose something about the poems that we won't be able to get back.

Notes 3/23

Frankenstein

Each version has specific words that appear in each of them: friend, creature, noble, misery. We transition from the 1818 version to the Thomas version to the 1831 version, and we can see how she progressed as an author to her final piece. In the earlier edition, it was less emotional and more analytical and the later edition, the scene was more emotional and studied more closely the interactions of individuals.

Did Mary Shelley write three different novels?

I don't think she wrote three entirely different novels, merely three versions of the same novel but the progression from start to finish may appear to be two different novels, in what she has changed, inserted, deleted from her original. Her characters may appear different than when she first wrote them because of that. Each version is slightly different but I don't think its enough to be considered different novels.

How does digitizing these texts help us think about the different versions? (visualization!)

Digitizing the texts allows us to look at the novel in ways that we would otherwise be unable to. For example, tag clouds help us to find what concentration of words are found in each text which enables us to make new correlations between them and about them.

Notes 3/20

Define:

Epic art is art that is over and above the normal, whose context lasts for all generations.

Modern life is life in the now, building on the past but living in the present.

Can there be heros in modern life?

Aurora believes there can be heros in modern life, the everyman who lives and breathes the ideals of that society, or doesn't. Heros are only heros when they're recognized. Even if someone does something great, but no one ever knows, they're not thought to be heros. But putting people, whether they be Alexander or King Arthur or the widow next door, into a poem immortalizes them and makes them heros. Heros of the past were normal people like us: they lived, they grew old and they died - time and literature has made them into something larger than they were. I think Aurora believes that because we are living in the "now" we are unable to see the heros that are amongst us, not enough time has passed; however, they are here if we write poems that reflect our times and not that of the past, whose heros have long since died.

Notes 3/18

Aurora is caught between two ideals of women, her mother (Italy) and her aunt (England). She has to learn that it's okay to be part of both ideals, not completely in one or the other. Her aunt is a caged bird who wants to cage Aurora, who is a wild bird. She thinks she's doing the right thing by her niece but Aurora who has been free doesn't want to be caged.

According to Romney, Aurora cannot be "Christ" and can only be "Madonna"; she can't be the center, the love, the passion; she can only be the one who helps that person. Aurora retorts that he doesn't want a lover but a wife; he wants her for the idea of her but not for herself. She claims his idea is noble and she is not worthy, thus turning things around on their head and getting want she wants, to not marry Romney, and making him believe he didn't just insult her as she leaves.

After rescinding Romney's offer of marriage, Aurora tells her aunt that she would rather die a poet than to marry for money. "At least/ My soul is not a pauper; I can live/ At least my soul's life, without alms from men." When her aunt dies and she has no money, Aurora must write for cyclopedias, magazines, weekly papers in order to hold herself up so that she can write for herself and still be financially supported.

Notes 3/16

Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


The rhythm of English poetry combines Germanic rhythm with French rhythm and creates a beautiful rhythm that makes poetry in English best. English poets can pit accent against syllable length, making a rolling type of speech.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She published her first book of poetry when she was 22 years old. She was very political, writing a long poet about children in work houses similar to the style of Charles Dickens. Her father cloistered her and she became addicted to morphine; her mother died when she was twenty. In 1846, she eloped with Robert Browning; they lived in Italy in a radical Bohemian lifestyle. She loved and lived with Browning until her death; she wrote some of the most beautiful, intense love poetry for him: "How do I love thee."


Book 1 Aurora Leigh

Her mother died four years after her birth and her father when she was twelve; she goes to live with her restrictive aunt, discovering her father's books on poetry and in that room becomes alive. "To live" has two connotations - to breath physically or to thrive spiritually


When her aunt looks for her mother in her face, she's trying to find the woman who stole her title and wealth when she married her brother (Aurora's father). Everything was passed through the first born son and when there is no heir, then its passed onto the nearest relative. Her father wasn't expected to marry and everything would have passed to his sister. But he meets Aurora's mother, moves to Italy and neglects his role as first born son. Once his wife dies, he puts all his affection on Aurora.


Aurora Leigh was the third greatest epic poem - Paradise Lost was the first (justify God to man); Wordsworth's The Prelude (growth of a poet) was the second. Aurora Leigh is also about the growth of a poet but also the growth of a woman. This poem is a papyrus, which was animal hide that was used as paper. Words were written, read then scraped off and reused. We are a papyrus: television, music, pop culture, literature, history has shaped us, words were written before us, scraped off and new ones added that created the layer of who we are today.


"traveling inland" a culturation; "the outer Infinite" the divine, God, whatever you want to call it; Children and babies have this look, this understanding but adults slowly lose it. Aurora has not yet lost this understanding. She hungers for the love of a mother, the comfort only a mother can give.


"They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words"



Mothers can communicate with and understand their children. Nursery rhymes are pretty words that make no sense but they sound good. It's not about what is said but how it is said.

Notes 3/6

Latimer claims to be able to read Alfred's mind and he says his brother doesn't have doubt or fears, but nobody is completely free from doubt and fear. Latimer doesn't really know his brother but he thinks he does.

The narrator, Latimer, is unreliable and his words can't be taken as fact. He claims that there is no evil in store for Alfred and if he didn't marry Bertha it was because someone better had come along. But Alfred dies that very day. Evil does befall him and he doesn't get a chance to marry Bertha or refuse her.

"The fear of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst": The need, the want of a relationship overcomes the intuition telling a person that the other is bad for them.

"Bertha that is not your real feeling": Latimer is projecting his own emotions onto Bertha - he doesn't want her to marry someone she doesn't love, and he knows they're going to be married, he wants her to love him!

"The easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell him the truth." She is feeling exactly what she's portraying but Latimer is purposefully misinterpreting her because of what he wants her to feel. Latimer doesn't have supernatural powers but rather an overactive imagination with the ability to project his own emotions and wants onto other people. When Latimer loves Bertha, she's portrayed as an amazing wonderful person; but when he doesn't lover her, she becomes a horrible monster. In both cases, the Bertha he "knows" is a projection, first an idealization and secondly a demonization. But he doesn't actually know her at all.

Does Latimer really love Bertha? No, he loves her for what he thinks she should be, for his inner portrayal, his fantasy, of her.

Did Latimer kill his brother? Did he want to marry Bertha so badly, was him "seeing" her married to him so overwhelming, that he killed his brother? Maybe.

Is judging realism? In order to escape your own pettiness, you judge other people's pettiness. Judgement raises a person above others, so when Latimer talks of Bertha's negativity and Alfred's shallowness, he's really seeing those things in himself but not accepting them so he finds those faults in others.

Latimer realized that he didn't love Bertha after his father died, he didn't need her anymore - nobody to compete with, nobody to prove himself to. The need for the relationship was gone.

Victor and Latimer

Does Latimer resemble Victor?

In many ways, I think Latimer resembles Victor; both had mothers who died when they were young, they both for a time lived in Geneva, both had childhoods that were happy and without want, except for want of a mother. But most importantly, both Latimer and Victor hold themselves in high regard. Victor believed he not only had the intelligence, the drive, the will to create human life but also the right. He didn't care who he hurt or who he pushed away; he was going to fulfill his dream because he wanted to. Latimer also believes himself to be above average, with greater mental capabilities. Not only does Latimer follow Victor's example in perhaps over-exaggerating his mental abilites but he believes them to be a curse just as Victor did. Fate cursed them both and neither can break free from her grip and think for themselves. They blame fate rather than taking responsibility for their actions. In this sense Latimer highly resembles Victor.

Notes 3/4

"okay, smile, not too much, just a little uplift of the lips, remember look at the camera, don't look away at other things, wonder what's taking so long, why am i doing this again, oh right my editor, there they're done..." stream of conscious of JK Rowling

The Lifted Veil by George Elliot

Evidence that Latimer actually has supernatural visions:

His vision of Prague. After his first disease and he realized that he had the ability to read minds/visions, Latimer went to Prague to see if the vision was true and it was. But the bridge he sees, is the most painted, photographed bridge in Prague. He might have seen it before.

Why can't he read Bertha's mind? It would take the fun out of his visions. Latimer is projecting his desire for what he wants her to be onto Bertha. She is a great "screen" because of her sarcasm, cynicism, sneering attitude that he believes someone can move her to emotion and he hopes it can be him.

In Latimer's youth, his mother worshipped him then died. He wants to get back to that all-embracing love from a woman and he's projecting that onto Bertha, who he thinks is worthy of that position his mother once held. He believes he's exceptional: "cursed, destined to be special".

He's more alone than a poet because he can't express his emotions and have others read his work; he talks of Rousseau who wrote "Confessions", an autobiography. Latimer is egotistical and self-absorbed but he's also romantic.