Welcome to Module 3! (1.5 – 2 hours)
Here’s what you need to do by next class:
- Think further about the text and format you will choose for your class project (proposal due next week).
- Read from the Anthology:
– “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” by William Wordsworth, 1798 (6 pages inc. author intro), also
available here.
– “La belle dame sans merci,” by John Keats, 1820 (4 pages inc. author intro), PDF here. - Watch the lecture below (Part 1 and Part 2).
- Come up with one question about the readings and write it in the comments below: has anything confused you? Struck you? Awed you? Revolted you? Interested you, in any way? We will use your questions for dicussion in class.
NB: you can’t write the same question as anyone else that has already commented before you. - Fill out the exit ticket for this lecture so I can count your participation.
Below is the lecture transcript:
Below are the slides:
Wanna do more?
- The School of Life on Romanticism and why we are still hopeless Romantics today: https://youtu.be/OiRWBI0JTYQ
- A very short documentary on Wordsworth: https://youtu.be/Mvps8Nt4AVs
- A podcast by Writ Large in which a text by Persian poet Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī is compared to Wordsworth’s poem: https://www.writlarge.fm/episodes/indications-of-inimitability
- An helpful article to decrypt Keats’ “La belle dame sans merci” (though we differ on the interpretation of the related Punch Magazine cartoon): https://ricochet.com/597760/archives/quote-of-the-day-la-belle-dame-sans-merci/
Feel free to write a second comment or reply to any of your classmates’ comments if you feel like saying anything else about the module content 🙂
I guess John Keats struggled in an unattainable love when he wrote down La Belle Dame sans Mercy. He was falling in love with a beautiful woman in reality. But meanwhile, he had some complaints about her unpredictability and fear of rejection.
In this poem, I see the sexism in a patriarchal society at that period. The lady was unidentified, had no right to speak, and was passive. He speculated, “she looked at me as she did.” The lady was passively set up by the knight, placed on the steed, and passively took the garland and bracelets. When she said, “I love thee true,” but the knight seems her language was strange, just like men thought women’s words were dull and stupid at that time.
Hi Laura, thank you for your comment! It’s helpful to read the poem from the perspective of feminism — I had not thought of it that way! It also relates nicely with the 1920s cartoon from Punch Magazine, which is more obviously linked to the condition of women.
As for Keat’s love life at the time… no way to know! But it’s important to remember we’re literary analysts more than biographs. The text already contains everything that we can draw from it, and while the historical context is helpful to shed light on a piece of literature, the life of the author is generally less so. Even if we could ask Keats, we might not want to take everything he’d say at face value. As the audience, we can make what we want of the text, and see it in ways that the author himself/herself had not foreseen. Thanks for sharing !
I learned in this module that Romanticism “rejects” the Enlightenment. Are they complete opposites or can they share some similarities or values? If so, what do they share? Also, does the Enlightenment “reject” Romanticism the same way Romanticism “rejects” the Enlightenment?
Excellent question, Kadija! Part of Tuesday’s activities will be to try and answer that question based on the two poems. As always, though, the aim is to try not to think too black-and-white. There is a limit to how new a movement can be, as it is always somewhat based on the previous one, and it shares much of the same socio-historical period.
As for your last question, the Enlightenment comes before Romanticism, but there may have been some overlap where Enlightenment thinkers would have criticized budding Romanticism ideas (think old generations criticizing the youngsters!)
Also, can you think of some chap who was a good example of sitting inbetween the two movements? 😉
For La belle dame sans merci, it is interesting to see that men from the 17th century can display emotions of vulnerability in a time when men had to portray themselves as masculine and tough. It seems like John Keats was very much in love with a woman who betrayed him in some way.
Hi Tanya, thank you for your comment! Well-spotted on the male vulnerability here. And interesting to see that that vulnerability also becomes an insecurity a couple of centuries later, with this poem being reworked as a cartoon, right?
I wonder if we can see this vulnerability as not only applying to Keats and his potential love life, and maybe see this poem as a statement for male vulnerability? Or simply, a statement that describes the state of mind or mood of people at a time of rapid change in society and culture (Industrial Revolutions, rapid modernization, etc.).
In William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” composed in 1798, why does Wordsworth keep repeating the word “five” and what is emphasized by “five”?
Excellent question, Ying! This is up to you to interpret, but here are three possible thoughts you can have here: 1. Think about time (five years, five summers. 2. research the symbolism of the number five. 3. bear in mind that this could or could not have much of an intended meaning, although nothing is accidental!
Romanticism, especially with these two readings, are very heavy on emotions and there’s also a connect to nature. I was wondering what the public impression of these writings were especially right after the very logic-heaviness of Enlightenment. Is this somewhat of a mind vs heart matter when it comes to these two periods?
Definitely, Puspita! Very well expressed.
In what ways do the themes in La Belle Dame sans Merci apply to todays society? How can people in modern times relate to the characters?
It’s a great thought to relate past literature to today’s world. Are there themes you recognize as intemporal and universal in this poem?
(One thing to bear in mind though, is not to become too general in your analyses, when straying from the poem’s own time and space. Start by focusing on the immediate context and then you can relate it to today’s context).
In William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”, I noticed a recurring theme revolving around the emphasis of the word nature. The capitalization of the word brought about a different interpretation of its meaning in that context.
Yes, Darius! Substantive (nouns) were capitalized in standard 18th-century writing, and this poem being written just at the turn of the century, you could think this explains the capitalization of the word “nature.” However, here’s a clue: Wordsworth vowed to write in plain, unrefined language. So what could the intentional capitalization of “nature” mean, here?
I am fascinated with how John Keats is able to portray emotion through literary devices in his writing. I am partly fascinated with Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci because it is so different to those that we have previously read like the works of Rousseau. In this piece, Rousseau writes, “ My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains. My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.” The focus on emotion is always emphasized in almost every line of his work. For example, works of Romanticism involve thinking with your heart while works of the Enlightenment have to do with thinking with your brain. Thus, my question would be: What caused Romanticism writers to think in such a drastically different way?
In “La belle dame sans merci,” by John Keats I found it to be very interesting in the way he chose to write about women, especially with the woman emancipation that was taking place. This change in view on how men would now have to view woman is something that really stood out. So do you think this was the main thing Keats was attempting to comment on? Did he really dislike it or was it just something he wasn’t used to?
Do you see any parallels between religion and “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”? When he keeps referencing the place that gives him the ability to keep being kind that he wants to go back to, it reminds me of heaven.
Absolutely, excellent thought, Jean! Let’s see if we can discuss this further during the class activity.
In “lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” the symbolism brought out by the use of nature is strong. How would this poem influence the writers of this time as to using nature and current social events?
Romanticism focuses on nature and empiricism. It also contains many fancys and imaginations, such as the “elfin” figure in Keats’s poems. But there is a difference between the two. How does romanticism recognize fancys and imaginations? Do they think they are nature thoughts or something beyond nature, that came from people?