1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected
in the ideological, conceptual and linguistic construction of the texts under
consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples...
2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what
really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
Question 1: Ideological construction.
ReplyDeleteInnocence/ Sublime:
The first impression of the children in this story is that they are poor. The example to support this shows children being sold to become chimney sweeps. The context of this lies in the fact that there was no form of known contraception and that for many families; they weren’t ready for another child. As a result, the course of action, selling children was deemed worthy as a last resort. Children were sought after as it was not practical to have a grown man trying to clean long narrow chimneys. Consequently children who had become chimney sweepers, would have a short life expectancy, and would die as a result of the soot.
Where do we see innocence? Blake sees this as being a problem but tries to find a solution by creating innocence. We see this as it is narrated by an older boy who tries to comfort Tom Dacre while he is getting his hair shortened. Tom doesn’t realise that this will result in there being less soot on his head as longer hair would carry more. The narrator dreams of children being buried in coffins and are freed by Angels , they can then go be cleansed and be free to live in heaven. The children were saved by the “father” as they were good boys for working and not complaining about their lifestyles. Good boys made it into heaver. The Ideological theory can be seen from this Christian vision or method. This in turn shows innocence as it boosts moral for this child, it could however be noted that this could also be a false sense of hope.
Hey Daniel,
DeleteI like what you have said about innocence, that fact that it is doing something illegal, you have added an example that backs this up. Blake committed an illegal action in order to find a solution.
Allan
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ReplyDeleteInterpretation Analysis of Lord Byrons: Manfred Dramatic Poem.
ReplyDeleteGoing online to see what really happened at the Villa Diodati, I found that Manfreds sister committed suicide due to Manfred's actions. In an attempt to forget all that happened, Manfred sought after assistance from 7 spirits of the earth. Having found that they could not help him he went on to ask help from a Witch, she too couldn't help him, he then went on to meet with Lord Abbot, who asked for Manfred. It seems that Manfred had intense love for his sister, Astarte and wished either to bring her back or die in an effort to forget what happened.
Reference: http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/book/Works-of-Lord-Byron-Vol-4-by-Byron
Reference: http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/byron/manfred.pdf
Q.2
What happened that fateful summer in Villa Diodati?
Lord Byron along with 4 other writers, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Claire Claremont, Mary Shelly, John Polidori and Edward Trelawny, and Theresa Guiccioli spent the summer at Villa Diodati in an effort to create the best and most well known Gothic Genre stories. This started a spree of Gothic stories, from that fateful summer.
Reference: http://www.harrys-stuff.com/byron/byron-shelley-intro.php
Stories such as The Vampire by John Polidori and Frankinstien by Mary Shelly were also birthed in this house. This paved a way for genres to follow such as Dracula etc.
What is a Sumblime?
ReplyDeleteTo cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form
Reference: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sublime
The Sublime expressed in Manfreds Dramatic Poem were reflected through his anguish and pain (a vapor state, that which cannot be seen, but can be felt). We could feel how much pain Manfred was going through as he described his need for torture and the willingness to die. His existence on earth was now useless without his love on his side, his sister, an object (solid) that he felt, and loved (vapor). The feeling he had for her was heart breaking (vapor) so much so that he would end his own life.
"In the next scene, Manfred attempts to plunge to his death from the high cliffs of the Jungfrau, but he is rescued by an elderly Chamois Hunter who takes him back to his cabin and offers him a cup of wine. Manfred imagines that the cup has blood on its brim, specifically Astarte's blood, which is also his own blood. This passage, along with Manfred's admission that he and Astarte had loved as they should not have loved, suggests that the two engaged in an incestuous relationship."
Another reference to sublime is the part where he imagines a solid state of blood as the blood of his sister, vapor state.
Reference: http://www.enotes.com/manfred-essays/manfred-george-gordon-noel-lord-byron
Hey Allan.
DeleteGood points, but you're using the scientific term of Sublime. For example Carbon Dioxide(Dry Ice) Sublimes at room temp.
The Romantic notion of the Sublime is perhaps more an "the Sublime, wherever it occurs, consists in a certain loftiness and excellence of language" (Longinus (n.d)) To take the reader out of himself into a wider more ecstatic form of themselves, or an expression of spirit.
Other scholars argue that the Sublime is something that willingly inflicts ideas of pain or grief, or any other negative feeling.
A good example of this would be from Shelleys Oxymandias.
"I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . "
These lines start painting a wider picture, the adjectives 'antique' and 'vast' are trying to pull the reader out of his little box and look at it from a longer distance. It's Sublime because you're taking only a few lines to portray a larger image; in this case it's an image of a desert. It immediately feels barren and empty except for the two legs of stone that stand isolated and lonely.
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings :
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. "
In this next section, it's shown that the world is decayed, and there is nothing left. Despite he, Ozymandias, a King of Kings stands alone, broken and dying. It's a image that makes us the beauty in our own world when beings like Ozymandias just stand there wasting away.
It is Sublime because it takes something so small, just an image of a broken statue and the words etched underneath it and makes it something more. It makes it an image of a broken tyranny.
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DeleteThe notion of the Sublime
DeleteYeah I'm going to have to agree with James. Thats not really the meaning of the Romantic notion of Sublime.
William Blake shows a great example of the Romantic notion of Sublime in The Tyger. Firstly, what is the notion of being Sublime? Here’s an excerpt from Edmund Burke’s definition of Sublime:
“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.”
I think the point of the Sublime is that it make us feel astonishment at something we cannot fully comprehend. The feeling of both terror and awe create a state of being that consumes our thoughts.
Here's the poem:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
The speaker is in a state of awe, feeling terror of the Tyger, but at the same time, unable to look away from it. Blake plays with the idea that the creation reflects the creator. “What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?” To be Symmetrical is to be perfect or harmonious proportionally. Blake writes a character that is perfectly harmonious in Beauty and horror. What kind of God creates something so beautiful yet has such a capacity for “deadly terrors clasp!” In a wider sense, what kind of God is one that created world so amazing yet drenched in evil? And since we were created by God, what is it like to live as a being that can both beautiful and terrible?
Blake also referenced The Lamb in this poem, reminding the reader that the same God of whom he speaks here is the same power that created the Lamb. In this song of innocence, the Lamb represents Jesus. Who, or what, does this Tyger represent? Perhap he represents an example of the Sublime, something that leaves us with unanswered questions, in awe of the complexity of creation and the colossal magnitude of God’s power.
ooop references =D
Deletehttp://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/sublime/burke.html
Oh damn, references. Knew I was forgetting something.
DeleteLonginus. (n.d.) On the Sublime. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17957/17957-h/17957-h.htm
Hey Allan, Nice you have some nice points there.
DeleteHowever, this is what I have came up with.
At the first, the author mentioned that the sublime has nothing like its currency. In critical writing, “sublime” can be used to characterize a work which includes many meanings, e.g. amazement, wonder or awe in virtue of its ambition, etc. Sublime works are produced in some unexpected places which informs passionate as hero. Also, sublime produces admiration, reverence, respect, terror and horror.
Great posts by James and Julia and Daehun.
DeleteBUT, I have to say that Allan your description was the most interesting. To try and apply scientific theory to prose in the way you did was a probably a huge headache, but it certainly shows you put a tonne of thought into it. Kind of a cool metaphor you have going there.
James and Julia nice work on this one. I was a bit scared of this question due to the scope, but but I think you've both made really good points. Especially in relation to the desert you were talking about James, and your notes about God and it's nature Julia. Mean as.
The concept of sublime is that the sublime “produces respect and reverence” as well as inciting an element of terror seemed rather pointless, apparently just a long-winded definition of the word. Pateman’s article, and indeed the original text itself, felt like a discussion about nothing, as they tried to find a word to describe what they were writing. However, I guess they are ultimately correct with their description. The concept that for something to be considered sublime it needs an element of terror as well as reverence, can be seen in ‘Manfred’ by the use of seven unearthly spirits, which draw on the aspects which Pateman identifies as that which terrifies us, “vastness…obscurity…magnitude” etc.
ReplyDeleteThe concept that these great works (‘Manfred’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’…) are all set in vast, dark, stormy evenings also align with the concept of the sublime.
I also think it interesting how Pateman reiterated a source of sublimity in art being colour, and the excessive descriptive colours used in ‘Ode to the West Wind’.
First of all, I found the Ken Russell trailers really dark. I mean it was really scary in a depressing, 1980’s budget kind of way, which most of the film accounts tend to be.
ReplyDeleteI found many accounts of Villa Diodati being referenced, including Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Haunted, Tim Powers’ The Stress of His Regard,
and the comic book The Unwritten. I also found a Hugh Grant stunner, Remando Al Viento (Paddling into the wind): http://youtu.be/Z9PB331jOos
The 1992 TV series Highlander, starring Colin Firth’s younger brother, also touched on the Villa Diodati summer: http://youtu.be/Z9PB331jOos
Hey Daehun,
ReplyDeleteHave you (or anyone else) read any of those books? I've had a breif read through a couple of issues of unwritten and thought it was pretty cool. Apparently it actually features the Villa in one arc, where a bunch of horror writers meet there and slowly get picked off. Pretty horrible stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed what I read though, definitely a series I'd like to get into more.
Russell's 1986 interpretation of the affair looks, quite frankly, ridiculous. But the darkness is certainly there. I guess it might have been something like that if the five attendees were straddling the line between 1970's cult member and 1980's metal band, rather than wealthy 19th century writers.
As for Hugh Grant and Colin Firths wee brother, I don't want to investigate any further there. Would've been cool to put up some pictures! I don't think we can do that in a reply though can we?