I. Critical Terminology and Ways to Analyze Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

II. Preparations: Reading, Discussing, and Being Tested . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Page 7

III. Concerns in Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Page10

IV. Neo-Classicism and Romanticism: A Context for the Study of Literature. . . . Page13

V. Brief Poems: Their Appreciation, Performance, and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . Page19

VI. Some Prejudices of Your Instructor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Page21 

A. No critical approach is true or Inherently superior to any or all other critical approaches. The value of a particular approach depends upon its usefulness (clarifying or enlarging experience) at the moment to the person who is employing it.

B. Moyer Abrams' list of critical approaches to literature and the other arts:

1. Expressive (author's relation to his work):
a. to what extent is the work a product of the author's life? (a correlation of the author's biography with the literary work)
b. what were the author's intentions, and were they fulfilled? (That the author's intentions are important Is called the intentional fallacy.)
c. how did the author construct the work? (a study of the various sources for and versions of the literary work)

2. Pragmatic (the reader's relation to the work):
a. what value does the work have for the individual reader? (This may or may not be in accordance with the author's Intention.)
b. what specific knowledge and experience of the reader enable her/ him to interpret the work and to share her/his criticism with others?

3. Mimetic (the relation of the work to the universe or reality):
a. is the work true to life or reality (as conceived by the reader .and/or most people)?
b. is the work a faithful representation or product of the period . in which it was written?

4. Obleciive (the relation of the parts of the work to each other and
to the whole of the work):
a. what is the relation of each part (word, line, stanza, section, mark of punctuation, sound, etc.) to every other part and to the whole work?
b. treating the whole work an a part of English or of World liter-ature, what is its relation to the whole? how Is it either a repetition, elaboration, or continuation of a literary tradition?

C. Analysis of Style (ultimately all literary matters are raduceable to diction, syntax, and the variable of the Individual's experiences up to the moment she/he reads the work.)

1. Diction (choice of words):
a. elevated or low (in term of what the occasion demands)
1b. formal or colloquial (written or informally spoken)
c. concrete or abstract (does the word represent something directly perceivable through one or more of the five sens*s, or does it represent a conglomerate of sense experiences or a concept?)
d. learned or simple (depends on number of syllables or frequency of use in everyday communication)
e. repetition (can result in either emphasis or do-ouphasts)
 

2. Syntax (word order):
a. regular (subject, ve rb, object) or irregular (for what purpose?
 emphasis, metrical or rime patterns?) Traditionally irregular
 syntax is justifiable for influencing meaning, but not justifi-
 able for sound effects.
b. simple or complex
c. dramatic: periodic (thought completed at end of sentence) or
 loose (thought completed early in sentence)
d. balance (parallelism and antithesis)
e. repetition (see l,e above)

D. Analysis of Poetry:

1. Poetry is not to be equated with verse; opposing poetry is non-poetry; opposing verse is prose; there is poetic prose.

2. All art is selective, not a mere recording of experience, and as such may be considered the conscious work of the artist. Therefore, the critic of literature can and should assume that every word and mark in the work has a purpose. Any statement about the content or style of a work should be followed by at least one of two questions: Why? or How? The attention of the critic should center on how the liter-ature is constructed, not what it says. One might also paraphrase the work being studied and discuss the differences in diction and syntax that exist between the paraphrase and the original work.

3. Judge poetic excellence by:

a. the principle of decorum (the interdependence of matter and form,
 content and style, sense and sound--making the rhythm, rime,
 diction, syntax, etc., parallel the meaning).

b. seeing whether the substitution, deletion, or addition of any
 word or the re-ordering of any words would improve the poem in
 any way, especially its unity.

4. Methods of Analyzing Poetry:

a. content: conceptual (ideas) or physical (things)

b. style (see C above)

c. form (the informal, external, often traditional pattern or shape of the poem) and structure (the internal organization of the content)

d. sound devices (repetition or interruption of sound patterns): (1) end rime: (a) the sonnet:

1. Italian or Petrarchan: abbaabba, cdecde (sestet has variations) (the emphasis is on its two part construction)

2. English or Shakespearean: abab, cdcd, efef, gg;
  Spenserian: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee (emphasis on the
  four part construction: three quatrains as examples
  of a principle which is stated abstractly or con-
  cretely in the concluding couplet)

(b) the couplet: every two lines rime

(c) stanzaic patterns:

1. rime royal: ababbcc

2. ottava rima: abababcc (an echoing rime with a stinger in its tail)

3. Spenserian stanza: ababbcbcc (last line in hexameter and usually has caesura which might have the same organization that the two quatrains in the previous part of the stanza have in relation to each other)

4. terza rima: aba, bcb, cdc, ded, etc. (2) internal rime:

(a) alliteration (initial sounds of words)

(b) assonance (vowel sounds)

(c) consonance (consonantal sounds)

(d) end rimes within lines (ends-of words - riming words need
not always occur at the ends of lines) (3) rhythm:

(a) phrasal and clausal

(b) syllabic: iambic (u/), trochaic (/u), anapeatic (uu/).
 dactylic (/uu), spondaic (//)

(c) line lengths: monometer (one foot), diameter (two feet),
 trimeter (three feet), tetrameter (four feet), pentameter
 (five feet), hexameter (six feet)

(d) special forms:

1. heroic couplet: rimed iambic pentameter (the problem: how to control stress and pace to avoid sing-songy quality)

2. blank verse: unrimed iambic pentameter

3. free verse: unrimed and no regular line length or
  metrical scheme (the problem: how to justify the
  length of each line)

(4) other concerns in sound:

(a) the quality (harshness or smoothness) of vowel and
 consonantal sounds

(b) the peculiarity of their succession

(c) the ease or difficulty or transition between words
W the silences between the sounds (a variable determined
 in large part by the reader, but also by the author's
 positioning of letters, words, and lines on the printed
 page)
.e. figures of speech (comparisons and associations):

(1) what is the subject matter of the imagery (does the author
draw his images from the earth, sky, country* cityp etc.)?

(2) what senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) are emphasized?

(3) classification:

(a) when both parts of the comparison are present (sometimes
referred to as horizontal predication or addition):

1. simile: direct comparison of two objects, using "like's or "as"

2. metaphor: indirect comparison of two objects, using the verb "to be"

(b) when only one part is present and the other or others
are supplied by the reader (sometimes referred to as
vertical substitution):

1. symbol: using a perceivable object--not human--to represent one or more unmentioned concepts or objects; the reader can be set off on a train of associations which may fluctuate between levels of non-perceivable subjects and concepts and perceivable objects and

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situations (such as tower--isolation--island--desert)

a.  check its consistency in the work (whether the
 symbol always represents the same things and
 concepts throughout the work)

b.  if there is more than one symbol in the work
 what are their relationships; which is most
 important?

2. connotations: meanings, qualities, and feelings sug-gested to the reader by a word or phrase

3. Synecdoche: use of a part for the whole--"hand" for 11man" (now usually included under the term "metonymy")

4. metonymy: substitution of the name of one object for a closely associated second object--"crown" for "king"

5. personification: attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract concepts.

f. tone: the author's attitude toward (1) his subject matter (2) his audience, and occasionally (3) himself. The surest, quickest way to determine such attitudes is through a study of diction.

g. satire: a negatively critical treatment of a subject, usually employing devices of humor, with a variety of tones possible on the spectrum from deeply serious to the light-hearted, from sharp condem-nation to detached amusement. It usually urges reform and implies a set of values contrary to those being embodied and satirized. Pay attention to: the degree to which the writer implies that reform is possible or impossible; the inclusion or exclusion of the writer himself within the material being satirized; and the specific (John Smith) or general (mankind) nature of the object of the satire.

h.  devices of indirection and of multiplication:

(1) ambiguity: two or more possible meanings from the same word or
set of words 

(2) irony:

(a) dramatic: the author implies different meaning from that of
the  speaker in the literary work

(b) verbal:

1. a character's not realizing the significance of what he says

2.  a character's saying one thing and meaning the opposite

(c) situational: incongruity between circumstances (what they
are  and what they should be or what they were expected to be)

(d) romantic: an author who is enthusiastic, inspired, and
 imaginative but also reflective, conscious, and critical
 of his/her ideas and self

(3) paradox: contradictions

(4) symbolism (see "figures of speech" on Page 3)

E. Analysis of Narratives:

1. Character:

a. the function of the character within the work (what would be missing if the character were removed from the work?), only for minor char-acters

b. balancing of characters (parallels and contrasts in personalities and beliefs between characters or in relation to a major character)

c. consistency of character (does the character change in any way during the course of the narrative?)

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d. ways of creating character: the character's thoughtso wordst actions, and opinions expressed by other characters about the character

2. Plot: the following parts of a plot (1) are not all essential or
necessarily present (2) may occur in a different ordering, and (3) may
involve conflict between ideas or concepts within characters rather
than just between the characters themselves.

a. situation (time and place)

b. generating circumstance (what first interests the reader in the narrative)

c. rising action (development of conflict between protagonist and antagonist)

d. climax (the triumph of the protagonist or antagonist)

e. falling action (explanation and completion of the previous action)

3. Setting:

a. function: (1) the influence of the setting on the characters (environmental influence or parallels between settings and characters such as a manis room reflecting his character) (2) the symbolic significance of the setting

b. substance: physical or mental
 

4. Point of View: the way the author tells his story: person and tense

a. omniscient (author knows everything everywhere and usually uses the third person, past tense)

b. personal narrative: major or minor character in the first person

c. dramatic (absence of author and omniscience--in its purest form: dialogue)

d. stream of consciousness (a series of associations often omitting links between the associations, which are to be supplied by the reader; the greater the gap between associations, the more "diffi-cult" the work)

5. Symbolis!! (see Page 4)

6. Theme: the one major concept embodied in the narrative, a declarative statement

7. Motifs: minor concepts woven throughout the narrative in repeated phrases, images, scenes, or situations

8. Tone (see Page 4)

9. Satire (see Page 4)

10. Devices of Indirection and Multiplication (see Page 4)

F. Some Random Subjects and Criteria for the Evaluating of Literature:

1. Balance: a psychological function of art is to produce a sense of balance for or in a reader. Such a balance may result either from the reader's perception of a balance within the work of art or from the reader's experiencing a sense of balance between himself and the work of art.

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2. Open and Closed-endedness: a narrative's action may or may not be
 resolved or completed. Thematically any work of art may be unresolved
 or incomplete when it depends upon devices of indirection and multi-
 plication (see page 4). In a more general sense, every work of art
 is incomplete until the reader adds himself to it (which may or may not
 result in some kind of closed interpretation or perpetuation of open-
 endedness).

3. Complexity and Simplicity: the value of having complexity in thought and structure in a work of art is to include as much and as diverse material as possible within the smallest given space thereby bringing all of the faculties of the reader into activity. When one calls a work simple or complex, he is usually commenting on whether or not a single, clear meaning is obvious upon a first reading. Actually whether a work is simple or complex depends upon the wishes of the reader: the "simple" can be made "complex" by the reader's bringing materials to the work, and the "complex" can be made "simple" by the reader's ignoring elements within the work and his own experiences. In like manner the concrete can be made abstract or the abstract made concrete by the activities of the reader and what he brings to bear upon the work.

4. Humor: the basis of all humor is incongruity. Incongruity can occur not only between elements within a work (character and setting, style and content) but also within a single element (high and low diction) or through such specific literary devices as irony and ambiguity or between the work and a special context the reader chooses to put the work into.

5. Mythmaking: a myth is any series of events--which of necessity must include characters and symbols--which enables man to evaluate his experi-ences (form a set of values). Meaning, not historical authenticity, is of primary significance.

6. Novelty: experimentation in diction, sound devices, rhetoric, subject matter, or any combination thereof.

7. Unity and Disunity: the value of a unified, closely knit structure; every word and mark must be functional; hence brief works are most popular for such interpretations. And, in contrast, disunity or the lack of unity (through diversity of style and content, digressions, or stream of consciousness) often to promote freeplay and creativity by the reader.

8. Variety: the value of a variety in subject matter and forms of expres-sion within the works of a single author, a quantitative as well as qualitative criterion.

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At the risk of insulting your intelligence I am going to offer some obser-vations about studying, classroom discussions, and taking examinations; for many of you these observations should be rather commonplace, but I do not want to take up classroom time repeating these basic matters until you are bored beyond recall. So, read what follows: if you are already familiar with the suggestions, so much the better; then you do not have to waste time rereading them. Whether or not you practice them is entirely up to you. Obviously the suggestions apply to my courses and not necessarily (although they may) to other courses offered by my colleagues at this college.

A. Reading the Assignment:

1. Note on the syllabus the length of each assignment so that you are not surprised by long assignments at the last moment.

2. Read or skim through the assignment rapidly, and note your first, fuzzy, and highly subjective reactions to it.

3. Select a small portion of the assignment which is both typical of the whole assignment and not uninteresting to you, and prepare it thoroughly (that is, quizzing yourself about the reasons for your initial reactions and Also what sections of "Ways to Evaluate Literature" raise appropriate questions about the material).

4. Do not hesitate to mark up your text (although if carried to an extreme, marginalia will only confuse your reviewing before an examination); your notes in the text will be valuable as a history of your first reactions to the reading, which might be quite different from later readings.

5. Assume you are the instructor; spend some time deciding what you would do with the material in class if you were the instructor; in other words, make something of your own out of the assignment.

B. In the Classroom:

1. Statements about facts (such as when a work was written, or what the word order is in the text) can be true or false, right or wrong; reactions to works, opinions about and interpretations of works cannot be right or wrong, only better or worse, better meaning productive (leading to further insights); opinions, etc. can also be common (what most people would think) or unusual.

2. Your reactions to the literature are important, for no matter how spon-taneous, sudden, or unusual they might seem, they (the reactions) are based upon the text's words, the word order, and most importantly your experiences up to the moment that you read the work, especially your present physical and mental environment. A large part of the appreciation of liter-ature depends upon an understanding of the causes for your reactions.

3. Therefore, be willing to respond in class, for all reactions are valid; you cannot be "wrong." The quality of what you have to say may be decep-tive: apparently "stupid" or "ignorant" answer" and questions often lead

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to more education taking place than the well-tailored answers which leave nothing further to discuss. Part of your job is to keep your instructor thinking, and the other part of your job is to be a teacher yourself.

4. Although you may already know the reasons for your reactions and be willing to share them with your instructor and classmates, if you do not know those reasons, it is the responsibility of everyone present to try to help you understand those reactions.

5. Try not to get irritated when the Instructor interrupts you or cuts you short; almost always it will be caused by your having made him think of something that he thinks is worthwhile enough to take time to pursue (something you have just said).

6. The taking of notes is a highly personal matter. You might choose to take voluminous notes if you either want to recreate the classroom exper-ience or want to have something to rework or rethink after class, or you might limit your notes to matters that the teacher seems to think important (by his repeating them, by his saving them for the end of class, by his suddenly appearing enthusiastic) for the closed-book part of examinations or for you to think about at a later date. For those who take few notes, I recommend doodling, which can be a very subtle and unconscious stream of your reactions to what is being discussed in class.

7. Feel free to come into and to leave class at any time during a particular class meeting. Chronic lateness not caused by racing across campus from another class should be avoided

C. Taking Examinations:

1. Most examinations will have two parts: (a) a brief, closed-book, short-answer section considering matters emphasized in class and introductory materials such as "Ways to Analyze Literature" and special introductory materials in the text, and (b) a longer, open-book, essay-answer section which will count from two-thirds to four-fifths of your grade for the exam.

2. Memorization of classroom notes is the best way to prepare for the closed-book section. Since its grade will be curved (the highest score auto-matically becomes a hundred, and the rest of the papers are upgraded accord-ingly) and since I do not have a certain point total in mind, you should race through the questions leaving room to go back and add more information if you have time. If you do not have time to finish this portion of the exam, don't worry: everyone has the same amount of time, and the results are curved. This part of the exam will not be graded for written expressions.

3. When preparing for the open-book, essay-answer part of the exam, remember that it is better to know a lot about a little than a little about a lot. Review your margins, and think about "Ways to Analyze Literature." Divide the materials of your assignments into categories such as short, medium, and long poems (thinking about them within each category), or for narratives consider the section of "Ways to Analyze Literature" which deals with narratives. Come to the test with well-organized notes on the passages you would discuss if you had the choice, and almost without exception you will have that choice.

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4. The basic problem of the open-book part of the exam will be to take already
 prepared materials (More often than not works which have not been discussed
 in class) and synthesize them with the question on the exam. To do this,
 you must be able to multiply the logical possibilities or methods for answer-
 ing a question (for example, a question on setting could apply to physical
 or mental environment; the physical environment could range from a corner
 of a room to the whole universe). When taking the exam, it is important
 that you understand the question (ask me if you are having troubles, but I
 may not answer if no one else in the class seems to be having trouble
 with the same point), and write down your understanding of the question if
 you have any doubts about "going wrong."

5. How you get started in writing is your business: some students outline or
 take notes (please indicate them as such in the bluebook); some sit silently
 working things out for a long time before writing; and some start writing
 immediately and write themselves into an answer to the question. If you
 begin writing immediately you will probably be subtly learning in the process
 of taking the exam and should articulate the changes that are happening in
 your line of reasoning. If you contradict yourself, fine--as long as you
 let me know that you are aware of the contradiction. Such an answer must
 be a careful. and detailed recording of your relating the literature you choose
 to discuss to the questions: I need as much of the process on paper as
 possible (I can't read your mind or between your lines).

6. Try to think of more than one way to answer a given essay question. State your optiones; choose one; if you exhaust it, go back and begin another option.

7. Any answer to an essay question should include not only a discussion of the literature but also a discussion of the discussion, which is to say, you are to demonstrate a knowledge of critical terminology and your awareness of what you are doing while you are doing it (mention for example, that you are talking about the influence of the setting on character instead of Just talking about a character and asetting).

8. At the end of your essay, take a few moments to articulate your evaluation of what you have written: its weak and its strong points. In other words, be a self-critic.

9. Anything is acceptable in examinations (and classroom discussions) if:
 (a) you make known your personal criteria, (b) you support your conclusions
 with concrete references and examples. and (c) you either have consistency
 in your interpretations and criteria or note the lack of it. Statements
 on examinations will be considered confidential if you request in the

10. :xaminations that they be kept in confidence.

If you get angry when you see the examination, blame the instructor if it dispells your anger and permits or helps you to get back to the exam in a calm and rational way.

11. If you panic during an exam, either come talk with me if I am in the class-room, or think of something completely foreign to the examination. Before taking any examinations, prepare a special and well-defined pleasurable memory from your past to think about when you panic. Make sure the memory has an ending so that you don't go on and on day-dreaming. When it is over, return to the exam.

12. Before handing in your exam, check over it to insure it fulfills the criteria of literate English. When making corrections or deletions, draw a single line through the work or passage so that I can see if what you had originally said had any merit.

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A. The goal of expository writing is to say as much as possible in as few words as possible with such a variety of style that the reader is never distracted from the content.

B. Good writing consists of more than the avoidance of mechanical errors: it requires the proper subordination of word, phrase, and clause to insure a clear reflection of the orderliness and priorities of your thought; in a larger sense, it requires principles of organization within each paragraph and within the essay as a whole.

C. Rudimentary principles of organization are:

1. temporal or chronological (first, second, third in time: yesterday, today, tomorrow, or any combination thereof)

2. spacial (such as here, there; prepositions such as in, our, around, above, below forming a narrative of place, etc.)

3. causal (tracing links in the chain of cause and effects, which often becomes chronological)

4. dramatic (from least to most or most to least important point, or some combination of degrees of importance)

5. quantitative (or size, from large to small or small to large; may apply to anything quantifiable, therefore everything experiencial).

D. Reread your essays trying to make them mean something other than what you intended. If you can't, fine; if you can, rewrite to clear up the ambiguity. The more rewriting you do, the greater the likelihood of your writing accu-rately reflecting your thought.

E. Spelling:

1. Use a dictionary (American Heritage Dictionary recommended).

2. Reread your writing, and if you are a chronic misspeller, read your paper backwards, one word at a time (with very little practice, you can go quite rapidly).

F. Punctuation:

I. Excessive use of any mark of punctuation will distract your reader.

2. Dashes emphasize; parentheses de-emphasize; commas show differences in degree of importance between what immediately preceeds and what imme-diately follows them.

3. Don't use Commas unless (1) there is no other previous sign indicating subordination (2) you have a compound sentence, or (3) in a series.

4. Periods and commas always come inside quotation marks, colons and semicolons always outside. and question marks and exclamation points may appear inside or outside quotation marks depending on whether or not they belong to the quoted material.

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G. Grammar and Miscellaneous Items:

1. Knowledge of grammar is important for an appreciation of literature as well as for good expository writing. For creative writing one must know the rules so that he may skillfully depart from them or violate them.

2. Tense: stay in the present tense unless you have a very definite reason for leaving it; after all, the literature is in front of you and thus is alive, now, in the present.

3. Person: just write about the literature and your reactions to it. Do not use 11one,11 11we,11 etc. If you want to use "I" for emphasis, all right, but don't overuse it, for I assume everything you write is your opinion unless you state otherwise.

4. Dangling Modifiers (dm): keep modifiers as close to what they modify as possible. The most common fault is introducing a sentence with a participial phrase and not having the subject of your main clause the same as the subject of your introductory participle (example: Having gone home, I found my book; not: Having gone home, the book was found.)

5. Titles: underline the titles of separate publications; place the titles . of parts of a separate publication within quotation marks.

6. Any quotation that runs four or more lines in length should be indented, single-spaced, and left without quotation marks. Verse incorporated in a normal-margined text needs slash marks (diagonals) to indicate line breaks.

7. Write out all numbers that can be expressed in one or two words (hyphenated words count as a single word).

H. Diction (choice of words):

1. Good diction requires a rich vocabulary. The best way to increase your, vocabulary is to read, read, read, and not trash. Secondly, listen to cultured speakers.

2. You can often avoid problems in diction by using monosyllabic words or talking baby talk. Such usage may avoid errors in diction, but also to reflect the subtleness or your thought. Find the best word or set of words to express your thought; obviously the more choices you have (the richer your vocabulary) the more precise you can be.

I. Sentence Structure (SS):

1. Sentence structure involves syntax (word order) and subordination (the correlation of the significance of the thought with the kind of grammatical expression used to embody the thought).

2. The difference between a phrase and a clause is that the latter has a subject and a verb, the former does not.

3. The difference between a main (independent) clause and a subordinate
(dependent) clause is that the latter has an introductory subordinating word such as a subordinate conjunction or a relative pronoun.

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4. Most sentence structure errors (RU, CS, SF) result from confusion about clauses and phrases and how they are to be punctuated.

(a) If you have two thoughts expressed in clauses and one is more important than the other, subordinate the less important one (When I was sick, I went home.)

(b) If you have two thoughts equal in importance, you have three different ways of putting them on paper:

 (1) as two separate sentences (I was sick. I went home.).

 (2) as a compound sentence with a semi-colon (I was sick; I went
  home.), or

 (3) as a compound sentence with both a comma and a co-ordinating
  conjunction: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet (I went home,
  for I was sick.)

W RU errors arise when you run two independent clauses together
 without the comma or without the comma and the co-ordinating
 conjunction.

W CS errors arise when you run two independent clauses together with the comma, but without the co-ordinating conjunction.

(a) SF errors arise when you punctuate a group of words as if it were an independent clause, when in actuality it is a fragment (most fragments occur when you fail to have a finite form of the verb or when you introduce the clause with a subordinating word.).

5. You may avoid SS errors by limiting your writing to simple sentences. Such infantile writing dots an injustice to the accurate reflection of the relationships between your thoughts.

There is no substitute for rereading and correcting your writing before turning it in. If you let the principles of good writing lie dormant, your grade will reflect your laziness.

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A. The Background (the Restoration and Eighteenth Century)

1. Politics is inseparable from religion and of concern to writers

2. Religion

a. Two ways to approach religion

(1) Natural Religion: man arrives at a concept of God by looking at Nature and arguing back to a first cause through reason and science.

(2) Revealed Religion: God is directly revealed through such sacred texts as the Bible, and the use of "inner light."

b. Deism: the universe is a Great Chain of Being constructed by God, who once he has completed it forgets it as a watchmaker forgets the watch, which then unwinds itself.

c. The Great Chain of Being: hierarchy of creation from God (pure spirit) through Seraphs, Cherubs, Archangels. Man, Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals to Nothingness (pure matter) with Man in the middle (50/50, spirit/matter).

3. Science

a. Optimistic outlook toward life, belief in inevitable progress

b. Founding of the Royal Society with a purification of prose style (as opposed to florid, baroque prose of the late 17th century)

4. Economics: the rise of business depending upon dissenting religious
groups who were to become the new middle class

5. Philosophers

a. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), The Leviathan (1651)

 (1) Sensations equal the jarring of the nervous system

 (2) Ethics equal movements of the nervous system

 (3) Natural right to self-preservation and self-assertion

 (4) Natural condition of all things is war

 (5) Man is entirely self-centered

 (6) Social contracts are necessary

b. John Locke (1632-1714), An Essay on Human Understanding (1689) (1) No innate ideas (2) The mind is a wax tablet (tabula rasa) upon which sense experience is inscribed

(3) Abstract ideas result from the mind's reflections upon the inscribed sense data

c. George Berkeley (1685-1753), Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) (1) Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) (2) God perceives all things at all times

d. The Shaftesbury (all men are intrinsically good) - Mandeville (all men are not intrinsically good but are a mixture of good and evil) controversy

e. David Hume (1711-1776), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understandips
(1748): the destruction of the a priori existence of the cause-effect principle (the billiard b-all example) -13-

B. The Neoclassical or Augustan Age (1700-1745)

1.  Influences

a.  French classicism through the return of Charles Il (1660)

b.  Augustan Rome, not the classicism of the Age of Pericles in Greece

2.  Qualities of the mind

a.  Rational simplification in life, thought, and art

b.  Confidence in common sense

c.  Skepticism in the application of reason to the infinite

d.  Empirical approach '

e. Desire for unity, generalizations, and abstractions, rather than concrete details

f.  Reaction against emphasis on imagination and emotion

3. The literature

a. Closely allied with religion and politics

b. Subject matter

(1) Urban, not rural

(2) Maturity, not youth

(3) Civilized present, not the rude past

(4) The typically human, not the individually peculiar

(5) Nature

(a) Human nature

(b) Nature-nature as a complex system or set of prin-ciples divinely ordained and manifested in creation and interpreted by the moralist (poet)

(c)  Such items as flowers, stars, and gardens rather than
 mountainss oceans, and season

(6)  The gentleman: a benevolent Christian citizen of the world
  who is disinterestedly compassionate and moral

C. Form and style

(1) Ideas, forms, and attitudes derived from the classics

(2) Adherence to clear and reasonable rules

(3) Appeal to the intellect rather than emotions

(a) Beauty of design

(b) Not words or fragments but the whole work is important

(c) Correctness, harmony, and proportion

(d) Imagery and diction conventional and colorless

(e) Wit and satire

(4) Polish, clarity, avoiding the mysterious

(5) Imitation (of nature): idealized representation, not a copy, to improve upon what is being imitated. A desire to create perfection as opposed to the romantic belief in the existence of the perfect.

(6)  Didacticism

(7)  The heroic couplet

(8)  Universality and decorum

(9)  The practical and the useful

4.  Theories of classicism

a.  T.E.Hulme, "Classicism and Romanticism":

(1) Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the indi-vidual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppres-sive order then these possibilities will have a chance and you will have Progress.

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 (2) One can define the classical quite clearly as the exact
  opposite to this. Man is an extraordinarily fixed and
  limited animal-whose nature is absolutely constant. It
  is only by tradition and organization that anything decent
  can be got out of him.

b. The principles of decorum

(1) The close correlation of style and content, of sound and sense

(2) In content, choosing the mean between the extremes (for example being an Anglican rather than a Dissenter or a Roman Catholic)

C. Tendencies or Features of the Beginning of Romanticism in the Second Half of the 18th Century (borrowed from Ernest Bernbaum's Guide Through the Romantic Movement):

(1) Faith in the instinctive goodness of human beings

(2) Faith in the relatively high moral and religious value of sympathy or benevolence (School of Sensibility)

(3) Accurate observation of nature, though without mysticism

(4) The same as (3), with the suggestion that nature has a religious significance

(5) Elegiac interest: in death, mutability, mourning, melancholy (Graveyard School)

(6) Interest in humanitarian movements and reforms

(7) Interest in kindness toward animals

(8) A democratic attitude: insistence on the rights and dignity of man, and on the freedom of the individual socially and politically

(9) Attacks upon wrongs in the established order or in conven-tional usages; political, economic, social, or educational

(10) Interest in the state-of-nature; the "noble savage," pref-erence for the simple life of earlier ages, primitive religions, folk-poetry

(11) Interest in the medieval period; as an age of faith, chivalry, and poetry

(12) Attacks on Pope and other neo-classical authors

(13) Revival or imitation of older forms of verse; ballads, sonnets, blank verse, Spenserian stanzas, etc.

(14) Use of local dialects and color

(15) Translation or imitation of Oriental tales

(16) Translation or imitation of old Scandinavian literature

(17) Translation or imitation of old Celtic literature

(18) Development of the historical novel, the Gothic School, and the School of Terror

(19) Development of literary theories and literary criticism stres-sing the relatively greater importance (over the rational and formal) of the imaginative, emotional, intuitive, free, indi-vidual, and particular (rather than general)

(20) Exaltation of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton.
 
 

D. ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE

1. Qualities of Romanticism

a. The image of the poet:

(1)  individualistic

(2)  highly imaginative

(3)  lonely, an outcast from society, a rebel

(4)  highly subjective

(5)  melancholic

(6)   sentimental

b. Beliefs of the poet:

(1)  the universe is essentially spiritual

(2)  the natural goodness of man, hence

(3)~  emotions need not be controlled by reason

(4)  the vay to truth is through imagination, not reason

(5)  man has infinite potential

(6)  the unconscious is a valuable creative factor

(7)  freedom

(8)  novelty has intrinsic value

c. Poetic devices and style:

(1) abandonment of the heroic couplet for the Spenserian stanza, blank verse, ottava rims, and experimental forms

(2) all kinds of diction permitted but simplicity emphasized and 18th century poetic diction de-emphasized

(3) conventional imagery and personifications replaced by never and bolder figures of speech

(4) symbolism used although not as frequently as similes and metaphors

d. Subject matter:

(1) the primitive, uncivilized, and "natural"

(2) the past medieval, Elizabethan, and Germanic

(3) idealized rural life

(4) children

(5) all classes of men

(6) the supernatural

(7) hit-An rights, freedom, and politics

(8) the human mind and the poet's emotions and feelings highly personal, egocentric at times

 (9) far off places: America and the East

(10) folk materials

(11) Celtic and Germanic mythology added to Graeco-Roman mythology

2.  Some Definitions of Romanticism (borroved from Ernest Bernbaum's Guide
 Through the Romantic Movement):

a. Romanticism is disease, Classicism is health. Goethe

b. A movement to honor vhatever Classicism rejected. Classicism is the regularity of good sense, perfection in moderation; Romanticism is disorder in the imagination, the rage of incorrectness. A blind vave of literary egotism. Brunetiere

c. Classic art portrays the finite, romantic art also suggests ~h, infinite. Heine

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d. The illusion of beholding the infinite within the stream of nature itself, instead of apart from that stream. More

e. A desire to find the infinite within the finite, to effect a synthesis of the real and the unreal. The expression in art of what in theology would be called pantheistic enthusiasm. Fairchild.

f. A sense of the mystery of the universe, and a perception of its beauty. Earnest

g. In general a thing is romantic when, as Aristotle would say, it is wonderful rather than probable; in other words, when it violates the normal sequence of cause and effect !n f;.ivor of adventure. The whole movement is filled with the ,~t ignorance, and of those who still enjoy its inappreciable advantages, the savage, the peasant, and above all the child. Babbitt

h. The opposite not of Classicism, but of Realism, a withdrawal from outer experience to concentrate upon inner. Abercrombie

i. Liberalism in literature. Mingling the grotesque with the tragic or sublime (forbidden by classicism); the complete truth of life. Hugo

J. The cult of the extinct. Goeffrey Scott

k The classic temper studies the past, the romantic neglects it. Schelling

1. An effort to escape from actuality. Waterhouse

M. Sentimental melancholy. Phelps

n. Vague aspiration. Phelps

o. Subjectivity, the love of the picturesque, and a reactionary spirit (against whatever immediately preceded it). Phelps

p. Romanticism is, at any time, the art of the day; Classicism, the art of the day before. Stendhal

q. Emotion rather than reason; the heart opposed to the head. Sand

r. A liberation of the less conscious levels of the mind; an intoxi-cating dreaming. Classicism is control. by the conscious mind. Lucas

s. Imagination as contrasted with reason and the sense of fact. Neilson

t. An accentuated predominance of emotional life, provoked or directed by the exercise of imaginative vision, and in its turn stimulating or directing such exercise. Cazamian

u. The renascence of wonder. Watts Dunton

v. The addition of strangeness to beauty. Pater

w. The fairy way of writing. Ker

x. The spirit counts for more than the form. Grierson

y. Whereas in classical works the idea is represented directly and with as exact adaptation of form as possible, in romantic the idea is left to the reader's faculty of divination assisted only by suggestion and symbol. Saintsbury

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3.  Theories of Romanticism:

a. Northrop Frye, "The Drunken Boat":

(1) The difference between Romanticism and pre-Romanticism lies in imagery rather than in concepts.

(2)  Contrasts between the Medieval Renaissance and Romantic Views:

(a) Pre-Romanticism believed in a hierarchy of creation: Heaven, Human Nature (Eden), Physical Nature (Earth) and Hell.

(b) Rising on or through the hierarchy depended on non-human made laws and acts (moral law and the sacraments)
W Good is "up" and evil "down" because of Newtonian orientation

(d) Romantic view had two poles of mental activity: sense experience and the formulizing or constructive aspect of the mind

(e) Movement is within (good) not "up" and without (evil) not "down."

(3) The Romantic view as Rousseau puts it makes civilization a human artifact the only known model for which is the human mind, and thus the arts become the core or the center of the universe and also serve the function of maintaining a self considered idealized world without the intrusions of realism or irony.

(4)  The Romantic view cultivates the primitive within man:

(a) a heightened sense of consciousness and communion, a sense of unity with the creative process including the self.

(b) resistance to fragmentation in favor of unlimited continuity.

(c)  the source of genius is beyond good and evil.

b. Morse Peckham, "Toward a Theory of Romanticism":

(1) The difference between Classicism and Romanticism can be accounted for by the differences between two theories: Mechanism and Organicism.

(2)  The Mechanistic orientation:

(a)  The universe is a static mechanism, a clock

(b) finite man lacks knowledge of the mechanism, but can attain knowledge at least of his limitations

(c)  values are: perfection, changelessness, uniformity

(3) The Organic orientation

(a) the universe is an organism which is constantly changing and growing, a plant or tree

1. the whole (the organism or tree) is greater than the sum of its parts and indeed necessary for the life 6f its parts.

2. the organism grows or develops and contains its own principles of growth.

3. the theme, idea, emotion, or seed of the organism organizes itself in its own proper and unique form (content dictates form).

(b)  relationships, not entities, are contemplated.
W values are: change, novelty, imperfection, growth, diversity

(d)  creative originality versus imitation.

(e) the universe is constantly developing and deteriorating at the same time.
c. T.E. Hulme, "Classicism and Romanticism: (see theories of classicism)

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A. Approaching the Poem:

1. The beat way to define poetry is by example.

2. The poem should tell you what to say about it. No checklist of literary devices (such as metaphor, alliteration, or line length) should be applied to the poem before you have let the poem work on you in its own way.

3. Once you sense some pleasure or feeling, tl-.(-(! niore general categories such as sound* imagery, structiii li.i(~ Iloyie may give some shape to your initial and highly subjettive Impressions, but the terminology listed and explained in "Crii-tcal rerminology and Ways to Analyze Literature" should be employed oitly in the final. stages of explaining the bases within the work for your reactions. See V, B, 5.

4. Read the poem out loud. At first read it slowly enough that you can hear and think about what you are reading.

5. When you find there is something about the poem that you like, read and reread it until it becomes an expression of y2ur emotions and ideas, until you are sure how each part of it should be spoken in order for it to convey the most significant thing the poem seems to you to embody (usually some fusion of thought and feeling).

6. Identify an audience for your reading of the poem; especially helpful may be an individual you know and with whom you would most like to share the experience of the poem.

7. Familiarity with the poem is essential. Untit. the poem (or at least a part of it) has become a part of your experience and an expression of that experience, it will remain at best a bunch of words to be approached as a puzzle.

8. Each poem is unique. Not only does this fact make it valuable as an experience for the reader, but its uniqueness requires a flexibility and equally unique treatment by the reader who is performing or talking about the poem.

9. Ideally, your audience deserves a performance of the poem prior to any comments you might wish to make about it. You can always give another performance of the poem after your comments.

B. Ways to Generate Discussion (these six methods overlap and have several variations in application):

1. Reader's Interests: The ordering of a poem may take many forms
 (1) the order of the process of composition (requires original MS
 versions) (2) the final order of the printed or taped poem (deter-
 mined by the poet), and (3) the order of the reader's subjectIve
 responses (determined by the experiences and interests of the reader).
 Begin with #3 and work into #2, which is to !-.ay: respond freely to
 any part of the poem according to your own Ifiterests; try to work your
 way throughout the entire poem in whatever direction or ordering you

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wish (such as from most easily understood passage to least under-stood passage); finish up by questioning the author's motives for the final ordering from beginning to end of the published poem.

2. Paraphrase Contrast: Paraphrase the poem, and then discuss the dif-ferences between the paraphrase and the author's diction and syntax (with special attention to connotations of the author's diction and the musical effects tied to meanings by the author). See 1, D, 2.

3. Controlling Factor: Identify the single most important or controlling factor (idea, image, emotion, epiphany, phrase, line) in the poem, and then relate all other parts or factors of the poem to the most important one.

4. Statement/Question: Give a running commentary upon the poem starting
 with its title or first line using the following process: Make a
 descriptive, declarative statement about a word or a group of words;
 ask why (or how) of that statement. Then continue in a chain reaction
 asking the same question(s) of each answer (which of necessity will
 be expressed as a declarative statement) until there are diminishing
 returns. Repeat the process again with the next word or phrase, grad-
 ually accumulating answers which in turn may be related to your previous
 answer/statements. See 1, D, 2.

5. Categories: No checklist of literary devices (such as simile, irony,
 and alliteration) should be applied to the poem before you let the
 poem work upon you in its own way and you have a larger context than
 a word or a phrase within which to consider the reason for the use of
 the literary device. Instead, apply the following general categories:
 imagery, sound, structure and form, and tone; and arrange them accord-
 ing to an ordering from the one you would have the most to say about
 to the one you would have the least to say about. Explain why.
 Some matters to consider within the categories: For imagery: which
 is the controlling or un ' ifying image? How are the images related
 to one another? Is there aprogression of images? Are they parts of
 a whole? What senses are emphasized? For sound, focus on how the
 rhythms and rimes reinforce or generate meaning and tone. For structure
 and form, understand structure to be the informal organization of the
 materials (things and concepts) of the poem, from formating (such as
 spacing) to general rhetorical strategies of organization (such as
 cause/effect and dramatic), and understand form to mean traditionally
 established literary forms (such as sonnets, heroic couplets, and
 ottava rima) and their characteristics as well as genres (such as mock
 epic and pastoral) and their qualities. For tone, attend to the kind
 and intensity of the author's attitude towards himself, his subject,
 and his reader.

6. Last Words: Finally, imagine yourself unavoidably near death and in the presence of those whom you most care for. You have one hour (a few pages?) during (on) which to say what you most need to say to them. But you must say it strictly in terms of the poem you are discussing. What would you say (write)?

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A. Love of words and of language should be the basis of love of literature.

t. There is no subject incapable of artistic treatment.

C. No one critical approach is supreme except within the context of the critic's particular purpose in approaching the work.

D. Alert yourself to those qualities of literature you have most rarely been asked to attend to (sound, structure, the how instead of the what).

E. All discussions of literature are ultimately reducible to diction (choice of words), syntax (word order), and all the critic has experienced up to the moment of reading the text (the only variable in the tripart constellation).

F. Base every literary judgment or conclusion initially on empirical evidence.

G. To be a professional in your field, you must consider every aspect of your subject from the broadest philosophical or aesthetic implications to the nittiest and grittiest detail of grammar and linguistic or historical fact.

H. There are three worlds of critical analysis, and they are unified (the world of the author creating, the world of the verbal construct, and the world of the reader recreating).

I. What one thinks is true is more operatively significant than any "eternal, external, or independently existent truth" (the meaning lies within your consciousness rather than within the work or behind it in either the author or "reality").

J. Whether or not you believe in the traditions of the culture in which you reside (i.e. Christianity), accept the influence of those traditions (that is, accepting or rejecting those traditions) on the writers who have created the literature you are studying.

K. Ultimately, you as reader have complete and absolute freedom to make or create whatever you wish out of the artist's given, the artist's offspring, whose umbilical has been cut and which survives as much through your reading as though its being remembered by you.

L. Literature is not only as important as life; it can be life itself with very little effort.

M. When all else passes into insignificance, the integrity of the work of art must be preserved by its being used for no other ulterior motive than its aesthetic pleasure.

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