Virginia Woolf on Dorothy Wordsworth

Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence.  This is my professional opinion.  Among her multitiude of never failing sentences, I'd like to share a few that can be found in a short piece on Dorothy Wordsworth collected within the "Common Reader" series:

"It is strange how vividly all this [her life with her brother and Coleridge around the time that they writing Lyrical Ballads] is brought before us, considering that the diary is made up of brief notes such as any quiet woman might make of her garden’s changes and her brother’s moods and the progress of the seasons. It was warm and mild, she notes, after a day of rain. She met a cow in a field. “The cow looked at me, and I looked at the cow, and whenever I stirred the cow gave over eating.” She met an old man who walked with two sticks — for days on end she met nothing more out of the way than a cow eating and an old man walking. And her motives for writing are common enough —“because I will not quarrel with myself, and because I shall give William pleasure by it when he comes home again”. It is only gradually that the difference between this rough notebook and others discloses itself; only by degrees that the brief notes unfurl in the mind and open a whole landscape before us, that the plain statement proves to be aimed so directly at the object that if we look exactly along the line that it points we shall see precisely what she saw. “The moonlight lay upon the hills like snow.” “The air was become still, the lake of a bright slate colour, the hills darkening. The bays shot into the low fading shores. Sheep resting. All things quiet.” “There was no one waterfall above another — it was the sound of waters in the air— the voice of the air.” Even in such brief notes one feels the suggestive power which is the gift of the poet rather than of the naturalist, the power which, taking only the simplest facts, so orders them that the whole scene comes before us, heightened and composed, the lake in its quiet, the hills in their splendour. Yet she was no descriptive writer in the usual sense. Her first concern was to be truthful — grace and symmetry must be made subordinate to truth. But then truth is sought because to falsify the look of the stir of the breeze on the lake is to tamper with the spirit which inspires appearances. It is that spirit which goads her and urges her and keeps her faculties for ever on the stretch. A sight or a sound would not let her be till she had traced her perception along its course and fixed it in words, though they might be bald, or in an image, though it might be angular. Nature was a stern taskmistress. The exact prosaic detail must be rendered as well as the vast and visionary outline."

The complete piece can be found here:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301251h.html#e17

The Historical Development of Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads has a complex publication history.  Notice that the above title page of the first edition lacks the names of its authors.  As we'll discuss in class today, the subsequent editions are not so coy.  The later editions, too, offer increasing signs that Wordsworth means this book to mark a turning point in the history of poetics.

More on these issues can be found in this excellent electronic edition: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/preface.html

Gilpin's Observations on the River Wye

For tourists visiting Tintern Abbey, including Wordsworth, Gilpin's Observations was the travel book.  Here's a selection dealing with the approach to and visit within the abbey:


Such is the situation of Tintern-abbey. It occupies a great eminence in the middle of a circular valley, beautifully screened on all sides by woody hills, through which the river winds its course; and the hills, closing on its entrance and on its exit, leave no room for inclement blasts to enter. A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods and glades intermixed; the winding of the river; the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin, contrasted with the objects of nature; and the elegant line formed by the summits of the hills which include the whole, make all together a very enchanting piece of scenery. Every thing around breathes an air so calm and tranquil, so sequestered from the commerce of life, that it is easy to conceive a man of warm imagination, in monkish times, might have been allured by such a scene to become an inhabitant of it.
[…]
But if Tintern-abbey be less striking as a distant object, it exhibits, on a nearer view (when the whole together cannot be seen) a very enchanting piece of ruin. The eye settles upon some of its nobler parts. Nature has now made it her own. Time has worn off all traces of the chisel: it has blunted the sharp edges of the rule and compass, and broken the regularity of opposing parts. The figured ornaments of the east-window are gone; those of the west-window are left. Most of the other windows, with their principal ornaments, remain.
To these were superadded the ornaments of time. Ivy, in masses uncommonly large, had taken possession of many parts of the wall; and given a happy contrast to the grey-coloured stone of which the building is composed: nor was this undecorated. Mosses of various hues, with lichens, maiden-hair, penny-leaf, and other humble plants, had over-spread the surface, or hung from every joint and crevice. Some of them were in flower, others only in leaf; but all together gave those full-blown tints which add the richest finishing to a ruin.
[…]
When we stood at one end of this awful piece of ruin, and surveyed the whole in one view — the elements of air and earth, its only covering and pavement; and the grand and venerable remains which terminated both; perfect enough to form the perspective, yet broken enough to destroy the regularity — the eye was above measure delighted with the beauty, the greatness, and the novelty of the scene. More picturesque it certainly would have been, if the area, unadorned, had been left with all its rough fragments of ruin scattered round; and bold was the hand that removed them: yet as the outside of the ruin, which is the chief object of picturesque curiosity, is still left in all its wild and native rudeness, we excuse, perhaps we approve, the neatness that is introduced within: it may add to the beauty of the scene; to its novelty it undoubtedly does.


You can read more on Gilpin here: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/riverwye.htm

J. M. W. Turner and Tourism, Tintern Abbey ca. 1795

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/j/jmw_turner,_tintern_abbey.aspx

When Wordsworth composes his "Lines" a few miles from Tintern Abbey, he's noting a spot that many readers will know either by first-hand experience or through pictures and accounts transmitted by tourists.  Turner is arguably the most important British artist of the early nineteenth century (if not the century as a whole).  Notice that Turner depicts Tintern Abbey as a not only a fascinating blend of light, life, and history but also a tourist attraction.

There's a nice Norton website about the tourist culture of the later eighteenth century found here: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/welcome.htm

Context for Lyrical Ballads: Percy's Reliques (+short reading assignment)

In the eighteenth century, the English evince a rising interest in their own literary past.  Antiquaries gathered old songs from various provinces, effectively converting local oral culture into a national literate one.  No publication was more important in this development than The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (also called "Percy's Reliques"), edited by Bishop Thomas Percy (1st ed., 1765).  The book was celebrated, reprinted several times during the remainder of the century.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were both profoundly impacted by this book, particularly by its manifold displays of the ballad form (more on this form this week).  Prior to reading Coleridge's "Rime," please read "Sir Patrick Spens" (printed as "Sir Patrick Spence" in Percy) a very popular poem that appeared in Percy's book: http://www.exclassics.com/percy/perc15.htm

Wednesday's Reading: Coleridge's Rime (1798 text)

Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" was the first poem printed in the first edition of the history-of-English-poetry-altering collection Lyrical Ballads (1st ed., 1798), that book being our concern for the next few class sessions.  Wordsworth's "Lines" (aka "Tintern Abbey") was the last poem.  We'll talk more about the poem's fate on Wednesday.  For now, it's important to note simply that Coleridge revised the poem several times, including reducing its number of archaisms in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) and adding marginal glosses in the widely anthologized edition of 1817 (that's the one in your textbook).

We'll be reading the 1798 edition, which can be found at the following link... PLEASE PRINT IT OUT: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9622/9622-h/9622-h.htm#poem1

(If that link for some reason fails to serve its purpose, use this site: http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/history/index.asp?pageid=154 )

Blake Resource at the University of Georgia

Romantic Studies has been at the forefront of the emerging field known as "digital humanities," and one of the early Romanticist experimenters teaches at the University of Georgia.  In the nineties, he and his students composed histories of the criticism of the poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience (in some cases these histories reach back to the nineteenth century, others are more twentieth-century-centric).

For example, you can read the discussion of "The Tyger" here: http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake/SONGS/42/42bib.html

The easiest way to see the critical history of an individual poem is to type the following key words into a search engine: "blake [poem's title] uga."  You CAN navigate the archive by fiddling with the URL, but you're like to find what you are looking for faster by using a search engine.

This will likely be an aid for those of you who want to write about Blake for the longer paper at the semester's end (which will require you to dig into the criticism).  It's still likely to fascinate those who want to get a sense of what professional critics make of Blake's poems.

How did Blake make those plates?

Follow this link to learn more about the inventive method that Blake used to made the plates for printing _Songs of Innocence_:
http://www.vu.union.edu/~blake/artisan.html

Further information (more than most of us want to know) can be found in this excellent example of digital scholarship:
http://www.rochester.edu/College/ENG/blake/inquiry/enhanced/index.html

Very Helpful Blake Timeline

http://www.blakesociety.org/about-blake/a-blake-chronology/
An example entry:
1788
Began associating with the radical circle of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Paine, & Joseph Johnson.  Met the painter Henry Fuseli, or Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741-1825, with whom he had some spiritual affinity.  For the rest of his life, Blake had a close, spiritual relationship with Robert (Gilchrist).  “I converse daily & hourly in the Spirit & See him in my remembrance in the regions of my Imagination.  I hear his advice & even now write from his Dictate.”  Blake claimed that the appearance of Robert to him in one of his “visionary imaginations” led to the idea of relief etching in copper for printing his poetry (Gilchrist).  Produces his first works using his method of relief etched illuminated printing: There is No Natural Religion & All Religions are One, though these were not printed until 1794 5.  Engraves the Songs of Innocence by the new process (Gilchrist).

Note, too, what Blake is up to in 1791:
The first book of Blake’s unfinished poem in seven books, The French Revolution, is printed for Joseph Johnson but in view of the political situation is abandoned.  Only one set of page proofs survives.  Six engravings after Blake’s designs appeared in a new edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s book Original Stories from Real Life, Johnson, 1791, & 10 plates for [Erasmus, grandfather of Charles] Darwin’s Botanic Garden, Johnson, 1791 (Gilchrist).

Excellent BBC Radio Program on Burke

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjqynIf Burke, someone who will reappear on a few occasions this semester, intrigues you, I recommend giving a hearing to some or all of this excellent BBC Radio broadcast about his life and thought.

What does a pamphlet look like in the late 18th century?

http://brandeisspecialcollections.blogspot.com/2011/11/french-revolution-pamphlets-1761-1807.html
The Brandeis Special Collections Blog has been kind enough to offer some images of pamphlets from the era.  Notice how they are obviously designed to be cheap and easy to print as well as distribute.

The Battle of Images! Or, Political Cartooning in the 1790s

http://www.anselm.edu/academic/history/hdubrulle/ModernBritain/text/generalinfo/gallery02.htm
The above link will take you to a course website maintained by a historian at Saint Anselm College.  You'll find here political cartoons from the 1790s by several artists, including the important caricaturists James Gillray and George Cruikshank (who'd later illustrate, among other things, Dickens's early novels).  Once you've had a chance to review the images, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about how the images are being employed.  Any particularly striking images or surprises?

The Blake Archive

http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/main.html
The Blake Archive is one of the most impressive online endeavors in the field of Romantic Studies (if not digital humanities in general).  We'll discuss in class how to use it effectively, though I suspect many of you will enjoy figuring out how to use it by toying with it in advance.

Reading for Wednesday, Jan 18: http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=s-inn.b&java=yes
Using the Blake Archive's 1789 edition of Songs of Innocence, read/review "Title Page"; "Introduction"; "The Voice of the Ancient Bard"; "The Ecchoing Green"; "The Chimney Sweeper"; and "The Lamb"

Reading for Friday, Jan. 20:  http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=songsie.b&java=yes
First of all, please carefully review the "General Title Page," reflecting on Blake's new title: Songs of Innocence and Experience, Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul
In Songs of Innocence, please read: "The Divine Image"
In Songs of Experience, please read: "Title Page for Songs of Experience"; "Introduction"; "Earth's Answer"; "The Tyger"; "London"; "The Human Abstract"; and "A Poison Tree"