Keats, Vase-Gazing

Keats sees Greek amphoras (a certain kind of vase) at the British Museum [see top image].  He also is reading catalogues for artistic exhibitions.  The bottom image is Keats's rendering of images of the so-called Sosibios vase (middle image).

Lord Elgin's Marbles

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/w/what_are_the_elgin_marbles.aspx

From the British Museum:
 

What are the 'Elgin Marbles'?

The 'Elgin Marbles' is a popular term that in its widest use may refer to the collection of stone objects - sculptures, inscriptions and architectural features - acquired by Lord Elgin during his time as ambassador to the Ottoman court of the Sultan in Istanbul. More specifically, and more usually, it is used to refer to those sculptures, inscriptions and architectural features that he acquired in Athens between 1801 and 1805. These objects were purchased by the British Parliament from Lord Elgin in 1816 and presented by Parliament to the British Museum.

The collection includes sculptures from the Parthenon, roughly half of what now survives: 247 feet of the original 524 feet of frieze; 15 of 92 metopes; 17 figures from the pediments, and various other pieces of architecture. It also includes objects from other buildings on the Acropolis: the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, and the Temple of Athena Nike.

In the nineteenth century the term 'Elgin Marbles' was used to describe the collection, which was housed in the Elgin Room at the British Museum, completed in 1832, where it remained until the Duveen Gallery (Room 18) was built.

Herschel, The Discovery of Uranus

Herschel's note on his new discovery (the planet Uranus) reads: "curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet"

Keats: Option A

When I have fears that I may cease to be

 When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high grav'd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.

Keats: Option B

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

My spirit is too weak—mortality

   Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

   And each imagined pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship tells me I must die

Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.

   Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep

   That I have not the cloudy winds to keep

Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.

Such dim-conceived glories of the brain

   Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;

So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,

   That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude

Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—

   A sun—a shadow of a magnitude. 

 

 

Keats: Option C

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
 Round many western islands have I been
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken;
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
 He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

From Chapman's Odyssey (1616):

HE man, O Muse, inform, that many a way

      Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
      That wandered wondrous far, when he the town
      Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down;
      The cities of a world of nations,                                5
      With all their manners, minds, and fashions,
      He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes,
      Much care sustained, to save from overthrows
      Himself and friends in their retreat for home;
      But so their fates he could not overcome,                       10
      Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise,
      They perish'd by their own impieties,
      That in their hunger's rapine would not shun
      The oxen of the lofty-going Sun,
      Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft                    15
      Of safe return. These acts, in some part left,
      Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.

Jeremy Bentham on Poetry

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is considered one of the founding lights of Utilitarianism, a philosophy that, as the name suggests, experiences, laws, social arrangements around assessments of utility.  One of the things that makes Bentham such a polarizing figure is his willingness to call everything into question in light of his utilitarian commitments... including such long-venerated matters as poetry.

In his "Defence," Shelley is concerned about the kind of thinking that we find here, in Bentham's The Rationale of Reward:

 The utility of all these arts and sciences,—I speak both of those of amusement and curiosity,—the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. Every other species of preeminence which may be attempted to be established among them is altogether fanciful. Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either. Everybody can play at push-pin: poetry and music are relished only by a few. The game of push-pin is always innocent: it were well could the same be always asserted of poetry. Indeed, between poetry and truth there is natural opposition: false morals and fictitious nature. The poet always stands in need of something false. When he pretends to lay has foundations in truth, the ornaments of his superstructure are fictions; his business consist in stimulating our passions, and exciting our prejudices. Truth, exactitude of every kind is fatal to poetry. The poet must see everything through coloured media, and strive to make every one else do the same. It is true, there have been noble spirits, to whom poetry and philosophy have been equally indebted; but these exceptions do not counteract the mischiefs which have resulted from this magic art. If poetry and music deserve to he preferred before a game of push-pin, it must be because they are calculated to gratify those individuals who are most difficult to be pleased.

All the arts and sciences, without exception, inasmuch as they constitute innocent employments, at least of time, possess a species of moral utility, neither the less real or important because it is frequently unobserved. They compete with, and occupy the place of those mischievous and dangerous passions and employments, to which want of occupation and ennui give birth. They are excellent substitutes for drunkenness, slander, and the love of gaming.


http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/jsmill/diss-disc/bentham/bentham.xr18.html

Mont Blanc

Turner's Mont Blanc

Sublimity!

Turner (1775-1851), Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812)
More here

Turner, Passage of the Gothard (1804)

Gericault (1791-1824), The Raft of the Medusa (1818-9)
Read more here

John Martin (1789-1854), The Great Day of His Wrath (1853):

Landscape Painting

William Gilpin (1724-1800), Scene without Picturesque Adornment (1792):

Scene with Picturesque Adornment:

John Constable (1776-1837), Salisbury Cathedral (1825):

Further info on this painting

Further info on this painting

The Royal Academy

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787 by Johan Heinrich Ramberg and Pietro Martini [Print]:

The Murder of David Rizzio by John Opie [Painting]:

Prince George with Black Servant by Sir Joshua Reynolds [Painting]:

Reynolds, Seven Discourses on Art
A Nice Reynolds Timeline by the Tate

BBC Radio Program on Lyrical Ballads

Follow this link to another clever discussion led by Melvyn Bragg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cwszf/In_Our_Time_Lyrical_Ballads/

Further information here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cwszf#supporting-content

Circulating Libraries

The circulating library flourished in the later eighteenth century as the reading public of fiction, in particular, exploded.  Remember that the paperback is a twentieth-century invention and that public lending libraries exist but not on the scale (and easy of access) that we know today.  Several of our texts have refered to the triple-decker (three volume) format in which many books appeared; not surprisingly, the more volumes the more expensive the book.  To buy a copy of a triple-decker outright might cost--in modern terms--somewhere between $70 and $100, depending on how you estimate inflation.  Not surprisingly, paying (or subscribing) to a lending or circulating library proved a better option for most readers.  It is important to note that the lending library emerges alongside Gothic fiction in the 1790s: the institution enables the spread of such works (making them broadly availble to the public) and profits considerably from their popularity.

Follow this link for a few choice words on Jane Austen and the circulating library:
http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

A few words on the most successful of all 19th-c circulating libraries, Mudie's:
http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/mudie.html