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).