Samuel Coleridge

Coleridge seemed to me as a troubled man, even in his early years. Not sure what his place is in life. He changed from one religious affiliation to another. His addiction to opium I'm sure caused problems in his marriage, and his friendship with Wordsworth dwindled.

In his poem "Dejection: An Ode", there is sadness and pain. Is this being written to a woman, or to any one in general?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm not very literate when it comes to literature, but reading Tennyson's "In Memoriam," touched me in a special way. I too have experienced the death of a good friend, confidante, and best supporter of whatever it was I was doing in my life. This person was one who I attribute my success today.

I also felt "blights joy in all living things"pg. 599, when this happened to me. "He is not here, but far away, The noise of life begins again!" pg. 601. Somehow I was able to move on, for if I hadn't, I would not be where I am today. I think this is a beautiful and healthy way of mourning your best friend.

George Gordon

In reading about George Gordon Byron, his life was like today, very scandalise. The incest and affairs cost him his marriage. Then he continues his afair with Claire Clairmont. Besides his awful personal life, I was impressed on how he was able to build his own army for his political cause to aid Greece. I found it hard to stay focus on his poems, but with Don Juan, is this the same as the movie starring Johnny Depp a few years back?

William Wordsworth

Williams had death that surrounded him, losing his brother and two of his children. With his sister's writings and his own, William was able to describe his love of nature. Spending years with his sister I found a little strange. Like I mentioned in my blog about Dorothy, were they really brother and sister? The way Dorothy spoke of him and admired him seem like there was more to their relationship

Williams Butler Yeats

The poem Easter 1916 is Yeats reaction to the revolution of the Irish. You can relate this event to modern day also. The 911 terror attack on the U.S. brings to memory while reading this poem. In the end it reads pg. 1121, "A terrible beauty is born." Does this mean that the violence is seen as beauty for those who support this type of resolution?

An example of Yeats insight of human conditions is stated on pg 1120, "Too long a sacrifice, Can make a stone of the heart," which can apply to family relationships, your job, and your marriage. We tend to stick it out when things are going bad but in the long run cause the heart to grow weaker and weaker until you feel nothing.

I enjoyed Yeats and his work.

George Bernard Shaw

To bad Shaw's mother left him early in his life. Later moving to London proved to be the best thing that could of happened to him. His ability to write and express his thoughts about the English language unfortunately did not receive it's claim to fame until after his death, in the playwright "Pygmalion," and later titled "My Fair Lady."

Pygmalion is a funny play about a phonetics expert who attempts to make a lady out of an uneducated Cockney flower girl. This play also brings out the important questions about relationships between men and women, human behavior, and social class.

Glad to see Shaw take a stand for women and their roles. He, in a sense was helping to free women of the stereotypical role of running the home and being submissive. Yeah to Shaw!

John Keats

I am noticing that with some of the authors, their lives seem to be cut short from illness, such as Keat's unfortunate tragedy of losing his mother at an early age, then losing is brother. With these losses, he had lost inspiration to continue his works. Even he himself ended up with the same disease that his mother and brother had, and died in the prime of his life. However his works where well known before and after his death.

Keat poems created a world of imagination, an escape of unhappyness, and passing of time. In Ode to a Nightingale, pg.438, he listens to a real nightingale sing and feels joy and pain at the same time. As the poems moves on, is this a real nightingale or does he use the bird to symbolize his feelings about nature, joy, and pain? Even in this poem he talks about drinking which to me seems a way to escape, "With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, and purple-stained mouth(wine perhaps) that I might drink, and leave the world unseen, and with thee fade away into the forest dim:"

Not sure if this poem is real experience or just a daydream.

Thomas Hardy

It is very interesting how Hardy as described on pg. 1073, "built up his words into complicated structure, lines, and stanzas," his poetic energy seems to come from his business profession as an architect. To invision a buliding, than turn it into something readable as his poems.

After Hardy's passing, I'm trying to visualize his heart being buried with his 1st wife. How is this done? Was the heart put in formalidhyde and his grave opened up, and place with his remains? I have never heard to this before.

In Hardy's poem "On the Departure Platform," pg. 1074, Is this an imaginary women that he see's from a far and hoping she would notice him in a crowd?

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins poem's were a little hard to comprehend. In reading about his concept of inscape, I still was not able to understand. Sound like Hopkins was very eccentric. In the poem Spring and Fall- to a yound child pg. 776, there wasn't much to understand. Was this suppose to be about the five nuns who drowned in his work, The Wreck of the Deutshland?

Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen

This era sounds much like today, regardless of conduct, the rich were considered ladies and gentlemen. For example, Paris Hilton and Hugh Grant fit this way of thinking perfectly. What were the people who worked in fields and factories called, morans? Being a governess or a schoolteacher sounds just as bad as being a factory worker. No respect, always humiliated, and put down, what a shame.

With George Eliot, you see modern day relationship in her story, "live openly with a married man." In our day the woman would be called a Mistress and in this era she is called the "fallen woman." Already labeled as an outcast, George is really a woman, who had to use a male name in order for her works to be published because of relationship with a married man. Women today still date married men and think nothing of it. Are they considered ignorant,? No, just a lack of self-esteem in my opinion.

Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft both tribute to woman's rights, but have slightly different views of the woman's role with men.

Robert Browning- My Last Duchess

This poem is about how his wife acts with other men, which causes him to be very jealous. "She looked on, and her looks went everywhere", pg 664, suggest her unfaithfulness. The Duke in my opinion was arrogant, egotistical and controlling, but he could not control his wife's wondering ways.

Did the Duke kill his wife? "I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands." pg 664. or did he have her killed? This poem indicates extreme example of jealousy and the Duke would rather do whatever it took to save his ego from being crushed with shame or embarrassment. Throughout the peom he only talks about himself, so how dare she take the spotlight off of him. He is the one in control always. Good poem, but sad.

John Stuart Mill

I liked the readings of Mill's. He deals with a whole range of issues especially in the The Subjection of Women that include, equality in political soceity, their place in hisotry and the place of women, men, and children within the family.

I am glad to see Mill's stand up for women and their equality. In his remarks on The Subjection of women pg. 525, "The most favourable case which a man can generally have for studing the character of a woman, is that of his own wife: for the opportunities are greater, and the cases of completed sympathy not so unspeakably rare. and in fact, this is the source from which any knowledge worth having on the subject has, I believe, generally come." Mill's gives a sense of how he felt about his own relationship with Harriet.

After Harriet died, his relationship with his stepdaughter I would imagine, caused some controversy about that relationship and the works that came after Harriet's death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning made her way once she left the shackles of her father. It's nice to hear of very sucessful women in this era. Laureateship, I'm assuming this is like the prestige honor of holding the Noble Peace Prize. I enjoyed reading Sonnets from the Portuguese. It marks a point in the developing relationship between her and husband. It also reflects her emotions as she moves through sorrow, fear, passion, and thoughts of her own death.

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1) pg. 530, "I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. I think this depicts Browning as an invalid lying in bed grieving her past.

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle opposed the new industrial society, especially in Past and Present pg. 477. "England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition." I believe what Carlyle is saying is that we have people who are unemployed, yet the rich continue to enjoy. The poor stay poor and the rich get richer. He blames the British leadership for the shape that his country is in.

Carlyle started out to be a preacher (really for his parents), but soon realized that pursuing a dream for others, he would fail himself. He became a rebel in his own right. His sense of religion was his belief of a friendly ruler of an orderly universe.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, was it a social or cultural revolution as we saw the Romantics? I believe that it was more of an economic one. The changes that took place during this time was good and bad. With the technology that was introduced ,problems did occur. With people not sure what life would bring them, caused turmoil in some and great pleasure to others who excepted the change. The steam engine brought about new advancements in the way goods and services were delivered. The cotton mills changing to new technique cause for jobs to be lost for those who performed these duties at home.

I would imagine that with these new developments, caused problems in the home, whereby parents would leave children and home everyday to go work in the factories and mills to make ends meet. Therefore, stability and parent control disappeared. In contrasts this brings to mind of The Great Depression as we know it as the worst economic slump in the U.S. history and throughout the industrialized world.

In reading Fanny Kemble her expressive view of the new locomotive was told childlike:" little engine consisted of a boiler, a stove, a small platform, a bench, and behind the bench a barrel containg enough water to prevent her being thirsty, goes upon two wheels, which are her feet, and are moved by bright steel legs called pistons."pg. 490. She was very interested in this machinary and was able to capture details of her experience.

Felecia Hemans

Felecia's poem "Woman and Fame" talks about the role of women. It seems to me that all she wanted was to be loved as a woman and still do her works. I am sure that some of her other works come from her past. Her mothers husband leaving and then her husband leaving the family. She died very young and I wonder why?

Percy Shelley

By reading the brief information about this author, it became apparent to me that he was a modern day "player" and worse a child molester. In today's society, being involved with a minor is criminal offense and he would be charged with statutory rape. He broke his vows to his wife and as the book said "appallingly selfish."
I was not able to get into his work, like I have with the other authors.

Dorothy Wordsworth-Grasmere Journals

Ah, the Grasmere Journals with calmness of nature. Where did the name come from? Grasmere is located in the Lake District of England where Dorothy was born and later returned and settled. This is were Dorothy began writing. Why do we suppose she wrote only for her brother? An elegant writer and love of nature, why not write and claim your own work. This seems really odd to me. The love that she had for her brother may have come from her mother's death and her father being gone, and subsequently being separated from siblings as a child. Perhaps once they were reunited, her total existence revolved around William and not herself. Not normal in my opinion. Dorothy say's she writes to give William "pleasure." When William marries, she felt abandoned and have nothing else to write for or about?

I enjoyed reading "When Shall I Tread Your Garden Path." This still shows her love of nature, but unfortunatly not able too because of illness.

Williams Blake

A man who beats to a different drum, and sings to his own tunes. He was admired by William Wordsworth but sounds like he didn't like him much. Blake was a rebel in his day by using his works as a way of voice his opinion about political and social issues.
The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is one that I enjoyed. William describes a different childhood experience in that children were used as labor to clean chimney sweeps. This was hard labor and in today's society, laws prevent children from working before the age of 14. This is really a form of slavery. Perhaps the white hair is used as a symbol of innocence, as Blake states "You know that soot cannot spoil your white hair". As the reader, I know that the soot did spoil the sweep's "white hair". Even "washing in the river and shining in the sun"does not take away the innocence that has been lost while these children continue to labor as sweepers.

Romanticism

As you asked us during our chat on 5-23-07, what is your meaning of Ramance? I replied, relationships. Thinking in todays views, it can apply, however in the readings the term is not used in that way. After a little research, I find that romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightenend interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion, and rebellion against establised social rules and conventions.
Now I understand the authors views in there writings by knowing what is meant by the romantic era. I was not understanding what I was reading at first, but it is now clear.

comments on Podcast

I really enjoyed listening to the Podcast. Because I am waiting on my book, I was able to get some insight to some of the readings. Also I was able to get into Thursday's night chat and was enlighten as well of some of the readings. Can't wait to be a part of the discussions the rest of the summer.

I am trying to get into the chat room tonight and I keep getting any error page, is anyone else having problems? Techincal help is not answering their phones. Thanks if anyone can help.

My name is Gloria Fletcher and I look forward to learning some things in this course.