Here's an inquiry into our last lecture, as Prof. Kuin discussed the historical transition period to Arnold. I was thinking of posting this on Prof. Kuin's blog, but I think I will see who takes me up on this here before I do so...
Professor Kuin was discussing the effects of the industrialization of literature in the 1800s. He said something along the lines of, the mass production of books as a commodity and source of entertainment opened up a great middle class audience for the reading of literature. Suddenly, he said, women began reading books and literacy became more and more of a cultural norm...this due to the greater development in publishing and also the growth of a class of people who was able to afford this luxury...
I am bringing this up because in lecture this rang a bell. I remember learning in a lecture last year (in my literature class that I constantly speak so highly about) that during the time of the French revolution (about that same time period) in Britain, the aristocracy feared that same sort of revolt from their own people. The French Revolution was instigated (or at the very least, progressed) from the writing and passing around of socio-political literatures (i.e. Rousseau's Social Contract), thereby revealing the controversial powers modern publishing was (and still is) capable of. Rousseau's work, for example, explained how the state is bound by the people, not vice versa. At birth, citizens agree to be bound by the laws of their country of origin by an implied moral contract that entails the state to give to them fair governance and necessities of survival. This doctrine gave the French people "permission" to revolt when the government failed to meet their needs.
The British feared a similar occurence within their own lands, and so it has been said (in my class), that this was at least a partial motivation for the government's support for literary study, the establishment of libraries and formal education centres, where women and children were the first to study literature. The supposed idea is to distract the idle public by feeding them what the government does not necessarily want them searching for; however enabling a sort of surveillance. Simply, the newfound middle class was one that had time on their hands- spare time, which, as shown throughout history, may generate a threat to stability, especially now that there is a new medium of expression available to them. By encouraging the study of fiction, past writings, etc. it made writing into stable entertainment, or distraction.
This is not to say that the British government had bad or wrong intent, or that perhaps the true cause was not a mix of things- but it's an interesting idea.
Look around your English classrooms, at who is in them.
I believe that women are still the majority group that is traditionally "oriented" towards the study of English literature, or at least are still the largest market for it. Do we see the paths of the past when we go to school? (with exceptions, or course, like our class, perhaps...)
Monday, January 31, 2005
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Part Two: A Slum-ber Did My Spi-rit Seal
Hello everybody!
I want to express how to you all how great class was on Tuesday, I think we all felt the same way, and how sad it is too...That we are done with Wordsworth.
We may be done with him but he certainly isn't done with me. I still have a lot of thiughts about him...and Tintern Abbey and the Ode is haunting them. What a I pleasure to hear them read out loud.
Before I rant about those poems, I'd like to finish my analysis of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Please note: Thanks and reference to Professor Leps with whom I studied this poem, I couldn't share these things without her teaching them...
At the end of my last blog, I made reference to sign rhyme, and exemplified the usage of this with "I had no human fears" and "the touch of earthly years." We all understand how this is an effective technique: The effect of sound draws assonance and dissonance to the ear, changes pitches, slurs and constrasts. But why Fears and Years? What is it about the actual words that lets us leave the phrase so haunting and so lonely?
Allen Ginsberg, writer and member of the Beats (leaders of the cultural and literary Beatnik movement, 1950s America) once spoke of his interest in the effect of words and sounds on the mind. He thought that "what would be interesting," would be to somehow discover if certain words, sounds, or combinations of them, when put together created particular biological reactions in the brain. How and why do certain sounds evoke emotion? What is sadness to the ear? How do we know when we hear "sad" or "lonely" or "fear"? And what are the patterns that generate them biologically? Ginsberg's question is sensical. After all, it is said that all art is patterns.
This Wordsworth poem in particular illustrates this possibility because it strongly and efficiently generates in the reader an emotional response: It generates a particular sense of sentiment that, though created with words, perhaps cannot be described with them. As I said in my previous posting, to explain the impact of the poem would be to let loose its power.
So why did Wordsworth (whether consciously or not) choose the words that he did? He could have chosen any word that rhymed with those particular sounds (fear/year). What made him choose Fear? What about the words themselves, absent of them sounding similar? What is their relationship, and is not the relationship of their meanings amplified by their rhyming? (In other words, it is not the rhyming alone that creates intensity (for the "I feel that" reaction), but that THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE WORDS AND MEANINGS ARE ASSIMILATED INTO THE MIND BY REVEALING AN IMMEDIATE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THEM (rhyme). WE, IN THE POEM, ARE ALLOWED NO TIME TO THINK OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN YEARS AND FEARS...WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED UPON ITS READING. WE SOAK IT LIKE A SPONGE, INGEST IT AND IT TASTES WIERD, AND THEN IT MOVES US.
It is a lot like what Professor Kuin lectured about in regards to how people in the past (Renaissance, etc.) would connect things differently than we do now. Now, our connections are cause and effect related, while at another time, people drew significance in other ways. For example, a walnut looks like a brain, therefore since they are physically similar, walnuts must be good for the brain.
I am not saying that this is scientifically valid way of assessing things, but, I am pointing out that our brains, as we think and as we read and converse, do in fact notice similarities between things in a multitude of ways. We do this even if we do not think them to have any true significance. We make odd associations and they effect us. The power of Wordsworth's poem proves this.
As I was saying, in Wordsworth's poem, we soak associations like a sponge, they intensify themselves without us stopping to even think about them. But, now we have time to think about them, so let's: What is the association between the words Fears and Years? Perhaps there is something about years passing that invokes fear. By throwing this association to us, this fear is awakened in poem and in ourselves. It is said that this poem was written by Wordsworth to or regarding his deceased sister, who had written (whose influence upon Wordsworth's literary content is highly debated) alongside him. Fears and Years has a connection to time. The years they had passed together perhaps invokes in him a fear, now that she is gone? Or, perhaps her death generated in him a realization of time, and now he is fearful of it, perhaps even of his own death? However, the actual sentences are contradictory then, as he denies that he had any fears: "A slumber did my spirit seal/I had no human fears:/She seemed a thing that could not feel/The touch of earthly years." We are left almost unsure as to whether he did or did not have human fear: If his sister was touched by earthly years and could no longer feel, why wouldn't he be afraid? The very fact that these questions come to mind reveals that there is a space left between the meanings of the words, as if we know that there is significance there but cannot point to it. We know there is association there; why? Because our mind hears the rhyme and connects the words for us.
A similar technique is used in the second fragment of the poem: "No motion has she now, no force/She neither hears nor sees/Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course/With rocks and stones and trees." Force and Course: There is no force within the course! The subject cannot hear or see, she rolls around, she is subject to natures course, she has "no force." Again, force contradicts the course, and also rhymes with it. Again, we experience power within the association of rhyme and contradiction of meaning...
The final rhyme is "sees" and "trees". The subject cannot see: She does not see the trees. But though she does not see it, the audience gets a great image of it: Rocks and stones and trees. We end seeing only nature. Sense is important to the Romantics, they were empirical thinkers.
Moving on to the overall feel of the poem, the overall meaning conveyed by the technicalities put together, what I find remarkable about this poem is that it performs itself. Read in a normal tone, it is so strong.
The overall feeling we get of the subject is of a day dream like state, perhaps that is the slumber that Wordsworth fell upon. In the slumber, we experience the idea of mortality: "She seemed a thing that could not feel." Then falls a pause, a silence in the poem. "The touch of earthly years." This is an example of how silence plays the same role that sound does. Lack of sound is still sound. The pause is where the death is. Wordsworth did not have to say it, a play between what is said and what is unsaid.
The entire poem creates melancholy tension in this way, with the use of redescent language: colloquialism makes us feel emotion more strongly because it hints to things unsaid, creating a sense of overall muteness in the work. This muteness says more than flowery language does. It allows the audience to hear words that are not even there, through rhyme and ideological associations. In this way, Wordsworth's techniques are not in isolation. They are not momentary lapses, attempts towards alliteration, etc., but they correspond to and create new, overwhelming sensations of loss, the fear of death, time and absence of an ambiguous subject. Prof. Leps said, "It gives a new feeling of a very old thing." Recite it aloud, and you will feel that too.
I want to express how to you all how great class was on Tuesday, I think we all felt the same way, and how sad it is too...That we are done with Wordsworth.
We may be done with him but he certainly isn't done with me. I still have a lot of thiughts about him...and Tintern Abbey and the Ode is haunting them. What a I pleasure to hear them read out loud.
Before I rant about those poems, I'd like to finish my analysis of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Please note: Thanks and reference to Professor Leps with whom I studied this poem, I couldn't share these things without her teaching them...
At the end of my last blog, I made reference to sign rhyme, and exemplified the usage of this with "I had no human fears" and "the touch of earthly years." We all understand how this is an effective technique: The effect of sound draws assonance and dissonance to the ear, changes pitches, slurs and constrasts. But why Fears and Years? What is it about the actual words that lets us leave the phrase so haunting and so lonely?
Allen Ginsberg, writer and member of the Beats (leaders of the cultural and literary Beatnik movement, 1950s America) once spoke of his interest in the effect of words and sounds on the mind. He thought that "what would be interesting," would be to somehow discover if certain words, sounds, or combinations of them, when put together created particular biological reactions in the brain. How and why do certain sounds evoke emotion? What is sadness to the ear? How do we know when we hear "sad" or "lonely" or "fear"? And what are the patterns that generate them biologically? Ginsberg's question is sensical. After all, it is said that all art is patterns.
This Wordsworth poem in particular illustrates this possibility because it strongly and efficiently generates in the reader an emotional response: It generates a particular sense of sentiment that, though created with words, perhaps cannot be described with them. As I said in my previous posting, to explain the impact of the poem would be to let loose its power.
So why did Wordsworth (whether consciously or not) choose the words that he did? He could have chosen any word that rhymed with those particular sounds (fear/year). What made him choose Fear? What about the words themselves, absent of them sounding similar? What is their relationship, and is not the relationship of their meanings amplified by their rhyming? (In other words, it is not the rhyming alone that creates intensity (for the "I feel that" reaction), but that THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE WORDS AND MEANINGS ARE ASSIMILATED INTO THE MIND BY REVEALING AN IMMEDIATE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THEM (rhyme). WE, IN THE POEM, ARE ALLOWED NO TIME TO THINK OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN YEARS AND FEARS...WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED UPON ITS READING. WE SOAK IT LIKE A SPONGE, INGEST IT AND IT TASTES WIERD, AND THEN IT MOVES US.
It is a lot like what Professor Kuin lectured about in regards to how people in the past (Renaissance, etc.) would connect things differently than we do now. Now, our connections are cause and effect related, while at another time, people drew significance in other ways. For example, a walnut looks like a brain, therefore since they are physically similar, walnuts must be good for the brain.
I am not saying that this is scientifically valid way of assessing things, but, I am pointing out that our brains, as we think and as we read and converse, do in fact notice similarities between things in a multitude of ways. We do this even if we do not think them to have any true significance. We make odd associations and they effect us. The power of Wordsworth's poem proves this.
As I was saying, in Wordsworth's poem, we soak associations like a sponge, they intensify themselves without us stopping to even think about them. But, now we have time to think about them, so let's: What is the association between the words Fears and Years? Perhaps there is something about years passing that invokes fear. By throwing this association to us, this fear is awakened in poem and in ourselves. It is said that this poem was written by Wordsworth to or regarding his deceased sister, who had written (whose influence upon Wordsworth's literary content is highly debated) alongside him. Fears and Years has a connection to time. The years they had passed together perhaps invokes in him a fear, now that she is gone? Or, perhaps her death generated in him a realization of time, and now he is fearful of it, perhaps even of his own death? However, the actual sentences are contradictory then, as he denies that he had any fears: "A slumber did my spirit seal/I had no human fears:/She seemed a thing that could not feel/The touch of earthly years." We are left almost unsure as to whether he did or did not have human fear: If his sister was touched by earthly years and could no longer feel, why wouldn't he be afraid? The very fact that these questions come to mind reveals that there is a space left between the meanings of the words, as if we know that there is significance there but cannot point to it. We know there is association there; why? Because our mind hears the rhyme and connects the words for us.
A similar technique is used in the second fragment of the poem: "No motion has she now, no force/She neither hears nor sees/Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course/With rocks and stones and trees." Force and Course: There is no force within the course! The subject cannot hear or see, she rolls around, she is subject to natures course, she has "no force." Again, force contradicts the course, and also rhymes with it. Again, we experience power within the association of rhyme and contradiction of meaning...
The final rhyme is "sees" and "trees". The subject cannot see: She does not see the trees. But though she does not see it, the audience gets a great image of it: Rocks and stones and trees. We end seeing only nature. Sense is important to the Romantics, they were empirical thinkers.
Moving on to the overall feel of the poem, the overall meaning conveyed by the technicalities put together, what I find remarkable about this poem is that it performs itself. Read in a normal tone, it is so strong.
The overall feeling we get of the subject is of a day dream like state, perhaps that is the slumber that Wordsworth fell upon. In the slumber, we experience the idea of mortality: "She seemed a thing that could not feel." Then falls a pause, a silence in the poem. "The touch of earthly years." This is an example of how silence plays the same role that sound does. Lack of sound is still sound. The pause is where the death is. Wordsworth did not have to say it, a play between what is said and what is unsaid.
The entire poem creates melancholy tension in this way, with the use of redescent language: colloquialism makes us feel emotion more strongly because it hints to things unsaid, creating a sense of overall muteness in the work. This muteness says more than flowery language does. It allows the audience to hear words that are not even there, through rhyme and ideological associations. In this way, Wordsworth's techniques are not in isolation. They are not momentary lapses, attempts towards alliteration, etc., but they correspond to and create new, overwhelming sensations of loss, the fear of death, time and absence of an ambiguous subject. Prof. Leps said, "It gives a new feeling of a very old thing." Recite it aloud, and you will feel that too.
Monday, January 17, 2005
A Slum-ber Did My Spi-rit Seal
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal is probably one of Wordsworth's most prettiest poems. The first line, for example, utilizes sound in a striking way: Alliteration followed by contrast. i.e., while the S sounds are the same, the M and P, B and R are opposites. The sounds radiate and then bounce off one another.
The rythm is balanced tightly, and flows throughout the piece: "Earthly years." There is a richness to the tone. Overall, the poem is not only full of depth but is aesthetically pleasing as well as balanced.
An in-depth analysis:
When analyzing A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, take into consideration the visual placement of each of the words on their given lines. There is symetry and pleasure in their order. The poem is IN PERFORMANCE; even when it is read silently, even though the words are plain and the tone is regulated. In fact, it is the simplicity of the words that generate energy when placed together. i.e. Form = Content. The simplistic ideas create complexity, whereas had Wordsworth embelished on the complexity and said what it is about the piece that is powerful, most of the power would be lost.
Now to discuss rythm. Let's first take a close look at what rythm is, before we attempt to identify it in this poem. Rythm is actually sounds you hear and silences between those sounds. (Yes, the silences actually make most of the impact. We do in fact "hear them".) Just like "rests" in music, silence is as important as sound.
Prominent rythms are categorized and analyzed accoring to their rythmical patterns, such as Iambs. Each Iamb is the passing of a phrase from the unstressed syllable to the stressed one. Spi-rit is one iamb. An Iamb is as well called a poetic foot. There are other common patterns as well, though Iambs are the most commonly used. We use these rythms when we speak. We carry with our words length, metric and meter.
When we say that a poem hass an underlying metric pattern, we are refering to this very thing: The organizational pattern of its overall rythm. A Slum-ber Did My Spi-rit Seal is written in Iambic tetrameter. Its arrangement is Ballad meter and Quatrain. In more colloquial terms, it is 4 3 4 3 footing.
So why did Wordsworth use such a common rythmic form? He wanted to simplify his writing, to make it colloquial and rhetorically accessible to the common folk, and he wanted these people to have the ability to write as well. The ballad meter (Quatrain that goes from tetrameter to trimeter) that he uses is known to be used in folklore, communication to the common people that can reach to everybody. Wordsworth wanted to valorize the middle ages!
Other tools Wordsworth used to be concious of:
Enjambment- when the phrase continues to the next line.
Terminal- approaches the end of the line.
Bleak- an 'almost rythme'
"I" rythme- they don't sound the same but look like they should!
Sign rythmes- They look the same and they rythme. Fears and Years is a good example of this.
That's all for right now: the technical stuff. Next comes the theoretical analysis of the poem. Coming soon!
The rythm is balanced tightly, and flows throughout the piece: "Earthly years." There is a richness to the tone. Overall, the poem is not only full of depth but is aesthetically pleasing as well as balanced.
An in-depth analysis:
When analyzing A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, take into consideration the visual placement of each of the words on their given lines. There is symetry and pleasure in their order. The poem is IN PERFORMANCE; even when it is read silently, even though the words are plain and the tone is regulated. In fact, it is the simplicity of the words that generate energy when placed together. i.e. Form = Content. The simplistic ideas create complexity, whereas had Wordsworth embelished on the complexity and said what it is about the piece that is powerful, most of the power would be lost.
Now to discuss rythm. Let's first take a close look at what rythm is, before we attempt to identify it in this poem. Rythm is actually sounds you hear and silences between those sounds. (Yes, the silences actually make most of the impact. We do in fact "hear them".) Just like "rests" in music, silence is as important as sound.
Prominent rythms are categorized and analyzed accoring to their rythmical patterns, such as Iambs. Each Iamb is the passing of a phrase from the unstressed syllable to the stressed one. Spi-rit is one iamb. An Iamb is as well called a poetic foot. There are other common patterns as well, though Iambs are the most commonly used. We use these rythms when we speak. We carry with our words length, metric and meter.
When we say that a poem hass an underlying metric pattern, we are refering to this very thing: The organizational pattern of its overall rythm. A Slum-ber Did My Spi-rit Seal is written in Iambic tetrameter. Its arrangement is Ballad meter and Quatrain. In more colloquial terms, it is 4 3 4 3 footing.
So why did Wordsworth use such a common rythmic form? He wanted to simplify his writing, to make it colloquial and rhetorically accessible to the common folk, and he wanted these people to have the ability to write as well. The ballad meter (Quatrain that goes from tetrameter to trimeter) that he uses is known to be used in folklore, communication to the common people that can reach to everybody. Wordsworth wanted to valorize the middle ages!
Other tools Wordsworth used to be concious of:
Enjambment- when the phrase continues to the next line.
Terminal- approaches the end of the line.
Bleak- an 'almost rythme'
"I" rythme- they don't sound the same but look like they should!
Sign rythmes- They look the same and they rythme. Fears and Years is a good example of this.
That's all for right now: the technical stuff. Next comes the theoretical analysis of the poem. Coming soon!
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
The Romantic Wordsworth: Breaking the Myth
How nice it is to be studying Wordsworth! Class today was intriguing; I don't know if I am the only one who feels this way, but it is so much easier to get into the analysis of the writing when the basic language is more contemporary. With Sidney and Dryden, it was a challenge much of the time just to get through the bare language, but now, I can immediately absorb what Wordsworth means on several levels.
The second reason I am particularly interested in Wordsworth is probably because my greater historical understanding is of the last two centuries. That being said, when we study the context in which he writes, a vision of my historical understanding is further enlightened. With Sidney and Dryden, I found it difficult to place their lives even after reading and hearing about them. The general background for me was not before them cemented. Though I suppose that is what makes them even more important for me to focus on.
The major thing I wanted to comment on regarding lecture this morning is that I was actually very surprised at this unifying point about Wordsworth the Romantic: In a sense, his interest lies more in the human nature than in an external nature.
While I previously knew that Wordsworth investigated the interconnectedness of man and external nature, I did not realize that he acknowledged it to such a humanistic extent. I had always thought that Wordsworth was a model for the contemporary environmentalist; that he was peace-loving and calm, artistic and expressive not necessarily from his own mind but from the way nature moved him.
Professor Kuin said today that this is in fact true: Wordsworth was moved by the aesthetic beauty of nature. But as a younger student I had thought that this aesthetic beauty charged in him the "spontaneous flow of emotion" that was impressionistically written on his page. Not necessarily so: Prof. Kuin revealed today, poem by poem, that his writing is well thought out and deliberate. In my naive mind, this morphs my "romantic" picture of an inspired writer who speaks to an inspired writer who has mastered a craft. But of course, I must get over my naive nature...In short, I was slightly disullusioned about Wordsworth; I had thought him one of the few who was focused on external nature and not on man, but he lies somewhere between focus on man and a combination of the two.
Realizing my disullusionment, I wanted to find out why I had thought the things I did about Wordsworth. I had never studied him intensely before...but I did study him in a Literature Theory course last year!....
The best place to do research sometimes...your old notes. Why? Because it's the writer, or the professor who spoke directly into your notebook. The professor from which I received the following information is Marie Christine-Leps. I found some very interesting information about the Romantic period:
-The etimology of the term 'Romance' is vernacular, it comes from Latin. It refers to medieval romances, tales in verse such as those of Lancelot, Tristan, etc.
-Romantics did not refer to themselves as such.
-Blake, Wordsworth and Colleridge are known to be of the first generation of Romantics. Byron, Shelly, Sir Walter Scott are known to be of the second.
-Romanticism rose as a revolt to Neoclassicism, the age of rules of reason, of decorum and 'poetic diction'.
-Colleridge, writing in 1817, differentiated between primary and secondary modes of imagination. The primary mediates between sensation and perception, while the second unites the perceiver and the perceived. The secondary then dissolves, leaving a new reality. For example, we have Wordsworth's relationship with daffodils. If Wordsworth is A and Daffodil is B, the space where they unite is between A and B.
-poetry became aestheticly pleasing!
These are ideas I have read in my old notes, and I am beginning to realize why I had a different view of Wordsworth: My emphasis was placed on the ideas of Romanticism: I love it! I find it really interesting, but now I will be able to learn who Wordsworth really is by studying more of the text.
I also found a fantastic analysis of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal". It will be interesting to add that to what we learnt today, but I think I will keep that for my next blog.
Goodnight!
The second reason I am particularly interested in Wordsworth is probably because my greater historical understanding is of the last two centuries. That being said, when we study the context in which he writes, a vision of my historical understanding is further enlightened. With Sidney and Dryden, I found it difficult to place their lives even after reading and hearing about them. The general background for me was not before them cemented. Though I suppose that is what makes them even more important for me to focus on.
The major thing I wanted to comment on regarding lecture this morning is that I was actually very surprised at this unifying point about Wordsworth the Romantic: In a sense, his interest lies more in the human nature than in an external nature.
While I previously knew that Wordsworth investigated the interconnectedness of man and external nature, I did not realize that he acknowledged it to such a humanistic extent. I had always thought that Wordsworth was a model for the contemporary environmentalist; that he was peace-loving and calm, artistic and expressive not necessarily from his own mind but from the way nature moved him.
Professor Kuin said today that this is in fact true: Wordsworth was moved by the aesthetic beauty of nature. But as a younger student I had thought that this aesthetic beauty charged in him the "spontaneous flow of emotion" that was impressionistically written on his page. Not necessarily so: Prof. Kuin revealed today, poem by poem, that his writing is well thought out and deliberate. In my naive mind, this morphs my "romantic" picture of an inspired writer who speaks to an inspired writer who has mastered a craft. But of course, I must get over my naive nature...In short, I was slightly disullusioned about Wordsworth; I had thought him one of the few who was focused on external nature and not on man, but he lies somewhere between focus on man and a combination of the two.
Realizing my disullusionment, I wanted to find out why I had thought the things I did about Wordsworth. I had never studied him intensely before...but I did study him in a Literature Theory course last year!....
The best place to do research sometimes...your old notes. Why? Because it's the writer, or the professor who spoke directly into your notebook. The professor from which I received the following information is Marie Christine-Leps. I found some very interesting information about the Romantic period:
-The etimology of the term 'Romance' is vernacular, it comes from Latin. It refers to medieval romances, tales in verse such as those of Lancelot, Tristan, etc.
-Romantics did not refer to themselves as such.
-Blake, Wordsworth and Colleridge are known to be of the first generation of Romantics. Byron, Shelly, Sir Walter Scott are known to be of the second.
-Romanticism rose as a revolt to Neoclassicism, the age of rules of reason, of decorum and 'poetic diction'.
-Colleridge, writing in 1817, differentiated between primary and secondary modes of imagination. The primary mediates between sensation and perception, while the second unites the perceiver and the perceived. The secondary then dissolves, leaving a new reality. For example, we have Wordsworth's relationship with daffodils. If Wordsworth is A and Daffodil is B, the space where they unite is between A and B.
-poetry became aestheticly pleasing!
These are ideas I have read in my old notes, and I am beginning to realize why I had a different view of Wordsworth: My emphasis was placed on the ideas of Romanticism: I love it! I find it really interesting, but now I will be able to learn who Wordsworth really is by studying more of the text.
I also found a fantastic analysis of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal". It will be interesting to add that to what we learnt today, but I think I will keep that for my next blog.
Goodnight!
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