...dereliction of nature. Composed during the Industrial Revolution and radical scientific experimentation, Shelley typifies the Romantic Movement as she forebodes her enlightened society of playing God. Her warning permeates through the character of Victor, whose self-aggrandising diction “many excellent natures would owe their being to me” represents a society engrossed with reanimation. Shelley moreover questions the morality her microcosm’s pursuit of omnipotence through Victor’s retrospection “lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”, as the juxtaposition of “all” and “one” emphasises Victor’s cavernous obsession to conquer death; akin to scientists of her time such as Erasmus Darwin. Moreover, recurring mythical allusions to Prometheus, “how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge” further portray Victor as an Aristotelian Tragic Hero; a noble character whose hamartia of blind ambition foreshadows his own downfall and dehumanisation, “swallowed up every habit of my nature”. In addition, Victor’s impulsive denunciation of his grotesque creation,...
Words: 982 - Pages: 4
...dereliction of nature. Composed during the Industrial Revolution and radical scientific experimentation, Shelley typifies the Romantic Movement as she forebodes her enlightened society of playing God. Her warning permeates through the character of Victor, whose self-aggrandising diction “many excellent natures would owe their being to me” represents a society engrossed with reanimation. Shelley moreover questions the morality her microcosm’s pursuit of omnipotence through Victor’s retrospection “lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”, as the juxtaposition of “all” and “one” emphasises Victor’s cavernous obsession to conquer death; akin to scientists of her time such as Erasmus Darwin. Moreover, recurring mythical allusions to Prometheus, “how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge” further portray Victor as an Aristotelian Tragic Hero; a noble character whose hamartia of blind ambition foreshadows his own downfall and dehumanisation, “swallowed up every habit of my nature”. In addition, Victor’s impulsive denunciation of his grotesque creation,...
Words: 982 - Pages: 4
...It is possible to conclude that the aforementioned adjectives describing indolence, in combination with these questions, means that in this elimination of pain and dulling of pleasure leaves the sublime, a universal truth of pleasure, so to speak, to lie beneath both senses as he normally would know them, to be only accessed by this sloth. For lines 37-40, he describes the evenings as plunged into “honied indolence,” that is, he compares indolence to a food sweet and succulent like honey in order to demonstrate the beauty it has to him, a common trope in Keats’s poetry. Furthermore, not only is the speaker-poet shielded from both pleasure and pain, again reiterated with “shelter’d from annoy,” in which “annoy” means “discomfort,” but also from daily duties and from others, perhaps the reason that guides this world. Perhaps he was not even being that specific, and merely meant that whatever is going on outside is blocked off from the speaker-poet...
Words: 1718 - Pages: 7
...read with the greatest avidity” – Frankenstein while reading Cornelius Agrippa (outdated and disproven alchemist) • “In a scientific pursuit there is continued food for discovery and wonder” – Frankenstein reason • “My nights of the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and these branches of physical science from which a naval adventure might derive the greatness practical advantage” – Walton • “I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books” – Creature on the significance of books • “Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative!” – Walton asking for affirmation • “God like science” – Creature referring to language • “How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” – Victor Frankenstein • “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge” – Creature Nature, Religion and the Sublime • “Their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven” – Frankenstein referring to an idealist himself in the eyes of his parents • “Change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations” – Frankenstein • “...and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements” – Frankenstein referring to God, Shelley romanticises • “...mighty Alps, whose...
Words: 582 - Pages: 3
...In her 1818 preface to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote that Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron sojourned into Nature leaving her behind at Villa Diodati near lake Geneva. After weeks of rain, the weather suddenly clears and she writes “my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, lost, in the magnificent scenes…” (8) This would be the first of many excursions from which she would be left out. Though exceptionally educated and progressive, Shelley was a woman trapped by the mores of the nineteenth century. She was no stranger to the social constraints placed upon her sex. Her experiences as a woman of her time are mirrored in her portrayal of men and women and their relationship to nature in the novel. While creation, pregnancy and birth, were intrinsically the provenance of women, the quest for a rational, scientific method for understanding and conquering Nature was the objective of men. This...
Words: 3576 - Pages: 15
...again I see | | These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines | | Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms, | | Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke | | Sent up, in silence, from among the trees, | | With some uncertain notice, as might seem, | 20 | Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, | | Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire | | The hermit sits alone. | | Though absent long, | | These forms of beauty have not been to me, | | As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: | | But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din | | Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, | | In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, | | Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, | | And passing even into my purer mind | 30 | With tranquil restoration:—feelings too | | Of unremembered...
Words: 1451 - Pages: 6
...Industrialists and consumers by following the trends that lead the industry; (EuropainIntersuc Study). Trend 1: Bakery = contemporary version for every moment of consumption: The consumer plebiscite places where he can buy but also consume on the spot at any time of the day. The goal here is to make bakery product more available to consumer. “In France, with 340 visits per day opening, bakeries are among the busiest retail proximity businesses” (www.devenir-boulanger.com). Trend 2: What is " good for me " is in my bakery: Here, we are concerned about consumer’s health and well -being, today's consumers are looking for freshness, nutritional quality, food safety and simplicity. The industry is focusing only delivering edible product but they also expect it to participate actively in good consumer’s food habit. For instance, if you’re diabetic you can still order a birthday cake, because they can bake one with no sugar. Trend 3 : Design, perfect for collections and sublime taste agreements: The bakers, confectioners or chocolatiers in fact the industry professionals dare the amazing shapes, sustainable or ephemeral collections! It’s about turning food into: Art. The industry professionals concentrate all their effort on making their product more and more appealing for consumers. For example nowadays bakery don’t only make...
Words: 1003 - Pages: 5
...Frankenstein Science AO2 Unrestrained scientific desire: ‘they penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places’ • ‘they ascend into the heavens’ ‘new and almost unlimited powers’ ‘penetrate’ ‘command’ ‘mimic’ • ‘with fervour’ • ‘performed miracles’ • ‘unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation’ • ‘secret’ ‘hidden laws’ • How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge’ Power: ‘as if my soul were grappling with a powerful enemy’ • ‘like a hurricane’ ‘pour a torrent of light’ • ‘pursued’ ‘unremitting ardour’ ‘clung’ ‘dedicated myself’ ‘secret toil’ ‘tremble’ ‘tortured’ • ‘one pursuit’ • ‘tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man’ • ‘I preferred glory’ • ‘until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me- a light so brilliant and wondrous’ Lack of Morality: Transgression against God he mocks the power of the creator ‘torrents of light’ ‘a new species would bless me as its creator and source’ ‘many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me’ • ‘eyes insensible to the charms of nature’ • ‘Labours’ scientist in being able to mimic and usurp traditional creation methods; existence of an immortal soul? • Responsibility for creation image reinforced ‘inarticulate sounds’ Pursuit: ‘deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge’ • ‘Pursuit for discovery and wonder’ attracted to the tree of knowledge ‘eternal light’ back to biblical times, tree of knowledge...
Words: 2241 - Pages: 9
...Katie Valdesuso November 30, 2010 ENGL 439 Prof. Allan R. Life The Evocation of Terror in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher In his Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allan Poe informs us that he begins writing with “the consideration of an effect” (430). Most of Poe’s poetry and fiction exemplifies his assertion that a preconceived effect upon a reader is undoubtedly fundamental to his creative work. Poe’s tales of terror in particular epitomize the supremacy of his craft in that each component of his narrative strategy functions to achieve the final effect of generating unmitigated terror in his readers. Focusing primarily on The Fall of the House of Usher, I argue that Poe employs a preconceived narrative strategy that ultimately functions to evoke terror; I assert that Poe elicits fear to challenge us to reexamine out perceptions of ostensibly impossible circumstances and recognize the limits of our intellect. I will first examine the aspects of Poe’s narrative style that culminate to achieve his desired effect of the evocation of terror. I will then analyze the narrator’s response to this evocation of terror and how this emergent response elicits fear in the reader. Last, I will illustrate how the narrator’s evolving response is emulated in the style through which the tale is narrated. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tactically exploits a first person narrator, setting, imagery, and tone to achieve a “unity of effect,” the aforethought effect...
Words: 2196 - Pages: 9
...Romanticism Unshackled: a Study of the Modern Prometheus The most remarkable aspect about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the ability to label the novel in so many different ways amongst many genres, ranging from science fiction, to fantasy, to horror, and have all of them be correct. At such a young age, Mary Shelley constructed a narrative so revolutionary, intricate, and involved that it is still pertinent to be written about in college essays almost 200 years after it was written. As the author, Shelley is often attributed with vast creative intellect, and rightly so, as is evidenced while reading through her novel. It is imperative to recognize, however, just how much influence her colleagues—the Romantic poets—had on the ideas that became manifested in her writing. Frankenstein should bear the title of Romantic literature because the novel embodies trademark Romantic ideas, situations, and characteristics throughout the text. In an attempt to categorize any novel as Romantic, however, one must first attempt to identify what, exactly, makes a work Romantic. A group of poets, including the likes of William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron and—Mary’s husband—Percy Shelley, who are commonly credited as being the ground-breaking authors of the Romantic movement (Ferguson). A prime example of this method of poetry was introduced in the 1798 collection, Lyrical Ballads. This work, written by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is a compilation...
Words: 3287 - Pages: 14
...geography, weather). At the same time, Wordsworth was a self-consciously literary artist who described "the mind of man" as the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension between objective describer of the natural scene and subjective shaper of sensory experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's view of the mind as "creator and receiver both." Wordsworth consistently describes his own mind as the recipient of external sensations which are then rendered into its own mental creations. Such an alliance of the inner life with the outer world is at the heart of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature. Wordsworth's ideas about memory, the importance of childhood experiences, and the power of the mind to bestow an "auxiliar" light on the objects it beholds all depend on this ability to record experiences carefully at the moment of observation but then to shape those same experiences in the mind over time. We should also recall, however, that he made widespread use of other texts in the production of his Wordsworthian (Keats said "egotistical") sublime: drafts of poems by Coleridge, his sisterDorothy's Journals, the works of Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, and countless others. Wordsworthian "nature" emerges as much a product of his widespead reading as of his wanderings amid the affecting landscapes of the Lake District. His poems often present an instant when nature speaks to him and he responds by speaking for nature. The language of nature in such instances is, like the language...
Words: 1953 - Pages: 8
...International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 3 No. 3; February 2013 Emotions Recollected in Tranquility: Wordsworth’s Concept of Poetic Creation Faria Saeed Khan Department of English Literature University of Balochistan, Quetta Abstract Wordsworth was of the view that ‘Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. When reading this statement, one might think that, for Wordsworth, poetic composition is solely based on the expression of emotions, excluding any reflection about them. But Wordsworth gave equal importance to the element of thought in poetry and says that poems to which any value is attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, has also thought long and deep. Wordsworth believes that artistic process is combination of thought and emotion. This research article will study Wordsworth’s concept of poetic creation Wordsworth believes that artistic process is combination of thought and emotion . During the poetic process, the poet is possessed by powerful passions but he undergoes a period of emotions reflected in tranquility. During this process the influxes of feelings are modified and directed by thoughts. The direction of thought adds a depth of meaning and truth to poetry. For Wordsworth poetry is a method of interpreting the reality or the meaning of life. Introduction Generally the critics criticize the Romantics for being too emotional...
Words: 2924 - Pages: 12
...The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature William Cronon This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet-indeed, a passionof the environmental movement, especially in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.“’ But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made...
Words: 11026 - Pages: 45
...follow the winding rural road up the steep grades of the Ozark Mountains until you reach a small, modest farm at the top of the first ridge. This was my home when I was ten years old. Inside the walls of my family's log cabin was a life wrought with staunch rules and religious observations. On the outside, amidst the sheep and the fields, in the secrecy and mystery of the surrounding mountain woods, was my world of freedom and imagination. Every summer was the same. I would wake early with the sun, and bound for...
Words: 1747 - Pages: 7
...The French Revolution, which took place at the end of the 18th century, was perhaps the most significant revolution in history to date. Not only did it have an enormous impact on politics and social order within France but also across the European continent which was, at that period in history, the fulcrum of civilisation and modernity. A bitter dispute ensued about the French principles of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. This essay intends to focus on the impact that the Revolution had on Britain at that time and we will reflect on the influence that literary writings had upon shaping Britain’s views of the revolution and its espoused ideals, and in turn the consequences that they would have on British society into the 19th century. Leading up to the beginning of the French Revolution political and social unrest was spreading in Britain. The country was divided on one argument: the rights of man. On one side of the argument were the radicals who strongly supported a new form of government, that of elective democracy. This group were countered by the loyalists who adamantly opposed such drastic changes and remained allegiant to the church and the monarchy. Loyalists vehemently opposed what they saw as the threat against traditional British values. The radicals were part of a post-enlightenment movement that believed citizenship and its right derived from natural human rights such as that of all men being allowed to take part in politic regardless of their status or background...
Words: 2495 - Pages: 10
