Lit 12 - Fishbowls! June 15

FINAL ESSAY - would it be a good idea to have a few good themes and try to memorize some handy quotes? Have your magic sheet (syllabus) next to you!

Religion

Beowulf - fate vs. Christianity
-B has to be like a god because there is not just one
-overlaid on top

Sir Gawain
-contrasts to B - society has developed - more civilized - Christianity more prevalent
-Sir G is more humble

Chaucer
-satirized
-Christianity not what it should be
-look at Friar, Pardoner, Summoner and compare to Plowman, Knight, and Parson

Blake - "Tyger"/ "Lamb"

-relationship directly with God (Calvinists) - Milton

- Nature in the Romantic Era seems to take the place of Christianity

Milton - Paradise Lost- how does he influence the authors who come after him? Satan's point of view - sympathizing with him (what does this do?) - people think about issues - questioning beliefs - compares himself to Moses - show how seductive the devil can be (don't succumb!) - "justify the ways of God to men"

"Rime" - son of God/albatross
-Christianity is conflated with Nature

-Blake is religious - but questions whether or not innocence is purity and experience is not - they are part of a spectrum - Socrates quote ("courage temperance, and the rest belong to most evil men: "Or do you fancy that great crimes and unmixed wickedness come from a feeble nature and not rather from a noble nature that has been ruined?")

Problems with Society

Anglo Saxon - Beowulf- bad guy versus good guy - acceptance (Grendel the outsider - alienated - think about sympathy for him or not)
-needed a strong and powerful leader - Beowulf is that
- Sympathy for Grendel - disturbing nature - the colonists - he can stand for groups who have been oppressed (misunderstood)

-Chaucer -

"To the Ladies" - silence from women - then "wife and servant are the same"

Social Class - "Elegy," "Rape of the Lock" - ridiculing and satirizing people of status who just play cardas
-"A Modest Proposal"
- Satire has gone throughout history - to effect change - rather than telling people what's wrong - people come to the conclusion themselves (more effective)

-new social problem - Romantic Era struggling with Nature becoming ruin "Apostrophe" - "man marks the earth with ruin"
"The World is Too Much with Us" - "little we see in Nature that is ours"

-"Not Waving But Drowning" - Stevie Smith (author of "Pretty") - people could have helped but didn't

"Hollow Men" - absence of purpose

-always a popular theme - we are always progressing - if we solve one problem - others arise, new problems arise (it may have been fine to discriminate against poor people - think of when Hamlet kills Polonius "I took you for your better")

-passionate about?

- Industrial Revolution - makes Nature become an issue

"Disembarking" - "I am a word in a foreign language" - people taking the time to notice - could be the most beautiful phrase - but people don't understand - the nuance or the context

"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" - Albert Maysles

Mortality

- State of being subject to death
- How is it viewed through the ages

Beowulf - death can be honourable and glamorous - burned in an effigy and having a tower

"Dulce et Decorum Est" - full span - Wilfred Owen - poem - not good and honourable to die for one's country (not honorable any more - just dirty)

"Bonny Barbara Allen" - just love

-so many Middle Ages wars - perhaps people didn't want to talk about death - but then again Crusades were far away

-WWI and WWII - English Literature - London is bombed ("The Destructors"

"marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116) - death does not affect love (big contrast to "Bonny Barbara Allen"

-time and mortality = recurring theme "On His Arriving at the Age of Reaching 23," "When I Have Fears," Sonnet 29 - "When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes" - relationship with completing life's work
-death a concept they have to beat

"Because I Could Not Stop for Death" - personified - also in "Death be Not Proud" - making something human makes it less scary

-death can't exist if there is eternity - (think of all the love poems = eternity)

- Why is death such a recurring theme
- Did we become more afraid of death as time went on? (mortality rate = much younger)
- Experiencing death first hand

"Ode to a Nightingale" - experienced his brother dying - death is also imminent - personal experience of death = different treatment

- Religion - people more scared if they are not religious (?)
- Beowulf - people are proud to die
- Milton doesn't have a comforting view of the after life (but of course we are not supposed to be seduced by Satan = point of Paradise Lost)
- Beowulf - needs-based society
- Christianity developed as society became more civilized
- Beowulf - death has a purpose
- Attraction towards death

"Rime" - burden of death - killing the albatross (worse = Life in Death - seeing all the crew mates living)

-burden of life "Ode to a Nightingale" - "youth grows specter thin and dies"
- "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" - fight! - good, wise, grave, wild (resist it!)
- Avoid death, death is pretty great, avoid death again (Sam's death circle)

"Elegy" -