Midterm Flashcards
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Mary Wollstonecraft: Women are entitled to liberty and equality. Their subordination impedes civilization for ALL people.
ALL children need quality education that cultivates reason.
There is only ONE standard of virtue (character and moral behavior) NOT one for each sex.
Teaching women reason will allow them to be virtuous and fulfill their duties.
Draws parallels in abusive kings and corrupt military.
“I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with the ephitets of weakness.”
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the rights of women. If women are exclusively participating in “delicate” actions they become objects of pity and eventually objects of contempt.
“Meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world, by marriage…Can they be expected to govern a family with judgement, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?”
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the rights of women. To be good mothers women need to be educated in reason. Right now they can only be successful with beauty.
“How grossly do they insult us who this advise us to only render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes! “
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women. It is insulting to be asked to be gentle and soft because that’s the same as asking them to be docile and submissive. It is a FALSE form of power and governance.
Additionally, she asks women be compared to God and not to men.
How does Mary Wollstonecraft feel about love and friendship?
Passion is not forever and not even necessarily good.
Friendship is more important because it is sustainable.
Love=grand passion and this will eventually fade and fail.
Women need to cultivate their own interests so that when this love eventually fails they will not damage the marriage or children or themselves.
Sappho and Phaon
Mary Robinson. The fight between reason and passion. Each seem to have their positives but also a darkness.
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth.
Subject: Celebrates humankind in its simple things (common and rustic life).
Language: Poetry should be close to prose in language (simple and express natural emotion).
Origin: Comes from “the spontaneous overflow of feelings” that are modified and directed by thought.
Purpose: pleasure, moral purpose, express political ideas, and help the reader express emotion.
Poet: a translator of emotion
The Great Ode
William Wordsworth. Explores the idea of pre-existence. Reflects on lost childhood joys. Nostalgic. Desire for youth and priest like state. Turns back to nature.
Biographia Literia
Samuel Coleridge.
Primary Imagination: is living power and agent of all human perception. Represents Gods creation.
Secondary Imagination: coexists with conscious will/decision. It’s the same agency but differs in mode. Recreating imagination.
Fancy: is not divine. Comes from free will. Mechanical memory, repetition, passive.
Kubla Khan
Samuel Coleridge.
Opium influenced dream. Is he master or slave to his writing?
Prometheus
Lord Byron.
The Byronic Hero defies morality, is an outsider, syndical and prideful, gothic revival bad boy.
Prometheus is a Byronic hero because he does not let anyone hear his suffering, it’s a way to stand up against tyranny.
Said “Only humans can make death a victory”
A Defense of Poetry
Percy Shelley.
The human imagination experiences and adjusts the external forces. A poet is able to SYNTHESIZE via imagination. Aka the mind is generative but only with synthesis with the world.
Poetry is not for moral improvement, it exposes and serves beauty.
The imagination serves beauty, beauty serves love, love creates morality.
“A poet therefore would do I’ll to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong (which are usually those of his place and time) in his poetical creations (which participate in neither).”
Percy Shelley. A defense of Poetry.
Morality in terms of right vs wrong is not eternal so Poetry should not be used to define right and wrong.
Poetry IS for love which means putting ourselves in others Shoes.
To A Skylark
Percy Shelley. The Skylark is a metaphor to embody the idea of pure joy and inspiration. The Skylark is an artist but he isn’t confined by pen and paper the way the poet is. He shares the art as he experiences (the poet has disconnect by putting it to language).
Selected Letters
John Keats.
Negative capability: when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
Be content without having all the answers and be able to live with situations you cannot solve.
Poetic Character: NO CHARACTER. They can explore all things, light and dark, sin and divine, happy and sad.
Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats.
The nightingale has something more than humans have that keeps him happy and vital. The speaker is depressed and feels the need to be drunk or high all the time. He decides he wants to be like the bird and turns away from his darkness.
The History of ________, a West Indian slave
Mary Prince. Considered the first female slave narrative, got involved with abolition. Written in dialect.
Past and Present
Thomas Carlyle. If you had helped the widow before she got sick when she asked for help, less people would have died which is more economic.
Everyone is brothers and sisters.
Quit trying to know yourself and know your work.
Government can’t solve everything, we have to create solutions so the government can enact what the people want.
Captains of industry need to create community and employee loyalty.
A Review of Southeys Colloquies
Thomas Macaulay. Pro-free trade, pro- liaz-e-faire. Thinks Southeys accusations that the industrial system is evil are unsupported. The industrial movement has facts supporting that it results in progress and increased comfort.
Echo
Christina Rossetti. Echo and Narcissus. Unrequited love. Curse to repeat only what’s just been said. Annafora is the repetition of words and it’s used here to show the curse.
An Apple Gathering
Christina Rossetti. Plucking apple blossoms as a metaphor for losing virginity too soon. Christina was very religious and believes this is bad but still leaves us feeling sympathetic for the girl.
Aurora Leigh
Elizabeth Barrett Brown. Aurora Leigh is An English verse novel or epic.
“Come. Reason, come! Each nerve rebellious bind,
lull the fierce tempest of my feverish soul”
Mary Robinson. Sappho and Phaon.
“O reason! Vaunted sovereign of the mind!
Thou pompous vision with a sounding name!”
Mary Robinson. Sappho and Phaon.
