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Novel Beginnings

ENGL 446B handout

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus

The beginning of the novel (Walton's letters)

LETTER I

To Mrs. Saville, England

ST. PETERSBURGH, Dec. 11, 17--.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There--for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators--there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas's library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.

Keats' Letters

To George Keats, 21 December 1817

[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason--Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

To J H Reynolds, 3 May 1818

Well - I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being yet shut upon me - The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle - within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man - of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression - whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought become gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages - We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist - We are now in that state - We feel the "burden of the Mystery," To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages.

To George and Georgiana Keats, 14 Feb-3 May 1819

The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is 'a vale of tears' from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven--What a little circumscribed straightened notion! call the world if you Please 'The vale of Soul-making' Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say "Soul making" Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence-- There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception--they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God--how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the chrystain religion--or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years--These Materials are the Intelligence--the human heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of forming the Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive--and yet I think I perceive it--that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible--I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read--I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, it is the Minds Bible, it is the Minds experience, it is the teat from which the Mind or intelligence sucks its identity--As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their Souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence

Keats' "To Autumn"

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,	
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;	
Conspiring with him how to load and bless	
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;	
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,	        5
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;	
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells	
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,	
  And still more, later flowers for the bees,	
  Until they think warm days will never cease,	        10
    For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.	
 
2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?	
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find	
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,	
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	        15
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,	
  Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook	
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:	
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep	
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;	        20
  Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,	
    Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.	
 
3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?	
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—	
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,	        25
  And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;	
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn	
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft	
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;	
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	        30
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft	
  The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;	
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”

Conflicted nature of human life

the interconnection or mixture of pain/joy
intensity of feeling/numbness of feeling
life/death
mortal/immortal
the actual/the ideal
separation/connection.

Move from concrete to abstract

concrete imagery and sensual language
becomes symbol

Stanza 1

reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing
feels joy and pain, an ambivalent response

what words express his pleasure and what express his pain
which words express his intense feeling and which his numbed feeling

What qualities does the poet ascribe to the nightingale?

Real bird > Symbol but of what?

pure or unmixed joy,
the artist, with the bird's voice being self expression or the song being poetry,
the music (beauties) of nature
the ideal.

Stanza II. move into a world of imagination or fantasy

alcohol: what are the effects alcohol has; which one or ones is the poet seeking?
drinking and of the world associated with wine is idealized
The image of the "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" is much admired. Does it capture the action of sparkling wine? What sounds are repeated? What is the effect of this alliteration? Do any of the sounds duplicate the bubbles breaking? Say the words and notice the action of your lips.

Stanza III. real world pulls him back from imagined world

What is the effect of the words "fade" and "dissolve"? why "far away"?
What kind of world does the poet live in?
What is the relationship of the bird to the world the poet describes? See line 2.
Characterize the real world which the poet describes. By implication, what kind of world does the nightingale live in? (is it the same as or different from the poet's?)

Stanza IV. Turn to fantasy again

What does it mean to choose “Poesy”?
He contrasts this mode of experience (poetry) to the "dull brain" that "perplexes and retards" (line 4); what way of approaching life does this line reject?
In line 5, he succeeds or seems to succeed in joining the bird. What’s it like being with the bird?

Stanza V.

cannot see in the darkness, he must rely on his other senses. What senses does he rely on?
Even in this refuge, death is present

What words hint of death?
Do these hints help to prepare for stanza VI?
Was death anticipated in stanza I by the vague suggestions in the words "Lethe," "hemlock," "drowsy numbness," "poisonous," and "shadowy darkness"?

What season is it? What significance might we attach to that?

Stanza VI. Distance from the nightingale

yearns to die, a state which he imagines as only joyful, as pain-free, and to merge with the bird's song.
The nightingale is characterized as wholly blissful--"full-throated ease" in stanza I and "pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (7-8).
mixed nature of reality and its transience suggested by the contrasting phrases "fast-fading violets" and "the coming musk-rose"
What does the speaker realize about death at the end of the stanza?

Stanza VII. Human mortality => Bird immortality (or song)

but the bird will die: is this an error? or can we read it another way?

Is he saying that the bird he hears is immortal?
or is he saying something else, like "the bird is a symbol of the continuity of nature" or like "the bird represents the continuing presence of joy in life"?

Deepened “meaning” of the bird:

Does the bird symbolize ideal beauty, which is immortal?
Or is the bird the visionary or imaginative realm which inspires poets?
Or does the bird's song symbolize poetry and has the passion of the song/poem carried the listening poet away?
Has the actual bird been transformed into a myth?
Does this one bird represent the species, which by continuing generation after generation does achieve a kind of immortality as a species?

Hungry generations
Where is the bird located in this stanza? Do we see a shift?

Stanza VIII. Identified or separated from the nightingale?

What delusion is the poet waking from?
Bird is not a symbol anymore, now the actual bird. The bird flies away to another spot to sing. The bird's song becomes a "plaintive anthem" and fainter.

Is the change in the bird and/or the poet?
Is Keats's description of the bird's voice as "buried deep" a reference only to its physical distance, or does the phrase have an additional meaning? It is the last of the death images running through the poem.

With the last two lines

true insight or experience (vision) or daydreaming
the validity of the experience the poem describes, or is he expressing the inability to maintain an intense, true vision?
transience; a false vision, or true?
Has the dreamer in this poem changed as a result of his visionary experience? For instance, has his life been improved in any way? has he been damaged in any way?
What is the tone of the ending?

November 15, 2011

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November 10, 2011

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November 8, 2011

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John Martin, Manfred on the Jungfrau

Ford Maddox Brown, "Manfred on the Jungfrau

The Prisoners' Chorus from Fidelio

GEFANGENEN
O, welche Lust!
in freier Luft den Atem
leicht zu heben, O, welche Lust!
nur hier, nur hier ist Leben,
der Kerker eine Gruft, eine Gruft!

ERSTER GEFANGENE
Wir wollen mit Vertrauen
auf Gottes Hülfe,
auf Gottes Hülfe bauen,
die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu,
wir werden frei, wir finden Ruh,
wir finden Ruh'.

GEFANGENEN
O Himmel Rettung,
welch ein Glück,
o Freiheit, o Freiheit,
kehrst du zurück?

ZWEITE GEFANGENE
Sprecht leise, haltet euch zurück,
wir sind belauscht mir
Ohr und Blick.

GEFANGENEN
Sprecht leise, haltet euch zurück,
wir sind belauscht mir
Ohr und Blick.

ALL
Oh, what a pleasure once again
Freely to breathe the fresh air!
In Heaven’s light we live again;
From death we have escaped.

One of them.
Let us in Heaven trust;
On Heaven depend our hopes:
He will on our griefs look with pity.
On His goodness all things depend.

All.
Oh, liberty! oh, salvation!
Oh, God, upon our miseries have pity!

[Here an Officer appears on the wall, and again retires.

Prisoner.
Silence! make no noise!
Pizarro’s eyes and ears are o’er us!

All.
Silence! make no noise!
Pizarro’s eyes and ears are o’er us!
Oh! what a pleasure once again
Freely to breathe the fresh air!
In Heaven’s light we live again;
From death we have escaped.

From J. S. Mill's On Liberty

Few persons, out of Germany, even comprehend the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise--that "the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore, the object "towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development;" that for this there are two requisites, "freedom, and a variety of situations;" and that from the union of these arise "individual vigor and manifold diversity," which combine themselves in "originality." (Chapter 3)

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill or that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State, which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish. (Chapter 5)

From Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3

XXXVI.

There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose spirit anithetically mixed
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed;
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
Even now to reassume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!

XXXVII.

Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became
The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
A god unto thyself; nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.

XXXVIII.

Oh, more or less than man--in high or low,
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield:
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.

XXXIX.

Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.

XL.

Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steeled thee on to far too show
That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.

XLI.

If, like a tower upon a headland rock,
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
THEIR admiration thy best weapon shone;
The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men;
For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den.

XLII.

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul, which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.

XLIII.

This makes the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:

XLIV.

Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

XLV.

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high ABOVE the sun of glory glow,
And far BENEATH the earth and ocean spread,
ROUND him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

* * * *

XCVI.

Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices, is the knoll
Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest.
But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?

XCVII.

Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,--could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe--into one word,
And that one word were lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

* * * *

CXIII.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee, -
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

CXIV.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me, -
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,--hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the falling: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem, -
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.

From the final scene of Goethe's Faust, Part 2

ENGEL (schwebend in der höhern Atmosphäre, Faustens Unsterbliches tragend)
Gerettet ist das edle Glied
Der Geisterwelt vom Bösen:
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen;
Und hat an ihm die Liebe gar
Von oben teilgenommen,
Begegnet ihm die sel'ge Schar
Mit herzlichem Willkommen.

ANGELS (hovering in the higher atmosphere, bearing Faust's immortal soul)
Now the noble member
Of the spiritual world is saved from evil:
Whoever constantly aspires and perseveres,
Him can we redeem;
And if he fully merges in the
Love high above,
The sacred congregation will meet him
With the most heartfelt welcome.

November 3, 2011

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November 1, 2011

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October 27, 2011

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October 18-20, 2011

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October 13, 2011

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October 11, 2011

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September 29, 2011

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September 27, 2011

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I.
O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O, thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!
II.
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head	20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O, hear!
III.
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know	40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O, hear!
IV.
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O, uncontroulable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed	50
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,	60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?	70

Stanza	Then	Now
1	celestial light glory and freshness of a dream	can see no more
2	Rainbow comes and goes . . .	there hath past away a glory from the earth
3	fullness of your bliss	thought of grief
4	visionary gleam glory and the dream	if I were sullen whither is fled
5	not in entire forgetfulness trailing clouds of glory Heaven lies about us Nature’s Priest vision splendid	a sleep and a forgetting shades of the prison house Man perceives it die away fade into the light of common day
6	[Nature’s] Foster-child glories he hath known imperial palace whence he came	Inmate Man Earth fills her lap with pleasures
7	his dream of human life	some fragment of [his dream of human life] this hath now his heart fit his tongue to dialogues of business, love, strife, the little Actor As if his whole vocation / Were endless imitation
8	Thy Soul’s immensity Thou best philosopher thou Eye among the blind read’st the eternal deep haunted forever by the eternal mind Mighty Prophet Seer blest glorious in the might	In darkness lost darkness of the grave to bring the inevitable yoke blindly with thy blessedness at strife earthly freight custom lie upon thee with a weight

Stanza	Loss	Gain
9	Delight and liberty simple creed / Of Childhood new-fledged hope that immortal sea / which brought us hither [cannot be children on the shore]	perpetual benediction obstinate questionings blank misgivings first affections Our souls have sight of that immortal sea . . . see the Children sport upon the shore
10	radiance once so bright splendour in the grass glory in the flower	primal sympathy soothing thoughts that spring / Out of human suffering faith that looks through death years that bring philosophic mind
11	to live beneath [Nature’s] more habitual sway [a time when I] tripped lightly as [the brooks] the innocent brightness of a new-born Day	sober coloring kept watch o’er man’s mortality To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

1-10	Current struggle with France
11-22	Nature bounteous in vain
23-38	Human world bounteous in vain
39-60	Is Britain exempt? No
61-66	Golden tide (of commerce, progress, and enlightenment) leaves Britain ’s shore
67-112	Before the tide left, here’s a sampling of what Britain did—a litany of Britain ’s intellectual achievements
113-126	With the tide gone, Britain will now enter a new dark age
127-156	Britain will become a ruin, visited by (North) Americans in search of their “roots”
157-214	London 157-176 depopulated (imperial center becomes ruined Jerusalem ) 177-186 Westminster Abbey as repository of past glories 187-204 more greats of the past (now museum material) 205-214 Art ( Britain ’s imperial spoils will be on display as someone else’s spoils)
215-240	The mechanism of the imperial/commercial Genius (i.e. how it moves from place to place)
241-258	How this Genius left the classical world
259-304	How Europe awakened from barbarism under the influence of this Genius (how the Genius has traveled north)
305-312	Britain triumphs
313-320	Reversal—the end of empire for Britain
321-334	Genius moves to the New World

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Daily Notes

December 1, 2011

Notes on Frankenstein

General

Allusiveness—a very literary text

The Title Page

Structure

Who is the Hero?

Walton’s Story?

Frankenstein’s Story?

Creature’s Story

Ambition

Selfish

Community

God

Identity

Justice

Language

Parents

Prejudice

Romantic

Women

Science

November 29, 2011

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

November 22, 2011

Romantic Irony

Byron’s Don Juan

November 17, 2011

Novel Beginnings

Keats' Letters

Keats' "To Autumn"

Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”

November 15, 2011

Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes

Background

Overview

Analysis

November 10, 2011

Notes for “Ode to the West Wind”

November 8, 2011

The Prisoners' Chorus from Fidelio

From J. S. Mill's On Liberty

From Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3

From the final scene of Goethe's Faust, Part 2

November 3, 2011

Notes on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Epistemological Questions

Metaphysical nature of the Mariner’s universe

Overview

More Questions

November 1, 2011

Wordsworth’s Ode

October 27, 2011

Some Representations of the Sublime

October 18-20, 2011

Notes for Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

The Necessity (but Pain) of Sense

Problems

October 13, 2011

Notes for Barbauld’s Eighteen Hundred Eleven

Overview of the Structure

October 11, 2011

Notes on the Rights of Woman

(caution--page numbers might be to 3rd edition)

October 6, 2011

Notes on Industrialization

October 4, 2011

September 29, 2011

September 27, 2011