BRIT LIT 2240: FINAL EXAM CARROLL
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
"A Scandal in Bohemia" is the first short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his now iconic character Sherlock Holmes. It was published in 1891 and is also well known for introducing the character of Irene Adler, a woman who becomes a romantic interest for Holmes in later works. The story begins with a married Watson paying Holmes a visit. While Watson is there, a masked visitor enters the room claiming to be Count Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client who does not wish to reveal himself. Holmes quickly identifies the masked man as Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and the hereditary King of Bohemia. The man admits that Holmes is correct and removes the mask. The king is engaged to a Scandinavian princess, but he is worried about his previous liaison with the American opera singer Irene Adler. During that liaison, he had written letters to Irene and had a picture of the two of them made; now the king is worried about his fiancee's strict family and wants to have the letters and picture back. The problem is that Irene refuses to return either, and the king requests that Holmes locate the photograph. He has already tried to retrieve it himself, sometimes through forceful means, and his offer to pay for it was also refused. Irene is now threatening to send it to his fiancee's family, so the king is desperate for help. The photograph is too bulky to be carried on Irene's person. Holmes surmises that she must have it hidden close to her. Holmes receives money for expenses from the king, and asks Watson to meet him at his home the next day. The next morning, Watson visits Irene's apartment disguised as a drunken, out of work groom. Some of the stablemen inform him that she has a frequent gentleman caller, the barrister Godfrey Norton of the Inner Temple. Norton visits her on this particular day, and then he takes a cab to a church. A little while later Irene leaves, heading to the same place. Holmes follows and then accidentally becomes the witness to their marriage. They all go their separate ways after the small ceremony. Watson has been waiting for Holmes to arrive back at his apartment. Sherlock is amused by the earlier events and fills Watson in on them when he arrives. Watson agrees to be part of a plan to discover where Irene has hidden the picture. Watson dresses as a clergyman, and he and Watson head back to Irene's apartment. A group of men is standing on the street, and when she arrives, they fight over who will get to help her. Holmes rushes over to protect her and seems to be hurt in the scuffle. Irene takes him into her apartment, where he is laid on the couch to recover. At a prearranged signal, Watson tosses a smoke rocket into the apartment and shouts "fire!" Holmes tells Watson later that he saw Irene rush to her most prized possession, the photograph, when she thought the building might be destroyed. Holmes now knows its hiding place. He tells Watson that he was unable to take it at that moment because he was being watched, but that he will return later. At that moment, the two men are bid goodnight by a familiar-sounding youth, who slips away in the crowd. Holmes tells the king of his findings, but when he goes to retrieve the photograph, Irene's elderly maidservant tells them that Irene has left hastily for the train station. Instead of the photograph of her and the king, Holmes finds only a photograph of her in an evening dress, and a letter addressed to him. In the letter, she explains that she was the youth from the previous night, and congratulates him on doing such a good job fooling her with his disguises and locating the photograph. She has left with Norton, however, who is an honorable man. She will not give the photograph to the king's fiancee's family and wishes only to keep it to prevent further action against her by the king. The king is impressed with this result and asks Holmes how he wishes to be paid. Holmes takes only the photograph of Irene, telling the king, as the king laments what a wonderful woman Irene is, that they are not of the same station. He insinuates that her station is far higher than the king's, but Holmes' subtlety is lost on the king. Watson has already referred to Irene as "the late Irene Adler," alluding to her death in the intervening three years between the events described in the short story, and the moment at which they are recounted. Holmes, however, refers to her honorably from then on as "the woman." As with all Holmes stories, observation is at the forefront of the story. Holmes is able not only to see, but to really observe. This talent is normally lost on the rest of the characters in the story. In this particular story, however, he is matched and bested by the observational skills of Irene. One of the major themes of the story is the battle between wit and force. The two major male players in the game of subterfuge use force to try to retrieve the photograph. They are bested by Irene's use of her wit and clever disguises. Ultimately, wit wins.
"The Entangled Bank"`
"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth." - By invoking this gentle image, Darwin sought to emphasize how "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful" have all evolved through the process of natural selection.
low culture
"Low culture" is a derogatory term for forms of popular culture that have mass appeal. Its contrast is "high culture", which can also be derogatory. It has been said by culture theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures. ... Many people are "omnivores", making cultural choices from different menus.
"Post- Colonial"
"Post-colonialism should not be confused with the claim that the world we live in now is actually devoid of colonialism." - the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.
Salman Rushdie, IIC "The Courter,
'The Courter' is a short story by Salman Rushdie that was published in 1994 within the collection East, West. It is told from the perspective of a teenage boy from India who has been sent to boarding school in the United Kingdom. The now grown-up narrator reminisces the time during the sixties, when he was joined in London by his family - his parents, his three sisters and his ayah - and lived with them in 'Waverley House'. 'The Courter' explores the immigrant microcosm of Waverley House - where two Indian Maharajas are also living - and binds different storylines together. In the foreground is the love story between the narrator's ayah and the porter, whose name she mispronounces 'courter' and who himself is an immigrant from the USSR. Both have to deal with their dislocation, being cut off from their relative homelands and living in an environment where they have troubles finding their place - which is constantly articulated through the medium of language and language barriers. Even so, they find a way of communicating with each other through the game of chess. 'The Courter' is also the story of the narrator himself, a story staged in the background. It shows how he deals with his status as an immigrant, belonging neither to India nor fully to Britain yet applying for British citizenship. It shows how he deals with his situation as a 'hybrid' while simultaneously facing more 'down-to-earth' problems such as teenage issues or dealing with his disharmonic family - such as his authoritarian father and his rebellious sister. 'The Courter' is a wonderful story by Rushdie, that - contrary to many of his novels such as, of course, The Satanic Verses - deals with the subjects of exile, hybridity and dislocation in a very direct and quite positive way. It is a story that shows how 'newness enters the world' and highlights the possibilities and the unexpected combinations of ideas, people and cultures that can arise from the borderline position of the exile. 'The Courter' explores the tensions, mistranslations and miscommunications that arise from hybridity, but it also emphasises that something very positive can come from the position of being caught between two cultures. It displays how the hybrid changes the landscape of which he is part, how he has the power to subvert the dualisms and binaries of power, and how new historical subjects emerge from hybridity: 'But I, too, have ropes around my neck. I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. I buck, I snort, I whinny, I rear, I kick. Ropes, I do not chose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose.' (211)
Post- Modernism
- After WWII literature and culture changed again-> PM particularly challenges assumptions of Enlightenment rationality - Questioned "progress" as a human condition - Questioned high culture which co-existed with fascism - Pointed out knowledge systems linked to power - Values socially-constructed often to benefit hierarchies - High culture linked to power & low culture is also culture! - Skeptical and ironic - Performative
Struggle for existence
- Refers to the competition between living things to survive. This, and the similar phrase struggle for life - Were used over 40 times by Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species, and the phrase is the title of chapter 3 of the Origin.
Beyond the Pale
- The territory the British fenced off around Dublin - A border between English civilization and "Celtic foreignness" - Came to have a metaphoric meaning: to stand outside the conventional behavior or law, behavior, or social class Going beyond the pale meant: - Challenging newly literate middle class to think and read more difficult texts - Experiments in narration like stream of consciousness - Turning inward - Sharing fragmentary thoughts and perceptions of all types of experiences. Ex. Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence
Easter 1916, William Butler Yeats
- dudes he runs into the streets when the shops and offices are closing up around dubland -he sometimes gets a laugh out at jokes at the bars -doesnt value convo with these people "meaningless words" -Yeats breaks off and starts going through a list of all the people who were involved with the easter uprising of 1916; ex. the womens day were spent; in ignorant will. -as he continues yates is getting a little uncertain about his superiority , and is starting to wonder if these people hes mentioning might actually be heroes. -as he continues, yeats compare these fighters and their unchanging dedication to a rock that is sitting at the bottom of a stream. the stream and the nature around it keep changing, but the defiantly has learned to respect then and the sacrifice they made for something they believed in. -yeats closes the poem by repeating the phrase "a terrible beauty is born", which hes mentioned several times in the poem. basically, this phrase closes the poem by suggesting that even through the death the deaths of the Easter Uprising are terrible, history tents to remember bloody battles and self- sacrifice more than anything else so with regards to being remembered, theres kind of a terrible beauty in the death that came out of Easter 1916.
Graphic Novel
- graphic, violent, brutal; - They compress history - Offer: complex stories, rich character development, use of cultural references - Rely upon cultural literacy and allusions. - A sequential, collage-like structure joins key moments, images, and figures
Bavarian Gentians : D.H. Lawrence
-Blue -this short poem in free verse opens with a two line stanza that implies the speaker has some bavarian gentians bright blue flowers growing in his house in september -this poem then turns into a invocation or prayer written in the imperative mood, in which the speaker calls to the flowers to act as torches to lead him into the dark underworld of pluto and persephones marriage. "barvarian gentians" thus becomes an imaginative journey motivated by the contrast between the somber and unexceptional scene evoked in the opening lines and the vividly described phantasmal underworld of roman mythology. -the poets allusions to pluto, pis, demeter, and persephone invoke a particular roman myth that explains seasons. Pluto, the ruler of the underworld, abducts persephone, the daughter of the goddess of grain and ferility, demeter. -Though pluto makes persephone his underworld queen, demeter exacts a comprimise: persephone can return each april to her mother for six months, after which (in september) she much return to her husband and the underworld. during this time persephone is away from her mother, demeter mourns her absence and the ground become barren; with peresehones return in the spring. The earth becomes ferile anew. -thus the peoms september setting is significant. the speaker longs to follow persephone back into plutos kindgom at the very time when the earth is dominant and barren.
Snake, DH Lawrence
-Snake at water-trough -softly drank, was harmless @ moment -speakers education told him to kill it was it cowardice, was it perversity - throws stick at him -admires him "like a god" -masculinity
The Second Coming: William Butler Yeats
-The peom begins with the image of a falcon flying out of earshot from its human master -anarchy is loosed upon the world -speaker asserts the word is near a revelation -speaker is troubled by "a vast image of spiritus mundi, or the collective spirit of mankind: somewhere in the desert, a giant sphinx (a shape with lion body and the head of a man./a gaze as blank and pililess as the sun.) -desert birds are around the creature -darkness drops over speakers sight -speaker knows that sphinx's twenty centuries of "stony sleep" have been made a nightmare by the motions of "a rocking cradle". - what "rough beast "he wonders, it hour come round at last/slouches towards bethelhem to be born?
A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf)
-setting of a room of ones own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of women and fiction. she advances the thesis that "a woman much have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." -imaginary narrarator " call me mary beton, mary seron, mary carmicheal or by any name you please-it is not a matter of any importance." who it is not a matter of any importance." who is in her same position, wrestling w/ the same topic. -the narrator beging her investigation at oxbridge college, where she reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. -she then spends a day in the british library persuing the scholarship on women, all of which has written by men and all of which has been written in anger. -turning to history, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she decides to reconstruct their existence imaginatively. the figure of judith shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met with under those circumstances. -in light of this background, she considered the achievements of the major women novelists of the ninetheeth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring water. -a survey of the current state of literature follows, conducted through a reading the first novel of one of the narrators contemporaries. -Woolf closses the essay with an exhortation to her exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endourment for their own daughters.
Thatcherism
1979-1991 Margaret Thatcher; Prime Minister 1979 until forced to resign in 1991 - Harsh economic policies - Sharp decrease in funding for education, housing , business, and medical care - Sharp increase in unemployment and poverty - Use of brute strength to silence protests in England, Falkland Islands and Northern Ireland - Rhetoric of empire, individualism, venture capitalism, family, and Christianity - Ten Irish political prisoners died during hunger strikes 1980-1981
fin de siecle
A French term meaning end of century, a term which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom turn of the century and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. This term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century.
Humanism
A Renaissance intellectual movement in which thinkers studied classical texts and focused on human potential and achievements
Liberalism
A belief that government can and should achieve justice and equality of opportunity.
A Far Cry From Africa, Derek Walcott
A far cry from africa A Far Cry from Africa Introduction: The poem A Far Cry from Africa belongs to post-colonial poetry. Principally the poem talks about the occasions of the Mau uprising in Kenya in the mid-1950s. It was a grisly fight amid the 1950 between the European pilgrims and the local Kikuyu clans in Kenya. Kikuyu was the biggest and most instructed clan in Kenya. As the English individuals attacked increasingly their territory they ridiculously responded. The Kenyan clans opposed the English who stole the country of them. The insubordination was under a mystery association called Mau. It is assessed a substantial number of Kikuyu and in addition whites were butchered amid the procedure. A Far Cry from Africa Summary: Lines 1-3 The initial three lines portray the poem's setting on the African plain, or veldt. The country itself is contrasted with a creature (maybe a lion) with a "twany pelt." Brownish is a shading portrayed as light darker to caramel orange that is basic shading in the African scene. "Kikuyu" fills in as the name of a local clan in Kenya. What appears an untainted depiction of the African plain rapidly moves; the Kikuyu are contrasted with flies (humming around the "creature" of Africa) who are bolstering on blood, which is available in sufficiently huge in adding up to make streams. Line 4-6 Walcott shatters the picture of a heaven that many connect with Africa by depicting a scene covered with carcasses. He includes a sickening point of interest by alluding to a worm, or parasite, that reigns in this setting of rotting human substance. The worm's exhortation to "waste no compassion on these separate dead!" is perplexing in that it suggests that the casualties by one means or another got what they merited. Lines 7-10 The specify of the words "justify" and "colonial policy," when taken in setting with the former six lines, at last clears up the correct occasion that Walcott is portraying—the Mau Uprising against English pilgrims in Kenya amid the 1950s. Where prior the speaker appeared to accuse the casualties, he currently accuses the individuals who constrained the frontier framework onto Kenya and enraptured the populace. They can't legitimize their activities, on the grounds that their reasons will never matter to the "white child" who has been killed—just due to his shading—in striking back by Mau warriors or to the "savages," who—in as bigot a state of mind as was taken by Nazis against Jews—are regarded useless, or disposable. ("Savages" is a dubious term that gets from the French word savage meaning wild, and is presently entirely defamatory in English. Walcott's utilization of "savage" capacities to exhibit an English colonialist's bigot perspective.) Lines 11-14 Walcott changes gears in these lines and comes back to pictures of Africa's untamed life, in an update that the ibises (since a long time ago charged swimming winged creatures) and different brutes governed this land some time before African or European development existed. The artist additionally depicts a centuries-old chasing custom of locals strolling in a line through the long grass and beating it to flush out prey. Such slaughtering for sustenance is set against the silly and irregular passing that local Africans and European pilgrims execute upon each other. Lines 15-21 These lines are at the same time pr0-natural nature and anti-culture. Creatures slaughter simply for sustenance and survival, however people, having idealized the ability of chasing for nourishment, stretch out that brutal demonstration to different zones, utilizing power to apply control—and demonstrate prevalence over—other individuals; they look for heavenly nature by choosing who lives and who bites the dust. Amusingly, wars between individuals are portrayed as following the beat of a drum—an instrument made of a creature cover up extended over a chamber. Walcott additionally brings up that for whites, generally, peace has not been the outcome a trade off with an adversary, however a circumstance landed at in light of the fact that the restriction has been squashed and can't avoid any longer. Lines 22-25 These lines are hard to translate, yet they give off an impression of being gone for those judging the Mau uprising from a separation—onlookers who could some way or another acknowledge ruthlessness as vital and who know about a critical circumstance yet wipe their hands, or decline to end up required, in it. The writer seems to denounce such a mentality by contrasting the Mau Uprising with the Spanish Common War (1936-39). Pioneers of France and Awesome England needed to maintain a strategic distance from another war that would inundate all of Europe, so they presented an apathy agreement that was marked by twenty-seven countries. Regardless, the Extremists, or Patriots, (under the initiative of General Francisco Franco) were supported by and gotten military guide from Germany and Italy. The Followers, or Republicans, had no such support; they battled valiantly however were outmanned, lost domain, and were in the end vanquished in spring of 1939. Line 25 exhibits a pessimistic perspective of the Mau Uprising as simply one more pilgrim strife where gorillas—adversely animalized Africans—battle with superman—a negative portrayal of Europe. Lines 26-33 This stanza is a difference in scene from essentially that of Africa, to that of the artist. Walcott, being a result of both African and English legacy, is torn, in light of the fact that he doesn't know how to feel about the Mau battle. He unquestionably isn't happy with the stock reaction of those all things considered. Walcott is sickened by the conduct of Mau similarly as he has been disturbed by the English. Before the end, the artist's predicament isn't accommodated, however one gets the feeling that Walcott will surrender neither Africa nor England The poem begins with the excruciating jolting cruel experience of the insubordination that changed the quiet tranquil setting of the nation. The country itself contrasted with a creature, as it shows it is a creature like a lion. "twany pelt" And how Kikuyu began the wicked fight. The Kikuyu are contrasted with flies who are encouraging on blood. Next we are educated the consequence of the resistance. The poet depicts that the nation before the contention was a 'paradise' and with an unexpected remark he demonstrates the demise, brutality and devastation happened in the land. There is the juxtaposition of the contention against something divine with the picture of carcasses scattered through a heaven. The worms that can be viewed as a definitive image of stagnation and rot, cries at the useless demise. Wryly poet shows how the people are lessened to measurements. What's more, in the meantime however researchers legitimize the nearness of white men in Africa and the way toward cultivating the locals, the artist demonstrates the way that it was a disappointment with the severe demise of the little white youngster and his family. Individuals act like creatures 'savages' implies and remind us the mistreatment persisted by the Jews. Jews were killed in millions because of their ethnicity amid the season of Hitler. In spite of the fact that the time and the place is diverse a similar sort of circumstances rehash on the planet time to time. Next the writer makes a photo of white men in looking for locals who are taking cover behind the brambles. The sound of 'ibises' indicates a terrible sign. Again the reiteration is appeared through the word 'wheeled'. The acculturated men flourished with vanquishing others. This procedure of savagery and vanquishing each different demonstrates the law of the wilderness. The savagery of 'beast on beast' can legitimize as indicated by the law of nature, the law of wilderness. However it can't be connected to the 'upright man' who are extending themselves to come to the 'divinity'. Aside from the errand of extending themselves to achieve 'divinity' they wind up with 'perpetrating torment' which is executing and which is the law of wilderness; slaughtering for prey. They require the slaughter they make by executing as war. Amusingly, wars between individuals are depicted as following the beat of a drum — an instrument made of a creature stow away extended over a barrel. In spite of the fact that the locals think the demonstration of executing white men brings them 'courage' it winds up with fear. Besides the artist stresses the way that however the locals legitimize their assignment saying it as a 'brutish necessity' and considering it as a national reason they simply clean their hands with 'the napkin of the dirty cause'. So the writer proposes the way that the locals' motivation is messy and monstrous however they think about it as right and across the country. He sees a correlation with the West Indians who had their offer of unforgiving encounters with Spain. The battle is similarly as the gorilla grapples with superman. The gorilla in this setting is contrasted with locals and superman is contrasted with white men. The last two lines show the circumstance of the writer, as he has a place with the two societies how he feels mediocrity in regards to the circumstance. The blended legacy of the poet makes him unfit to choose to which he ought to be incomplete. The title itself too demonstrates the perspective clash of the writer, a cry from an incredible separation away and besides it demonstrates the distance and the mediocrity of the artist. The ballad closes with a photo of viciousness and remorselessness and with hunting down personality.
Democracy
A political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them
V for Vendetta
Alan Moore & David Lloyd
Idylls of the King
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
mobility
All types of movement from one location to another; the ability to move between different levels in society or employment.
The Importance of Being Earnest: Oscar Wilde
At the beginning of the play a wealthy Algernon (Algy) is waiting for his aunt, Lady Bracknell and her daughter Gwendolen to visit him in his flat in London. Before they arrive, Jack Worthing, Algy's friend arrives. Jack calls himself 'Earnest' and Algy is curious about it. Jack clarifies that his real name is Jack Worthing and has a daughter named Cecily. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) He further states that he is going to propose Gwendolen. He loves being called Earnest. Algy too confesses that he visits his imaginary friend Bunbury whenever he needs a break from the hectic life of the town. He, too, employs deception when it is convenient. When Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen arrive, Algy explains that he cannot attain the reception of lady Bracknell since he has to visit his friend Bunbury. Algy distracts Lady Bracknell in another room, at the same time, Jack proposes Gwendolen. But, she says she loves to marry a man whose name is Earnest because for her it sounds so aristocratic. However, she accepts his proposal and later on wants to rechristen Earnest. But, Lady Bracknell is not happy with the proposal and interrogates Jack about his social status. When she finds him lacking same social status, she rejects the engagement. While leaving, she tells Jack to find some acceptable parents. When Gwendolen asks for his country's address, Algy secretly writes it down on his shirt cuff. He is curious about Cecily and decides to go "bunburying" in the country. In the country of Jack, Cecily is being taught by Miss Prism. She praises Jack for being responsible, but shuns his brother, Earnest for being wicked. When Canon, the local vicar, takes Miss Prism for romance, Algy appears pretending to be Earnest, Jack's wicked brother. Algy has a plan to stay for a week to know more about Cecily, but Jack returns early in mourning clothes claiming that his brother Ernest has died in Paris. He is shocked to find Algy there posing as Ernest. Jack's plan to send Algy back to London fails. Algy in the same day proposes Cecily. From her diary, it is clear that Cecily, too, wants to marry someone named Earnest. Algy too needs to rechristen like that of Jack. Gwendolen arrives in the country of Jack and meets Cecily. In the course of their talk, they both mention that they are engaged to Earnest Worthing. The situation becomes tense and a battle follows. Jack and Algernon arrive, and, in an attempt to solve out the Ernest problem, they alienate both women. The two men follow, explaining that they are going to be rechristened Ernest, and the women agree to stay engaged. Lady Bracknell gives permission to Algy to engage with Cecily after discovering the extent of Cecily's fortune, however, Jack's parentage is still a problem in getting Gwendolen. Jack tells Lady Bracknell that he will not agree to Cecily's engagement until she is of age (35) unless he can marry Gwendolen. Dr. Chasuble announces for the christenings but Jack explains it is of no use now. The minister states that he will return to the church where Miss Prism is waiting to see him. When Lady Bracknell hears the name Prism she immediately calls for Prism and reveals her as the governess who lost Lady Bracknell's nephew 28 years earlier on a walk with the baby carriage. She inquires about the boy. Miss Prism explains that in a moment of distraction she placed the baby in her handbag and left him in Victoria Station, confusing him with her three-volume novel, which was placed in the baby carriage. After Jack asks for details, he quickly runs to his room and comes back with the handbag. Miss Prism identifies it, and Lady Bracknell reveals that Jack is Algernon's older brother, son of Ernest John Moncrieff, who died years ago in India. Jack now truly is earnest, and Algernon/Cecily, Jack/Gwendolen, and Chasuble/Prism fall into each other's arms as Jack realizes the importance of being earnest.
Translating the English, 1989 & The Diet
Carol Ann Duffy
Evolution
Change in a kind of organism over time; process by which modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms.; change over time
Natural Selection
Charles Darwin
Struggle for Existence
Charles Darwin chose the term as the title to the third chapter of On the Origin of Species published in 1859. Using Malthus's idea of the struggle for existence, Darwin was able to develop his view of adaptation, which was highly influential in the formulation of the theory of natural selection.
Goblin Market
Christina Rossetti
Decolonial
Decoloniality or decolonialism is a term used principally by an emerging Latin American movement which focuses on understanding modernity in the context of a form of critical theory applied to ethnic studies.
Epigram
Definition of Epigram. Epigram is a rhetorical device that is a memorable, brief, interesting, and surprising satirical statement. ... This literary device is commonly used in poetry, where it appears as a short satirical poem with a single subject, ending in an ingenious or witty thought.
A Cry from Africa & Volcano & Wales & The Fortune & Midsummer
Derek Walcott
A terrible beauty is born
Easter 1916 - referring to the Dublin uprising on Easter in 1916
The gospel of work
Given by Thomas Carlyle; Carlyle's view was that happiness is a paltry goal for humankind. We are not placed on this earth to be happy but to work. In work humans find fulfilment; consequently, the only happiness they should be concerned about is that associated with work.
Something to Tell You
Hanif Kureishi
allusion
Image result for allusion in literature Allusions Defined. An allusion is a figure of speech that refers to a well-known story, event, person, or object in order to make a comparison in the readers' minds. For instance, imagine a writer needs to explain her main character's struggle against an overwhelmingly powerful opponent.
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present
In Past and Present, Thomas Carlyle brings to the task of social commentary the same searching, tenacious, and idiosyncratic analysis that characterized his Sartor Resartus (1835). In the earlier work, Carlyle explores his crisis of faith; in Past and Present, however, he analyzes the problems of newly industrialized England both by invoking historical events and by dissecting contemporary issues. Carlyle offers his assessment in four books: "Proem," "The Ancient Monk," "The Modern Worker," and "Horoscope." While his method may at first appear haphazard, Carlyle weaves striking examples, blistering caricatures, and shrewd political analyses into a memorable pattern, closing with a stern warning about England's future. Born into a family of resolute Scottish Calvinists, Carlyle was never shy about offering opinions, advice, criticism, and even insults in his essays. While he no longer accepted the tenets of the faith, Carlyle never shed its didactic approach. For this reason, some Victorian critics considered his style indecorous, even grotesque. Readers, however, will find his unpredictability and exaggeration surprisingly modern. Carlyle also inherited from his family an abiding respect for and insistence upon work. Throughout Past and Present he demands constructive efforts from all persons "each in their degree" and lambastes the idle gentry, whom he calls "enchanted dilettantes." Despite his admiration for the worker and emphasis on solid, practical accomplishment, Carlyle remained scornful of the prevailing Victorian doctrine of utilitarianism. Expounded by Victorian optimists, including Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism sought to achieve "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Its method required assessing every act, belief, or idea for its usefulness or "utility." Like the utilitarians, Carlyle had little use for existing religious and social institutions; however, he found their emphasis upon happiness infantile and their confidence in utility exaggerated and mechanistic. To Carlyle, the utilitarians wasted energy in endlessly classifying and codifying human efforts. By contrast, he claimed that, given the appropriate conditions, a genuine "Aristocracy of Talent" would arise to lead society. Such "heroes" deserved to be worshiped; they possessed a vital energy capable of reinventing and ordering society. Later generations have deemed such views authoritarian, even fascistic, but Carlyle's defense of his position in Past and Present defies easy labeling. In "Proem," Carlyle introduces most of the major themes of his work as well as his characteristic rhetorical strategies. In Carlyle's opinion, England in 1843 was burdened by a huge surplus of wealth and activity, improperly managed and frivolously expended. Able workingmen languished "enchanted" in poorhouses or were daily exploited by profiteering and callous employers. Early in the discussion, Carlyle takes a stand on one of the most controversial economic issues of his day: the infamous Corn Laws (repealed in 1846). These tariffs on imported grains were established to eliminate foreign competition and to keep the price of English farm products high; they also effectively robbed working people of their daily bread. Carlyle defends an early popular movement against the Corn Laws, the Manchester Insurrection of 1819, arguing that the agitators "put their huge inarticulate question, 'What do you mean to do with us?' in a manner audible to every reflective soul in this kingdom." Those who labor deserve to be responsibly and actively governed, rather than enduring the laissez-faire neglect of the political system. To achieve this organic, vital government, Carlyle urges his readers to "put away all Flunkyism, Baseness, Unveracity from us." Only a heroic nation of "faithful, discerning souls" will be capable of electing a heroic government, of discerning the Aristocracy of Talent crucial to England's future. Also in "Proem," Carlyle creates the first of his imaginary characters, who appear periodically in the work to serve as "straw men," ludicrous proponents of the arguments he despises. Bobus Higgins, for example, typifies the fatuous, greedy middle classes, incapable both of self-rule and of choosing worthy leadership. In the following book, "The Ancient Monk," Carlyle turns to an actual historical figure to dramatize the diminished stature of profit-minded Victorians.
Idylls of the King: Medieval Revival, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In the first Idyll, "The Coming of Arthur," King Leodogran of Cameliard has to decide whether or not to marry off his only daughter, Guinevere, to the newly crowned King Arthur. Arthur has driven the pagans (non-Christians) out of Jolly Olde England and re-established the rule of law among the warring smaller kingdoms within it. He now rules with the consent of most of his subjects, but a small group of Northern kings are a wee bit PO'd, and believe that Arthur is decidedly not the former king's legitimate heir. This bothers Leodogran, so he asks for different opinions and hears differing stories regarding Arthur's origins from Arthur's knights and his sister. When he has a dream that seems to confirm Arthur's future success, he decides to go ahead and marry Guinevere to Arthur. At the banquet celebrating their wedding, the lords of Rome show up demanding cool presents, but Arthur sends them away empty-handed, announcing that a new order has arrived. Oh snap. In the second Idyll, "Gareth and Lynette," the youngest son of Lot and Bellicent wants to prove himself at Arthur's court. But his mom is not exactly pumped about it, so she forces him to present himself there as a kitchen-hand in an attempt to deter him. When Arthur learns Gareth's true identity, he promises to keep it a secret and to grant him a quest. That quest is to rescue the lands of the Lady Lyonors from four brothers who are holding her hostage in a tower as fairy tale supervillains are wont to do. Her sister, Lady Lynette, who has traveled to Arthur's court in search of a knight, is terribly insulted when she is given a so-called kitchen hand, so she mercilessly mocks Gareth during their journey. But Gareth's prowess eventually wins her over, and by the time he reveals the fourth knight, Death, to be nothing but a young boy, the two have fallen in love, and everyone swoons accordingly. "The Marriage of Geraint" tells how Arthur's knight, Geraint, met his wife Enid by fighting to win her the designation of "most beautiful damsel" in the Tournament of the Sparrow Hawk. By winning the tournament, he also avenged an insult to Guinevere and rescued Enid's family and town from oppression by the tyrant Edyrn. Efficient jousting, no? In "Geraint and Enid," Geraint becomes convinced that his wife has been contaminated with Guinevere's "taint" and is cheating on him. In what can only be described as a bizarre response, he forces Enid to put on her ugliest dress and ride behind him without speaking to him. Um, okay. Enid proves her devotion by telling Geraint about a former lover's attempt to seduce her, weeping over Geraint's body when she believes him to be dead, and refusing another man's advances. Geraint reconciles with her and even allows her to hang out with the "tainted" Queen Guinevere again. Thanks? In "Balin and Balan," the rough-around-the-edges Balin attempts to act all civilized and fancy at court while his brother is away in search of a demon in the lands of King Pellam. He takes Guinevere as his inspiration for this feat. But when he witnesses a meeting between her and Lancelot one day, he flees Camelot in confusion—what has he just seen? In King Pellam's woods, the sorceress Vivien fabricates a story that confirms his suspicion that Lancelot and Guinevere are having an affair. Hearing his howl of pain, his brother Balan mistakes him for the demon and attacks him. The brothers die in one another's arms. Vivien travels to Camelot in an attempt to poison the court with the rumor of Guinevere's infidelity but becomes determined to seduce Merlin instead when he mocks her for these efforts. "Merlin and Vivien" is mostly made up of the dialogue between the two after Vivien pursues Merlin following his departure from Camelot in a fog of foreboding. Under a large oak tree, she wheedles out of him a curse that enables her to imprison him in the tree as though buried alive. In "Lancelot and Elaine," Lancelot travels to a tournament incognito, passing through Astolat on the way. While he's there he meets Elaine, who falls in love with him. Lancelot is wounded in the tournament and takes refuge in a hermitage near Camelot, where Elaine travels to him and nurses him back to health, falling even more in love with him than ever, the poor girl. Of course Lancelot is totally head over heels for Guinevere, so he doesn't return her affections, and straight up refuses to take her as his mistress. Elaine dies of her unrequited love and has her body sent down the river to Camelot in a barge bearing a note that tells her story. She's the lady of Shallot, by the way. Arthur's knights embark upon an not-too-smart quest for the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper in "The Holy Grail." While Arthur mourns the chivalric deeds that will go undone while they chase shadows, more than half of them set off in search of the grail. Three knights (Lancelot, Bors, and Percivale) have partial visions of the grail while only one—Galahad—manages to achieve a full vision, traveling to a "spiritual city," never to return again. A young, naïve knight's devotion to a cruel woman is the subject of "Pelleas and Ettarre." Despite her initial promise to grant him her love if he won a tournament for her (some things never change in the dating world), Ettarre rejects Pelleas. She thinks he's naïve and, later, too good for her. Gawain promises to help Pelleas win Ettarre's love but sleeps with her instead. Whoops. When the already broken Pelleas learns that Guinevere, too, is false, he becomes the "Red Knight of the North," setting up a court that's a parody of Arthur's, peopled with (brace yourself) harlots and adulterers. Yowza. Arthur rides with some of his knights to kick some Red Knight butt, leaving Lancelot in charge of the Tournament of Innocents in "The Last Tournament." But the tournament goes wrong. Really wrong. People insult each other and break rules, and everything ends badly when Tristram, the winner, insults the ladies by refusing to grant any of them the title of Queen of Beauty. Harsh, dude. Tristram leaves Camelot in a huff, insulted by the court jester Dagonet. (Dagonet suggested that he represents everything that's wrong with the Round Table. Ouch.) When he reaches Cornwall he presents his lover, King Mark's wife Isolt, with the tournament prize. As he ties the jewel around her neck, King Mark slips into the room and slits his throat. Meanwhile, Arthur's forces easily overtake the Red Knight, but their battle ends in slaughter, raping, and pillaging with Arthur powerless to stop it. The Last Tournament indeed. "Guinevere" is about Arthur's wife Guinevere, who's hiding in a convent after she and Lancelot have been caught in her bedchamber together. A rookie courtier drives her crazy by feeding the rumor mill about her infidelity. Arthur arrives at the convent and tells Guinevere that her actions have caused the total collapse of the Round Table and, with it, the ideal world that he tried to create. Yet Arthur forgives Guinevere and hopes they will one day be together in heaven. Touched by his faith in her, Guinevere devotes the rest of her life to doing good deeds. After he leaves the convent, Arthur rides to what he knows will be his last battle. In "The Passing of Arthur," he kills Mordred and receives a fatal wound in the process. He asks his last remaining faithful knight, Bedivere, to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. Bedivere fails twice before finally managing to throw it in on his third attempt. Three ladies arrive on the shore of the lake in a boat in which Bedivere places Arthur at his request. Bedivere watches the boat disappear into the sunrise.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Font/Propaganda
Literary technique used in Graphical Novels
Culture
Literature and Culture. Books are written by individuals, but they are always influenced by that individual's society. Therefore, it is important to consider a work's cultural context. Culture can refer to the beliefs, customs, values, and activities of a particular group of people at a particular time.
Victorian Literature
Literature written in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, or roughly from 1837 -1901. It is largely characterized by the struggle of working people and the triumph of right over wrong. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the modernist literature of the twentieth century.
Immigration
Migration to a new location
darwin natural selection
On of the most important contributions made to the science of evolution by Charles Darwin is the concept of natural selection. The idea that members of a species compete with each other for resources and that individuals that are better adapted to their lifestyle have a better chance of surviving to reproduce revolutionized the field of evolution, though it was not accepted until several decades after Darwin first proposed it. Today, natural selection forms the basis for our understanding of how species change over time. Natural selection may act to change a trait in many different ways. When selection pressures favor the average form of the trait, selection is said to be stabilizing. Directional selection occurs when selection pressures favor one extreme of the trait distribution. Selection is disruptive when the average form of the trait is selected against while either extreme is unaffected. In addition to natural selection, there are two other types of selection. Sexual selection, which Darwin believed was distinct from natural selection, involves the selection of traits based on their role in courtship and mating. Artificial selection is the selective breeding of species by humans to increase desirable traits, though the traits do not necessarily have to confer greater fitness.
The Importance of being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
Chivalry
Prompted by Idylls of the king; Refers to the medival knightly system with its religius moral & social code
A Scandal in Bohemia
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
stream of consciousness
Stream of consciousness. ... In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator.
high culture
Such a literary definition of high culture also comprehends philosophy. Moreover, the philosophy of aesthetics proposed in high culture is a force for moral and political good. Critically, the term "high culture" is contrasted with the terms "popular culture" and "mass culture".
Technology
Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, or it can be embedded in machines to allow for operation without detailed knowledge of their workings. The simplest form of technology is the development and use of basic tools
The watercress girl: Henry Mayhew
The "Watercress Girl" is Mayhew's interaction with an eight-year old girl who sells watercress bundles on the London streets and defies the accepted, expected, and assumed vision of a young girl. Her story as a young girl who works is paralleled with an image of a girl who is worked to death at a dressmaker's
Medieval revival
The Gothic Revival was an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms in contrast to the classical styles prevalent at the time.
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late nineteenth century and had a profound influence on feminism well into the twentieth century.
The Troubles
The Troubles (Irish: Na Trioblóidí) was an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, and the Conflict in Ireland, it is sometimes described as a "guerrilla war" or a "low-level war".
Charles Dickens, "The Coming of the Railway
The first successful railway locomotive train ran in 1804 and Stephenson's Rocket was designed in 1829. Railways then started to expand across the UK. Eventually the railway reached Cambridge in July 1845, when the first trains made their way there from both London and Norwich. Two years later, in 1847, the line from Peterborough to Cambridge was built, with stops at both March and Ely on the route. There was also another line, going west towards St. Ives and Huntington. The route of the old railway tracks is now the route that the guided bus uses to get to Cambridge. The old Great Eastern route to Cambridge had some of the fastest trains on it- with a train recorded at going at 70mph! The trains had a non-stop time of 72 minutes from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, covering 55.75 miles on its journey. The Victorian design of Cambridge railway station was mainly the inspiration of architect Francis Thompson. The very first station opened in 1845 and had just one platform for trains to go both up and down on. However, the design of station was seen to be more impressive than the other stations along the line, with its grand columns and arches. It also had decorative cornices and friezes- some of which you can still see in the station today! When the Victorians first built the station there was just a wooden platform for passengers to stand on while they waited for their train. There was no tunnel or footbridge for people to safely access the train, so people just climbed down onto the line and walked across the tracks to get there- which was incredibly dangerous! This was later replaced with a larger 'island platform' with a tunnel and footbridge, which was much safer. It was dangerous working on the Victorian railway and many railway workers were seriously injured or killed whilst at work. The Eastern Counties Railways did however offer a subscription to a kind of hospital healthcare from Addenbrooke's, which cost employees 10 guineas a year. As there was no free healthcare from the NHS back in the Victorian Era! However it was not all bad news, one of the great positives of the coming of the railway was that it provided the opportunity for people of all walks of life and class to travel. The train was much quicker, cheaper and more reliable than travelling by horse drawn coach, which was the main way that Victorians travelled long distance. The railway provided the opportunity for working class people to travel. They were encouraged to use the excursion trains to go on day trips on a Sunday for a cheap fair, such as visiting Cambridge for 5 shillings, or visiting the seaside. The Directors of the Eastern Counties Railway decided to allow their staff to go on daytrips to the seaside in East Anglia, such as Walton-on-the-Naze and Cromer. The coming of the railway also meant that fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy and fish could all be transported much quicker than by horse or boat. This meant that fresh produce could be delivered from different areas of the country and from ports, to be sold at market much more easily. National newspapers could also be delivered via train, so more people could read newspapers than had done before. Many railway workers lived in and around the Mill Road area to work on the railways. One of the Victorian workers on the railway was William Bright, who was described as a 'good staff man' and was the station master from 1884 to 1894. He was the first person to live in Morcombe House, which was the Station Master's House for many years. It was quite a spacious house compared to the houses of other railway workers. It stood where the Mill Road Butchers Shop now stands at number 128 Mill Road, on the corner of Devonshire Road. William helped to promote St. John Ambulance Brigade in Cambridge, which trained people to provide free ambulance services to railway workers and other local people (as there was no NHS then). Records show that in 1893 he oversaw a demonstration of the St. John ambulance work and 59 people were presented with badges and certificates in the Railway Mission Hall for their achievements. The Hall was just round the corner from William Bright's house, so very convenient for him to get to meetings. During William Bright's time, around 1892/3 the Cambridge Railway Band was formed. It was a brass band for local people to join, which was very popular, with about 30 members. They played in a number of local venues, such as the Railway Mission Hall on Devonshire Road. The Railway Men (Workers on the Railway) usually lived in walking distance of the station. The Victorian Railway Cottages where workers lived can still be seen on Mill Road today. Once the railway grew workers then moved over the bridge into other areas close to the station such as Romsey Town. So not everyone lived in such spacious houses like the Station Master. Most railway workers would have lived in cramp conditions. For example in the No. 28, one of railway cottages on Mill Road, there were 5 members of the Butler family and 9 members of the Linsey family all living in the same house, so 8 people earning a wage and 6 children under 15 years old. Eric Lee was 7 years old when the planes bombed the Railway Cottages during World War II. He lived just round the corner on Great Eastern Street and remembers the bombing happening. "On the day of the Mill Road bombing we came out of school in Ross Street ? my brother Tony and I. We ran all the way home and on the way the air raid siren went. We looked down the railway track and there was a German plane, and he came up the line dropping bombs. We ran in the house and hid under the stairs with our Mum as you did in those days. The Cambridge Daily News must have sent a photographer early the following morning (a January afternoon would have been dark by 4 p.m.) as the following remarkable photographs and commentary appeared in the newspaper of 31 January." The Herbert family also lived in the Railway Cottages. On 6th May, 1938 Roger Simpkins was born in the Railway Cottages. He was 3 years old when the bombing happened. He shared this memory with the Mill Road History Project: "Dad was a messenger boy when he first started with the railway, but when they were bombed out he was a guard, a goods guard during the war. Ours was actually knocked down because me and mum were in it. I can't remember it because I was too young but mum went under the stairs, we got under the stairs and I suppose it all come down on us. They must have dug us out. I know she got a cut, I didn't get nothing, me, but Mum had a cut on her head. I suppose that was quite serious. I never heard anyone else was injured." Roger's brother Robin (who was born a year after the bombing) continued the story: "The old chap, my dad, used to say he came back from a work shift early in the morning about 3 or 4am and walked over the bridge from the Argyle Street side. He met a policeman who said ?So where are you going?' and he said ?I'm just going home; I live just over the other side of the bridge'. The policeman said ?I'm afraid your home isn't there any more.' Apparently he always used to say to Mum ?If anything drops out of the sky get under that staircase'." "I was 13 in 1941 and went to Central school. January 30th was the day of my grandmother's funeral. She lived in Mawson Road so after the funeral the family apparently collected back at Mawson Road. And as I was thought to be young to attend the funeral I was staying with a neighbour at 37 Ross Street. And of course the bomb fell. As far as I can remember I was expected back at the house about four o'clock or half past three, but I thought they said leave at four o'clock and of course my parents panicked because when the bomb dropped I could possibly have been on the bridge. My father walked as far as the bridge and he had quite a job getting over because they were stopping people coming over at the time, but when he explained that his daughter could have been on the bridge they let him through to check I was still at Ross Street. Charles Langley picked up a fragment of the bomb on 30th January 1941 and recalls his story: "I remember him arriving at Ross Street , great great relief. And of course then we had to go back and they let us back over the bridge. I can't remember what it looked like at all. They must have been holding people back; there was very little traffic in those days; it was mainly pedestrians. I've no idea when he picked up the bit of bomb.... this is completely guess work.. I would have said when he was asking permission to go over the bridge, when he was standing there. I don't recall him stopping when we were together but I really don't remember. I remember the gap in the bridge, about half way up where the bomb caught the railing. They didn't start mending that for a long long time, till after the war I think. Somehow we've kept that bit of the bomb all the time, through all the house moves."
Ambiguity
The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
fascism
The term "fascist" has been used as a pejorative, regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".
Exceptionalism
The theory that a nation is distinct from and superior to other nations. Used to describe the historic belief that America is separate and unique, and a moral guide for other nations.
Carol Ann Duffy, "Translating the English, 1989"
This bitterly ironic poem is very much a reductive state of the nation speech in the voice of a persona who proudly boasts of the attractions of Britain. All that is said is at variance with the view of the poet who finds that the country she lives in has changed beyond all recognition. In 1989 there was a strike by the greater London Council resulting in terrible backlogs of work associated with public services such as road-sweeping, refuse collection and funeral services. The effects of this strike were widespread. Rubbish was piled up in the streets and bodies lay unburied in municipal mortuaries. At the same time there was a climate of individualism and selfish pursuit of wealth at any price. Duffy tries here to find an equivalent in language for the state of the country. The result is a stilted, almost pidgin, version of English. The speech of the persona is peppered with phrases used by black marketeers. English is translated into a depressingly recognisable version of itself. As a result we are forced by the poet to reflect upon how the use of language reflects social attitudes. In this way it is not simply a linguistic translation that is being presented. The 'English' referred to in the title could also be regarded as the population. In this way there is a clear suggestion that England is being transformed into another country, no longer adhering to the values it once cherished. Fair play and social justice seem to have been replaced by contemptible and myopic self interest. People have been translated in the Shakespearean sense of being transformed (see A Midsummer Night's Dream: 'Bottom, thou art translated!'). The language people use can change them and their attitudes since these are inscribed in it. This is not to miss the obvious point that people shape language continuously, too. It is a two way process. The basic technique of the poem is to assemble a collage of references and fragments presented a form more like prose than poetry. This links to the epigraph of the poem which makes clear that we can lose sight of the original meaning of poetry in one language if we try to translate it into another. In this case it seems that Duffy is saying that there is no poetry left in the country presented in the poem. The deliberate juxtaposition of high culture and underworld activity in lines such as, 'If / you like / Shakespeare or even Opera too the Black Market.' Indicates that in Thatcher's Britain anything can be bought if you have enough money. Britain is presented as a place of superficiality where the invented worlds of soap operas such as Neighbours and Brookside preoccupy a population too selfish to take action against mugging, environmental damage, vagrancy and rape. The speech of the guide is saturated with phrases that betray the power of advertising and the media, especially the tabloid press with its obsession with royalty and gossip. Mentioning Charles Dickens and Terry Wogan in the same breath is also humorously reductive. The veneer of jocular bonhomie is stripped away by Duffy through the references to the situation in Northern Ireland, punitively high interest rates and increasing violence. The irony of 'our wonderful / capital city'; 'Plenty culture you will be / agreeing' following a reference to Jeffrey Archer; and 'Rule Britannia and child abuse.' Cannot be lost on a perceptive reader. The idea that the presence of estate agents contributes to a 'smashing good time' is laughable. In the late 1990s and early 1990s such people made colossal profits as house prices boomed. The limitations of space disallow an exhaustive exploration of all the facets of Thatcherite Britain under attack here. The chilling conclusion of the poem reads like the peroration of a nightmarish speech. The voice we hear makes it all too plain that we are being welcomed to another country. Duffy, among others, is a very reluctant inhabitant. The triple repetition of 'my country' and 'welcome' takes on a hollow, sinister aspect as we realise that the guide's country should be ours too but it has changed so much that we do not recognise it anymore.
Labour
Thomas Carlyle
Volcano: derek walcott
Two of "the great" are named in this poem: Joyce and Conrad. Joyce is a foil for Walcott: an exiled former subject of the British Empire who wrote Ulysses, to which Walcott, from a different Atlantic island, replied with Omeros. It turns out that lions did roar at Joyce's funeral, and one can risk the pathetic fallacy that they roared for the master's passing. I don't know Conrad's novel Victoria, but Wikipedia suggests why Walcott might like it (as long as it can be read as "ironic"). Apparently, it describes yet another colonial island-outpost, this one in the Pacific, from European and subaltern perspectives-offering that double vision that fascinates Walcott. And according to Walcott, it ends with two lights shining on the ocean horizon, one a cigar and one a volcano. Seeing a similar pair of lights on the sea off his Caribbean home, Walcott imagines them as messages from Conrad, who is only "rumored" to be dead because his words still speak. Walcott, the future Nobelist, has every right to place himself in these men's company. He strives to write great works, to make his own mark. The poem relates a moment, however, when he considers whether it might be better to devote himself to reading: in fact, to become the "ideal reader." That is a ruminative life, more modest, quieter, although Walcott's character still compels him to be the "greatest reader in the world." "Volcano" adopts a rhetoric of decline. "Awe ... has been lost in our time"; "so many take thunder for granted." But I think the narrator pokes a little fun at himself for that mood when he says, "In those days they made good cigars." It's not really that culture has declined and all the great ones have passed. That's simply what a person feels when he or she pledges, "I must read more carefully." With Walcott gone now, I'd like to think of him as a light from far offshore, sending his slow-burning signals for a long time to come. Best to enjoy them, not try to outdo them, because they really don't make writers like Derek Walcott any more.
Modernism
Use of: Emotional distance Fragmentation Abstraction Stream of Consciousness Narration Free verse Collage Myth and high culture The self as a construct or subject Interest in subjectivity - The idea of romance, authority, paternalism, seemed an "illusion" (Revolutions of style and form)
Three Volume Novel
Used in victorian age - Created a demand for the novels - Used in pride & prejudice and The Importance of Being Earnest
Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. Initially published in black and white as an ongoing serial in the short-lived UK anthology Warrior, it morphed into a ten-issue limited series published by DC Comics
A Room of Ones Own
Virginia Woolf
Easter 1916 & The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
The Haystack in the Floods
William Morris
New Man
a man who rejects sexist attitudes and the traditional male role, especially in the context of domestic responsibilities and child care.
Modernity
a modern way of thinking; the quality or condition of being modern.
Allegory
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
Allegory
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. - Goblin Market (Christina Rossetti)
Myths
a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
Myth
a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. - Tennysons medival story of King Arthur
Transnational
extending or operating across national boundaries.
Loss of Faith
loss of faith basically; Loss of faith in Christian tradition.
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
omas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer. As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind's friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children. In the meantime, an impoverished "Hand"—Dickens's term for the lowest laborers in Coketown's factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby's home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby. James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa. The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen's integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city. Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father's house, where she miserably confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest. Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind's school and who embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer's grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all. Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy's family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.
British
relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom, or to its people or language.
Western
situated in the west, or directed toward or facing the west.
Feminism
the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
Industrialization
the development of industries in a country or region on a wide scale.
Irony
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.
Mammonism
the greedy pursuit of riches. See also: Money. the pursuit of material wealth and possessions, especially a dedication to riches that is tantamount to devotion.
authority
the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.
Alienation
the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved.
reform
to bring back to rightness, order, or morality
beyond the pale
totally unacceptable behavior
Medical Revival
•Dissent from industrialization •Deliberate archaism •Exploration of faith •Honor, chivalry, brotherhood, sisterhood, romantic love •Creativity -> evident in art, architecture, literature
