Eng 375 Exam 1 Authors/Works
John Ruskin
- Art critic, theorized about social politics. - Permeating influence in future influences 1960s radicals Ghandi Arts and crafts movement - Drew coal and smoke over Turner painting to make point about industrial revolution - Sage writing: creative, nonfiction prose.
E.B. Browning
- Background - dad didn't want to let any of his kids get married, typical education for a girl - but also listened in on her brothers lessons and gained a decent classical education - Encouraged by father to write poetry; was more well-known/renowned than her husband, which was atypical - Very sickly much of her life--family moved to London but hated it there; lived in Italy with Robert (hubby) b/c of illness, became better there and had son - Corresponded with many well-known poets/writers, i.e. Wordsworth - Ordinary education--gave herself classical education - Very versatile poet - epic, social and political, lyrical, love, etc. - Aurora Leigh -written in Italy, somewhat autobiographical - Mixes narrator "voice": sometimes Aurora, sometimes author, sometimes both
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
- Beauty and Justice go hand in hand. Art is all about changing and exulting humanity, including the artist. - Gothic architecture is a form of art. - The person producing the artwork or building should be both the creative mind as well as the physical hands. Jobs should not be split up. - "Servile ornament." - Trashed the "grandiose" 1. Don't make unnecessary things 2. Don't demand an exact finish for it's own sake, unless its for a practical end. 3. Don't copy or imitate.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters - Definition of Greatness in Art
- Great art should evoke the greatest number of great ideas. - It doesn't matter so much what is said, but what is represented. Art as language, better art will be using its language more effectively. He believes that Turner evokes millions of ideas. - Both the viewer and the artist can grow because of the effectiveness of the Art.
Who comes to the door in A Christmas Carol?
- Scrooge's nephew: foil to Scrooge, invitation to Christmas dinner, - Charitable gentlemen: fundraising, Scrooge raises poorhouse objections - Singer through keyhole:
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi
- Very blah life; had separate private and public life (dandy) - Had solid marriage to Elizabeth - Not confessional--hides behind mask of speaker--creates personas and situations via monologues (like stage drama) - Asks us (the readers) to sympathize/connect with people of questionable morality - wanted to be famous, but wasn't during his lifetime - Inspired by painting Coronation of the Virgin, where Christ is crowning Mary as royalty; Browning used (?) history of painter/painting- to write Coronation of Virgin was made in period of transition from medieval to Renaissance style: how do you portray a soul/spirit? - Dramatic monologue - Plot: Priest coming out of brothel; stopped by night guards; he name-drops his master, a powerful Midicci powerhouse; suggests he'll paint the guards to eternalize them; offers them alcohol to bribe them. The point of the speech is to get the guards to like him/forgive him/look the other way
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
- What do you do if you can't figure out your life? Arts! - His father forced his through rigorous academic training and forced him to teach his younger siblings. - The philosophy that influenced him most was utilitarianism. - Bringing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. - From a young age, he decided to be a reformer of the world.
Horsley (from Christmas Carol Appendix)
- designed first Christmas card in 1843 - showed a festive family in the middle and people helping the poor on each side
Charles Dickens
- hard family - dad in debtors prison, childhood despair and working - always money conscious - job writing parliamentary reports, then funny little sketches for newspapers, extra issues of periodicals at Christmas, hated plagiarism, short novels for Christmas market - problematic family life - had 10 kids, then separated from wife - political radical - sided with workin man, opposed Sunday Laws to close pubs
significance of two kids with the Ghost of Christmas Present
- ignorance: lack of knowledge that one lacks knowledge, dividing line in Engles Two nations - want: larking or need, deficit of something physical, stems from ignorance - ignorance will doom society, not want - no future with ignorance because education leads to power to earn money -Who is most ignorant? Scrooge! Dickens educates him (and audience) through Ghosts
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
- more individuals are created than can survive - serving as food for other animals, not food available determines the average numbers of a species - climate indirectly favors some species over others
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
- poor (poorhouse, homeless, beggar boy singing throuhg keyhole, Scrooge as boy) v middle (Cratchits, Fezziwigs, Scrooge grown up) - Scrooge voices reader arguments "aren't there poorhouses?" which is then thoroughly repudiated by the ghosts - asks the interior Scrooge of reader - What can you do? never specifies how, individual efforts
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
- what makes humans different from animals - reason, self-consciousness, culture, - man charts the character/pedigree of his animals, but not his own - social instinct rather than altruism
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
-essay - No opinion should be suppressed - custom and preconceived notions are untested - if you don't allow people to come up with new ideas, no progress will be made - if no new ideas are allowed, you won't be able to see what is good about what is happening right now
Harvey (from Christmas Carol Appendix)
Book detailing customs, traditions, ceremonies, etc. of Christmas season -why do we like Christmas? old traditions and holiday costumes - masquerades - comes from saturnalia - take refuge from joyous condition of world in festivities of Christmas -decorate with evergreens to remind of Christ - mistletoe and kissing to get married the following year
"A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions and motives,--of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who with certainty can be thus designated makes the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals."
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
"Few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining at what precise period in the development of the individual, from the first trace of the minute germinal vesicle to the child either before or after birth, man becomes an immortal being; and there is no greater cause for anxiety because the period in the gradually ascending organic scale cannot possibly be determined."
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
"The development of the moral qualities is a more interesting problem. The foundation lies in the social instincts, including under this term the family ties. These instincts are highly complex, and in the case of the lower animals give special tendencies towards certain definite actions; but the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy. Animals endowed with the social instincts take pleasure in one another's company, warn one another of danger, defend and aid one another in many ways. These instincts do not extend to all the individuals of the species, but only to those of the same community. As they are highly beneficial to the species, they have in all probability been acquired through natural selection."
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
"The higher intellectual powers of man, such as those of ratiocination, abstraction, self-consciousness, etc., probably follow from the continued improvement and exercise of the other mental faculties; but without considerable culture of the mind, both in the race and in the individual, it is doubtful whether these high powers would be exercised, and thus fully attained."
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
"The critics say that epics have died out with Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods; I'll not believe it. I could never deem as Payne Knight did, that Homer's heroes measured twelve feet high. They were but men: -his Helen's hair turned grey like any plain Miss Smith's who wears a front; And Hector's infant whimpered at a plume as yours last Friday at a turkey-cock. All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes: every age, heroic in proportions, double faced, looks backward and before, expects a morn and claims an epos."
E.B. Browning, Aurora Leigh - Everyday people are heroes
""Nay, if there's room for poets in this world / A little overgrown (I think there is) / Their sole work is to represent the age, / Their age, not Charlemagne's - this live, throbbing age, . . . King Arthur's self / Was commonplace to Lady Guenevere"
E.B. Browning, Aurora Leigh - Today just as great as olden days--don't need to focus on medieval "golden age"
"But still, unscrupulously epic, catch Upon the burning lava of a song The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age:216 That, when the next shall come, the men of that May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say 'Behold,—behold the paps we all have sucked This bosom seems to beat still, or at least It sets ours beating: this is living art, Which thus presents and thus records true life.'"
E.B. Browning, Aurora Leigh - We are all indebted to what has come before us. Invokes image of suckling child and mother. - Devotion to the past while looking forward to present and future.
"But poets should / Exert a double vision; should have eyes / To see near things as comprehensively / As if afar they took their point of sight, / And distant things as intimately deep / As if they touched them. Let us strive for this."
E.B. Browning, Aurora Leigh - authors have responsibility to write about contemporary issues and flaws and celebrate contemporary accomplishments--poets should see big picture as well as detail
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
Essay Very logical/rational in making his claims for gender equality "Unnatural generally only means uncustomary" (1123) Gender is a social construct--"an eminently artificial thing" ( Gender roles not allowing women to flourish and is thus damaging society Compares treatment of women to slavery, absolute monarchy, and poorly paid sailors (pp. 1122-23, 1128) Culture hasn't actually tried letting women have more power, so you can't argue that it doesn't work if you haven't tried it, this cripples society
Ghost of Christmas Present
Ghost
"But I say that the art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received. If this, then, be the definition of great art, that of a great artist naturally follows. He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas."
John Ruskin, Modern Painters - Definition of Greatness in Art
"It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally determined."
John Ruskin, Modern Painters - Definition of Greatness in Art
"Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, diffi- culties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself, nothing." (1493)
John Ruskin, Modern Painters - Definition of Greatness in Art
"1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share. 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving records of great works."
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
"The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both systems, a slave. But in the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul."
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
"Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool."
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
"In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for." (1133)
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
"The other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being for speculation and for action." (1136)
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography - Secular conversion narrative - turning to the Arts to find meaning in your life, turned to Wordsworth specifically to learn about how to feel/emotions
"Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
"Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own."
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
The merits of the case would then be clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slaveholders of South Carolina and Louisiana. "It is necessary that cotton and sugar should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for any wages which we choose to give. Ergo they must be compelled." An illustration still closer to the point is that of impressment. Sailors must absolutely be had to defend the country. It often happens that they will not voluntarily enlist. Therefore there must be the power of forcing them. How often has this logic been used! and, but for for one flaw in it, without doubt it would have been successful up to this day. But it is open to the retort--First pay the sailors the honest value of their labour. When you have made it as well worth their while to serve you, as to work for other employers, you will have no more difficulty than others have in obtaining their services. To this there is no logical answer except "I will not:" and as people are now not only ashamed, but are not desirous, to rob the labourer of his hire, impressment is no longer advocated. Those who attempt to force women into marriage by closing all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a similar retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be, that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women, as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations.
John Stuart Mill, Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill, Statement Repudiating the Rights of Husbands
Refused his right to claim his wife as property. Claims that she has the same absolute freedom of action and will as he does.
"By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me; I did renounce the world, its pride and greed, Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house, Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici Have given their hearts to — all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing — the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside!"
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi
"Never was such a prompt disemburdening on the wall"
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi
"For me, I think I speak as I was taught; / I always see the garden and the God there / A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned, / I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards"
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi - God is the greatest artist. Why shouldn't I learn from him? - Value of the flesh. Creation of Eve highlighted because she was made using Adam.
"For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted — better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out."
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi - Learn more about God when see everyday things from other perspectives - Art makes us think of and appreciate God's creations, which we often overlook/don't think about
"But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets Eight years together, as my fortune was, Watching folk's faces to know who will fling The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires, And who will curse or kick him for his pains, — Which gentleman processional and fine, Holding a candle to the Sacrament, Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch The droppings of the wax to sell again, Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped, — How say I? — nay, which dog bites, which lets drop His bone from the heap of offal in the street, — Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike, He learns the look of things, and none the less For admonition from the hunger-pinch."
Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi - Learns how to see
Irving (from Christmas Carol Appendix)
Story of a Christmas visit to father - baronial hall and family, friends, and servants at Christmas time - people playing cards, talking by a fire, playing games, toys on the floor - Christmas songs and dancing - Christmas hospitality, romping game, blind-man's bluff - Christmas dinner - wassail bowl, - decorating with green holly and ivy,