Popular Culture Vs Elite Culture

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Assignment

                               Name  :-  Gujarati Krishna v.                                                                      

Class :-     M.A.  SEM  2

Topic :-    Popular Culture Vs Elite Culture

Paper No  :- 08  Cultural studies

ROLL  NO  :-  17

Submitted :-    Smt S.B.Gardy   Department of English, Maharaja  Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

 Introduction :-

                  Culture’ is a term which has may connotations cultural is refinement or development of mind tastes, etc. by education, training and experience.‘Culture’, derives from ‘Cultura’ and ‘colere’ meaning ‘to cultivate’. It also meant ‘to honour’ and ‘project’ by the 19th century in Europe it tastes of the upper class (elite).‘culture’ is the mode of producing meaning and ideas.

Margaret Mead: “Culture is the learned behaviour of society or a subgroup.”
Clifford Geertz : “Culture is simply ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

        Cultural studies is not “a tightly coherent, unified movement of agenda”, but a “loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues and questions”.‘Cultural Studies’ is a discipline which is interested in the processes by which power relations between and within groups of human beings organizes cultural artefacts and their meanings. ‘Cultural Studies’ is a field of academic study that finds its origin now. It is a study of ‘culture’ or ‘cultures’ and power structure of society. ‘Birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies’ (BCCCS) in UK is the centre for cultural studies. Critics like Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and later Stuart Hall, Tony Bennett and others made ‘Cultural Studies’ popular.

         Thus, culture and cultural elements which made ‘culture’ is an important tool for Cultural Studies. In the 1950s and 1960s a change in focus came about in cultural studies, in analysis. Scholars started taking popular culture seriously. In 1969 the department of popular culture at Bowling Green University (USA) launched the ‘journal of popular culture’.The journal carried essays on Spiderman comics, rock music, amusement parks, the detective movies and other forms of popular culture. It is in popular culture studies that Cultural Studies finds its first movement.
Thus, Cultural Studies looks at mass or popular culture and everyday life. There was a time before 1960s when popular culture was not studied by academies. But Cultural Studies gives importance to popular culture even more than elite culture or elite arts. So, today, study of popular culture and comparison between popular and elite culture is happen widely.

                                 Popular Culture :-
    Popular culture is the culture of masses. Popular culture is the set of practices, artefacts and beliefs and shared by the masses. Cultural studies started to study popular culture and now many disciplines including semiotics, rhetoric, literary criticism, film studies, anthropology, history, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and psychoanalytic approaches, critic examine such cultural media as pulp fiction, comic books, television, film advertising, popular music and computer cyber culture. They assess how such factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class region and sexuality are reshaped in popular culture.

         There are four main types of popular culture analyses:  Production analysis, textual analysis, audience analysis and historical analysis. These analyses seek to get beneath the surface, denotative meanings, and examine more implicit, connotative social meanings. These approaches view culture as a narrative or story-telling process in which particular texts or cultural artefacts consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger stories at play in the society. A key here is how texts create subject positions or identities for these who use them.

         Sometimes, popular culture creates doubt to elite culture. It can so overtake and repackage a literary work that it is impossible to read the original text without reference to the many layers of popular culture that have developed around it. The popular culture reconstructs a work and can open it to unforeseen new interpretations. So, study of popular culture becomes necessary for cultural studies to know culture in a better way.

Elite culture :-

         Elite culture is widely studied by critics. Elite culture can be defined as those “high” cultural forms and institutions that were exclusive to, and a distinguishing characteristic of, modern social elites. It is a term that particularly references the cultural tastes of the established aristocracy, the commercial bourgeoisie, educated bureaucrats and political power breakers, and the professions in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Elite culture is very “high” and “intellectual” culture. It has very closed cultural domains, more omnivorous and not free as popular culture. Elite culture is in very few scales and it has bounded structure. It is sometimes marginalized by popular culture, but it affected on popular culture always.

         In easy words we can say that, elite culture means, the literary and artistic culture of educated and wealthy ruling classes. Elite culture is institutionally expressed in universities, academies, coffee houses, libraries and Masonic lodges. These are some ways where elite culture can be recognised. And they become symbols of elite class and elite culture.The culture of the wealthy minority section of the population was projected as the ‘standard’ or ‘true’ culture. So, academic studies would look at ‘great works of art’ or ‘classical authors’. The taste of the elite culture is also very high and standard. Some examples are classical songs, classical thought provoking intellectual documentary movies, picture and art galleries can be called as examples of elite culture. Thus, greatness, standardisation and intellectuality are important for elite culture.

Popular culture Vs Elite culture: Comparison with example:-
      Popular culture is a culture for majority and Elite culture is considered and known as ‘high’ or ‘great’, ‘intellectual’ culture. And popular culture is considered as ‘law’ and ‘mass’ culture. Meanings are governed by power relations and elite culture. Elite culture controls the terms of the debate.

        Elite culture, as known as great, is respected by popular culture. But elite culture rejects and insults popular culture. Non-elite views on life and art are rejected as ‘tasteless’, ‘useless’ or even stupid.

          Elite culture is of literary and educated wealthy elite group. But popular culture is of common, simple, rural and unliterary people of mass or society. So, elite culture is always expressed in universities, libraries. And popular culture is unwritten and oral. Folklores, fairs and entertaining television serials are examples of popular culture. Elite culture is always ambiguous and not simple one. But popular culture is very simple and presents human emotions and human life as it is, in a simple, understandable way. For example, classical music, philosophical literature, grammar schools, critical analyses, poetry, encyclopaedias are always liked by elites, and they show elite culture, whereas folk music, popular sports, movies, entertainer arts, news papers, novels are examples of popular culture.

          Popular culture reflects real mentality, true picture of society. Elite culture reflects highness or greatness of that society. So, if we want to study real society and human nature, we should study popular culture and if we want to study goodness and intellectuality, we should study elite culture. For example, majority of society does not read the writing of Rabindranath Tagore or Shakespeare’s plays and these are known as respectable arts. But any critic or elite does not study famous novels of contemporary writer seriously as considering these as art and relegating them to the realm of popular culture.

       Elite culture is one part of popular culture but elite culture becomes different and separate from popular culture. Majority of popular culture never see or study elite culture but popular culture is a subject of study of elite culture. But after studying popular culture, many times elite culture rejects it as stupidity. And popular culture always see elite culture as respected though not study it or because they cannot study it.Both the cultures are important for study. Popular culture is the set of beliefs, values and practices that are widely shared. Popular culture is a true reflection of society and elite culture reflects intellectual level and greatness of society very well.

                                                                                                                                                                         Thank you...........   


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write brief note on the views of I.A. Richards on the importance of metaphor, personification and visual memory in poetic language

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Assignment

                            Name  :-  Gujarati Krishna V.

                          Class :-     M.A.  SEM  2

Topic :- write brief note on the views of I.A. Richards on the importance of metaphor, personification and visual memory in poetic language

                  Paper No  :- 07 Literary Criticism and Theory.

                                      ROLL  NO  :-  17

Submitted :-    Smt S.B.Gardy   Department of English Maharaja,

  Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

  -I.A Richards as a critic of Figurative Language

                       In criticism if we remember some important and well-known critics then we must remember I.A Richards, in full Ivor Armstrong Richards, who was born Feb. 26, 1893, Sandbach, Cheshire, Eng.—died Sept. 7, 1979, Cambridge, Cambridge shire), English critic, poet, and teacher who was highly influential in developing a new way of reading Poetry that led to the New criticism and that also influenced some forms of reader-response criticism.

         Richards was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was a lecturer in English and moral sciences there from 1922 to 1929. In that period he wrote three of his most influential books: The Meaning of the Meaning (1923), a pioneer work on semantics; and Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929), companion volumes that he used to develop his critical method.

           The latter two were based on experimental pedagogy: Richards would give students poems in which the titles and authors’ names had been removed and then use their responses for further development of their “close reading” skills. Richards is best known for advancing the close reading of Literature and for articulating the theoretical principles upon which these skills lead to “practical criticism,” a method of increasing readers’ analytic powers.

         During the 1930s, Richards spent much of his time developing Basic English, a system originated by Ogden that employed only 850 words; Richards believed a universally intelligible language would help to bring about international understanding. He took Basic English to China as a visiting professor at Tsing Hua University (1929–30) and as director of the Orthological Institute of China (1936–38).

 In 1942 he published a version of Plato’s Republic in Basic English. He became professor of English at Harvard University in 1939, working mainly in primary education, and emeritus professor there in 1963. His speculative and theoretical works include Science and Poetry (1926; revised as Poetries and Sciences, 1970),Mencius on the Mind (1932), Coleridge on Imagination etc.

                               Four Kinds of Meaning

 A study of his practical criticism together with his work ‘The Meaning of meaning reveals his interest in verbal and textual analysis. According to him a poet writes to communicate and language is the means of that communication. Language consists words so study of study of words so study of words is significant to understand the meaning. The meaning depends on.

So,Now Let's have a look on each on them in detail.

1 Sense:-

           Sense is very much important in the figurative language.  By sense it meant something that is communicated by the plain literal meanings of the words. Therefore it matters a lot.

2 Feeling:-

             Feeling deals with the emotions and sentiments of the writers.It Refers to emotional attitudes desire, will, pleasure, unpleasure and the rest words express feelings.so it is important.

3 Tone:-

            Tone is significant as far as Figurative language is concerned. Tone here means the writers attitude towards his audience. The writer chooses his words and arranges them keeping in mind the taste of his readers. Feeling is only state of mind.

4 Intention:-

           So far as intention is concerned in the figurative language. It is authors conscious or unconscious aim, it is the effect that one tries to produce. Also intention controls the emphasis, shapes the arrangement, or draws attention to something of importance. Hence it is very much important in the figurative language.

“Sources of misunderstanding in poetry”:

         

 The source is very much important in the figuratie language.In practical criticism a study of literary judgment, I.A.Richards has given the theory of Figurative language. He starts discussion first on sources of misunderstanding in poetry. He says that it is very difficult to find the source which creates misunderstanding. Further, he says that there are four sources of misunderstanding as far as are poetry is concerned. As one source of misunderstanding is connected with the other in different way it becomes very hard to diagnoses, with certainty, the source of some particular mistake or misunderstanding. This kind of source of misunderstanding can be possible but rarely.

To some readers meter and verse form of poetry are as powerful as distraction as a barrel organ or a brass-bend is to one trying to solve difficult mathematical. But as we know, meter and rhymes are essential part of poetry and cannot be differentiated. Therefore, the reader should a poem several times. Because the constant reading of poem can solve the problem regarding the meter and verse. Reader should read a poem for grasping the concept of it. Perhaps the constant readings can solve the various doubts about the poem. These misunderstanding of sense of the poetry must be solved by the reader. So that he can grasp the idea of the poem.

 Here I.A Richards also says that the source of the misunderstanding in the poetry.This complicated situation gives rise to misunderstanding or wrong notion that syntax is of less significant in poetry then in prose and that the proper way of understanding poetry is through a kind of guess-work, which may even be called intuition. Such notions are hard solve. Because they are true to some extent. This aspect of truth in poetry makes reader most deceptive and misleading. I.A. Richard warns his readers against this danger.Therefore I.A Richards also makes remarks

“In most poetry the sense is as important as anything else;

It is quite as a subtle, and as dependent of the syntax as in

Prose; it is the poet’s chief instrument to other aims when it is not

Itself his aim. His control of our thoughts is ordinarily his chief means to the

Control of our feeling, and in the immense majority of instances we miss nearly everything

Of value if we misread his sense.

“The significance of visual memory”:

Here in this essay of Figurative language the significance of the visual memory is very much significant in short we can also say that a proper understanding of figurative language required close study of the poem. Reader should read the poem into the context of close reading. its literal since must be carefully followed, but such literal reading must not come in the way of imagination appreciation of it judicious balance must be struck between literalism and imaginative freedom . The aim of the poem must be clearly understood for without such and understanding any judgment of the means the poet has used would be fallacious. New critics give importance to means first then the end of the poem. Because by doing this, they can learn the language – metaphor, figure of speech etc... At art, the end of the poetry can be achieved then the liberty can be given to analysis poem from anyway.

Source of Misunderstanding in Poetry

     As far as misunderstanding is concerned many a times it occurs in the poetry in that misunderstanding occurs because sometimes what a poet wants to say and what the reader understand. So According to I.A. Richards there are four sources of misunderstanding of poetry. It is difficult to diagnose with accuracy and definiteness, the source of some particular mistake or misunderstanding of the sense of poetry. It arises from inattention, or sheer carelessness. I.A. Richards warns readers –In most poetry the sense is as important as anything else it is  quite as a subtle, and as dependent on the syntax, as in prose it is the poet’s chief instrument to other aims when it is not itself his aim. His control of thoughts is ordinarily his chief means to the control of our feelings, and in the immense majority of instances we misread his sense.” Hence I.A Richards makes remarks about the misunderstanding in the poetry.

                 But many times it is observed that sometimes Over-literal reading may cause misunderstanding in the poetry. Hence an over literal-reading is as great a source of misunderstanding. Careless intuitive reading and prosaic ‘over-literal reading are the simple-godes the justing rocks. Defective scholarship is a third source of misunderstanding in poetry. The reader may fail to understand the sense of the poet because he is ignorant of poet’s sense. Afar more serious cause of misunderstanding is the failure to realise that the poetic use of words is different from an assumption about language that can be fatal to poetry. Literary is one serious obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the poetic words. According to Richards-poetry is different from prose and needs a different attitude for right understanding.

The Nature of Poetic Truth:

So far as the nature of the poetic truth is concerned, it differs from Scientific Truth as it is very well said by I.A Richards. In the principle of literary criticism he writes “It is evident that the bulk of poetry consists of statement which only the very foolish would think of attempting to verify. They are not the kind of things which can be verified.

So if it is connected with what was said in chapter 16 as to the natural generality of verge of reference, we shall see another reason why references as they occur in poetry are rarely susceptible to scientific truth or falsity. Only references which are brought in to certain highly complex and very special combinations, so as to correspond to the ways in which things actually hang together, can be either true or false and most references in poetry are not knit together in this way. But even when they are on examination, frankle false, this is no defect. Indeed, the obviousness of the falsity forces the reader to reactions which are incongruent or disturbing to the poem. An equal paint more often misunderstood, their truth when they are true, is no merit. Hence the nature of the poetic truth is very well observed by I.A Richards.

The Value of Figurative Language

In any literary work of art the value of figurative language is very much an inevitable part. Figurative language can create problems. It is difficult to turn poetry into logical respectable prose. Only through accuracy and precision is combined with a recognition of the liberties is combined with a recognition of the liberties which are proper for a poet, and precision is combined with a recognition  of the liberties which are a recognition of the liberties which are proper for a poet, and the power and value of figurative language.

Thus we may also say that the poet is rather negligent in the choice of means he has employed to attain his end. The enjoyment and understanding of the best poetry requires sensitiveness and discrimination with words a nicety, imaginativeness and deftness in taking their sense which will prevent the poem in question, in its original form, from attentive readers. Hence those mixed metaphors are necessary to make the language eye-catching as well as well-ornaments.

 A Health, a ringing health, unto the king, of all our hearts today! But what proud song, should not followed on the thought, nor do him wrong? ………………….. Away into the sunset-glow.

There are various comments on the above piece of the hyperbole of sea-harp. The only concrete simile in the octave is the likening of the sea to a harp-surely a little extravagant.

There is no doubt that the similarity between the sound of a harp and the sea but in poetry such things do happen. It is clear that the effect proposed by the poets is, “an exhilarating awakening of wonder and a fusion of the sea, lightning and spring, those three ‘most moving manifestations of Nature.’

Mixed Metaphors :-

Mixtures in metaphors work well if in the mixture the different parts or elements do not cancel each other out. The mixture must not be of the fire and water like. ‘Woven’ does not mix well with sea and lightening and so here the mixed metaphor is a serious fault.

Figurative Language:

The poet is rather negligent in the choice of means he has employed to attain his end. The enjoyment and understanding of the best poetry requires a sensitiveness and discrimination with words, a nicely, imaginativeness and deftness in taking their sense which will prevent the poem in question, in its original form receiving the approval of the most attentive readers.

The Value of Personification:

Personification comes naturally to us. Personification may not express sense but it expresses the feelings of the poet towards what he is speaking about personification enables the poet to clear and comprehend the difficult work. Personification should not be over-elaborated. There are degrees of personification. If it is over-elaborated it becomes over-burdened.

Comparative Criticism:

Richards warns his readers against the dangers of over simple forms of ‘comparative criticism’. A critic has compared the poet and Shelley is clear in the conception. One thing should be noted that ‘end’ and ‘means’ both differ. As two poets are often closely paralleled in their intents, divergence in their methods does not prove one poem better than the other, ‘Comparative Criticism’ has value under conditions and circumstances.

“When after five years of ‘antics’ chiefly concerned with the cloud- shadows, he turns to the cloud itself in its afternoon dissolution, he cuts the personification down, mixing his metaphors to reflect its incoherence, and finally, ‘O frail steel issue of the sun,’ depersonifying it altogether in mockery of its total loss of character. This recognition that the personification was originally an extra vantage makes the poem definitely one of fancy rather than imagination to use the Wordsworthian division but it rather increases than diminishes the descriptive effects gained by the device. And its peculiar felicity in exactly expressing a certain shade of feeling towards the cloud deserves to be remarked.”

Analysis of the poem with the help of “figurative language of poetry”  by I.A.Richard

Joy and woe are woven fine

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine,
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so,
We were made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.

-  by William Blake

In this poem poet William Black uses some figures of language like Paradox, personification, exaggeration or Hyperbole. So let’s discuss it. 

1.       Paradox : - Joy and woe. We know that Joy means Happiness and woe means sadness and this both are together in very first line of this poem. So, we can say that here poet used paradox in first line of this poem. 

2.    Personification:- clothing for the soul divine Personification gives human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, or ideas. And here poet says that clothing for the soul divine. We all know that soul can’t  wear  clothes but here poet used personification in this line.

3.    Personification :-  Runs a joy it is also personification because we all know that joy can’t run. 

So, we can say that here poet William Black uses so many figures of language for his poem 

‘ Joy and woe are woven fine’.

Conclusion:

Briefly, a proper understanding of figurative language needs closer study. Its literal meaning must be traced. Its literal meaning cannot be found in any imaginative appreciation of it. There should be a judicious balance between literalism and imaginative freedom. One should comprehend the meaning of poetry properly and then come to the judgment whether it has any fault or not. 

I.A.Richards says :-

 “The chemist must not require that the poet writes like a chemist, not the moralist, not the man of affairs, nor the logician, nor the professor, that he writes as they would. The whole trouble of literalism is that the readers forget that the aim of the poems comes first and is the sole justification of its means. We may quarrel, frequently we must, with aim of the poem, but we have first to ascertain what it is. We cannot legitimately judge its means by external standards which may have no relevance to its success in doing what it set out to do.”

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Victorian prose writers.

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                                           Assignment

Name  :-  Gujarati Krishna v.

                               Class :-     M.A.  SEM  2

      Topic :- Victorian prose writers.  

                               Paper No  :- 06 Victorian age

                               ROLL  NO  :-  17

Submitted to:-    Smt. S.B.Gardy   Department of English,  Maharaja  Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

Introduction

 

 It was an era of  material of affluence , political consciousness, democratic  reforms, industrial progress, scientific advancement, social unrest, educational expansion, empire-building and religious uncertainty. Many thinkers and writers felt satisfied with the general condition of the age. But some like Ruskin and Carlyle raised frowns against the soul-killing materialism of the age.

(1) Ruskin as an outstanding prose writer of his age

Introduction: Ruskin (1819-1900) was a sensitive soul who pitted himself against the inhumanity of the age of machine. Born in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, he raised his prophetic voice against the rank materialism which had been ushered in the industrial expansion and cut-throat competition. But what is more, he was an artist himself 23i a keen lover of all art. He made himself felt in the field of art criticism as well as in that of social criticism. Add to that his remarkable sense of vigorous and colourful style. So Ruskin's work and achievement have to be studied under three heads as given below:

              (i)     as an art critic; (ii)    as a social critic; and  (iii)   as a literary artist.

            As an art critic, Ruskin did not concern himself only with painting. He went ahead, and in some of his writings, particularly The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, he came forward to discuss the art of architecture. His fundamental point, which he repeated over and over again, was, in his own words "that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture had been produced." For him art was to be considered as the spiritual history of a nation. He emphasized the relation between art and life, and art and morality. "Art," he asserted, "in all its forms was but a manifestation of a sound personal and social life." Art he considered to be an action; and, therefore, as indicative of the artist's temper and spiritual condition as any other important action of his. Though he favoured principles of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood yet he keenly opposed their slogan "Art for the sake of art." The "seven lamps of architecture," according to him, are:

            (i)   Truth  (ii)  Power  (iv)  Beauty (v)  Life (vi)  Sacrifice (vii)  Memory  (viii) Obedience.

Ruskin's as social critic : Ruskin's object as social critic and reformer was to quote Compton-Rickett, "to humanise political economy." The conventional "political economy" which Ruskin called "nescience," and elsewhere, "a bastard science," owed its origin to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations which was the bible of the political economists of Ruskin's age—such as Mill and Ricardo. Unto This Last was a remarkable work by Ruskin, where he somewhat systematically set about the task of challenging the pontifical utterances of self-important political economists. He gave a new definition of wealth and value, but, most of all, he apparently succeeded in demolishing the superstructure of "the bastard science" by shaking its very foundations. The political economists based all their principles on the assumption of "the economic man". Ruskin tried to show that there was none like an economic man, that is, a man who is wholly motivated by considerations of monetary profit. Ruskin contended that our motive power is not the desire of gain, but a soul. He emphasised the importance of what he called "social affections" in determining the actions of a normal human being. Thus he tried to nullify all the conclusions of the political economists by challenging their very premises.

 (2) Matthew Arnold as an essayist

            Arnold is considered one of the most significant writers of the late Victorian period in England. He initially established his reputation as a poet of elegiac verse, and such poems as “The Scholar-Gipsy” and “Dover Beach” are considered classics for their subtle, restrained style and compelling expression of spiritual malaise. However, it was through his prose writing that Arnold asserted his greatest influence on literature. His writings on the role of literary criticism in society advance classical ideals and advocate the adoption of universal aesthetic standards.

Arnold's prose writings articulate his desire to establish universal standards of taste and judgment. In his highly regarded Essays in Criticism (1865), he elaborates on this key principle, defining the role of critical inquiry as “a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true ideals.” For Arnold this endeavor should not be limited to literature, but should embrace theology, history, art history, science, sociology, and political theory, with pertinent standards drawn from all periods of world history. Arnold's approach was markedly eclectic, and in “The Literary Influence of the Academies,” the second of the Essays in Criticism, he pointedly contrasts the isolation of English intellectuals with European urbanity, hoping to foster in his own country the sophisticated cosmopolitanism enjoyed by writers and critics on the European continent. Similarly, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869), widely viewed as one of Arnold's most important works, was motivated by his desire to redress what he saw as the smug provincialism and arrogance of English society. The essay is a sociopolitical analysis of England's class structure in which Arnold identifies three major classes: Barbarians (the aristocracy), Philistines (the middle class), and the Populace (the lower class). While Arnold praised the aristocracy for their refined manners and social assurance, he also condemned them for their conservatism. “Philistines” Arnold considered hopelessly uncouth though innovative and energetic. The lower class he dismissed as an ineffectual, inchoate mass. Arnold argued that as the middle class gradually assumed control of English politics, they must be transformed from their unpolished state into a sensitive, sophisticated, intellectual community. The alternative, he contended, would be a dissolution of England's moral and cultural standards. Arnold also endorsed the eventual creation of a classless society in which every individual would subscribe to highly refined ideals based on the culture of ancient Greece.

(3) Carlyle as an essayist

One of the foremost writers and intellectuals of his era, Carlyle wrote influential works on The French Revolution, Cromwell and Frederick the Great, emphasising the cult of a great man as national moral leader.

Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, as the son of a stonemason and small farmer. He was brought up in a strict Calvinist household. At the age of 15 he went to University of Edinburgh, receiving his B.A. in 1813. From 1813 to 1818 he studied for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, but abandoned this course and studied law for a while.

Carlyle wrote contributions for Brewter's Edinburgh Encyclopedia, also contributing to such journals as Edinburgh Review and Fraser's Magazine. From 1824 he was a full-time writer and undertook thorough study of German literature, especially Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Carlyle's essays on German philosophy introduced many new ideas to the British public. He also produced a translation of a work by Goethe, which was highly acclaimed.

As an essayist Carlyle's career began with two pieces in the Edinburgh Review in 1827. He expressed sympathy for the condition of the working class in the long essay Chartism (1839). In 'The Negro Question' (1850) he addressed the subject of West Indian slavery in intemperate and for the modern day reader doubtly repugnant terms. Carlyle's cynicism with English society was evident in the Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850). As in his historical studies, Carlyle insisted the importance of the individual, and raised serious questions about democracy, mass persuasion, and politics. This also isolated him from the liberal and democratic tendencies of his age. In the 20th-century his reputation waned, partly because his trust in authority and admiration of strong leaders, which were interpreted as foreshadowing of Fascism.

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Nature in English romantic poetry Wordsworth ,Kats, and Shelley as nature poets

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                                                           Assignment

Name:-  Gujarati Krishna V.

Class:-     M.A.  SEM  2

Topic:-   . Nature in English romantic poetry Wordsworth ,Kats, and Shelley as nature poets

Paper No  :- 05 Romantic age 

 ROLL  NO  :-  17

 Submitted to:-    Smt S.B.Gardy   Department of English,   

                    Maharaja  Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

     Introduction

       Romanticism is an imaginative point of view that has influenced many art forms. Love of nature played an important part in the revival of romanticism.

                            Nature in WORDSWORTH’S POETRY

The Beneficial Influence of Nature

         Throughout Wordsworth’s work, nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind. All manifestations of the natural world—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—elicit noble, elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development. A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and the social worlds. As Wordsworth explains in The Prelude, a love of nature can lead to a love of humankind. In such poems as “The World Is Too Much with Us” and “London, people become selfish and immoral when they distance themselves from nature by living in cities. Humanity’s innate empathy and nobility of spirit becomes corrupted by artificial social conventions as well as by the squalor of city life. In contrast, people who spend a lot of time in nature, such as laborers and farmers, retain the purity and nobility of their souls.

Keats and nature

        Nature was one of the greatest sources of inspiration for Keats. Like Wordsworth he had a cult of nature, though, unlike him, he did not see an immanent God in it. He simply saw another form of Beauty, which he could transform into poetry without the aid of memory; he only enriched it with his Imagination. While Wordsworth thought that “sweet melodies are made sweeter by distance in time”, Keats believed that “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”, i.e.: beauty imagined is superior to beauty perceived, since the senses are more limited than the Imagination and its creative power. While Wordsworth´s love for nature is well explained by the fact that he grew up in the Lake District, thus being influenced by the suggestive landscape, it is harder to understand the connection between Keats and nature, since he was a city boy. For this reason, unlike Wordsworth, whose relationship with nature was spiritual, he looked at nature with the eye of the aesthete, recreating the physical world, including all living things.

         Nature was a major theme among the Romantics, but Keats turned natural objects into poetic images. When he already knew that he was gonig to die, he looked back at childhood and realized that concrete contact with natural objects at that time was responsible for the postitive associations they continued to communicate in adulthood.

         Nature led Keats to the formulation of a concept he called “negative capability”, described as the ability to experience “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact or reason”, managing to negate personality and opening to the reality around. It is an intuitive activity of mind, a metaphysical process in which nature is a potential source of truth. That of the poet is a visionary activity, which uses natural objects as means to represent the poet’s ideas. Though a great number of images connected with nature in Keats’s poems are used only to represent experiences, thus becoming a symbol of the psyche.

                                Nature in Shelley and Wordsworth

          For Shelley, nature represents a powerfully sublime entity which feels utter indifference for man. Certainly, Shelley describes such beautiful scenes as "earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep / Of the etherial waterfall". At the same time, however, he recognizes nature's merciless potential:

But a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing 
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand: the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed.

       According to Shelley, nature is at once splendorous and deadly, a dynamic force that cannot be tamed by man. While appreciating nature's aesthetic majesty, Shelley warns man not to equate beauty with tranquility. Rather, Shelley advises us to view nature from both sides of the coin, admiring its unapproachable synthesis of power and grace.For Wordsworth, on the other hand, nature plays a more comforting role. Like Shelley, Wordsworth sees nature as an eternal and sublime entity, but rather than threatening the poet, these qualities give Wordsworth comfort. As Wordsworth writes:

I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Rather than placing man and nature in opposition, Wordsworth views them as complementary elements of a whole, recognising man as a part of nature. Hence, Wordsworth looks at the world and sees not an alien force against which he must struggle, but rather a comforting entity of which he is a part.

Shelley was an atheist, a fact which certainly contributed to his vision of nature as a powerfully indifferent entity. Having no benevolent God to give reason and order to the world, Shelley lived in an immensely intimidating universe of powerful and fractious components. Nature could be beautiful for Shelley, but that does not imply that it was caring. Shelley seems to echo Pascal, who said, while gazing at the stars, "The silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." Wordsworth, on the other hand, was a relatively solid and conservative member of the Church of England. Thus, with the faith of religion to back him up, Wordsworth was able to look at nature and see the benevelonce of God behind it. For Wordsworth, the world could be a place of sorrow, but it was not cruel. Though suffering surely occurred, Wordsworth comforted himself with the belief that all things happened by the hand of God, manifesting Himself in the ultimately just and divine order of nature.

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