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Aug. 8th, 2006 03:37 pm( ahahaha yet another essay left til the last possible minute )
ETA 2: OH YEAH, I have an argument!
"Does romantic poetry accurately represent the non-human world, or does it drastically misrepresent it? Support your argument with an analysis of two poems."
"The nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart": Nature as female in the poetry of William Wordsworth.
Although Wordsworth strives to faithfully describe the environment that surrounds him, his poems betray an inability to escape preconceived notions of nature as female, ultimately leading to distortions in his depictions of the non-human world. By exploring the language of "Nutting" and "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", it can be seen that Wordsworth's formulation of nature as female leads inexorably to descriptions of an environment that exists only in response to the poet's needs and desires; and environment, even, which Wordsworth appears to feed on, both literally in the case of "Nutting" and metaphorically in the case of "Tintern Abbey."
Okay, that's not a thesis, that's a title and the first two sentences of my introduction. Woo woo? Actually, gah, it doesn't quite say what I want it to say, it doesn't quite answer the question, so we'll see, it might change.
He gave out a whole bunch of essay advice, some of which was great, and some of which was kind of blah. But what really struck me was, he said only draft a provisional introduction and come back and do it again after you've finished. I do usually revise my introduction a bit, mostly because I end up leaving stuff out (I'm... talky) but, gah, I can't write *anything* until I have a really good introduction. Man.
ETA3: okay okay the rest of my blether is going to go below a cut and y'all won't have to see it but this is *fascinating*. Wordsworth published (and, according to Wiki anyway, wrote) Tintern Abbey in 1798. Here he describes the natural world as "The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being." He also wrote that
...Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us...
Now, in the same year Immanuel Kant published his "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View", where he writes: "Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that … [men] would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behaviour, which is the preparation and introduction to morality." The "beautiful understanding" or finer feelings that women (supposedly) have (Kant was very into finer feelings, "the beautiful and the sublime") actually leads men on to higher moral feeling.
The similarities are fascinating. I mean, Kant was publishing in German and although he was a pretty influential philosopher, even during his lifetime, I have no idea whether Wordsworth would have read his work. But whether he did or not, the similarities are striking: Wordsworth writes that nature leads men on to higher feelings and gives them a moral compass; Kant thinks women do the same thing. It's just so interesting.
*geeks out*
( what's the opposite of progress? )
ETA 2: OH YEAH, I have an argument!
"Does romantic poetry accurately represent the non-human world, or does it drastically misrepresent it? Support your argument with an analysis of two poems."
"The nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart": Nature as female in the poetry of William Wordsworth.
Although Wordsworth strives to faithfully describe the environment that surrounds him, his poems betray an inability to escape preconceived notions of nature as female, ultimately leading to distortions in his depictions of the non-human world. By exploring the language of "Nutting" and "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", it can be seen that Wordsworth's formulation of nature as female leads inexorably to descriptions of an environment that exists only in response to the poet's needs and desires; and environment, even, which Wordsworth appears to feed on, both literally in the case of "Nutting" and metaphorically in the case of "Tintern Abbey."
Okay, that's not a thesis, that's a title and the first two sentences of my introduction. Woo woo? Actually, gah, it doesn't quite say what I want it to say, it doesn't quite answer the question, so we'll see, it might change.
He gave out a whole bunch of essay advice, some of which was great, and some of which was kind of blah. But what really struck me was, he said only draft a provisional introduction and come back and do it again after you've finished. I do usually revise my introduction a bit, mostly because I end up leaving stuff out (I'm... talky) but, gah, I can't write *anything* until I have a really good introduction. Man.
ETA3: okay okay the rest of my blether is going to go below a cut and y'all won't have to see it but this is *fascinating*. Wordsworth published (and, according to Wiki anyway, wrote) Tintern Abbey in 1798. Here he describes the natural world as "The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being." He also wrote that
...Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us...
Now, in the same year Immanuel Kant published his "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View", where he writes: "Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that … [men] would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behaviour, which is the preparation and introduction to morality." The "beautiful understanding" or finer feelings that women (supposedly) have (Kant was very into finer feelings, "the beautiful and the sublime") actually leads men on to higher moral feeling.
The similarities are fascinating. I mean, Kant was publishing in German and although he was a pretty influential philosopher, even during his lifetime, I have no idea whether Wordsworth would have read his work. But whether he did or not, the similarities are striking: Wordsworth writes that nature leads men on to higher feelings and gives them a moral compass; Kant thinks women do the same thing. It's just so interesting.
*geeks out*
( what's the opposite of progress? )
