English 102

Emphasis in literary texts we’ve read up till now: REASON through reading, print culture. Now for something completely different!

Paradigm for Poetry: Mirror vs. Lamp vs. ….? (Reader, p. 91-92)

For each example:

1) Where is the light coming from?

2) What is the relation between the literary text and the world outside it? Which is more important, which is the basis or original, of which the other is the copy?

Two main threads, based on issues we’ve already been exploring in 102 (in each case, contrast example from Rape of the Lock):

1) changes in the representation of NATURE and relations between humans and the natural world (including now the supernatural). What happens to the idea of a Golden age, nature as benevolent mother?

2) changes in ideas about what literature should do, and about the writer’s relation to his or her society. What do poets have that society needs?

New category: the idea of the SUBLIME (Reader, p. 92).

- an adjective referring to some aspect of an object

- a term referring to a psychological or emotional response produced in someone seeing something with certain attributes.

Key feature of experience of the sublime: may result in shortcircuiting of reason – in inability to express one’s responses in conventional language.

Summary: In the second half of the c., literature begins to explore psychological and emotional aspects of human nature that were now increasingly seen as what makes us human. Greater value now placed on emotional responses, of the extremes of experience; artists and writers are valued now for originality, genius.

As a result: cultural products now explore the BORDERS of what can be represented formally. Artworks now strive to achieve the near-impossible: to give their readers or viewers access to experiences inaccessible through normal language or normal ways of experiencing the world. (the supernatural)