Hemans posts

Hello Romanticists,

Though Felicia Hemans and George Gordon, Lord Byron are both members of the second generation of Romantics, they might strike us as bewilderingly different from or even diametrically opposed to each other.  Byron was deeply skeptical of Christian faith; Hemans was deeply devout.  Byron was a political radical who embraced a life of exile from his homeland; Hemans was much more conservative and valorized patriotism.  Byron famously had a string of affairs and separated from his wife when their daughter was a child; Hemans was abandoned by her husband and supported their six children on her own.  

And yet, despite vast differences of experience and ideology, the two poets share some profound similarities.  Both, for example, are invested in constructing heroes.  Records of Woman presents a host of figures who embody ideals Hemans felt to be important for women throughout history.  Even when they embody gender norms, Hemans’ women are passionate, courageous, and undaunted in the face or threat or trauma.  They are often wronged or rejected by those around them, and often seek means to defy those who seek to control them.

In your post, pick one of Hemans’ women to consider.  In what ways does she embody conventional (female) virtues?  In what ways does she defy these conventions?  How is she like and unlike Childe Harold or the general Byronic hero?

Happy reading,
Prof. M.

Hemans, from her Collected Works

Illustration of Hemans' poem "Effigies" 

Ivanhoe posts 2

Hello Romanticists,

When we first talked about Ivanhoe last week, I said it was a novel about Englishness and English identity.  Another way to frame that is to say that the novel seeks to define what constitutes the nation of England, or nations generally.

The concept of nationalism, as we know it today, originates in our period—the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  The famous theorist of nationalism, Benedict Anderson, defined nations as “imagined communities.”  Nations are “imaged” in the sense that their members never meet most of their fellow countrymen or know anything of them, but yet “in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Imagined Communities, 49).  And nations are “communities” because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (ibid., 50).

For your posts this week, consider how Ivanhoe imagines communities.  What characterizes or defines “Englishness”?  Who is included in that community and who is excluded?  Who do characters feel most connected to, and why?  What forms of “inequality and exploitation” exist within the community of Anglo-Saxon England and how well does the imagined connection of nationhood recompense for or paper over these problems?

You might also think about the nation of England in 1819.  To spark your thought process, have a gander at some commemorative depictions of the Peterloo Massacre.

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

Ivanhoe posts 1

Hello Romanticists,

We now embark on the first novel of our class, Walter Scott’s historical romance Ivanhoe.  For this first post, I want you to accustom yourselves to close reading novel prose.  Pick one short paragraph of the text and analyze it in minute detail, noting interesting word choice or sentence structure, rhetorical devices, dominant images, the role of the narrator, and anything else you can. 

For example, if I chose to analyze the first paragraph of the novel, I might note that the subject of this paragraph is England, implying that the novel might be about England or English identity as much as it is about any individual character.  I might go on to note the shift in verb tense from the first sentence to the second: “there extended in ancient times a large forest” becomes “The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen” (15).  The effect on the reader is to create a temporal jolt as we whiz across centuries, and to balance an assertion of continuity (you can “still” see something of the forest) with a sense of loss (you can only see “remains,” not the whole).  Finally, I might examine the syntax of the final sentence.  The order of words in each clause is inverted: one would normally say “many of our most desperate battles were fought here,” not “here were fought…”  This slightly unusual syntax emphasizes “here” by putting it first, suggesting that the location discussed is more important than what occurred there.  That emphasis is reinforced by the anaphora, the rhetorical device of starting several clauses with the same word(s).  In this case, each clause begins with “here” and then identifies an event that took place on the spot in question: “Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws…” (15).  This device expresses the depth of English history be piling up in that “here” a whole series of different historical moments.   

I’ve bolded the textual elements to make the pattern of observation and analysis easy to see: first identify some aspect of the text, then proceed to explain how it contributes to the meaning of the passage as a whole, or how it affects your reading experience. 

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

Illustration of Wamba and Gurth from the 1830 edition.

Illustration of the a scene from the operatic adaption of Ivanhoe, 1891.