Day Two: Humanism and the Proto-Romantics

(I thought this might be appropriate for this class. Watch to the end. It is not as sad as it seems, and has a funny ending)

• Your homework for today was to select a poem from the reading and to write one page on how that poem connected with the idea of being “found.” Let’s begin by getting out that work, skimming it, and underlining the most important lines. Once we’ve done that, let’s get into small groups and share our thoughts and comments.

Class Discussion of Responses

One of the reasons we are looking at these writings is because they give us a general sense of what the Romantic Period was like, what its concerns were, and how it directed human attention in new and interesting ways. We will be investigating these issues over the next few weeks, in much more detail. But this was a good “first pass.”

One of the things you may have noticed about all three of our authors is that they lead rather exceptional lives, in terms of the education and fame they came into contact with.

All three can be connected with the idea of the Enlightenment, which is actually the larger social context for the major cultural transformations that were rocking England during this time.

The American and French Revolutions were grounded in shifting social values: religious and aristocratic explanations of the world were falling away to rationalist explanations and explorations of the natural world, and also to new concepts of what it meant to be a liberated or free individual within the context of such a world.

Here’s a practical example:

Everyone stand up and back to a wall, then walk forward by placing one foot in front of another, proceed until you get to the other wall. Count your steps.

Okay. If you were the King or Queen on of France or England, your number would be the number for EVERYONE.  That is what it means to live in an unenlightened world.

From an enlightened positioned, one that recognizes the rational difference, the notion that measurement should follow such a role is obviously illogical. The reason is understandable, regardless of your race or gender.

They knew this in France, and that is one of the reasons why they bucked so hard against the Monarchy, that they BROKE THE NUMBERS. It’s where we get the metric system from.

Enlightened thinking BENEFITED from England’s ban on educating Protestants and other undesirables who would not conform to the Anglican church. In Nonconformist schools, dissidents broke further from the classical traditions of Oxford and Cambridge in favor of education that would be of practical value to their children. There was of course a political motivation, as these children would have to survive in this quickly deteriorating world.

Anna Letitia Barbauld emerges from this situation. She invites us to consider the logical implications of the Enlightenment as they were visible in the late Eighteenth century, and her work is extremely important for us.

Anna Letitia Barbauld:

• The Mouse’s Petition

• The Rights of Woman

Here’s a student made video that, as far as I can tell, totally misses the point of the poem, but which is relevant as it shows one way in which the poem may be “found” in contemporary American life.

• To a Little Invisible Being

Charlotte Smith:

• Written in A Church Yard

• On Being Cautioned

Mary Robinson:

• London’s Summer Morning

• The Haunted Beach

Homework: Read William Blake: All Selections from “Songs of Innocence and Experience” 81-97. AFTER, read “There is No Natural Religion” 80-81, AFTER read “All Religions are One” 79-80