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An Analysis of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

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Generally speaking, Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" has been seen in relation to many an aspect of his poetic career. First of all, it is said to be a historical record of the different stages of the growth of his poetic imagination, and that is why some view it as a miniature epic that anticipates his epical endeavour with "The Prelude", in both thematic and artistic designs. Tintern Abbey contains and expounds many of Wordsworth’s poetic and philosophical beliefs, which were intended to be the themes of his other poems like, “Recluse”, “The Excursion” and, of course, “The Prelude”. Again the poem is unusual in examining the composition of the landscape, like his contemporary artist of his country Constable, rather than expressing the spirit of the landscape—its topography, its arrangement of vegetation, its placement of the works of men and its colours and light and shade have been scrupulously described. These scenes ultimately become the “objective correlative” for his philosophy of that period. The procedure and kind of poem were determined by Coleridge’s influence, for “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight” were its immediate successors, with the 18^th century sublime odes in the farther background. But it must be admitted that "Tintern Abbey" has greater dimension and intricacy and a more various verbal conversation than Coleridge’s poems.

Wordsworth’s
Tintern Abbey inaugurated wonderfully the functional device, which he later
called “two consciousness”: a scene is revisited, and the remembered landscape,
“the picture of the mind” is superimposed on the picture before the eye. As the
two landscapes fail to match, they set a problem, “a sad perplexity”, which
compels the poet to the meditation. As Wordsworth now stands on the bank of the
river Wye, he comes to the final realization of his relation to Nature and of
his concept of the relation between man and Nature, in general, and above all
of his ontological standing, both as a human being and as a poet. That is why
he is found here thinking of nature not only as a painter, but as a philosopher
too. In his scheme of thought the human world is connected with the divine
world by the way of the world of Nature. In his Romantic vision the world of
man—pastoral forms and plots of cottage ground—merges and becomes one in the
spatial expansion with the world of Nature, which is finally connected with the
inorganic quite of the sky. The suggestion is made through an intensification
of the dominant aspect of the given landscape, its seclusion, which also
implies a deepening of the mood of seclusion in the poet’s mind. To Wordsworth,
the landscape of the Wye declares the unity of the universe. In this it appears
that his philosophy is essentially quietistic and almost like that propounded
in the Upanishdas . Again, in his indirect reference to the three planes of
being—the natural, the human and the divine—Wordsworth adumbrates the great
Romantic vision of cosmic unity. Thus Wordsworth also prepares the reader for
the similar progression of his attitudes to and understanding of Nature in his
own life.

Wordsworth
traces in this poem the history of his evolving attitude to Nature basically
for two reasons: on the surface, this is an autobiographical confession, and on
the higher level of thought he wants to give validity of experience to the kind
philosophical truths he seems to have found. This is, however, inextricably
related to the growth of his poetic career. It is found that in his earlier
poetry, Nature had no exotic significance. A humanitarian phase had followed
‘exemplified’ at its best in The
Ruined Cottage. After a brief period of disillusionment, he became convinced
that the universal human malady in mind and heart could be cured only by
Nature’s “holy plan”. So this poem may be said to illustrate a love, which is
almost religious in conception; “the sentiment of being spread over all that
moves and all that seemeth still”; the experience of communion with the
universal spirit; the moral influence of Nature even in absence. Furthermore,
Wordsworth’s philosophy is almost pantheistic as he alludes to the link a
pantheist sees between Nature and the lot of mankind, which he tries to
ameliorate.

Wordsworth expounds these views not in
isolation from experience but as organically related to his own experience in
the lap of Nature. When he had visited the Wye as a mere boy, he enjoyed the
abundance of Nature instinctively. A fuller commentary on this stage can be
found in the Book I and Book II of The Prelude. At that stage of life, enjoyment of Nature was coarse
and animalistc:

“…when first

I came along these hills; when like a roe

I bounded o’er the mountains…”

Wordsworth then describes his impressions
he got during his second visit in 1793. At this period of life his appreciation
of Nature had been largely emotional. At that time he ahd been

“…more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads than one

Who sought the thing he loved.”

Here speaks simultaneously of vision and
emotion because his perception of the natural objects brought immediate joy to
him. It had then for him no appeal that was “unborrowed from the eye”.

In the third stage Wordsworth find that the “aching
joys” and “dizzy raptures” are no more, but their place has been taken by other
gifts of Nature. As he looks on Nature now, he hears in it

“…the still and sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample
power

To chasten and subdue.”

He is satisfied now because he feels
the presence of the divine power in everything,

“Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”

Wordworth seems to have emerged here as a
mystic in his all-pervading pantheism. But he differs from the conventional
mysticism because unlike a mystic he can communicate his experiences in Nature
to the readers. Now he understands that he is the lover of Nature, “Of all the
mighty world/ Of eye, and ear”. Now his soul is relieved

“ …to recognise

In nature …

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the
nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and
soul

Of all my moral.”

The Rape of the Lock as a Mock-heroic Poem

Unknown 06:00 Pope

When Pope called the poem “an heroicomical poem”, he intended to mean it a mock-epic. He could assume that his eighteenth century readers, educated in the classical and knowledgeable about epic, would recognise that it was a mockery. Besides, the mock-epic, which Boileau had established as a distinctive p[oetic genre with his poem Le Lutrin, was well-suited to the eighteenth century. Unlike the burlesque, which lampoons the epic, it plays off a high sense of the heroic against the diminished scale of contemporary life. In this confrontation, Pope might be expected to have a clear allegiance to the classical epc poets. His veneration of the classical antiquity is on record in the Essay on Criticism, and his low opinion of the general character of contemporary life is evident in the Moral Essays and Intimations of Horace. It is worthy of remark therefore that in The Rape of the Lock Pope presents a world dominated by trivialities in terms of an epic grandeur. The fashionable society of the beaux and belles is not only allowed the defects but also the advantages of its scale. In the midst of its ironies the poem delights in the exotic preparations and instruments of Belinda’s toilet and in the exquisiteness of the sylphs. It extends rapturous complimentary to Belinda and expresses genuine sympathy for the pathetic fate of the belles it mocks.

Many of Pope’s jokes in the poem derive their significance from the epic tradition. Epic subjects were grand; for instance, the Trojan War (Iliad), the founding theme (Aeneid), the Fall of Man (Paradise Lost) were narrated at length in twelve or more books, each consisting of several hundred lines. The epic hero also traversed a wide geographical area encountering battles, romantic interludes, journeyed by land and sea and even descended into the underworld. From on high the gods watched the human drama, intervening when they chose at critical moments. Success for the hero was dependent upon the subplot of divine intrigue as well as his own courage and skill. The mock heroic imitated the most recognisable aspects of the epic, its form and elevated language. It used an inflated style to ridicule the pretensions and pomposity of minor quarrel. Pope also borrowed elaborate phrases and similes from the great epics of the western tradition. The joke lies in his applying this elevated language to “the life of the modern ladies in the idle town”, as he deprecatingly described the subject of "The Rape of the Lock" in a letter to a lady friend.

Pope consciously imitates the epic opening in his first twelve lines, which may be called the invocation in the approved epic manner. He too will ‘sing’ his subject whose importance he indicates by inverted syntax and elevated language: “dire offence”, “mighty contest”, “tasks so bold”. He addresses the muse in order to invoke inspiration. His tone does gather declamatory epic ring as he commands the goddess: “Say what strange motive…?” At some points we begin to sense that Pope is not mocking the epic form so much as laughing at his subject. Once we realise that we are reading a mock-epic, it casts a different light on the apparent solemnity and dignity of Pope’s propositions and invocation. The first hint of the mock-epic comes from the third line of the poem when Pope credits a human being, Caryll, rather than the muse with inspiring his poem. The lines from five to six have the effect of an anticlimax:

“Slight is the subject, but not so the praise
If she inspire and approve my lays.”

As for the supernatural machinery, which neoclassical criticism considers indispensable for an epic, Pope reveals remarkable inventiveness. The sylphs of "The Rape of the Lock" are Pope’s mocking recreation of the gods who watch over the heroes of epics and guide their fortune. It is nicely fitting that Pope’s supernatural beings, who are supposed to imitate Homer’s deities and Milton’s angels, are tiny, frail and powerless. Although they are an amalgam of epic machinery, Rosicrucian lore, an English tale…, they are essentially Pope’s inventions. As for epic battles, the game of ombre at the centre of the poem is presented in terms of a mighty epic contest, catching repeated echoes of Trojan War and the war in the heavens. As for the epic underworld, there is an effective counterpart in the Cave of Speen in "The Rape of the Lock", which is contrasted with the Golden glittering beauty of Belinda’s delightful environment.

Pope was also mindful of the fact that a mock-epic should have a moral just as an epic does. Clarissa’s speech in "The Rape of the Lock"opens out the moral of the poem about the fashionable society. The speech can be taken as an attempt to redefine for contemporary women a concept of honour, which apply to male epic heroes. In the world of belles, honour becomes courage to face decay with humour and duty, to use the power of beauty well.

On the character and the dramatic function of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Unknown 15:55 Shakespeare

Lear’s relationship with the Fool is no mere static pictorial contrast, but part of the tragic movement of the play: the movement downwards towards that ultimate exposure and defeat when the king is degraded to the status of the meanest of his servants. It is the presence of the Fool which reinforces the meaning of Lear’s loss of sanity. As his wits begin to leave him, Lear begins to see the truth about himself; when they are wholly gone he begins to have spasmodic flashes of insight in which during the momentary comments on the storm in revengeful personal resentment, he sees the truth about the world. It is important to remember that it is the Fool who points out at the beginning of Lear’s misfortune—“Thou would’st make a good fool”. In saying so the Fool also speaks as a prophet. Here Shakespeare makes the fullest possible use of the accepted convention that it is the Fool who speaks the truth, which he knows not by ratiocination but by inspiring intuition.

Hooker has said that “they that seek reasons for all things do destroy reason”. This is the kind of intellectual premise which helps us to consider the Fool’s role in more impartial light. The Fool in King Lear is the instinctive judgement of normal humanity raised to a superhuman stature; his remarks indicate that feeling has not been divorced from the mere reason which the judicious Hooker had condemned. The Fool sees that when the match between the Good and the Evil characters is being played out across the heath, the intellect alone cannot give proper judgement, but the heart must join in the game so that the decision is final. This is the wisdom that the Fool confers on Lear:

“ I will tarry, the Fool will stay

And let the wise man fly”.

It is clear then that in the scheme of King Lear there is nothing contemptible in a motley coat. The Fool is justified chiefly because he gives an indirect answer to his own question: “What is folly?” It turns out that, as the Fool shows Lear, to be foolish is to be mistaken about the nature of things, or to mistake the proper method of attaining to one’s desires. On one level, the Fool is seen to point this ethical value in terms of remarks which derive from the deeper cosmology or theology of the Renaissance. The Elizabethan playwright made conventional use of the inherited belief in thunder as the voice of divine judge. The thunder suggests the speech of God, but the apparently simple utterances of the Fool are no less profound because the Fool’s remarks also have the testimony of the human heart:

“He that has a little tiny wit,

With hay, ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortune’s feet,

For the rain it raineth everyday.”

Lear’s tragedy is finally the investing of the king with Motley; but it is also the crowning and apotheosis of the Fool.

The language of the Fool should be analyzed in order to understand the mode of his truth-telling. The Fool is a model court-fool: a sage without laurels, obscuring, trivializing and blunting home truths in order to forestall the blows that he would receive as traditional reward. The more telling his insight, therefore, the more quirky its statement. As much as Kent, the Fool rebels against and clings to a king who denies his kingship. His obscurities are ironic, for irony is a way of being at once angry and kind. Even as he guides Lear through the storm he tells him:

“Nuncle…good nuncle, in ask thy daughters’ blessing;

Here is a night pities wise men nor fools” (Act III, scene ii)

The suggestion that Lear asks his “daughter’s blessings” is a keen thrust, recalling the earlier illusions to his daughters’ flattery and to the benediction Lear refused Cordelia, so mistakenly conferring it on Goneril and Regan. This obscurely aggressive truth-telling is the primary content of the Fool’s speeches. When the mad and anguished Lear falls exhausted and the last word seems pathetic: “We go to supper in the morning”, the Fool’s comment is “And I will go to bed at noon”. This is the Fool’s irony which is directed against Lear’s illusion. It declares that polite formulas cannot cover the great revolution in Lear’s condition. This ironic empathy is small but prophetic, for at lat Lear will be as undeceived as his Fool.

One reportorial or dramaturgical reason which has been cited to explain the disappearance of the Fool after the third Act suggests that the same actor played the roles of Cordelia and the Fool. It becomes a dramatic imperative therefore that the Fool should recede once it is realized, that Cordelia will have to enter the stage in the fourth Act, extending her comforting hands to the suffering king.

But this seems to be only a strange rationalization for the Fool’s disappearance. It is clear that the tone and seriousness of the tragic action does not require the presence of the Fool any more. Once Lear has seen through the imbecility of his actions and has acquired the vision or insight appropriate the wise old man, the Fool’s company becomes redundant proposition for the action of the play. In a sense, therefore, this deliberate pulling off of the figure of the Fool helps to reinforce the theme of the education of Lear indicating once and for all that the blind Lear has finally received the insight of the Fool.

Explanations of Catherine Mansfield's Short Story "The Fly"

Unknown 15:48

1. “At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen…it was ready for life again”

2. “But just then the boss had an idea…the task began from the beginning…it was only a question of…”

After the departure of Mr. Woodifield, the boss remained morbidly engrossed in the thoughts of his dead son. He was extremely agonized to remember that his son, who was all to him, had died. At that moment, he found that a fly had fallen into his inkpot and was trying to come out of it. He was fascinated by the sight of a tiny little fly’s endeavour to come out of the pot. It seemed to the boss that the legs of the fly were crying for help. As the sides of the pot were slippery, it slid down. The boss helped the fly with his pen to come out of it and put it on a piece of paper. For a moment it seemed that it was dead. But at the next moment it waved its legs and began to clear its body with immense effort. It succeeded in drying up its legs, body and the wing, and sit on its legs. It tried to expand its wings and was now ready for a flight. The boss could realize the horror of death it had escaped. But at the next moment he was possessed with an idea: he simply put his pen inside the pot and took out a heavy drop, which fell on the fly. The boss was fascinated at the sight of the fly’s being totally dumbfounded at what happened with it. It seemed to the boss that it was now afraid of moving. But then it tried to get out of the whole burden laboriously and began cleaning its body yet again. The boss was very much impressed with the fly’s efforts for saving its life.

3. “But the fly had again finished its laborious task…And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to drying process…the boss decided that this time should be the last…But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened…pressed the bell for Macey.”

After the departure of Mr. Woodifield, the boss remained morbidly engrossed in the thoughts of his dead son. He was extremely agonized to remember that his son, who was all to him, had died. At that moment, he found that a fly had fallen into his inkpot and was trying to come out of it. He was fascinated by the sight of a tiny little fly’s endeavour to come out of the pot. The boss helped the fly with his pen to come out of it and put it on a piece of paper. But at the next moment it waved its legs and began to clear its body with immense effort. It succeeded in drying up its legs, body and the wing, and sit on its legs. It tried to expand its wings and was now ready for a flight. The boss could realize the horror of death it had escaped. But at the next moment he was possessed with an idea: he simply put his pen inside the pot and took out a heavy drop, which fell on the fly. The boss was fascinated at the sight of the fly’s being totally dumbfounded at what happened with it The boss was very much impressed with the fly’s efforts for saving its life. But he was possessed with a peculiar, almost abnormal attitude to the fly; while he wanted to help it dry up, he also wanted to check out its stamina. As soon as it finished with drying, he took out a heavy drop and let it fall on the fly. Now the fly was completely subdued. It became still. It died. This incident filled the boss with a wretched feeling. He was horrified at his deed. He pressed the bell and ordered his servant to bring some fresh blotting paper. He was puzzled to think what he was thinking about and what led him to kill the little creature.

Comment

The author through the presentation of the fly here tries to bring home the difference between life and death. The boss could realize the horror of death because he had gone through the experience through his son’s death. Perhaps he was trying to weigh out the difference. Again, it may be that he was possessed by a desire to help the little creature, which, otherwise would go down the pot. In fact, he was identifying the fly with himself, as both of them were trying to come to terms with life and death. But moments later the same person was possessed by a sadistic desire and killed the fly. The irony is that he could not understand the reason behind his acting so unreasonably.

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An Analysis of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

The Rape of the Lock as a Mock-heroic Poem

On the character and the dramatic function of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Explanations of Catherine Mansfield's Short Story "The Fly"

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