- BrowningB not read til late in his life. 1880's, still getting larger revenues for his wife's poetry than for his own. E.B.B. died 1861

Cult figure in the end:[chased around Albert Memorial by admiring females] prophetic bard Religious figure...1860+ fame increased, but best poetry written before.

1881 Browning Society started. first such group founder: philologist F.G. Furnable. groups stated they were not idolators, but their papers suggest otherwise.[one fan:B. makes life worth living] their praise had serious effect on Brownjing's 20th century reputation. Dr Edward Bordeaux wrote book on Browning: Browning Encylclopedia bordeuax claimed re-conversion after hearing lecture on Paracelsus

famou essay, George Santayana, 1900: presence of barbaric genius truncated...

Browning not Christian, but Agnostic [debatable]

Santy says: B as seen as a philosopher a muddle but B as poet is clear.

Browning and Lovefinest love poet of 19th he has exalted a sexual love wuite un-Victorian. Spinsters and clergymen in Browning society did not look too deep.

Browning love theme: unfulfilled Love is wrong, destructive, sinfull. Aproves of passion. contemptuous of convention.

"Seize the moment, for it will never come again."

Statue of the Bust 1855Lovers, out of propriety, remain chaste, so, lives become sterile. Empty. Echoes Ring and the Book

palace in florence, the statues face each other. The Duke falls in love with woman to be married, but no follow up: So weeks grew months, years, gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and Love: And both perceived they had dreamed a dream 151-153She makes a face for the window, him, one for the square: If you choose to play! is my principle Let a man contend to the uttermost For his lif'es set prize, be it what it will The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coiin: And the sin I impute to each frsutrat ghost

Is- he unlit lamp and the ungirt loin Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. You of the virtue {e issure join} How strive you? De te, fabula [the tale is told for you] [241-ending,251]

Brwoning Master of Dramatic monologue Poet seen only through characters, but here, he speaks directly. Brwoning interposes. A poetic turn on God, morality, respectable middle class readers.

Brwoning uses Christian vocabularyu, like Arnold, but shows adultery. A yet greater sin to deny passion.

Brwoning himself was an impuslive lover- engages E.B.B. agaisnt her father's wishes:

in 18th century, Browning swould not have run off together to get married, tabboos too strong.

in 20, would have run off, not got married.

W.C. Vain essay on Brwony: Brwony abnormally attracted to legenf of Andromeda [imprisoned woman on island, chained, rescued by Saint George, dragon slain.]

Browny had picture over desk his entire life.E.B.B. Browny as St George?

In Statue and the Bust St George fails to rescue

Love fro Brwoning, fgreatest experience in life.

Love Among the Ruins 1855love: non intellectual endurable preferable to achievemnt, glory, wealth.

theme: love comapred to transience of great cities, deeds. But not Babylon, ninevah...a scicilian city. lots of excavation in 19th.ending stanza: Oh heart! of blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns for whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best [78-85]

Two in the Campagna 1855thought of as companion piece to Love among the Ruins but, intermittent love only available: we only have one minute: ...I kiss your cheek Catch your soul's warmth,- I p[luck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak- Then the good minute goes. [46-50] human separation then made evident.

Betty miller wrote debunking Freudian treatment of Brwoning marriage, used Two in Camp as chief indicator that Browning was warped.

tyheme: loves is fleeting, this a sign of human imperfection.

James Lee's Wife 1864

not admired by first readers.not good victorian poem. no tidy ending. subject off-cue. Hardylike/Eliot.

1863, Browning settled in Brittany, after E.B.B dies.

theme: to live without responding love: All love but a day And the world has changed. [Mweredith, poet, 1862]

little action in poem mood gloomy, inevitable events only through eyes of woman.

like Maude: series of lyrics, no connecting narrative. Each anrrative developed through different character

VI firewood from sailing ships leads to drowning sailors, looking to land, envious they do not know her fate the same

VII drawing a peasant hand, turns to a cast by Leonardo, leads to Art/Nature motif: beauty of suffering peasant hand.

the work not autobiographical. Krey to note in Brwoning, that sense of loss is not permanent in his poetry. Prospice 1864 for instance: active defiance of death...death horrid ...character defiant calm serene and Love triumphs beyond death.

I was ever a fighter, so, -one fight more The best and the last ...O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again and be with God

Browning's Career

3 long poems Pauline 33 Paracelsus 35 Sordello 40 none well received, all commercial failures: sordello especially, inspired storied of obscure reading.

Mrs Carlyle: Sordello a man,m a city, or a book?

Browning had reputation as Difficult poet. in 30's tried to be Dramatist. FailedPippa Passes strengthened Brownings experiments with theater, thouhg it not meant to be staged [a closet drama]

becasue of this, Browning relaxed:no audience to please, no staging, only characters. Refreshing respite from stress of readerhsip.

Victorian theaters, by the way, were immense, difficult to work.Browning great with the human psyche, terrible at action.

still, his apprenticeship in theater crucial to his poetic development. not incidental that in 30's, when he finds his voice, it is as a Dramtic monologuist.

Chareleston: Ottima/Sebald section best in 19th century.

Pippa Passes 1841

ascending pattern: four kinds of love..elicit married parental, patriotic Christian love.but in practivce, first section so good, others pale.

famous passage, line 189: Ottima; buried in woods we lay, you reccolect; Swift ran the seartching tempest overhead; And ever and anon some bright white shaft Burn'd thro the pine tree roof, here burned and there As if God's messenger tho the close wood screen Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture Feeling for guilty thee and mee; then broke the thunder like a whole sea overhead.

Sordello's Albotross: Pippas' lines: god's in his heaven All's right with theworld [225]

Brownign's universe sees evil, acknowledges the worst, reaffirms sense of goodness in people, via Pippa.Sebald illuminated:line 239 "My god, and she is emptyied of it now Outright now- how miraculously gone All of the grace- had she not strange grace once? Whym the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes no pupose holds the features up together Only the cloven brow and puckered chin Stay in their places; and the very hair that seemed to have a sort of life in it Drops, a dead web! [238-47]

Sebald is not generated to good, but to repentance.

Pippa symbolic: each scene she innocently influences, but knows nothing at the end.

all characters caught up in dilemmas:Sebald and Ottima, have killed her old husband. get repentantLuigi paralyzed between mother love/national love decides to kill the Autsrian Emperoro, liberate country {irony, had he stayed, would have gbeen arrested}Jules has a peasant mediteranean type for compromise: married her.Intendant: confesses his kidnaping of Pippa, the heiresss to Monsignors brother's estate.Pippa, as a play, is flawed. speeches long, too much coincidence.

E.E. Stall: improbability good at the beginning, but later, like in Lear, to unlikely: kings don't divinde yup like this/hang on.

Brownings's Dramatic MonologueBrowning did not invent form in 20th,m we have a few notables

Dramatic Mono not the same as a soliloquoy

Tenny wrote in it, but in Tenny, listener not easy to identify: Browny, the time, place, the listener are always clear.

Bishop Orders His Tomb 1845Dramtaic MonoRuskin: Rich in Rennaissance hoolowness, hypocrisy, love of art, inconsistency, etc...

bishop here mixes the sacred and the profane:line 56: the bas relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and per chance Some tripod thyrsus, with a vase or so The saviour at his sermon mount

nephews: bishops own illigitimate children.

chief fixation: rival Gandolph and the mistress

Concern: wnats a good tomb[status symbol] close to the altar

Browning shows Bishop off Gurad, like Tenny shos Ullysses, so he tells us more than he would in his role: he is unaware he is disclosing a baser nature, as he tells us things inadvertenly.

becomes frustrated. He is a dying bully, but his childredn are moving in for the kill, like "wolves" bishop knows it is too late. they will spend the money on themselves, not on a good tomb.

goes from marble to gritstone tomb.

Victorians took deathbed scenes seriously, collected deathbed sayings, as truth. We see Browning here thumbing it. Bishop is not listened to on deathbed.

finally, bishop has no further self understanding with death impsnding. just imagines an afterlife with more petty quarrels, more political intriges, more mistresses.

Soliloquoy of a Spainish Cloister 1842Dramatic Monologue illustrates a departure from B's pattern. no listener here.

speaker revealing character to us, inadvertently, lke in Bishop Orders His Tomb: a leagalist, a petty man. Iago type.

Brother Lawrence the nemesis we get a Franciscan picture of Lawrence,stanza V: When he finishes refection Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection As do I, in Jesus' praise. I the Trinity illustrate Drinking watered ornage pulp- In three sips the Arian frustrate While he drains his at one gulp.

Polotics of Monastary

petty man's scheme: a french novel will baitn out the Lawrence. yet, speaker shows he knows french novels himself ["on gray paper with blunt type] VIII

Stanza VII test on Galatians referenced. critical problem. Brwony acknolwedges mistake in citing.

line 70; Hy,Zy,hine possibly from black mass [parody mass], notes in British museum.

Bishop Orders Toimb also has french novel.

Brwoning struggles for clarity in his work, which he attains, fitfully.

Men And Women volume of 1855 is Browning's most clear work.almost all Dramtic monologues. After Ring and The Book, published in four volumes, two in 1868, two in 1869, critics cite a falling off in style.

In Men And Women, lots of painters, Musicians, shows Browning's aquaintacne with other arts. He lived in Florence during much of marriage.

Fra Lippo Lippi 1855 volumeDramt Mon.reputation: Brwoning equvalent to an historical novelist, still kept to Englishism, reading English papers in Florence. Many

contemporary british allusions in his work, cartoons in Punch. Arnold, by contrast, out of touch with Brits. So, in Broowning, though a distant setting, characrtrer, and time previals in his work, the 19th century British present in the work.

Fra Lippo caught by Florentine guards. He bullies them cajoles them, sits down to talk. A Man's man. Unfavorable first impression gives way to rascality, link with guards.

Discrepancy between vows and behaviour. association of his painiting and behaviour, despite social restraints.line 70: Browning invents painting that Lippi is working on, to provide ironic contrast: for he is needing to slip back in from a nights activity so that he may paint: Saint Jerome knocking at his poor old breast With his great round stone to subdue the flesh [then] You snap me of the sudden.

Browning characters are energetic, humorous, willfull.

Fra defends his theory of art- strives for sensuality, physical expression. his critics say too much flesh in his paintings.[spirit and the flesh were in opposition in middle ages Catholicism.] Thought that flesh must be subdued: Yet lippo feels difficulty; wants to celebrate the body and the soul, to discover the wholeness of man. Felt that physical beauty leads to God, and implies that the artist celebrating physical beauty leads us to God. Browning likes to put his own truths in the mouths of somewhat villainous characters like Lippos

Lippo in life, a Florentine painter, a Harbinger of the Rennaissance, living in the middle ages.

Lippo character, like Browning, knows valure of the flesh. Brwoning's vital primitivism.

lines 285-315: The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades. Changes, surprises,- and God made it all- for what? Do you feel thankfull, ay or no,

for this town's fair face , yonder river's line The mountain round it and the sky above, Much more the figures of man, woman, child, These are the fram to? What's it all about? To be psassed over, despised? or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course.

Yet, an uneasyness with Lippo character, we fell in Browning, for such can easily slip into sloppy hedonism. Browing wants us to see him as a representational figure of the middle ages, mingles in with the Victorian need for treatment of sexual passion.19th thought o f Browning: bacame un-English, lived out of England. Too much time in Italy [though he lived in an english colony]

Andrea del Sarto 1855Companion piece to Fra Lippo

while Lippo has energy, Andrea demure, passive, culckolded.Lippo ends at dawn. Adel takes place at sunset.

Subtitle: "the faultless painter": ironic, cause true only technically. Andrea has compromised. Raphael and Michelangelo are more flawed, but more brilliant, more vigorous, spiritual, having zeal.

Andrea: all tecyhnique, no inspiration.

Andrea gets married to just the type of woman emblematic of his style: beautifull, but empty, pointless.

them of work: a great failure is better than a low success.line98, ironically stated by Andrea, talking to his wife:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

Ruskin on gothic Architecture: good quality of it was its imperfections. glossy perfection horrid.

19 century poets often intimate with Music

Pater: "all arts aspire to the condition of Music"

in music, form and matter perfeclty fused- no paraphrase of feeling.

Browning an accomplished pianist. in his poems, he writes for the keyboard.

Abt Vogler 1864

real figure...browning connected to his music teacher, but, inaccurate, appropriated.

no listenerNo revelation of charctermore lyrical

metaphors of Solomon's temples, to which speaker comapres music.

a moment of ecstasy of spirit, epiphanies, spots in time, expressing the spiritual reality beyond the material universe..

based on real character Abbe George vogler, german 1749-1814], notes as an extemporizer.

The spiritual moment like Tweo in the Campagna

first six stanzas could have been written by Romantics, images of eternity prevalent, but, like Arnold tendency, by stanza VII, Browny changes:

But here it the finger of God, a flash of the will that can Existence behind all laws, that made them and lo, they are. And I know njot if, save in this, such gift be be allowed man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

then we see a tapering off of intensity, a going donw to the C0- major of life. Yet, there is a return to the major.

Transcience of experinec seen here as the confort in Browning, just as it is in Hegel, Schiller, and the transcendenat philosphers. Suggestion of completeness.

Brwoningesque philosphy of music: extemporized music experienced in time, as a process, rather than as a finished work of art that conforms to certain artistic alws. in its state of becoming, and

in its spontanaiety, it is conceived as being closer to the vital principles of the universe the will of God], than is painting of a poem.

Difference for Ramonatica and Browning. When they came back from ecstatic moment,m bakc to earth, it was a living death. Browning, like Tennyson,[In Memorium, the vision, Tenny didn't want another, the one refreshed] considers the C-Major of life good, as capapble of holding other spontaneous moments of flight.

suggesting of completeness.

Stanza XI musicians know [as Fra Lippi] the impermanence of all life is evidence of permanence, of perfecttion of the aesthetic experience. though for us it is fleeting. Like Eliot, a sense of religous thought without the Christian dogma. As well, like Two in Campagna, a connection with human passion.

Rainbow to express hope:Shelly's Adonais has the rainbow appear. shelley thinks of light beyond the rainbow as valuable, while the colours are a stain.

Browning, the colours are symbols of human limitations, with initmations o imortality: On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. IX A Tocatta of Galuppi's 1855subject of musicspeaker listening to the music of Galuppi, then sees Galuppis Venetian world.

different from Abt Vogler where moments of mystical insight previaled. Here, music as instrument of dissillusionment

speake r English, thinks he knows Venetian 18th century life. reflects English stereotype: 18th century through eyes of a compalcent, uninformed man.

feeling of compalcency, of morally superiority in speaker crumbles as poem proceeds

stanzas 2-4: romantisized view of Venetian gaiety, but by stanza 7, change in music...shift to a minor key. now, in minor, Galuppi is taunting, mocking, suggesting hollowness of material life, the futility.

Early, Galuppi seen as celebrator of social gaeity.

but after stanza 7, celebrator of futility.

both remind speaker of impermanence of human existence.

Stanza XI: ends, In you come with your cold musice till I creep thro every nerve.Sense of death is felt at home by English provincial. like a good elegy, it starts o Venetian life in particualr, ends on the general human condition.

a moment of self understanding foe speaker like the ones in Abt Vogler the moment of musical ecstasty.

speaker feels sorry for the Venetians, now dead, but is glad that he is alive: consdemnation of fun loving Italians.

second half of poem spekaer thinks of his own death, up in a cold climate, having no fun. Feels intellectually, morally superior to Italians

great thinkers represented; speaker does not believe in Souls

Complaceny dissappears though, stanza XII: Yes you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. The soul, doubtless, is immortal- where a Soul can be discerned.

ends: " I feel chilly and grwon old.

Brownings's mother a dissenter, a congregationalist.Father a normal Anglican

parents views were intense, esp mothers.

Browning had liberal religious views, yet retained dissenting, evangelical coloration.

1st century A.D. and Rennaisance were Browning's historical passions.

Epistle of Karshish 1855christ working upon a scholarly Arab mind.

Arabs the best culturally in world in 1 cent A.D.

signbificantly, Browning makes spekaer a scienttist: 19th, science flourishing.

Karshish has met Lazarus, tries to expalin story to himself and to his Master, Abib.

poem begins with period atmosphere, typical of Browning. but soon, shows narrator is not treating story of Lazarus scientifically, analytically. He is baffled, even ashamed of his preoccupation with the story.

He cannot accept what he sees. so cannot understand.

Intereting picture of Lazarus: Laz as savant idiot, having witnesased God directly, a bewildered man now, unfit for life.

Browning sees Lazarus as unnatural. Glories in the imperfeciton of our vision.

imperfectioj of human experience/perceptions paradoxically a gift from god. God defending us from the blaze.

Lazarus' dilemma: his soul has outgrown his body. contrast with Abt Vogler's moments of vision, knowing he must come down. Lazaruse cannot come down. think of Eliot's Magi- they cannot go bakc either.

Cleon 1855theme: impace of Christ on 1st century sophisticated observer.confrontation with the best in Greek thought.

subtitle: "as certain also of your own poets have said"

comes from St Paul's hill sermon in Athens [Acts] but Paul makes no converts amongst the greeks, who only wonder at the knew philosphy, as if after new intellectual stimulation only.

Cleon is intellectually drawn to christ, from curiosity, but pulls back from commitment.

Brownings portrait of Greek Humanism not just old, but appropriated for 19th, for cultivated, thinkers of 19th rejected intellectual claims of Christ, finding them incomprehesible.

says Cleon: their doctrine can be held by no sane man. to Browning, such insanity is beautiful. Karshis: the madman sayeth it is so.

all arts are mine, says Cleon. But this in not enough.

Cleon's ironic Discovery: as his intellectual life, dexterity, increases, his faculties decline. He envies young slaves. Brownings message: paganism is no answer for death, for old age.

Cleon clearly shows need for an afterlife: our imperfections ought to lead to some perfection, somewhere.

line 112: And thus our soul, misknnown, cries out to Zeus to vindicate his purpose in our life: Why stay we on earth unless we grow? Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out, That he or other god descended here And, once for all, showed simultaneously What, in itws natyure, never cn be shown, Piecemeal, or in succession- showed, I say, The worth both absolute and relative Of all his children from the birth of time, his intruments for all appointed work.

humans are suspended, for Cleon, between Zeus and beasts. this is source of his dispair: so Cleon toys with afterlife, but rejects as fantastic.

shows intellectual pride of Greeks: God would not come through "mere Jews."

faith/doubt, at issue.

Biship Blougrams Apology 1855bishop, talking to an upstart man of the times. A gentleman, not a man of letters, A journalist, utilitarian, 19th century man. Intellectually outmaneavers him into thinking his life is justifiable. He tunrs the trick, but again, Browning distrust of

him shows through.

poem shows intellectual subtelty, talkiness that obfuscates later Browning.

speaker is the bishoplistener Gigadibs.

starts: No more wine? then we'll pusk back chairs and talk.Gigadibs the social equivalent of Bishop, but an unflaterring picture of him here, as an article writer, a man of letters, a mere journalist. Thinks highly of himself, his social cultural superiority to Bishop.

Gigadibs thinks Bishop a charlatan catholic, a vbeliever in miralces. Feels contempt.

Bishop starts with joke concealing truth: we ought to have our abbey back.

tightly reasoned arguments by metaphor.

utliizes pilgrim at sea motif.

On such a voyage, bish: I would want all my trunks Gig: if I can't have all, just give me bare cabin. bish: I'll take a few things then.

talks about faith and dount, turning every standard argument against faith on its head.

moments of doubt prove God.line 173: posits them theoretically as "unbelievers both:but shows that

assaults by faith wear down doubts, even if we guard them.

bishop says you cannot have pure faith without pure doubt.

Faith then gets you through life more admirably, even though Agnostic utilitarians choose to carry us through life best.

Browning has ambivalent view towards Blougram:line 980: For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke

the other portion, as he shaped it thus for argumantary purposes He felt his foe was foolish to dispute.

often, as said, Brownings own ideas come through less thqan perfect chartacters, ones less than noble. He said true things, but called them by wrong names. [996-7]

Blougram a portrait of 10th century Cardinal Wiseman, a man often parodied. Appointed first Archbishop of Westminster. In rome, he gave a fiery speech saying he would recover England, making it a province wwonce again, of the greater Rome.

poem published after Catholic decision to re-establish the heirarchy in England. even stirred up anti'papacy chatter. Cahtolic church till then dormant since reformation in 16th, with Henry VIII.

a solid protestant ethic at bottom of Browning. despite compalcent, wordly Shristianity he had in common with blougram character.

Ring and the Book 1868/69browning found book in stall in Firenze [Old Yellow Book]colected old documents, mostly printed, a few manuscripts, depositions of Guido's trial.

Bowny claims that moment he bought book he envisioned entire work. biut began writing several years later.

E.B.B didn't like subject matter. Browny wrote aftter her death.

Must be said theat Browning had a fondness for this srot of thing: adultery, murder, violence, sex. Many of his poems deal with such matters.

Guidos story: sordid material, yet, characteristic of Browning, from all of this sordidness, he finds two characters of shining vitrue [though old yellow does not really allow it].

Designed on structure of the Old Yellow: series of depositions, of retellings from different perspectives.

browning made radical courageious decision in handling: no linear narrative, but rather, tells tales ina Jamesian fashion

so, to avoid monotony, Browning had to be technically, powerfull, dramatic.

browning claimed [in poem and out] a highly factual account, but he took lots of license.

In OYB Pompillia flirtatious, sexual, not so nice.

Popes speech is invention.Character's motivations are inventions.

Browning brought to story because of triangular relationship, again,m the Andromeda strain that may have played in the dramatic rescue at #50 Wimple street, when St George rushed up to carry off E.B.B.

Recsue motif shows:page 291 lne 386-9: And when next day the cavalier who came With wings at head, and wings at feet and sword Threatening a monster, in our tapestry Would eat a girl else- was a cavalier.tapestry shows Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a sea monster. Pompillia speaks, as a child thought.

page 301,line 1312-1316:Our Caponsacchi, he's your true Saint GeorgeTo slay the monster, set the princess free.

narratively, we have interelated Dramatic Monologes.

R. Laungbaum Poetry of Experienceaccoutns of use of Dramtic monologe by browning as others in 19th and 20th cneturies;D.M. implies relativistic view of truth, inherent, when poet speaks in own voice, purpoerts truth, but, Partial Imperfect view of events seen by limited character as in DM, gives us sense of the frgament, the limit.

Henry James: Novleists ought not to speak in their own voice, ought to make himself invisible.

Launbaum contended that R&B a modern, relativistic peom in its exploration of truth through the various points of view.

We nor Browning, however, doubt Guido's evil, Pompillia's good.

but Dramtic Monologue refratcts truth, which implies that only God here, possessed the whole. All else see soemwhat differently/

Pope is closest to divine perspective, yet, he still misses. He does not have an external standard of justice. thinks to the effect on the times, the signs, the politics of decision.

Browning believes in ultimate truth, but human beings, only with great effort, can only get an approximate truth.

BkII R&B

other half of Rome given: representative public opinion

speaker an old bachelor, sentimental, admires Pompillia,but, testimony here not to be trusted. Man again has motives. Infatuated with Pompillia.

spoeeches by prosecutor in Defense: trusty? no. callus professionals on both sides. [Browny had disdain for Lawyers.]Pope concerned because Pompillia had points in her marrriage where she tried to ge thelp form clergy and secular powers. All of society ahd abandoned her. Her parents too. Even a bishop did not help. Clerical figures let her down, send her back,

Guido in minor clerical order, so, has a legal out. in fact, that is why poope tires it, not secular powers.

Pope, witnessing story, has vision of christina intitues in degeneracy. Propohetic vision of routed Christina furute in 19th.

page 330, line 1851:What if it be the mission of that ageMy death wilk usher into life, to shakeThis torpor of asurance from our creed,Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bringThat formidable danger back, we droveLong ago to the distance and the dark?no wild beast now prowls around the infant camp.

this much like Pound, in his Cantos, talking of rememvbering a time when there were gaps in the history, a timew of wildness though, soemthing good there.

so, more at stake than just murder.

Pompillia betrayed by machinery of society:parents, chruch,state, Pope her only chance for vindication. In fact, any hope of vindication the result of her having slipped through the courts. An accidental thing.

Truth no longer resides in institutions Pompillia had done the right htings, but machinery bad, despite efforts.

Intuitive trust in Capposacchi is a Protestant appropriation of story.

line 1425 Now I am in peril, she says, He says, I am yours. [hard core Andromeda]

Browning sees goodness, deceny in individuals, not in machinery.

Reference to Molinos hersey, mentioned over 30 times in R&B, note page 295: pre-0figures Protestant Reformation that sought to de-emphasize machinery, making faith subjective to inner light. Represents Vatic stirrings in Catholic times.

Secular society also mirroerd changin times.

Guido and Nobleman a generation before coudl have easily gotten away with this. aRguamnets for the defense on OYB show the old stance of a man being able to put away a wife who has somehow stained him, brought him dishonour. His by right.Pope wants Guido to be hung in a sqaure wherre all his nobel frined can see, as an example. Samson Agoniistes.

15-17the century Italy was on the edge of the modern worlds, confronted by forces they cannot understand.

A poem of change. Men/Women/economics/state/chruch/faith.

Guido's defense: I murdered her, but afterall, she was my wife.this wion't wash anymore.

Guido's execution a sign of the end of the feudal order.

Brwongin theme: action must be based on a subjective apprehesnion of turth.

discovery of self, then find ethic to correspond to soul, even if

it means rejection of state, law,m church.

So, full circle here:Statue and the Bust staying within norms, lovers sterilized.

R&B Pompillia and Capposacchi violated usual practive, even if they died, they did the right thing

When a pope endorsed this, you know the Browning is appropriating.

Papal; indecision: shows tensions in poem.

David CopperfieldAs with Vanity Fair , pretty much an open faced sandwich.

BibliographicWilson Angus 70' World of DickensEdgar, johnson, 53 biographyJohn Forster, authorized bibHumphrey House 41 Dickens WorldGeorge ford 53 Dickens and Hid Readers

Dickens seen in 20th as a pullp, fanstasy writer. House demosntrates that Dick took his work seriously, academically rooted.

Dick had a strong relationship with his readers, rare, endearing, a popular entertainer. Teh Barry Manilow of his day.

Late in life Dick gave public readings. Mobs swarmed.

Career: 2 parts 1st novel, Pickwick Papersin 19th, early novels most admired. [Oliver Twist #2]in 20th, later novels admired.

Early novels loose, comic, picaresque.

Pick Papers adventured of Pickwick and companions, roaming around Enmgland. Plot is linear, series of episodes on the road. Satire is broad, with only a few dark moments [oliver twist].Comic elements prevails.Always a sense of triumph for characters.Characters uncorruptable [speech pattersn of twist unaffected by his middle class being exposed to poor]

David Copperfield there is the potential for evil in protaganist David- makes for more complexity.

part 2: later novels, the world view is darker, though comedy stays.tone somberssymbolic overtones systematically developed.criticism of society more profound.

in Early novels, sources of evil tended to be individual [olover twists FAgan, pickwick's jingle] characters, grotesqeuly horrid, yet, there is no reason why they are evil.

in later work though, as in David Copperifeld, a sense that the source of evil is pervasive, that something is wrong overall.

Dickens not a systematic thinker, not good at anyalisis.

Marxists love Dick becasue he exposes all the capitalistic miscarriages of human dignity.

Hard Times Steven Blackpool factory lad, oppressed nobel working class figure so typcial to Dickens. It is this typ0e that links with Carlyls Joceylyn of Brickland for nobel are abused. character dies, falling into an inducstrial pit, says, "its all a muddle."

Dickens had a strength of recongnizing soemthing wqrong in 19thm, without offering any solutions.

So, as Dickens grows older, sens that wrong grows widespread, intsitutional, like Browning's ring and the Book Pope

DC middle novel; 7 before, seven after.Represents transition from boistrous stire, comedy/ to tighter structure, depth of vision.

Self Praface on page 47 shows that DC was Dicks fav cahracter.

Dick carefully planeed novel, not jsut a loos collection of epoisodes.

Critics:Older view of Dick: brilliant at improvisation, but not a conscious artist. [unconsious, like Twain]

Henry James called on this view in his criticism of Victorina novels overall[ though comments were not specifically put to Dicks work]. James called them "loose baggy monsters, objectionable to self-conscous artistry."

Yet, imrov charge doesnt wiork well with Dick. His work too well put together. Bu7t he did know sales figures, and abided by them.

When sales tapered, he did somethying drastic. A new character. New scene.

Character of Dora, for instance, a tiresome figure. He bumps her off. cionvenitne death. David canb marry now, the girl of his dreams.

Miss moucher, the dwarf, based on person Dick knew [Mrs Hill, a manicurist] she did not like characters involvement in conspiracy to seduce Emily, so comaplined. He changed for second half novel.

Biographical work? little bit. Told first person.

Dickens life facts :1 worked in a blacking factory [negativbe experience]2.never told wife and children about his work.

3. his father in prison for debt, though a military man.Why blacking fctory such a bad experience?1. Dick plucked out of school at 12 years old.2. Social humiliation3. terroe of sliding past lower middel class standards into lower class.

English class system: you can move from middle-class to aristocracy, though the continent could not do this[ france, for instance]. but between pitit beurgeousie and poor, a desperatge barrier put up.

Dickens comes from most insecure class.

David crossed boundary. no longer middle class.

Great Expectations Pip comes out of poverty into aristocracy, but put bakc into clerk class.

Dick had sympathy for the poor. A great champion of their identity, but he was more pre-occupied with money. wrote more than he should yhave, for money.

1870: Bell and Lancaster bill changed education:before this, middleclass illiterate. Hardy character show fear of reading, of that type change.

Oral traditon? Dickens parts with oral traditon, often read aloud, linked to theater with his melodramatic charactgers and steerforth theatrical.

Dickens idelaizes woemn helplessly, as does Tenny, so only old, poor, groteasqwue woemen interesting, beautifully realized.

Agnes= the complette ideal...blahDora= a lightweith..we are meant to see her so.

Mr McCauver in prison for debt, likwe Dicks dad, always hoping soemthing will come up.

Mr Murdstone= Dicks dad too, a villain

David's occupation as a court reporter just like Disk's

most dickens novels taken from a childs point of view. Frequently orphans. shoeblacking exper made him feel like an orphan.

strenth and weakness in seeing all through child's eyes. draws on memeor8ies of his won childhoos often.

1840's a bad time in England: no jobs, food, immigration the big solution.

English traditon: you must leave england to get your rewards.

Victorian fallen Woemn:little emily: no joy going bakc to Tarmouth a fallen women. she must go off, for peneance, for practicality, even though she is not to blame. She is thje injured party. She leaves Engalnd.

Hughes painting The Last of England shows famoly with baby leaving, sad.

Dicks orphans in DCDavidLil emilyAmDoraSterrforthAgnesTravisUriah

Dick famed around the world for domestic virtues, felicity, but, marriages in novels often broken sad death ridden

David marries twice.

dick sees home as centristic, yet sees dangerous world as he grows olderhis christianity is down under, in values, but not dogmatic.

We see the dangers of being outside of the family.David's journey to London from Cantgerbury- lots of visous people.

motif: series of attempt by David to find surrogate parents, for his ftgher is dead, his mother weak.

stepfather first surrogate:but Miss Murdstone is wicked stepmother.McCaubers

Aunt Betsey

wickfields

20th cen: Dick a little saccahrin.

we also see parody of families held together by hatred, not love.

less social criticism in DC. still, linked to later:Evil characters here a product ofsocietyUriah Heaps behavoir a result of [his mock humility] a strategy to surviveal adopted to Heaps's father. Our attitudes towards poverty poroduce this.

Yet, dick still not comfortable with analysis, still asense of mystery evil, unidentifiable.

No rationale David innately good. Uriah innately evil.

Dave shows poetntial for evil though

page 706 the injury you have hinted at [Davids aunt charges him]

1.too, signe of David's impatience with Dora before she dies.

this is differentt from flawless good character of early novels.2.Too, David never confronts Heap.

Good characters must join forces

3. David gettin gdrunk with Sterrfoth.

Steerfoth: complicated, Byronic Hero, suffeirng remorse.

series of confrontations of good an evil. 20th sees this as too black and white.

Angus Wilson on meals in Dickens novels:love feasts with religous overtones, affection, profound rapport, interactionwicked characters intrude, break harmony up.

Litermer comes in, breaks up Davie entertaineint chracters in London room. He enters, people stunned.At Wickfields, presend of Heap does turnStrongs House, Waldne's entrance

paradoy of loves feasts at Heaps, Steerfoths: Blackmasses for meals.

2 scenes where evil defeated by good:chapt 14: aunt betsy meets Mursdton, exposes them cuts them down

climax chapter 52 Uriah Heaps masque stripped away, villany exposed. Comic, cathartic.

Fagan in Oliver Twitst is evil, but comic, grotesque, but, Uriah Heap driven by power, wantes to crush, vindictive, worms his way into the middle class, responsible for the loss of Aunt Betsyes savings.

Uriah's always land on their feet.

in prison, in the end, unrepentant.

Dicks critique of prisons:: such systems encourage crime, evil

American Notes dick big on prions reform.

Lionel Trilling: later novels the prison the symbol for entire world.

Miss murdstone: characterized by metal early on, meand not just

houskeeper, but jailer. David and Pegget speak through keyholes. Strings of steel beads

MurdstonesBetsy calls them murderersMr Murdston killed David's mother, spiritually.

Dickens on Murdstons religious attitude:Calviniest with natural depraivity [children must be punished, constnatly being wicked]

Dick, like Brwoning, believed in fundamental goodness.

Thus, those most good, most childlike.Betsy: eccentric, separate.Mr dick: simple, mentally handicapped [Lazarus?]

Dicks values are with childredn, fesh, uninhibited.

Tought to see a good adult that is notchildlike in Dicks work, unless they are eccentric.

POefatty family: sijmple, unsophisticated.

Tought though, for Dick to account for evil

Early novels: innate bad peopleLater novels: greater mystery,

Dickens; mmoney can protect you somewhat from trouble

Dvid leaves factory for dover, sees consequeccnes of poverty.

Bleak House moral infection, but evil still a mystery.

poeverty is dangerous: Peggity left vulnerable, though good and happy.

David's task: achieve independence while preserving innocence of childhood. dicks task too.

but falling from innocence: Sterrforth wants child state.Mr Dick: genius afterall, adult/childDora: a child[but childish, not childlike]

David marries fully idealized woman.

Tag lines:McCauber: I will never desert my husband. Barkas Im willingBetsey Janet Donkeys

who changes? DavidSteerfoth- no changeUriah, no evidenc of change, but a few surprises.Dora, no change, but David's perception of her changes.NMrs Gummity chagnesMcCawber transformation to solie Austrailina citizen.

Habit of happy endings a Victorian must.

Jane Eyre: Reader, I married him.

19 cent Habit of Idealizing Women19th century common trait disliked today

no mature, interesting female characters.

sentimental deathbed scenes also big. obstacle for todays reaers.

Women are burdendd by the crushing weight of moral rectitude, just as Clym in Hardy's work weighted down with symbology.

19th cnetury liked their women this way

Dick was counting ojn the respone from stock readers. Caused him to write with stereotypical notions.

Thackery wretles with womenb issue.

Agnes: paragon of virtue, symbolic of selfless, divine love.David speadk of her in religous tones, at end, ponts to heaven, and she is at his side.

dickens weakest when he invoked religous language.

Middlemarch, George EliotWoolf: midlemarch one of a few novels written for gronwups in 19th

Serious purpose in Novel

compulsive thoroughness shows.

theme: a slice of English provincial life at a certain time. We see al levels, squire to domestic servants.

Eliot, writing, did formal research. notebooks.

Read medical journals, forn instnace, to do Lydgate.

W.J. Harvey: Eliot's mind like National Gallerly. for every canvas on display, there are tweo more in the basement.

Structurally odd, especially at beginiing.

eliots correspondence shows it to be two novels embedded. Opening chapters show two plots, fot she melds them together, chapter 10 [says Gordon Haight] is the melding point. Dinner party by Mr Brooke.

but characters of separate novels, the one bout Lydgate, the other about Dorothea, do not effctively interact untio much later.

chapter 30: Lydgate becomes .......s physician.

Eliot brings together subplots through techniqe of Ambiguous Titles: Wating for Death The DEad Hand Two Temptations

Chapters also elaborately worked out in parrallel.

Differrent from dickens, who planned less, had less details.

Middlemarch not published in serialization, so, less improvisation.

Story takes place between October, 1829. [First Reform Bill] time of writing 1871 [Second Reform Bill 1867]

England in transition shown: Railroad scene Brook Egged

Middlemarch is a pre-refomr bill world. it is on the edge.

Characters represent change: Lydgate New medicine Bulstrade Raging Capitalist Ladislaw dangerous interloper

Lydgate: has foreigh connections. studied in Paris. We know he had wild affair.

Ladislaw: an artist, heaven forbid, and son of a polish man. English have not assimilated until the last 30-40 years. 1066 their last big change. Foregin looks. Curls.

Bulstrade: new upstarts presbyter, new to the anglican fold. anglican prestige, but with Presbyter habits.

outsideers from London, they intrude, they threaten.

Refome bill: rezoning of voting districts, new laws for enfranchisement.

Paradox: Middlemarch, little town surrounded by villages, of which Lowick is one: represents extraordinarily stable, old world. slow. yet,these interloping outside influences bring about dispruptive forces.

30's-40's; Railroad building years in England. Broke donw medieval isolation [Glastonbury today]

page 122:old provincial society had its share of this subtel movement: had not only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies who ended by living up an entyry with a drab anad six children for their establishement, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are constnaly shifting the boudnaries of social intercourse, and begetting new consciousness of interdependence.

some have moved up sacel, others have come downh.

Ons aspect: Americans blow over fine social distinctions:precise social gradations here..talk of marrying above, below.

Vincy's; solid middle class

Mrs Vincy less respectable. silks business[ from time when this done in small towns.]

servants in all these himes. Act like chorus of minor characters, talking about major ones, as in Hardys Retune of the Native

Fred vincy higherMary Garth lower [but Eliot shows her smarter]Hardworking poor idealized by Eliot.

Cadwallader

Eliot goes out of any to give us multiple perspectives

Like most Victorian novelists, Eliot writes in her own voice.

Cadwallader: good anglo Saxon namemrs Cadwallader [mrs Debracy- good norman name] very conscious of social distinctions, cheerfull, cantgankerous, dislikes vulgar rich.

Mr Causobon:; squire and Parson of Lowick/ squarsonGarth: also good anglo Saxons name

bulstrade: Puritan leader in 17th

Middlemarch as microcosm.

Moral and religious changes:

General; Victoraian [late 19th]: grwoing sobriety and moral ernestenss, seriousness [Dr Arnol'ds favourite word]. happened gradually, but, older generation in this story more relaxed than younger generation. Farebrother/Cadwallader/Vincy.

New mood of moral sternousness: Dorothea, with moral aspirations.Dorotheas problem: the makkings of a saint, born in wrong age, where no possibility of Sainthood [profound moral influences.]

Dorothea: no institutional framework fits her religion, no way to work out moral impulses, seems tio exist outside traditonal moral channels.

Various families/characters can be placed on a spectrum;1.old fashioned Anglicans [high and dry, from 18th] vincy, Farebrother, Cadwalladers.

2.Methodists, enthusiats, working into Anglican low church wing:Tyke, Bulstrade, Dorothea.

1829: provinces of England had no Agnostics.

Chapt 13 page 159:Mr Vincy to Bulstrade, his brother in law: I've never changed; I'me a plain churchman now, just as I used to be before doctrines came up. I take the world as I find it, in trade and in everything else. I am contented to be no worse than my neighbors. But if you want us to come donw in the world, say so. I shall know better what to do then.Much like Browning's Bishop Brougam.

19th: all arguing religion in 19th. Anglican church practically self-destructed in 19th.

lots of pamphlets, fights, debates.unlike 18th, but like mid 17th.

later in 19th, Agnostics attack everyone.

outburst of religous passion begins at beginning of Victorian, carries through issue of conscience, of social conscience of church [Dorothea]

Church of Engalnd in 18th increadingly identified with ruling class, represented by Causobon.

page 537: Lydgate, to hospital board of directors; I see something of that in Mr Tyke at thge hospital; a good feal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people uncomfortabley aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at lowick! he ought to think, as St Francis did, that it is needfull to preach to the birds.

Eliot moralstolaerant of cardplaying, parties: vincy's, Farebrother, Brooke. ..........others, are harbingers of new, strenuous, Victorian morality

Ekiot humour:

Brooke advising Causbon to take up some light reading: smollet considered dirty by 19th standards. Brook recommends Smollet.

Brooke has looked into everything one time or another.

key. Brooke humour is unacceptable: in Copperfield, when David taks books to read, mentions Fielding in an apologetic tone.

Casuabon, Brooke, and Dorothea are all somewhat comic.

we are not told much of Dorothea's religious belifes, but her moral intensity, linked to Protestantism, who dsiplay enthusiasm:but it limits her, and we must see that her inability to understand the naked statures in Rome is comic.

Anglicans are a wishy washy faith.

Chapter 5, page 56: serious building of cottages, part of religious zeal. In 18th,19th, these were the pits of human living.

in her moral intensity, there is a myopia, a shortsightedness, both literally, and metaphorically. Dorothea stumbles.

She thought she might try and assert her moral positon on the cottages to Causobon, courting, but he brushed them off, gets on to Ancitne Egyptian setltlemnets.

Eliot like Dorothea, save she was not beautifull physically, nor well to do. Eliot also distances herslef from heroine.

page 52: dorothea talking to Sir Jamnes: does not approve of animals bred for pets. their lives are too frail, amouse that earns its own way is more intersting.

Dorothea, divinding up jewelrey with Ceceilia, Dorothea showed to be priggish and young. she enjoys her renunciaonts thought, like horseback riding.Marriage to Causabon another renunciation.

But, the marriage is a real sacrifice, and it chagnes Dorothea. she grows. funny in the beginiing[ jewelry] but as she cares for dying Causobon, serious renunciation, self sacrifice.

Dorothea a swould-be saint [martydon the esiet way, she has hankering after martyrdom, and she achieves it with Causobon, but not exactly as she intended]

we are told much about Dorothea's naeivity, her blindness, early on

Hero? Lydgate.

Causabon comic and tragic.

much critical work shows Eliot had personal model for Causabon.Mark Patterson [head of lincoln college] had a lifelong project he did not complete. died of cnacer, bitterly.

Eliot doesn not allow us to see Causabon as an old eccetnric. We must give him some feeling. [Dickens would have made him a grotesque]Eliot emp0hasizes our connections as readers to Causobon

page 312: "Causobon a-hungered like the rest of us." narraotor tells us this.

Causobon: "i live too much with the dead. house a tomb, autumnal imagery, gloom, decay, catacomb crawler, looks like St Thomas Aquinas.

Eliot insitss we make an effort to see Causobon's inner life.

page 314: Causabon: "for my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught,m and yet not to enjoy: to be presenjt at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungrym, shivering self." 313: his soul ws sensitive without being enthusiastic...it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. Narrotor comments

he is an imbitous, dimsighted uneasy cholar.

His great book: an academic afraid of failure. Launches littel articles. fears writing the big one.

Eliot takes painst with details: does Causoabon thesame way. She knows mythologies, for instance. Scriptural exegesis. scholares of the early 19th were German. they cracked the book on myth. Causobon doesn't read German. he is out of it.

in 18thg century, extraordinary views on myth assumed:one pure mythology, the story of the Old Testament. this the

true history. all other myths corruption of this, coming later as they did.

Hebrew the source of all culture.18th: man in natual state, noble savbbage theme.

Yet Germans come to realixzxe that myths grew up independently, not all from the Pentateuch.

Causabon, with all his notes, cannot put it together because he has an incorrect methodology. does not read German.

Scholarly fear extended to Dorothea, as she tries to get him to write the great book.

He sees her as a secretary, she wants to be a devotee, and apostle, Causobon has great learning, but no coherent theory.

Married relationship changes because they have both come to it with illusions. She to be Milton's daughter, he wanting a secretary, a copyist. Six weeks, and they know. intense to think of him in catacombs during honeymoon.

eliot, typical Victorian, say nothing of theirsex life...but Dorothea weeping on the honyewoon.

As with Dorothea and Causobon, we het early hints that all not well with Lydgate

seems admirable: ambitous, selfless, dharming, intelligent.

but, overestimates provincialism, pull of traditon, fear of change.

Wants to set up hospital, but standard of living unreal. Conscious ofhis aristocrativ connection p[physicains not ecxalted positon in 19th. Leechers]

Eliot gives us key to Lydgatge: he is a radical only in medical reform, otherwise, conventional, with a dubious jusgement about women/ French actress like Becky Sharp.

frenmch actress= Rosamond Vincy. cold, selfish,m superficial.

Lydgate has not learned lesson. Rosamond an actress, conscious

of playong role with Lydgate all of the tiem.

Rosoamond destroys his ambitions. kills him.

spots of commonness in Lydgate, despite all.

Lydgate/Will Ladislaw parallel stories, types, save that confronted with the temptation of stupid woemn and money, Will refuses, and Lydgate compromises.

Critics see Ladislaw as unsuccessfull in story:a paragon of virtue, a Christ figure, done in light imagery contrast with death imagery of Causobon, but he is a lightweight.

Said to be an idelaized portrait of Eliot's commonlaw husband, Geroge Lewis.

Will an artist: art is one of Dorothea's vblindspots. [in /rome, aghast at nudity. telles Willshe does not understand art. He is baffled.

critics: Will/Dorothea match a combinati9on of Arnolds Hellenism and Hebraism. a blending of opposites.

19th century great isuue: degree of human conttrol over actions

Early 19th century characters exude free will

Pickwick Papers middle class rattling around. People are what they are because that is what they choose.

End of 19th: HArdy: determinism pressing. Protesting, beating breast on injry of fate, but clearly, a puppetness, know it or not. illusions that they can change destiny.

Eliot is between extremes: decision sinhibit future actions1.Lydgate: comes in free to Middlemarch, series of decisions: alliance with Bulstrade, marriage to Roasamond, make him a prisoner.

2.Fred: buying a horse.

3. Past comes bakc to haunt Bulstrade, Lydgate. this a type of determinism.

New in English Novel with Eliot: not just outward obstacles, but subtle, inner, social, psychological factors imprisoning.

Eliot treats such matters in time, slow, unmelodramatic, the subtle movements of destinies

So, people have choice, but not all choice.

RuskinRuksin's Works The Library Edition Cook and Wetterberm 39 volumes. 2-3 volumes index.

Hyponchondriac, went mad lat ein life, still wrote 39 vols

theory; illness makes prolific writers [E.B.B. Ruskin]

interest in Ruskin now

in-progress biog: T. hilton biog: J.D. rosenberg A Darkley Glass 1961Ruskin had difficutl childhood in autobiog telle of this.

Fther a wine merchant[ materially confort family]

both parents, especially mom, religious [protestanst]attended dissenter chapel

Consequence: Rus cut off culturally, intell, from other kids. like Mill: result: Rus self educated, at home. mother so devout she did not approve of toys, friends. she dedicated him to god before birth.

Family wanted him to join clergy.

Pretended to preach as a child, to visitors

first sermon, age four: "People, be good."

home austere, but Rus caught glimpses of fine life, other world, when father took him to customers houses, on visits, business. Saw great architecture, art.

Still, alone, Ruskin devleiped uncanny ability to entertain himself. Clearly this lead to his unusual knack to see with such clarity, to isolate, to perceive.

like Wordsworth, looking in world, Ruskin saw univers as filled with divine presence: as well, important to him [likewise] to record what he saw, as anb act of reverence.

Writer, painters, work out Wordsworth: precised, detialed description of natural world not our of scientif8ic impulse, but our of spiritual one. 19th general.

Ruskin a good painter, and on trips abroad, he recorded with his drawings. vEry fashinalbe thing to do in 19th. Did Europe this way, Rus did. Nature scenes mostly.

Modern Painterscurious history of composition: begun as a defense of painter Turner, the impressionist, now purported one of 19th's finest. irony that Rus involved in invoking clarity himself, should defend Turner.

But strong sense that the peg of Ruskin's arguments are neve4r essential. They are simply launch points.

in gothic Arhictecture, for instance, Rus talks morals. here, in Modern Painters, principles of art, past and present, lead to a study in aesthetics, social critiscism.

Ruskin like an 18th cnetury scottich presbyeter preacher: I will now take up my subject uneer three headings.

Ebverything reminded him of something else. He explodes.

1843 first volume1860 fifth volume work never completed, but took up his early to mid career. Leonardo fashion of finishing work.

Precise, small, manageabmel beginnings take on comsin significance

Modern Painters resembles Hard Times as it rep social conditions that make art impossible.

Ruskin conencts art world to entire socio-economic, geographic, ehtical context ot the day.

19th centur, and esp Ruskin theme:

Style of Art produced by geographic and social backgrounds.

history essential to 19th, as we have seen. Judeon Christian emphasis on linear history explains it. quite unlike indians, who have no past tense. Radical difference in world view.

Accelerated pattern of change in 19th caused preoccupation with change itself: thus, our Darwin...what he did in natural science was being done in Philology, History, amongst poets, Novelists.

Walter Scott: preoccupation iwth past in his novelsTenny too.

So, Rusking looks at great past/present art and sees patterns of ahcnge, as did Darwin, seeing fossils.both try and account for what is happening.

As well, Ruskin links morality and art 20th against this, as were Wilde, Pater, Gautier,

Wilde: no good book written, just well written books.

If painting produced by immoral painters, adulterers] thenb Rus does not think ti reflects like that, rather... csubtle linking: society producing art.

M.P. begins with attack on 18th neoclassicism, ref to art, to rules.attakcs Joshua Reynolds, Presient of Royal Academy, attacks him as a theorist, page 345.

Rosenberg: M.P. last phase of attack on neoclassicism that was begun in Lyrical Ballads

page 878: Essay on Pre-Raphaelites...Ruskin believed Raphael/Western art steadily downhill from Rennaisaince on..15th century and after...

Browning would not believe this medievalist doctrine. his Fra Lippo was rule bound, set upon by the inhibited.

amongst his contemporaries, Ruskin admired Pre-Raph's

That shcool of course, stated after German brotherhood at turn of century took up in Rome, living monk exsitence, dedicatied to art.

Ruksin almost always writing in an English context.

the nadir: 18th century. I agree.

Turners position then, one of the painter who rejects 18th century notionss about rules, forms.

Rusking believed royal Academy corrupt. They wer hostile to Turner.

Rus's anit-classical bias liike Wordsworth's, while 18th cnetury sacrifices truth to beauty, to ideal form.

W.W. preferred lake district dialect [Preface?] as more genuine.

so, Ruskin prefers realism in painting, where nature rendered precisely, carefully, the pinnacle.

Wordsworth's Nature significant to 19th Centy Aesthetics: in 18th, nature meant: universal design, Newtonian physics. True to nature meant rational.

19th Century: Emmanence of god..mystery, wild, grotesque, picteruesque nature... true to nature meant irrelgualr, full of symboles, divinity.

adjective Ruskin applies to Gothic are those of 19th century nature descriptions from Wordsworth down.

for Rus, Neat Gerogian churches become the precise, landscaped 18th cnetury gardens. the parish church: nature untamed, wildend, Godly.

Ruskin: Art cannot folow rules. Must be intuitive response to landscape. so, the artistic task then, 8is to discard rules? to percieve nature directly/ yet, human beings cannot do this...Pre-Rapphaelites, for instance, quickly set up their own guidlines, criteria.

still, to record precisely, honestly, with reverence aint bad.

During Victorian Period, this preoccupation with nature had dire consequnces: Realism taken to a fault.

H.Hunt, for instance, [pre-raph] often cited with Realism- he went to Palestine to paint it.

Alberts painting in Crystal palace: the dead rat ontable.

Ruskin relaized realism by itself inadequate: Picture must be shaped by anb artist camerals were around at this time. Many artist used them.

Yet, the debate between:Pre-Raph Realism, Truth, vs. 18th, Rennaissance Imaginative beauty goes on.

Picasso: art is a lie which shows the truth.

Ruskin: great art cannot be taught. Genius finds out.

emphasis on art as Procduct of an age:

18th Ratiionals Negative, and rooted in Rennaissance, so,Middle Ages best, and the Gothic cathedral [Stones in Venice] exhalted.

The Gothic represented lost human and social values.like Carlyle, turns to Middle Ages to reveal deficiencies of 19th.

like Browning, Ruskin exhalts the imperfect.

Revival in Gothic dates back to 18th, when Horace Walpole did hismansion in the accoutrements of gothic: the Strawberry Hill home, in the Thames Valley, west of London. Gothic surface datils, pointed windows, goth vaults. frivoolusly done.

in 19th, inbterest becomes scholarly, sober.

thomas Rickman: Three variteies of English Gothic, rto correspond to 13th, 14th,15th.

Many write on Gothic before ruskin. He came late, but his eloquence made him the representative.. Thew clarity.

As well, Ruskin moved debate from merits of style [M.P.];

he begins with an artifact [a cathedral], then moves on, looking to society which produces Art.

doesn't want Gothic cathedrals, but to re-create society.

link to Carlyle- Past and Present Abbot Samson

Nature of Gothic

1st phase English Gothic: eccentircs [Walpole]2nd phase : instrument of warfare agasint other architectural styles, and moral order.

A.W. Pugim...the other significant writer on Gothic. 1836 Pugim wrote Conntrast between 14/15 th and similar showings indicating a decline in taste.

Pugim a witty writer, hard hitting satirist, worked in a series of contrasts...before/after...past/present.

etchings: A poor house: before: idealized, middle ages hospital, poor man buried with dignity.

after: 18th century workhouse, burial by cart [for dissection printed on side of cart]

A Catholic Town:1440: churches, spires high, river clear, nice bridge1840: same place with factories, churches ruined, pires truncated, workhouse in foreground, river polluted.

Pugim a Catholic, and so his interpretation simple: all evils came from Reformation, pernicious Protestantism.

Ruskin, taking up casue later, ambivalent to catholicism. Feared it, scorned it. His task then, in middle life, was to Protestantize Gothic Architecture, to Deemphasize identity of Catholicism and Gothic.

Yet, no correlation between Gothic Architecture and Catholicism of Dark Ages. [check this...]

Gothic: term of abuse, for barabarism

remember, as a child, Ruskin attended an ugly little dissenting, one that naturally rejected ornamentation as idolatrous. .......so, a feeling that beauty, connectedd with devil, might account for rpaturous tone he invokes when talking Gothic....samw way the Alps affects coleridge, Shelley.

Architecture is Ruskin's Landscape.

so, aethestically deprived as child, opend up to Gothic cathedrals as adult.

Ruskin distanced himself from Pugim: in Stones Of Venice he attacks him....asn finds moral religious values ini Gothic architecture that are other than Catholic.

Social and Human values preflecitng age producing buildings, so, Gothic style identified with North Europe...interetingly enoguht, Ruskin had to travel to Italy to find this out.

His pont is that Gothic Architecture beloings to the north becasue it mirrors the ragged,m assymetrical, irregular Northern landscape. Power. Rocks.

page 365 : ruskin sees Europe from the air, fantasitc view before the airplane. Vital. but, there is an ambivalence about what lies below...shows a sensual world friom a protestant Egnlishman's distrutiv perspective, then, in north country, vitality, power.

Ruskin's primitive, irregular architecture like Wordsworth's wild landscape of the lake district [though that was actually tame]...in surpassed perfection by being irregular. superior to neoclassicism of London.

Characteritics of gothic seen psiritually. ruskin had no interest in the strucutre of Gothic. He is is concerned with surface factors. incidentally, later work shows that much of Gothic form evolved from structural needs alone...pointed arch, for instnace, serves specific funciton on high ceilings, providing a method to successfully vault open space wiothout tunnel vaulting, that

encloses.

Ruskin always interested in the people putting building together,

like Browning, Ruskin likes human imperfections that separate us from God....this is the 17th century's fortunate fall.

Rus tells us each worker was allowed to do their best or their worst, unlike in classical period, when each crafstmans involved in mass production, that called for no creativity, no thought, and so, was a death. [classical models for Rus:Greco/Roman/Assyrian]

Rennaissance denied the Doctrine of the Fall: architects insisted on slick, glossy symmetry that is impossible, given man's state.

Ruskin's statment shifting to 19th century: if you have workers, the choice is to treat them as human beings, or machines. [tie with Carlyles "Captains of industry, in Heroes]ruskin goes further: we pride ourselves on machine made products, such as glass beads. but beads made people suffer, as they made them. so, wearing such beads is to participate in making workers, human beings suffer.Signs of Slavery: Beads the same as Pagan buildings

slaves of pyramids: industrial methods, assembly line mentality.

division of labour is division of the human being: Man as mere fragment.

Ruskin turns on middle calss reader..batis him as he sits, well fed.

Strong stuff...You there! You're Participating!

this radical, upsetting to 19th.

page 372: rules for moral responsibility of the consumer.

william morris wrote of Rukin's rules: "necessary utterance of the century."

Ruskin came to deplore Neo-Gothic of England..what appeared on banks, train stations etc..

he wanted social change, not imitation, a revival of social value, not material perceptions, again

Attack on Meterialism and Capitalism: brilliiant, pervasive, substantial.

Marx and Egnels heavily influenced by Ruskin, cited him as such, though Ruskin no communist.

His indictement of English society is Radical, moreso that Marx ever was:

Marx: social institutional relationships to be orders to bring about an equitable exchange of goods. but, Ruskin: wants to change people. Attacks Utilitarianism as unchristian, though Ruskin too, not orthodox.

Men and women to treat each other fairly, becasue christ's ethics demand it [shades of Winstanely, Godwin]

Ruskin in trouble for applying christian standards to business wsorld

19th century burning question: should salaris and dismisslas be dependent entirely on supply and demand? Should the lowest salaries that the market would bear be paid in a free market economics? [Adam Smith lassez Faire] Unto this Last 1860

people should be paid according to needs and faitness, not according to any abstract principle such as supply and demand. Folow christian doctrine.

Carlyle, dickens, Ruskin appaled by conditions of industrial England.

Ruksin's solution ambiguous: wants a paternalistic welfre state, like Carlyle.

old relationships need to be restored, even at cost of old patterns of master and servant

Art the time, Ruskin attacked...he pulled no punches.

it can be argued that his influence over the British left had been powerfull;

1906 Modern British Labour Party came into bing. journalist interviews all first memebers. All said Ruskin's Unto this Last most influenced them.

Ghandi: read one evening, said: "It marked ythe turning point in my life."

Work not received well when published.

Ruskin, overall, considerd the Father of English socialism.

He is still a vital force.

Hardy, Return of the Native 1878preamble, page 820, hardy's poem, The Oxenold superstition motif: midnight,m christmas, the animals all kneel in honor of christ, as they did at nativity. author does no belive, but he wants to do os.

yet., in Oxen, Hardy feels profound ties to Older World View.

Hardy's ambivalent toward the legned a product of 20th century rational. he is a man of the world, and doesn't belive in the legend. Wehn he talks of Oxen he thinks to his childhood. Yet, would it not be comforting if they kneeld?

With Hardy, his poetry and prose interrelated, concatenate. chronoly is separatge, but a complicated interrelationship.

Hardy's position: as a rational Victorian, he has given up God, myth. but, like Mathew Arnold, as shows in Stanza's from the Grand Chartreuse,, Hardy is caught between two worlds,

" the one dead, the other powerless to be born."

like Arnold's poem, as in Tennys In Memoriam, the univers is stripped of meaning, morally neutral.

Hardy's unique position: he simultaneously holds both views; Godlessness, and the Old World view

Hardy loved in a peculair time when this could be done.

Hardy proclaims two possibilities in novels:a. Human existence Meaningless puppets controlled by abscure destiny Fate a malevolent deity...mirror image of Christian god.

b. God not hostile, just indifferent. [Stephen Crane] or, universe morally neutral. its value only that which we invest in it.

Yet, he heaps of coincidence to such a degree, that we have sense of divine intervention. This links with mid - victorian novelists

1. coincidence2. Supernatural effects [Heath is living]3. Implicitly denies Empty universe by making us care about the characters. This undercuts meaninglessness

Typical dilemma of nihilistic writers: a caring world view.

Hardy writes in last two decades of 19th. A broad cultrual synthesis happening t this time. Like ancient Rome, legionaires returning to a new world that was home.

Middle years writers had broad agreement in the belief of progress, and in God. They argued over definition of God, but no outspoken Atheist

This break down in Hardy's time [Eliot showed symptoms. She moves outside tradition, but she carries the baggage of christian belief: professed disbelief in dogman, upholds ethics. Arnold too, Rugby Chapel

Hardy's world is Post Darminian. Hostile. ugly. Yet, he is also, especially as a novelist, an intermediate between the pop moralists, and entertainers: Thackery, dickens, Trollope,

and modern novelists: serious, separate, symbolizing.

Hardy not a realist, not a pop moralist. More like Eliot, I think.

look at marriages, as exampling:Dickens preoccupied with fialed marriages, but treats comically, so disaters treated evasively [Dave and dora]

Eliot: unsparing shot at marriage, but no corruption.

Hardy: carries on theme, going on step further, showing acrtual infidelity.

Hardy had reputation as a rascal artist, risque.Jude the Obscure is salacious, his last novel, ti casued popular outcry.

watch for signs in Native:Eustacia' habit of walking around alone at night talking to men kissing quickly Clym

by 19th standards, this is a loose woman. Victorians patterns of courtship, especially in Rurla areas, had the first kiss with the engagement.

Seeing men in private in rural setting is as horrid and corrupt as Railroad going into Eliot's Middlemarch

Intellectually, Gardy to be seen in his time as an advanced thinker on sex, on religioun.

Stylistically though, his plot, structure, is traditional.

Setting of Hardy's novels is Wessex.West Country: Devon, Hamphsire, Somerset, Dorset, Cornwall

Wessex does not exist today..but it is the old Anglo Saxon stronghold stadning free agaisnt the Danes: kingdom of Alfred.

Linguistically, culturally, different because of historical circumstance, more pure.

interrelationships between his novles like Trollope: Caster Bridge ref here, from Mayor of Casterbridge Dorchester

Budmouth= Weymouth

inmportant to see Hardy as a strong Visual, topographic imaginative forceAustern for instnace, travels, doens't see

conrad, no regard...

Hardy: landscape as a force in novel

English see Hardy as an accurater recorder of Old Rural Life.Americans see his qusi philosophy, fatalism.

Hardy one of most popular writers today, as then.

Sets all novels in the past to please readers.

three biggies: Dickens, Austen, Hardy

He is conscius of his role as such.

England changed in last in 19th, becasue it is so far out.Heath district gone now' a pine tree restoration project run by British forestry.

Sense in novel of impending incursions

Heath: no railroads. untouched. a museum piece. Microcosm

Heath soil rotten, modern farming evencould not do much with it.

Same problems with outsiders: Eustacia [greek] Damon Clym, [you can't come back]

Clym has illusion that yo7u can go bakc, but at the wedding, noon emissed him.

but life goes on for the poor, on the heath. Heath has seen it all.

Unhappy sorts, thinkers, interlopers, killed by Heath. Tioo sensation oriented killed by Heath.

"Heath will be the death of me [Eustacia]"

Traces of prior Human habitaiton:Roamn road/pottery/burial mounbds/duridic rituals

Significantly, Hardy begins with the ong, powerfull description of the Heath. [Walter Scott Dramas]

Auden: Hardy gives the Hawks view of the heath at dusk, like Ruskin's view of Europe

Heath metaphor for cosmos itslef, cameral moving down to peasants at bonfire, in druidic ceremony: a scene that has repeated since pre-history.

Minor characters seen first:Pre-Agrarain worldPre MedievalStable Human conditionStable ritualScamperingScratchingNo cropsHunter gatherers

Mrs Yeombright hs garden: status symbol, yet, HGeath alwsy trying to reclaim.

Alduous Huxely Wordsworth and the Tropics; easy to love God in lake district, no hungry, man eating mammals. imagines Wordy in jungle, pythons, animals. Lake dsitrict very tame

In fact, Wordy wants a partially tamed landscape.

Sense of enlargement, exageration here, for the Heath not too big [fives misle across]

Shakers and movers, instigators of change dont' make it on the heath. Heath peole live close to the ground, don't even need eyes. [you can do my job]

Hardy bid on fold traditions= integral continuity of rituyal/names change, form not.

English 19th and 20th Rural life Writers Sentimentalized, Romantisized English rural life Hardy does not do this.

Remember, England Europs most industiralized nation. English countrysides nice today because all left to mvoe to city. Forced to do so.

look at rruarlism: stupicity, myth, wax doll, stick pin, songs, mummers play [not a revival, the real, disinterested, unknown thing.]

Hardy spoke in dialect to give flavour, like Wordsworth, but did not bleablur the points. Gave a taste.

William Barnes, friend of Hardy, from the Heath, wrote in dialect. Unknown today.

motifTightly knit community of peasants shown. together, they survive. We always see them in groups.Modern characters [Eustacia, Clym, Wildeve] are all in Romantic isolation, modern individualists. they dio not make it.

Eustacia uses rituals for her onw ends. bonfire, Turk.

Peasants usefull as achorus..they comment on action...we must see things through thier eyes.

Kind of reality in novel shows common sense, an insticnt for survival, a sense of community prevails Big figures don' have this.

Peasants as comic relief: Granfer Cantle/ christian

Prosaic lives part of technique of survival. Great characters, poetic, need constant stimulation, thus, self-destructive.

Hardy compared to Fold Ballads, and to Classical Tragedy:

with ballads: ballad of Eustacia conceivable. Cryptic, spare, to the point techniques of delivery in ballads, Yet, Hardy gives psychological analysis they lack.

Classical Drama: changing clothes by major characters. Five books [classical five acts] Protaganist cut down by fatal flaws. follows Aritotelian unitys 5 nov-6 nov. 1

year difficulty of connection: although older dramatists talked about punishment of Gods, mostly clear this is metaphoric: real problem is ourselves. this understanding then, based on free will. No free will in Hardy, or at least ambiguous treatment.

page 416 Lawrence article: theme: take risks, you get into trouble, defy your environment, your a fatiality [potentially]

Damon, Eustacia espec Byronic.

Mario Praas : Eclipse of the Hero sugfgests character in early 19th poetry and prose the Fatal Man: in second half century, this Romantic hero becomes less characteristic, replaced by Fatal Woman [Eustaica strong]

Eustacia associates:Passage as Queen of the Moon: A destroyer of men A slight mutation of the byronic

In novel: two overlapping triangular love affairs very familir to 19th Victorians:thomison/Eustacia/Damon [man between two women, 1 good, 1 bad]

but Hardy takes this convetional triangle, and varies it: deeply facinated by Eustacia, rubbing branches

Dickens cluttered with good and wicked womenThackery has Becky Sharp and Amelia SedleyBut Hardy emphasizes mysteriousness of Eustacia. she doens't add up easily.

motives for her: she just wansts sensation sexual passion [redness of lips, noises in the dark]

yet, at simplelevel, we have familiar triangle.

page 321: Hardy says Thomasin good hero Eustacia wavering, errant, heroine.

she is physically darker, meditteraneaon.

Contrast to Mary Garth [blackhaired, dark] Rosamond Vincy [convent blond heroiine, slender]

Feeling in the community that Eustacia a witch.

Eustacia half greek/Becky Sharp, half french.

Oringinal draft of novel had eustacia supernatural creature, as was reddleamn

imagery with her is sinister, supernatural.

Mrs Yeobright bit byan adder/ Eust shutting he rout.

clym: cnetral figure

conectionc betweenhim and Hardy/birkin, Lawrence

Hardy born in heath, came to london as architect, then dissilluioned, returend to Heath.

Clym wants to come back, cannot.

complication: Hardy give s hium symbolic burden: de-racinated man, cut off from soil, product of modern anxiety, thought too much. his face ages rapidly.

Peasant don't think, don't have to.

Cly cut off from People, soil, family, god. Has no communal consciousness.

Book Six put in after publishers suggestions, Hardy too hard for his readership, who wanted the happy ending.

Hardy has imagination of disater [James phrase for self]profound pessimism reflected in increasingly catastrophic propoertions in novels [high pitch in Jude]

Well, this is as happy as Hardy could muster.