Pandaemonium Part 2: The Romantics Contd.

“mind-forged manacles” 

We had some fabulous classes this morning exploring William Blake as both a mystic and a social activist in the poems “Auguries of Innocence” and “London”

Click on the poems for a direct link. You can hear a wonderful class discussion on both these poems right here: 

And here are some of the white board images that accompanied our talk. Click on any of these images to enlarge them!

The last three images were from the wonderful tutorial we had on Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply” in which Wordsworth’s outlook on what is needed to lead a fulfilling life is presented. This is a truly “Romantic” point of view in which the emphasis is on stillness, intuition and allowing wisdom to enter us rather than trying to forcefully push ourselves into it. You will see these ideas beautifully represented in the many quotes from the class that appear in the last three white board images above.

And here are the audios for those brilliant discussions: 

Additional Blog Topics

Here are some more Blog Topics for your first Blog (find some earlier topics in last week’s Blog). You are permitted to choose any ONE of the topics from either this week or last week &  you can even create your own topic as long as it aligns in some way to the content of this week’s classes. But you are permitted- of course- to include reflections from your own life experience….

Try to keep your Blogs within the word limit. That is a minimum of 200 and a maximum of ……?????????? Don’t get carried away with the task… you do have other work to do!!!

 

CREATIVE

Write an argument between two friends about a topic which shows how radically different they are in their thinking. You can structure the argument as a poem (in the way that Wordsworth does in “Expostulation and Reply”) or you can write the argument simply as a prose piece.

 

Write a short poem or prose piece on a city that you know well, drawing attention to some of the negative aspects of the way the city is organized. Keep Blake’s “London” in mind as a kind of model.

 

Create a short conversation between Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his wife Sarah and Dorothy Wordsworth. They are talking about the importance of babies……

 

CRITICAL

Say in your own words what you think Wordsworth’s poem “The Tables Turned” is about? Is Wordsworth the loser in this argument? Why? Why not?

 

Find out what you can about Dorothy Wordsworth and about Coleridge’s wife Sarah. What makes them such different women?

 

Find out what you can about the key personality differences between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.