scholarly journals Revolution as herald of new bliss in early English romantic poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 05001
Author(s):  
Svetlana Borisovna Koroleva ◽  
Marina Ivanovna Nikola ◽  
Elena Nikolaevna Chernozemova ◽  
Ekaterina Dmitrievna Kolesnikova

The idea that the Great French Revolution for the age of early English Romanticism is a signal for mankind to transition into a new era, into a new apocalyptic time of the end of human history, is considered established in modern literary studies. At the same time, such issues remain underdeveloped as the relationship between the images of the Golden Age, paradise regained, and New Jerusalem in the poetry of Elder English Romantic poets and the interpretation of modernity in its connection with the past in the context of a biblical myth. The search for answers to these two questions is the goal of this research. The study is conducted within the framework of comparative literary studies with elements of comparative cultural studies. The significant results include the ideas that the human history during the early poetry by Elder English Romantic poets is depicted as mankind’s transition from blissful primordial harmony of the unity of the person-in-love with nature and another person to the oppressed-divided internal (spiritual) and external (social and political) state and, finally, to the new external (free) and internal (spiritually harmonious) bliss. In this new image of human history, the biblical myth of the Last Judgment and the New Jerusalem is superimposed on the idea of the return of the Golden Age and, simultaneously, paradise lost, and is interpreted through enlightenment ideas and romantic philosophy and aesthetics. The Great French Revolution seems to be the precursor of not only the common longing for the new bliss but also the transformation of human nature on the way to returning to the righteous state of sacrificial love.

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 271-280
Author(s):  
Gergő Gellérfi

The opening of Juvenal’s longest and maybe the most well-known poem, Satire 6, is based on the ancient concept of the “Ages of Man”, starting from the reign of Saturn and ending with the flight of the two sisters, Pudicitia and Astraea. The first part of this 24-line-long passage depicts the Golden Age by making use of two different sources: the idealized Golden Age appearing in Vergil’s poetry among others and the prehistoric primitive world from Book 5 of Lucretius. The Juvenalian Golden Age, presented briefly in a naturalistic way, is a curious amalgam of these two traditions, being the only time in human history according to the poet when marital fidelity was unblemished. However, while reading Satire 6, it seems far from obvious that the lack of adultery should be attributed to higher morals.


2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Suarez-Villa

The rise of technocapitalism involves the commodification of knowledge in faster and more diverse ways than at any previous time in human history. This article provides insights from a macro-analytical perspective on the phenomena that mark the emergence of technocapitalism as a new form of market capitalism, and their influence on the commodification of knowledge for invention and innovation. The phenomena in question involve the rapid accumulation of inventions and of knowledge-sensitive infrastructure. The rapid reproduction of creativity and a faster diffusion of knowledge, both of which have been supported by a massification of technical education, are also important for the emergence of the new era. Their contribution to the commodification of technological knowledge is most obvious in the pervasive corporatization of invention and innovation, and even more so in the emergence of continuous invention and innovation as a standard component of corporate strategy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. B. T. Houghton

The fourthEcloguepresents itself explicitly as a political poem, a loftier intervention in the humble world of pastoral poetry (4.1–3). This grander type of pastoral, moreover, is singled out as possessing a specifically Roman political significance: these ‘woods’ are to be ‘worthy of a consul’ (silvae sint consule dignae, 3), and the coming Golden Age is set within a precisely identifiable political context, the consulship of C. Asinius Pollio in 40bc(te consule, 4.11). Beyond that, however, the details of the relationship between the miraculous child, whose growth to maturity will be accompanied by the fabulous portents of the new era, and the contemporary political setting at Rome are left tantalizingly, perhaps prudently, vague. It was no doubt with a view to promoting his own political interests that Pollio's son, ‘the rash and ambitious Asinius Gallus’, claimed to have been the originalpuerof Virgil's poem. If so, he was very far from being the last public figure to appropriate the resounding cadences of the fourthEclogueto endorse his own position: it was not long before (in Harry Levin's words) ‘The Pollio eclogue had virtually created a minor genre, a means for the court poet to flatter his sovereign, as well as a device for balancing the moderns against the ancients.’ But even before the opportunistic assertions of Pollio's son, the poem's prophecies of a new age had already been re-appropriated to tie down the oracular generalities of the eclogue to a particular individual and a definite set of political circumstances, in a move that was to have significant repercussions for the later fortunes of Virgil's essay in pastoral panegyric.


1918 ◽  
Vol 64 (265) ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
Hubert J. Norman

Human perfectibility, or even entire social amelioration, appear with the passage of time to recede into a yet further distance; and, whilst forming subject-matter for academic discussion and for visionary imagination, they hardly come within the range of practical politics. With them, as with disquisitions about the hereafter, there has been a tendency to allow “other worldliness” to obscure the necessity for doing our duty here and now, and letting the distant future take care of itself. To those who object that this view is a sordid, or at least a selfish one, it may be answered that if we observe the Golden Rule—if even we practise but a negative virtue by refraining from doing evil—we shall yet make for the desired goal, possibly as rapidly as those who, their eyes fixed on that distant point, fail to observe the obstacles which lie immediately in their path, and who have, again and again, to arise bruised and disheartened by their stumbles and disappointments. It may indeed be that their aims are but illusions, mere figments of the fancy, impossible of realisation. “Uniform and universal knowledge, social salvation and sovereign goodness, a golden age to come excelling a past golden age, a Paradise regained in lieu of a Paradise lost, in fact, a kingdom of heaven on earth or elsewhere, are not yet matters with which the sober-minded scientist can grapple;” and nescience can only formulate them in phraseology which lacks verisimilitude even to those who utter it. It is doubtful whether the projectors of ideal commonwealths would have desired to have been themselves inhabitants thereof; even if they had had the will it is certain that they would not have had the ability to carry it into effect. Much of their work is perchance energy misdirected, and the words of Milton may be applicable to others as well as to him of whom he uttered them. “Plato, a man of high authority indeed, but least of all for his Commonwealth, in the book of his laws, which no City ever yet received, fed his fancie with making many edicts to his ayrie Burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire him wish had been rather buried and excused in the genial cups of an Academick night-sitting.” It is no use, as he further remarks, “to sequester out of the world into Atlantick and Eutopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, and will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-57
Author(s):  
Davide Barile ◽  

For a long time, the sections of the Philosophy of Right dedicated to the relations among states have been neglected by contemporary International Relations theories. However, especially since the end of the Cold War, this discipline has finally reconsidered Hegel’s theory, in particular by stressing two aspects: the thesis of an ”end of history” implied in it; and, more generally, the primacy of the state in international politics. This paper suggests a different interpretation. It argues that, in order to really understand Hegel’s theory of international relations, it is necessary to consider how it is related to the momentous changes that occurred in the wake of the French Revolution and to previous philosophical developments in the Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, the convergence of these two aspects in his own philosophy of history should suggest that, according to Hegel, by the early nineteenth century international politics had finally entered a new era in which states would still interact as the foremost actors, but would be bound nonetheless by an unprecedented awareness of their historical character.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 377-388
Author(s):  
Sven Ismer ◽  
Nina Peter

"IT'S ALL PART OF THE JOURNEY TO YOURSELF": LIMINAL EXPERIENCES AS IDENTITY-CREATIG MOMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY CLIMBERS' AUTOBIOGRAPHIESExperiencing physical and mental boundaries has always been part of mountaineering. However, over the last 150 years we have witnessed a process in which, in climbers’ accounts, mountaineering and climbing become more and more important as liminal experiences. While in the so-called “golden age” of mountaineering 1850–1865 the authors focused on the first ascents of well-known summits and during the “heroic mountaineering” stage 1930s they described primarily traverses of increasingly difficult routes, what comes to the fore in contemporary autobiographical works of professional climbers is the representation of subjective and individual liminal experiences. In recent autobiographies climbing gains importance as an individual quest for experiences and is presented as a form of self-fulfilment: liminal experiences of climbers become moments shaping their identity. The process is reflected in the style of climbing, which has evolved from collective expeditions to radical solo climbs. Speed or free solo climbs are an example of such an individualistic approach, in which grappling with oneself gets at least as much attention as grappling with the mountain. The authors of the article explore, from the perspective of literary studies and sociology, the representation of liminal experiences as identity-shaping moments in contemporary autobiographical works by Lynn Hill Climbing Free, 2002, Catherine Destivelle Ascensions, 2003, Alex Honnold Alone on the Wall, 2015 and Andy Kirkpatrick Psychovertical, 2008.]]>


Author(s):  
Judith Thompson

This chapter presents Romanticism as a golden age of oratory whose variety and cross-cultural influence were obscured in the reactionary aftermath of the French Revolution. Treating public speech as a political act and an art of gender and class mobility, the chapter defines oratory in distinction to orality and rhetoric through elocutionary theorists such as Thomas Sheridan and John Thelwall, who anticipate postcolonial concepts of oracy and orature. It then highlights three chief forms of oratory recognized in the era: parliamentary (balancing the giants Burke, Sheridan, and Fox against the radical ‘counter-parliamentary’ orators Thelwall, Wedderburn, and Hunt), religious (tracing conflicts over extemporality in the established, dissenting, and millenarian traditions), and theatrical (noting Sarah Siddons’s influence upon changing views of women as speakers). It ends by considering the lecture as a Romantic genre, and recitation as a tool of active, critical, and participatory democratic education through personation.


1989 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Peter Boss

We are all familiar with Donald Horne's descriptive phrase “The Lucky Country” as applied to Australia. It was coined during the resources boom years of the late 'sixties. It referred to the luck we have to be living in a country so rich in mineral resources – all we had to do was to dig it out of the ground and sell the raw stuff to equally boom economies overseas. Actually those economies then converted the stuff into manufactured goods – cars, fridges, television sets, plastic toys and so on, which they then flogged back to us … and we could afford to buy – much of the money our wealth generated went to make already comfortably-off people more comfortable - not much went to the not so comfortable or to the really poor. But in line with the optimistic theories in economics, the trickle effect of the boom years would ensure that the poor too got a gnaw at the bones thrown to them; distribution of wealth already distorted, stayed distorted. Then came Gough and a new era was about to dawn, the new wealth would be used toward producing a more egalitarian society and an enhanced infra structure of welfare sevices, a spanking new health service, a broadening of the social security system, more job opportunities, free tertiary education, the Australian Assistance Plan, and the list went on. But history has a mischievous, even misanthropic turn of mind, and no sooner was Gough crowned than the resources market turned sour and the money started to dry up, the dream faded and you know the rest. The Fraser years were years of cutback and belt-tightening, of dour and unglamorous attempts to keep the ship afloat. No more vision of building a new Jerusalem in Canberra's green and pleasant land.


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