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British Romantic Poetry(G11960)

Spring 2018

Introduction

1. Humbolt’s idea of “the whole man”

In a passage that would subsequently become famous in the English-speaking world through its citation by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, Humboldt wrote, “The true end of man, that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. . . .[T]hat on which the whole greatness of mankind ultimately depends - towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts . . .[is]: individuality of energy and self-development.”

2. Wordsworth’s romantic Project: Making a Perfect Man

Imagination having been our theme,

So also hath that intellectual Love,

For they are each in each, and cannot stand

Dividually.--Here must thou be, O Man!

Power to thyself; no Helper hast thou here;

Here keepest thou in singleness thy state:

No other can divide with thee this work:

No secondary hand can intervene

To fashion this ability; 'tis thine,

The prime and vital principle is thine

In the recesses of thy nature, far

From any reach of outward fellowship,

Else is not thine at all. But joy to him,

Oh, joy to him who here hath sown, hath laid

Here, the foundation of his future years!

For all that friendship, all that love can do,

All that a darling countenance can look

Or dear voice utter, to complete the man,

Perfect him, made imperfect in himself,

All shall be his: and he whose soul hath risen

Up to the height of feeling intellect

Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart

Be tender as a nursing mother's heart;

Of female softness shall his life be full,

Of humble cares and delicate desires,

Mild interests and gentlest sympathies.

(William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XIV, 206-231, 1850)

3. Schleiermacher’s idea of self with two contradictory drives: individuality and infinity(from Izenberg’s Impossible Individuality, pp 18-21)

Both the transient actions and the permanent dispositions of the human soul show that it exists as only two opposing drives [Trieben]. Pursuing one of them, it strives to establish itself as a unique and separate being. To accomplish this, to expand itself no less than to sustain itself, it draws its surroundings to itself, weaving them into its life and absorbing them into its own being. The opposing drive is the dread fear of standing as a single individual alone against the whole; it is the longing to surrender and be completely absorbed in it, to feel taken hold of and determined by it.

Individual particularity is by definition finite, because it is delimited by its difference from others. If, however, the self tries to expand by a constant absorption of the world into itself, its tendency is to become infnite and hence to obliterate its individuated identity. It follows that the two ostensibly opposite drives aim at the same thing, though by opposite means. Both aim not at individuality but at the infinity of the self, the one by absorbing everything into itself, the other by dissolving itself into everything. … A closer look, however, reveals that in 1799-1800 Schleiermacher saw no fundamental contradiction between the idea of individuality and the idea of union with the “one and all.” The fusion of the soul with the beloved produces not self-loss but a sense of personal mastery through the soul's identification with its object and the appropriation of the object's powers: “I lie in the bosom of the infinite world; I am in this moment its soul, for I feel all its powers and its infinite life as my own. It is in this moment my body, for I penetrate its muscles and its limbs as my own”(italics added). The rhetorically elegant and powerful passage repeats in its structure the reciprocity of the symbiosis it evokes. The world's infinity becomes the self, the self 's intentions animate the world. The religious experience of self-annihilation seems not only compatible with the sense of the individuated self 's active mastery of the universe, it is the vehicle for it.

4. Byron’s idea of self with opposite drives

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me; and to me,

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum

Of human cities torture: I can see

Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be

A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,

And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

(George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III, Stanza 74, 698-706)

5. Romantic Self and Autobiography (from Izenberg’s Impossible Individuality, p. 15)

The central theme that Wordsworth announces for his project is

th'individual mind that keeps its own

Inviolate retirement, and consists

With being limitless, the one great Life; (8-11)

With these apparently simple lines, we are at the heart of the Romantic enterprise and the Romantic claim: the finitude of the unique individual, inviolate in his or her self-contained individuality, is consistent with the individual's infinity and fusion with the cosmos in the one great life. Autobiography is not incidental; it is the demonstration and thus the proof of the great new truth that Romantic writing wishes to announce. From this point of view the details of the individual life are not merely particular, or rather, individual particularity is elevated in Romanticism to a universal principle. Individuality is not only compatible with infinity, it is the very vehicle for realizing the union with infinity.

6. Rousseau’s “Unique” Self(from Linda Anderson’s Autobiography)

I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself. Simply myself. I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike any one I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different. Whether Nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book.

(Rousseau, from The Confessions)

Though in the very next paragraph Rousseau goes on to invoke a ‘Sovereign Judge’ and an ‘Eternal Being’, God is being given only a peripheral role to play: Rousseau addresses God as a source of emphasis at the beginning of his autobiography rather than turning to him, either here or elsewhere, as a pre-eminent and sufficient arbiter of a truth. Truth for Rousseau becomes conflated with truthfulness, the non-verifiable intention of honesty on the part of the author. Truth, therefore, can never be established once and for all, but can only be presented in terms of the constant reiteration of avowals and disclaimers by Rousseau himself. Rousseau transposes to ‘man’, and, in particular, ‘natural man’ or Nature, the power to know or see inside the self that once resided with God. There is, for Rousseau, no higher form of knowledge than feeling; self-knowledge,

it soon becomes evident, is inseparable from conviction or intuitive self-understanding, from ‘a knowledge of his heart’ that belongs to him alone. ‘I have only one faithful guide on which I can count; the succession of feelings which have marked the development of my being’. Without recourse to Divine help, or intervention, situated within secular time, Rousseau’s ‘feelings’ stretch out into a succession of endlessly renewable inner revelations about himself. His ‘self’ is plotless and, because it is without climax or denouement, seemingly interminable.

7. 수업준비:

1) 각자가 각각의 작품에 1-2개의 구체적인 질문을 만들고, 그에 대한 자신의 답을 준비해 올 것. 그리고 그것을 1 page로 정리해서 수업시간에 “사용”하고 수업 후에 제출할 것. 모든 사람이 수업초반에 자신이 만들어온 질문을 발표할 것.

2) 모든 사람이 자신의 1 page pager에 입각하여 적극적으로 의견을 개진하고 토론한다.

5. response paper 작성요령:

1) 자신이 설정한 질문을 소개, 그것이 왜 중요하며, 전체 주제와 어떻게 연관되는지를 설명하고

2) 그 질문에 답변하는데 핵심적이라고 여겨지는 원문의 1-2군데를 인용하고 해석한 후

3) 본인의 해석을 제시한다.

4) 제시하는 질문이 완성된 형태일 필요가 없다. 답변보다 질문 자체가 중요함.

5) 잘 이해가 안되는 부분에 대한 질문도 가능하다.