Laura Mandell's theory of art in a nutshell: Genre, and what we know about the Genre of the novel, is that it begins in the 18th century. Aphra Behn's Oroanoko is maybe the first novel. The short story comes into existence around 1800. Genre Fiction just means kind; e.g. science fiction, romance, realistic novel, etc. It is formula fiction, if you could just find the formal to write for example a Harlequin Romance, you would fit into that genre. In college literature, do we stick to canon or do we stray? It has been theoretically been blown apart (the Pope's, Swifts, Shelley, Dickens, Keats, Byron, Wilde, Faulkner, anything in the Norton Anthology besides for women). Canon has been transplanted by Cultural Studies (ethnic minority literature). People have become aware of politics of thiis, there were professors who would exclude works because they did not fit into their own cultural views. But has the politics gone too far, it has completely torn up the canon. There still is great art, why should we abandon this concept entirely? Just when we discover women artists, now we say there is no great art anymore? Everyone in this room is potentially a great artist, great art is narrowly defined. When we read and adore an author, we get a "return of our own alienated majesty".

Art & Lies: Handel and Picasso for next time.

Art, Poetry, and the Digital World

In Felicia Heman's poem, she is expressing the unbiased, un-jaded, innocent perspective of a child. They can carelessly come to terms with nature, loving the simplest of it's gifts, with no fear and no regret. They have not yet experienced the hardships of life; the broken hearts, the terror, the biases that life brings about. They are merely satisfied with the smallest tokens of nature, and see them only as a simple amusement to life. They have not experienced what these simple things can turn into, while the onlooking adult is all too consumed with the brutalities of nature. 

For a day is coming to quell the tone

That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!

And to dim thy brow with a touch of care.

There will be a day that will change your perspective on life forever, make you see the hardships nature brings. Until that day comes though, revel in the beauty of nature and it's smallest gifts. 

Art and Nature VS. Technology 

After reading all three presentations of the Heman's poem, I realized that presentation of the text is  very important. The HTML version is a very generic version, like we are so used to reading. Just a simple recreation of the original text. I 

was alarmed to read the TEL encoded version. I have never seen anything like this before, and although I am aware that it is the same poem (same words and everything), the layout of the page is alien to my eyes. I do not get the same feel as when I read the HTML or page version. Now all I see are computerized, digitized keys of what was once words. I do not really understand the point of this presentation of the poem. It seem like a bunch of jibberish strewn on a page, with confusing marks denoting line breaks and such. I finally came to the page version, which is the most authentic version. I personally liked reading this one the best. It was the most romanticized version with it's layout. I could somehow relate to the words and feelings more in this version. I saw the dull yellow and worn pages and I thought about the author and her feelings while writing. While the HTML version is probably the most comfortable to me, now looking at it, it look's so fresh and new, with the glistening white background of the computer screen. Not having the page version really does not give full justice to the author or the piece. This was how she intended the reader to view the piece, and I feel we should stick to her original intentions. They are all the same poem, but in another light they really are not. Poetry is suppose to move the reader, feel in-tune to their own senses and that of the authors, and I certainly did not get that by reading the encoded version. Digitizing really takes away the romantic perspective of poems, and makes it like an alien, cryptic sort of message. Looking at the aim of Heman's poem, to discuss the beauties of nature and art, and the difficulties adults have at seeing art as mere art, I do not believe that Hemans would approve of this version of her poem. She is saying to revel in the simplest things, for later everything is made too difficult, there is too much trying to decode nature in it's simplest, most beautiful form. Here we are trying to transform her work into a complicated, technologically advanced version. It really seems to destroy her message. I understand the benefits of digitizing. With all the resources available on computers and through the internet, it makes it easy to have a digitized version readily available to find the simplest of things in poems. I just believe that the most justice is given to the original, or closest to the original, version of the poem. We should be able to take Heman's message to heart. Stop trying to make things more difficult than they need be, just value them for what they are, in all their innocent and natural beauty. 

The 1818, 1818 Thomas, and 1831 versions of Frankenstein: 

Are they different novels? The themes seem to be different in all three novels. When each of the members of my group put the texts into TagCrowd, the most frequent words all changed. In my version (the 1831 version), the most frequent words were CONVERSE, CREATURES, MAN, FRIEND, and SPOKE. It is strange that converse and spoke are both present three times in this particular text, considering they both have the same general meaning. It seems as if this text is really a narrative, trying to get across the narration of the conversation between Victor and Mr. Walton. While I do not think the three versions are different novels, they seem to be contributing different themes to the text. 

Aurora Leigh discussion

Elizabeth Barrett Browning biography: Elizabeth had many anxiety problems throughout her life. She was bedridden throughout much of her adolescence. Her father had forbade his children to marry, representing a strict and confining youth. She rebelled against her father though, and married Robert Browning. This biography helps explain her Aunt's strict and rigid disposition versus Aurora's own desire to be independent of these regulations. 

Passage no. 1:

"She had lived

A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,

Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

Was act and joy enough for any bird.

Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live

In thickets and eat berries!

I, alas, 

A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,

And she was there to meet me. Very kind.

Bring the clean water; give out the fresh seed."

Aurora is in essence choosing between this voluptuous, Italian, and free lifestyle, juxtaposed to the  marm-ish and rigid English lifestyle of her aunt. She compares both lifestyles to that of a bird; her aunt is a caged bird, who enjoys the subtlest jump from perch to perch - while she is the free bird, ready to spread her wings, yet encased in her aunt's cage. Her aunt wants to take care of her, raise her as an English woman, yet Aurora's mindset is entirely elsewhere. She wants to follow the footsteps of her wild mother, the farthest thing from her rigid aunt. Her aunt means well, but the English lifestyle is all that she knows and approves of, she neither understands nor advocates her Tuscan sister-in-law. Her aunt accuses Aurora's mother of stealing her brother and introducing him to a completely different lifestyle, controlled completely by his emotions. She accuses this lifestyle of draining him from any level-headed thought pattern, for he is a complete romantic. Aurora is stuck between these two lifestyles, for she knows the life of freedom, and thus, it is that much harder to cage a free bird. While the aunt thinks she is doing the right thing, she refuses to acknowledge both sides of the spectrum. She thinks she can almost re-train Aurora to live a devout English lifestyle. 

When thinking about the elements of a caged-bird versus a free-bird, I started to think of the transformation from high school to college. My roommate freshman year was a very conservative, family-rooted, homebody; that is until she came to college. She had been so rooted in this infrastructure, and then came to a place that had no limitations, no parent influence. This loss of structure led her to go completely wild. She now had a taste of the freedom that college could bring her, and she never wanted to revert back to her past ways. While this is opposite from Aurora (Aurora started in the wild lifestyle and then was introduced to the rigid, strict environment of her aunt), it still shows the power that freedom maintains. Once anyone has been given the taste of freedom, it is virtually impossible to go to back. You learn to be self-reliant; there is no longer any adult figure telling you what time to be home at night, or to finish your homework before you see your friends. Once you know what it is like to be on your own, you are spoiled into that sort of lifestyle. To go back home and have to follow rules once again becomes a major adjustment. It is also interesting how Aurora's aunt completely rebelled against this lifestyle. She had grown up living a conservative and strict existence, and when faced with the liberation of change, she preferred her past lifestyle. My roommate, on the other hand, had lived this obedient life, and then when introduced to this freedom, immediately accepted a new lifestyle. I think this has to do with different time periods. Where in Aurora's case, being a devout Christian was valued and appreciated, we no longer see the ultra-religious types as much now. We have now embraced what it means to be a democracy and to have freedom of thought and the ability to exercise one's own beliefs. I am most impressed by Aurora's acknowledgment of both lifestyles. Yes, she is a 'free bird' but she also understands her aunt's lifestyle, and that her aunt is trying to protect her. I think for my roommate, she could no longer balance both of these environments. Instead she began to resent her parents for their techniques in raising her. She could no longer understand that they were only trying to protect her, and she really lost the ability to reason between the desire to have ultimate freedom, and the responsibility to one's upbringing. 

Aurora Leigh

Aurora's mother dies four years after her birth, making it rather difficult for her father to bring her up because she was not only a reminder of his beloved wife, but also because men are not groomed to bring up the children. Her father then dies when she is 13, forcing her to live with her aunt. Her father fell madly in love with her mother, he was made uncommon, but does not take a step further to live the life as a free spirit, because she dies. He becomes melancholy over his loss, yet must raise the young aurora. "I Aurora Leigh was born to make my father sadder"

(de-facto literature cases are usually men's literary classes)

A bildungsroman (IPA: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]; German: "novel of formation") is a novelistic genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a (usually young) protagonist.

"OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,–
Will writ

e my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is."

-Often people look at photographs of old friends or old lovers, to just remember for a second what you felt like at that moment - and how things have changed so much since that very moment. At one moment you try to unite two periods, two psyches of your life - one past and one present. 

Aurora Leigh's comments on motherhood: "kissing full sense into empty words" - mother's have an ability to understand their children even when they speak babble. Mothers encourage the children to speak understandable words. Many of the nursery rhymes and lullabys that are sung to babies are rather barbaric and gruesome, but neither mother or baby listens to those words, it is just there mere sound of the mother's 

voice comforting the child. 

Stream of Consciousness for picture A: I hope my cleavage looks good, I paid a lot for this bosom so it better be photogenic. This seductive pose should make all the men desire me, and sitting on this lounge chair should make them think of just one thing. I am glad that I paid for the leg wax as well, who would have known the photographer would transition the dress so provocatively.

When you look at someone you can imagine what they are thinking because of all sorts of clues. Does Latimer have supernatural powers, or is he doing exactly what we do by inferring facts upon appearance? Charles Bridge in Prague

The evidence that he has supernatural powers: the vision of Prague, which comes forth after his disease has stimulated these powers. When he goes to Prague to see if his vision was correct, it was. Is it possible that he at one time saw pictures of Prague, and remembered them vividly, so when he went there it was all true. If he could read Bertha's mind,it would take the fun out of it. You can project what you want someone to be onto them.
Bertha is not the ideal of beauty, lots of pale blonde hair - "perpetually craving sympathy and support", "closed secret of a sarcastic woman's face"- he thinks something is going to move her, and it is going to be him - desire to conquer the cynical woman. The mother in Latimer's life worshipped him. He sees himself as pretty exceptional, scholarly, and worthy. He goes to Geneva, home of Rousseau and Frankenstein - speaks about himself as Rousseau, he calls himself romantic

Monster- Justine

(the image I created was e-mailed to you)

My Creation of a "monster- turned heroine" in Frankenstein depicts Justine as the courageous, fallen hero of the novel. She is accused of the murder of William, who she loved dearly, and must bear the consequences of this accusation. Even though she is innocent, she choses to take the blame, a heroic act forced upon her, yet that she choses to help the family with the pain, allow them to blame someone and feel some sort of vengeance come to life. I chose to put wings on her because she did die, so she is like the angel figure. She has has bandages on her legs because she is hurt, she is vulnerable, and this visible symbol of pain and wounds shows her pain. She has a two-sided face because while she confesses at one point and takes on the persona of a villain, underneath she alwå¥s maintains her innocence and is able in her final moments to express her innocence to Frankenstein and Elizabeth. The shield are the people who are trying to protect her. Elizabeth and Frankenstein always maintained her innocence, and Elizabeth even stood up in court to defend her. These are people who are trying to show the real Justine to people, and the impossibility of her having created this viscous crime. The lion is shown because for me the lion symbolizes honor and courage, things that Justine possesses. She has so much loyalty to the Frankenstein family, to the mother as she was dying and to Elizabeth as a confidant and friend. She is also protected by these honorable characteristics. Even though Justine is wounded in the end, she must lose her life, she is still valiant in her persona. She comes off as a weak character, incapable of a believable solution to the crime, yet I see her as heroic - always keeping in mind the families emotions, and simultaneously trying to fend for her own life while comforting the Frankenstein family. Her face is also visibly angry, because it is alright to be angry and upset - yet she triumphs over this and shows her heroism. Far too often, people forget that heroes can be human - they can be angry, desire vengeance, crave revenge - yet they try to make the right choices in light of the situation. They are able to weigh all choices and delve through their emotions to come up with sound decisions.