DOCSLIB.ORG

Wordsworth's Prelude." Genre 6 (1973): 142-177

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-16-2014 Wordsworth’s Prelude: The Continuing Relevance of the Epic in Education David Miller Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Miller, David, "Wordsworth’s Prelude: The Continuing Relevance of the Epic in Education." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2014. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/118 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WORDSWORTH’S PRELUDE: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF THE EPIC IN EDUCATION by DAVID W. MILLER Under the Direction of Dr. Christine Gallant ABSTRACT This study explores “poetic knowledge” as the episteme of the epic. The Romantic epic, as exemplified by Wordsworth's 1805 Prelude, modernized this traditional genre so that the epic continues to be relevant for education today. The initial chapter compares and contrasts the distinctions between poetic and scientific knowledge. Chapter Two explores the didactic possibilities of the epic genre. Chapter Three discusses poetic knowledge as a heterogeneous, variegated, and accommodating episteme that both challenges and accommodates modern conceptions of scientific knowledge. Memory cohesively unifies the narrative of The Prelude. As such, Chapter Four discusses the use of didactic memory in The Prelude. Chapter Five discusses the use of chiasmus in The Prelude, and references the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus. The first section of Chapter Six explores a postlapsarian “ecology of the mind” as relevant to Book XIII of the 1805 Prelude. This section is followed by a general conclusion to this study that reiterates the interconnectedness between poetic and scientific knowledge. INDEX WORDS: Chiasmus, Coleridge, Descartes, Didactic memory, Didactic poetry, Dorothy Wordsworth, Ecology of the mind, Enlightenment, Epic genre, Epic poet-philosopher, Episteme, Epistemology, French Revolution, John Milton, Modern education, Poetic knowledge, Rationalism, Scientific knowledge, The Prelude, William Wordsworth WORDSWORTH’S PRELUDE: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF THE EPIC IN EDUCATION by DAVID W. MILLER A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2014 Copyright by David W. Miller 2014 WORDSWORTH’S PRELUDE: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF THE EPIC IN EDUCATION by DAVID W. MILLER Committee Chair: Dr. Christine Gallant Professor Emerita of English Committee: Dr. Michael Galchinsky Dr. George Pullman Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2014 iv DEDICATION The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. - Pierre de Coubertin Give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world. - Benjamin Franklin Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here. - Epitaph at Thermopylae by Simonides This study is dedicated to the memory of Paul Hayden Duensing (1929- 2006). Among the many things he mastered during his lifetime were calligraphy, type design, typography, matrix engraving, and typecasting. He was a writer, historian, linguist, teacher, musician, printer, and friend. In the preface to Fine Print on Type (1989) Duensing states: One of the distinctive features of the human race is the ability to understand the notion of time and to conceive of past, present, and future (every human language embodies these three basic verb forms, whether it is considered an “advanced” language or one of the supposedly “primitive” speech systems). Bound up in this awareness is the need to record, first as writing, and in a more refined – and mechanical – sense as printing. The purpose of recording out thoughts, discoveries, skills, and experience is to share these with others with whom we can have no immediate contact across space or time. In our modern era of mechanization, Duensing taught through example that true craftsmanship continues to remain a unification of the hand and heart. Incidentally, Paul’s initials “PHD” corresponds with the degree conferred through the completion of the dissertation contained within the following pages; yet, Paul represents a living tradition of poetic knowledge that spans throughout the ages. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. Christine Gallant, Dr. Michael Galchinsky, and Dr. George Pullman, for all their help, advice, and support. I must make a special thanks to my dissertation advisor Dr. Christine Gallant. As I was working towards completing this study, Dr. Gallant became a Professor Emerita of English. Thankfully, Dr. Gallant was always willing and available to offer her advice on the multiple drafts necessary to complete this study. At some point, Dr. Gallant suggested reading the “Ithaca” poem by Cafavy that is included in the appendix to this study. I especially thank Dr. Gallant, and my other committee members, for joining me on the metaphorical voyage which is the following dissertation. My final sentiment is one of great hope: as one journey ends, a new one begins! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. v CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................... 1 Scientific and Poetic Knowledge ...................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO ............................................................................................................ 41 Epic Verse as Instructive Art ..................................................................................... 41 Education Today ......................................................................................................... 49 The Continuing Relevance of the Epic and Wordsworth’s Poetry ......................... 56 CHAPTER THREE ........................................................................................................ 62 In the Epic, Poetic Knowledge Accommodates Scientific Knowledge.................... 62 CHAPTER FOUR ........................................................................................................... 83 Didactic Memory ......................................................................................................... 83 Memory as Ethical Construct .................................................................................... 84 Intratextual and Intertextual Memory ...................................................................... 92 Interpretive Memory (Memory & Imagination) as Cultural Construct .............. 102 CHAPTER FIVE .......................................................................................................... 113 Chiasmus and Intellectual Transformation ............................................................ 113 Rhetorical Chiasmus: Never the Same River ......................................................... 118 Structural Chiasmus: The Circumference of a Circle ........................................... 129 CHAPTER SIX ............................................................................................................. 152 vii Ecology of the Mind: “Joint-Labourers” in the “Mighty Mind” ......................... 152 The Epic Poet-Philosopher ....................................................................................... 171 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 191 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 214 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................ 214 APPENDIX B............................................................................................................. 215 1 CHAPTER ONE Scientific and Poetic Knowledge All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love And feed his sacred flame. (Coleridge Complete “Love” I:330, 1-4) It is generally accepted in modern criticism that the period of British Romanticism represents a breaking away from established norms, specifically a divergence from the established norms of genre. Rosmarin suggests that “genre is a finite schema capable of potentially infinite suggestion” (44). The epic genre is encyclopedic in its nature, encyclopedic in the sense that the genre represents an all encompassing knowledge. English education during the era of the British Romantics was classical and unspecialized. Both poets and natural philosophers (the name for scientists during the era) received the same general heterogeneous education. Nonetheless, modern education has become more specialized, and distinct pedagogies between science and the humanities have developed. The British Romantic era marks an era in which scientists and poets competed for the same public audience in an attempt to receive the title
Recommended publications
  • Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 1800

    Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 1800

    Butler University Digital Commons @ Butler University Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS College of Liberal Arts & Sciences 2015 Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 1800 Jason N. Goldsmith Butler University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Poetry Commons Recommended Citation Goldsmith, Jason N., "Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 1800" The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth / (2015): 204-220. Available at https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers/876 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LYRICAL BALLADS, 1800 205 [tha]n in studying German' (CL, r. 459). Stranded by the weather, short on cash, and C H A P TER 11 unable to communicate with the locals, the poet turned inward, writing a series of auto­ biographical blank verse fragments meditating on his childhood that would become part one of the 1799 Prelude, as well as nearly a dozen poems that would appear in the second volume of the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. WORDSWORTH'S L YRICAL Completed over the eighteen months following his return to England in May 1799, the 1800 Lyrical Ballads is the fruit of that long winter abroad. It marks both a literal and BALLADS, 1800 a literary homecoming. Living in Germany made clear to Wordsworth that you do not .......................................................................................................
  • John Milton USP Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres UFSC

    John Milton USP Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres UFSC

    Apresentação 9 APRESENTAÇÃO John Milton USP Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres UFSC Little theoretical attention has been paid to the subject of Retranslation and Adaptation. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies there is no section on Retranslation. Adaptation fares a little better, and the section on “Adaptation”, written by George Bastin mentions a number of key elements associated with adaptation: it is often associated with the belles infidèles concept of translation; it is particularly common in theatre translation; adaptations are often made in order to prevent a communication breakdown, being linked to the skopos, the purpose; and the study of adaptations look beyond linguistic transfer and will throw light on the translator as mediator (Bastin, 1998: 5-8). These concepts are developed by a number of contributors to this volume. Two key statements on retranslation are Yves Gambier’s formulation (1994, p. 414): “[…] une première traduction a toujours tendance à être plutôt assimilatrice, à réduire l’altérité au nom d’impératifs culturels, éditoriaux […] La retraduction dans ces conditions consisterait en un retour au texte-source” {“[…] a first translation always tends to be more assimilating, tends to reduce the otherness in the name of cultural or editorial requirements […] The retranslation, in this perspective, would mark a return to the source-text”} and that of Antoine Berman, who distinguishes “deux espaces (et deux temps) de traduction: celui des premières 10 John Milton & Marie-Hélène C. Torres traductions, et celui des retraductions” [“two spaces (and two ti- mes) of translation : that of the first translations, and that of the retranslations”] (Berman, 1985: 116). After the work has been introduced into the foreign culture, Retranslations will attempt to get much closer to the source text.
  • Wordsworth's Double-Take William Galperin Rutgers University

    Wordsworth's Double-Take William Galperin Rutgers University

    Wordsworth's Double-Take William Galperin Rutgers University "At issue ... is history as our own unassimilable alterity, our sequence when Wordsworth was about five years old: his sep- difference from the directions in which 'history' is pushing us aration from his riding companion and guide; his coming .... a different conception of history—one where historical upon a place wbere "a Murderer bad been htuig in former • thinking is the dimension in which thought becomes respon- times" (lL 288-89) and wbere someone had then "cai^ved tbe sible to what is other, lost, unconscious, or potential, yet to murderer's name" on tbe "turf' (11. 294, 292); and lastly, bis be." sighting of the woman with tbe pitcber upon "reascending Tilottama Rajan ("Imagining History," 428, 433). tbe bare common" (11. 303). Tbe tratimatic conjunction of these events, involving an encounter witb memorials of vio- "[T]he worlçl is Eden enough, all the Eden there can be, and lence in tbe wake of wbat seemed like abandonment to a what is more, all the world there is. ... Romanticism's work young boy, amply accounts for tbe additional freight tbat tbe . [is] the task of bringing the world back, as to life." "ordinary sigbt" is summoned to bear. But tbere is a sense, I Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary (52-53) too, botb in the image of tbe woman, and in tbe poet's back- banded and retrospective wisb for painterly skills, tbat tbe peculiar excess of the only "ordinary" event of the three owes "It was, in truth, / An ordinary sight, but .
  • Wordsworth and Milton: the Prelude and Paradise Lost

    Wordsworth and Milton: the Prelude and Paradise Lost

    Providence College DigitalCommons@Providence English Student Scholarship English 12-19-2010 Wordsworth and Milton: The Prelude and Paradise Lost Colin McCormack Providence College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/english_students Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Other English Language and Literature Commons McCormack, Colin, "Wordsworth and Milton: The Prelude and Paradise Lost" (2010). English Student Scholarship. 1. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/english_students/1 It is permitted to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) users must make these conditions clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Wordsworth and Milton: The Prelude and Paradise Lost Colin McCormack December 19, 2010 ENG-481 Dr. Graver McCormack 1 John Milton had an undeniable influence on the Romantic era writers, specifically Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s various works most notably The Prelude and the introduction to the grand work of The Recluse, known as The Prospectus. Both works contains details and images that show a strong connection between the writers, not only on the level of allusion, but clear rivalry between the two as Wordsworth presents. Through investigation it appears that there is an almost personal relationship between the two, characterized by Wordsworth’s life experiences. On one level the connection is based on Wordsworth turning towards Milton as another failed revolutionary, hoping to find solace in his writings.
  • Cress Presentation

    Cress Presentation

    Keiter 1 “To Sail Free in Her Own Element”: The Novelization of the Epic and the “Cress” Letters in William Carlos Williams’ Paterson Joshua Keiter The long, scathing letter from Cress, a female poet detailing “woman’s wretched position in society,” at the end of Book Two of Paterson has appeared perplexing, to say the least, to readers and critics of William Carlos Williams’ magnum opus since its first publication. The letter arrives directly at the center of the projected four books of Paterson, which we learn in Book I concerns itself overall with “A man like a city and a woman like a flower / —who are in love. Two women. Three women. / Innumerable women, each like a flower. / / But / only one man—like a city” (Williams, P 7). The tension between the symbolic and the literal man and woman of Paterson holds a central place in the poem, and invites a gendered reading, particularly at the crucial juncture of the Cress letter, based around the appropriation of a female voice by a dominant male author/text. My paper will argue that Williams’ appropriation is more of an attempt, however inadequate, at integration—rather than imposing male poetic dominance over a female voice, Williams aims to deconstruct male authority, if not destroy his own authorship, by emphasizing the relational, dialogic nature (even in terms of “marriage” and “divorce”) of communication itself. A hopeless task, perhaps, but one that is emblematic of the entire project and problematic of Paterson as a “whole.” Indeed, the first part of my paper is devoted to a discussion of how the genre theory of Mikhail Bakhtin in his essay on the “Epic and Novel” provides, in distinctive terms, the kind of critical framework necessary to understand the role of Cress in Paterson.
  • Abbreviations Used in the Notes

    Abbreviations Used in the Notes

    ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES The following list is for use in connection with the short-form citations in Notes to the Introduction (beginning at p. 148 below) and Notes to the Poems (beginning at p. 150 below). BL S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 2 vols (London, 1817); ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols (Oxford, 1907). EY The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years, 1787-1805, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford, 1935); 2nd edn rev. Chester L. Shaver (Oxford, 1967). See also LY and MY, below. HD William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes, ed. Helen Darbishire (Oxford, 1914; 2nd edn, 1952). Hutchinson William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, 2 vols (London, 1897). IF Notes dictated by Wordsworth to Isabella Fenwick. JDW Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Mary Moorman (Oxford, 1971) - notably the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals. LSTC Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford, 1956-71). LY I, II The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Later Years, 1821-1834, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford, 1938-9); 2nd edn rev. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1978-9). See also EY above, and MY below. MS.L. Longman MS, British Library Add. MS. 47864. [Cf. A Description of the Wordsworth and Coleridge Manuscripts in the Possession of Mr T. Norton Longman, ed. W. Hale White (London, 1897).] MYI The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, Part I, 1806-1811, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford, 1936); 2nd edn rev. Mary Moorman (Oxford, 1969). MY II The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, Part II, 1812-1820, ed.
  • The Creation of National Ideologies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Erica Marat

    The Creation of National Ideologies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Erica Marat

    Imagined Past, Uncertain Future The Creation of National Ideologies in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Erica Marat National ideologies were a HEN the Central Asian nations inherited statehood as Wa result of the collapse of the Soviet Union in late crucial element in the process 1991, their political elites quickly realized that the new states needed to cultivate a unifying ideology if they were of state-building in the to function as cohesive entities. What with the region’s independent Central Asian fuzzy borders and the dominance of the Russian language and Soviet culture, Central Asian leaders had to develop a states. national idea that would solidify the people’s recognition of post-Soviet statehood and the new political leadership. The urgent need for post-communist ideological programs that would reflect upon the complex Soviet past, accom- modate the identities of majority and minority ethnic groups, and rationalize the collapse of the Soviet Union emerged before the national academic communities could meaningfully discuss the possible content and nature of such ideologies. Attributes for ideological projects were often sought in the pre-Soviet period, when there were no hard national borders and strict cultural boundaries. It was in this idiosyncratic setting that the Central Asian regimes tried to construct national ideological conceptions that would be accessible to the mass public, increase the legitimacy of the ruling political elites, and have an actual historical basis. National ideologies were a crucial element of the state-building processes in the independent Central Asian states. They reflected two major goals of the ruling elites. ERICA MARAT is a research fellow at the Institute for Security & Develop- First, the elites were able to strengthen themselves against ment Policy in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute competing political forces by mobilizing the entire public at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC.
  • Wordsworth's Moonlight-Poetry and the Sense of Thecc Uncanny"

    Wordsworth's Moonlight-Poetry and the Sense of Thecc Uncanny"

    Wordsworth's Moonlight-Poetry and the Sense of thecc Uncanny" BRIAN COSGROVE I c V_voNSPicuous AMONG THOSE who have emphasized in Words• worth the tension between Nature and Imagination is Geoffrey Hartman, who has argued that one habitual Wordsworthian response is to shy away from "an 'apocalyptic' position" since "he does not want to find imagination in violation of man or nature." Wordsworth's hope, then, is "that the imagination can be domes• ticated, that nature can satisfy a mind which seeks, or used to seek, the supernatural."1 The attraction of Wordsworth to the supernatural is, nonethe• less, potent in an early phase of his career; and there are a number of texts from the Alfoxden period (1798) which reveal not simply this attraction, but the ambivalence of feeling aroused by it. Since, however, Wordsworth's supernatural is deliberately muted by his strong grasp of the actual, we need a more accept• able term to describe a poetry which mediates between the extremes of natural and supernatural. I would propose, for con• venience, that we speak of Wordsworth's poetry of the preter• natural ; and I would argue further that this preternatural quality is most frequently evidenced in a consistent imagery of moon• light.2 Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a famous passage in The Scarlet Letter, may help us further to define the quality of this poetry of the preternatural which exists in an intermediary moonlit world. In the preamble of "The Custom-House," Hawthorne presents himself seated in a moonlit parlour, "striving to picture imagi• nary scenes. ..." He continues: 20 BRIAN COSGROVE If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case.
  • College of Letters 1

    College of Letters 1

    College of Letters 1 Kari Weil BA, Cornell University; MA, Princeton University; PHD, Princeton University COLLEGE OF LETTERS University Professor of Letters; University Professor, Environmental Studies; The College of Letters (COL) is a three-year interdisciplinary major for the study University Professor, College of the Environment; University Professor, Feminist, of European literature, history, and philosophy, from antiquity to the present. Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Co-Coordinator, Animal Studies During these three years, students participate as a cohort in a series of five colloquia in which they read and discuss (in English) major literary, philosophical, and historical texts and concepts drawn from the three disciplinary fields, and AFFILIATED FACULTY also from monotheistic religious traditions. Majors are invited to think critically about texts in relation to their contexts and influences—both European and non- Ulrich Plass European—and in relation to the disciplines that shape and are shaped by those MA, University of Michigan; PHD, New York University texts. Majors also become proficient in a foreign language and study abroad Professor of German Studies; Professor, Letters to deepen their knowledge of another culture. As a unique college within the University, the COL has its own library and workspace where students can study together, attend talks, and meet informally with their professors, whose offices VISITING FACULTY surround the library. Ryan Fics BA, University of Manitoba; MA, University of Manitoba; PHD, Emory
  • And Sublime Human Forms of Wordsworth's the Prelude in The

    And Sublime Human Forms of Wordsworth's the Prelude in The

    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2002 "Uncouth Shapes" and sublime human forms of Wordsworth's The rP elude in the ligh of Berdyaev's personalistic philosophy of freedom Elena V. Haltrin Khalturina Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Haltrin Khalturina, Elena V., ""Uncouth Shapes" and sublime human forms of Wordsworth's The rP elude in the ligh of Berdyaev's personalistic philosophy of freedom" (2002). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2138. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2138 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. “UNCOUTH SHAPES” AND SUBLIME HUMAN FORMS OF WORDSWORTH’S THE PRELUDE IN THE LIGHT OF BERDYAEV’S PERSONALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Elena V. Haltrin Khalturina B.S., Moscow Pedagogical College, Russia, 1991 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1996 May 2002 ©Copyright 2002 Elena V. Haltrin Khalturina All rights reserved ii EPIGRAPH Here might I pause, and bend in reverence To Nature, and the power of human minds, To men as they are men within themselves.
  • Catherine Bois the NATURAL SUBLIME

    Catherine Bois the NATURAL SUBLIME

    Catherine Bois THE NATURAL SUBLIME IN WORDSWORTH’S POETRY AND ROMANTIC LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS During the second half of the eighteenth century the meaning of the word “sublime” shifted radically from a rhetorical to an aesthetic, psychological and philosophical sense. The popularity of the Peri Hupsous, the Greek treaty by the pseudo-Longinus first translated in English in 1652, had established the distinction between the elevated style and energy (art’s capacity to raise passion) as an aesthetic emotion. After Boileau emphasized “l’extraordinaire et le merveilleux” in the archetypal sublime effect of the divine “Fiat lux”, “sublime” became a common critical term. John Dennis, insisting on the vio- lent emotion caused by the sublime—especially with heightened spiritual feelings—and Addison, reinforced the element of pathos in sublimity, which culminated almost in empathy with John Baillie. Lockian sensationalism had helped theoreticians to focus interest on sublimity as a sensory experience, not as a quality present in the object. Locke’s subjective psychology encouraged an aesthetic of mass and space: the feeling or thought produced by the con- templation of an object is proportional to the size of the object. The mind of man, says Addison, experiences a feeling of bafflement, a sense of awe and wonder at the view of a “vast, uncultivated desert, of huge heaps of moun- tains, high rocks and precipices, or a wide expanse of waters,” because it “naturally hates everything that looks like a restraint upon it and is apt to fan- cy itself under a sort of confinement, when the sight is pent up in a narrow compass” [Addison 412].
  • Writers of Tales: a Study on National Literary Epic Poetry with a Comparative Analysis of the Albanian and South Slavic Cases

    Writers of Tales: a Study on National Literary Epic Poetry with a Comparative Analysis of the Albanian and South Slavic Cases

    DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2017.02 WRITERS OF TALES: A STUDY ON NATIONAL LITERARY EPIC POETRY WITH A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ALBANIAN AND SOUTH SLAVIC CASES FRANCESCO LA ROCCA A DISSERTATION IN HISTORY Presented to the Faculties of the Central European University in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Budapest, Hungary 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation CEU eTD Collection György Endre Szőnyi DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2017.02 COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY Copyright in the text of this dissertation rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European University Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. I hereby declare that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions and no materials previously written and/or published by another person unless otherwise noted. CEU eTD Collection DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2017.02 iii ABSTRACT In this dissertation I intend to investigate the history and theory of national literary epic poetry in Europe, paying particular attention to its development among Albanians, Croats, Montenegrins, and Serbs. The first chapters will be devoted to the elaboration of a proper theoretical background and historical framing to the concept of national epic poetry and its role in the cultivation of national thought in Europe.