Blog Overview, Week 6

Jane: Hartman's Problematics in "A Poet's Progress"

Work Discussed: A Poet’s Progress: Wordsworth and the “Via Naturaliter Negativa”

Topics discussed: Jane argues against Hartman’s use of “via negativa.” She explains that he uses a “weak metaphor” because nothing is truly being negated. In Fact, Jane points out that Wordsworth’s imagination and Nature are not separate from one another but that they coexist.

Alfred: "Spot of Time"

Work Discussed: Wordsworth’s “Spots of Time,” Book Eleven

Topics Discussed: Alfred argues that Wordsworth is only concerned with himself, but in this particular poem, he moves beyond the self once he contends with “the woman backgrounded by the low pool and high summit.” Alfred makes an interesting point in that we are all products of nature, and through this perspective are we then capable of understanding ourselves.

Ryan: "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of  Early Childhood"

Work Discussed: Wordsworth 

Topics Discussed: He also believes that Wordsworth’s work is mainly concerned with himself, more specifically his consciousness. Ryan discusses how Wordsworth relationship with the natural world evolves over the course of his childhood. He explains that “for Wordsworth, adulthood, in the most profound sense of the word, is something that mandates an eventual spiritual detachment in a person from the natural world.”

Jane: Burke vs Kant in the Battle of the Sublime

Work Discussed: Burke and Kant

Topics Discussed: Jane compares and contrasts Burke’s definition of the sublime with

Kant’s interpretation. She explains that while Burke aligns the sublime with fear, pain, and astonishment, Kant views the sublime in terms attraction and repulsion that ultimately leads to a feeling of transcendence. She connects Kant’s understanding of the sublime with Freud’s theory of “unheimlich.” She argues that “Kant’s theory of the sublime focuses on the power of the imagination and its ability to produce feelings of gratitude and pleasure.”

Yuliana: "The symbiotic relationship of man and the environment with Wordsworth's Prelude"

Work Discussed: Prelude

Topics Discussed: Yuliana discusses the complicated relationship that man has with nature.

She explains that “We have a real and tangible relationship to nature and the interrelated system, but we also project onto nature our hopes, fears, desires, and emotions.” In her analysis of Wordsworth’s Prelude, she demonstrates how Wordsworth’s imagination cultivates an understanding of nature that is both “both real and imagined.”

Joseph: "The Prelude: Wordsworth and Solitude"

Work Discussed: Prelude

Topics Discussed: Joseph explains that for Wordsworth, nature provides a place of shelter and solitude. It becomes a safe haven for those looking for an escape. Joseph also points out that what is truly being demonstrated is “the power of the mind and/or imagination, and nature is simply the vehicle or the ideal setting to unleash the mind’s full poetic potential.”

Amber: “Sublimity and Other Questions”

Work Discussed: Perspectives: The Sublime, the Beautiful, and the Picturesque

Topics Discussed: Frustration with the mysoginist undertones of Coleridge’s “reimagining” of the Falls of the River Clyde episode; discusses the issues regarding the “packaging and consumption” of nature (ex: Claude glass), which implies a sense of artificiality to the experience; has difficulty with Kant’s interpretation of the sublime: is it rooted in absolute reason as opposed to nature?

Zully: “The Sublime in the Lascaux Paintings”

Work Discussed: “How Words Influence the Passions” from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Topics Discussed: Compares Burke’s theory of the word as the best method to evoke sublime passion to the Lascaux cave paintings; argues for the sublime nature of the artwork, as the objects in the paintings contain ideas of nature and human history not necessarily understood by the viewer.

Johnny: “Kant and the World of Reality and Experience”

Work Discussed: The Critique of Judgement

Topics Discussed: Proposes to reclassify Kant’s reality into two subcategories: the reality we experience (phenomenon) and reality itself (noumenon), as this reorganization blends epistemological and philosophical ideas of existence rather than separating them exclusively. 

Scott: “Forces of Nature: Irritable Bowel Syndrome”

Work Discussed: “A Poet’s Progress: Wordsworth and the Via Naturaliter Negativa”

Topics Discussed: Examines Blake’s criticism of Wordsworth’s poem “The Recluse,” which later is transformed into The Prelude; Blake viewed Wordsworth as a pagan for believing in “the reality of the natural world over God.”

Bill: “Ascent the Negativa”

Work Discussed: “A Poet’s Progress: Wordsworth and the Via Naturaliter Negativa”

Topics Discussed: Points to inconsistencies in Hartman’s citations (He sources an 1850 Prelude instead of the 1805 version found in the LABL; LABL also omits the Mont Blanc passage that Hartman refers to in the essay); finds trouble making sense of Hartman’s via naturaliter negativa analogy (wasn’t quite strong enough of a comparison to the via negativa of the spiritual world).

Dimitrious: “Spots of Time”

Work Discussed: The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind

Topics Discussed: Examines the paradoxical nature of The Prelude, focusing on Wordsworth’s past sufferings, confusions, and moments of doubt as catalysts for the poet’s subsequent understanding of truth and meaning, which Wordsworth views as the pleasurable experience.