Questions by sb70012

[sb70012]

We delight to hear the happiness of our friends and country, at which he were worthy to be laughed at that would laugh; we shall, contrarily, sometimes laugh to find a matter quite mistaken, and go down the hill against the bias, in the mouth of some such men as, for the respect of them, one shall be heartily sorry he cannot choose but laugh, and so is rather pained than delighted with laughter.

Source: Philip Sidney's An Apology for Poetry (1554-1586)

Paragraph 6. line 14.

Hello dear members,

Would you please tell me what the red sentence means?
I asked this question in one of other forums and I got different answers. I asked it here as well because I want to know what your idea is about the red sentence.


Many thanks in advance.

[cafolini]

It could mean that the very morbid stupidity of some people (especially high ranking) could cause a person to learn the even more morbid habit of laughing at what under normal circumstances would require disgust and intense weeping.

[togre]

It seems "go down the hill" is a phrase that means something like "swim up stream" or "go against the grain/prevailing winds." I am getting this only from context. I haven't found anything that explains where this phrase came from, but it has to mean something near this from how its used.

[Eiseabhal]

A bias is an inclination or leaning towards one side more than another. It is a weight inside a bowl to make it run not a straight but a curved path. So here it means to notice an error that has been accepted and laugh at its acceptance as if one is out of step with others. It is mocking the attitude of lemmings canainnse.

[sb70012]

According to Alexander Pope, the supreme value of art is provided?

a. order
b. beauty
c. instruction
d. form

Hello teachers,

This was a test at my university and I couldn't get what the answer was.
Would you please clarify it to me?
(I will be happy if you have some link or source for it)


Thanks so much.

[cacian]

ah..''trompe l'oeil''.
interesting thread and interesting question. I have looked....but I am not sure not hundred per cent.
can you take a guess? haha
Ok here it is :)
if we go by his name ''Pope'' then one may think it is
a. an order.
only kidding but then one never knows he was after of catholic upbringing hence his name.

if we go with his work then I think it
b. a form
the reason for this is that he mentions somewhere and I quote: ''true ease in writing comes from art''
and since writing is a form then by deduction art is too.

[cafolini]

Moral order into Homer's to discredit paganism. No doubt.

[JBI]

Order - part of the great age of "great chain of being" thought (I believe that term is his too), and his essay on man tries to demonstrate such a divine order. That would be my point, though to narrow it down to one is a bit wrong, as he seems to put a lot of focus on all of them throughout his career.

[sb70012]

Thank you Cacian,
Thank you Cafoloini,
Thank you JBI,

They were useful.

[sb70012]

Which is Wrong? The permanent elements of Pope’s poetic style are ……

a. rhythmic variety
b. precision of meaning
c. superb discipline
d. involvement of abstruse ideas

Hello teachers,

This was a test at my university exam sheet. But I couldn’t find the answer.
Any thought?

Many thanks in advance.

[sb70012]

Pope, in An Essay on Criticism, decrees the poets to follow nature because it ………

a. Is the source, and end and test of art
b. Gives one the necessities of varied style
c. Lets you have omniscient point of view
d. Aggrandizes the style

Hello teachers,

This was a test at my university exam sheet. But I couldn’t find the answer.
Any thought?

Many thanks in advance.

[JBI]

Make sure to footnote me on your homework.

[cacian]

Make sure to footnote me on your homework.

Lol


sb70012 you are most welcome :)

[sb70012]

In 1747 Johnson published the plan of his Dictionary, and the next seven years were occupied in compiling it-although he had been sanguine enough to count on finishing it in three years. When in 1748 Dr. Adams, a friend from Oxford days questioned his ability to carry out such a work alone in so short time, and reminded him that the Dictionary of the French Academy had been compiled by forty academicians working for forty years, Johnson replied with humorous jingoism: “ Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”

Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Hello teachers,

I know the meanings of each word but I can’t get the main goal of the bold written part.
What does Johnson want to say by these words? I really can’t understand the bold written part.

Thanks in advance.

[sb70012]

With the Rambler (1750-52) and the Idler (1758-60), two series of periodical essays, Johnson found a devoted audience, but his pleasure in success was tempered by the death of his wife in 1752. He never married. Boswell said of the Rambler essays that “in no writings whatever can be found more bark and steel [i.e., quinine and iron] for the mind.” Moral strength and health; the importance of applying reason to experience; the test of virtue by what we do, not what we say or “feel”; faith in God: these are the centers to which Johnson’s moral writings always return.

Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Hello teachers,

Would you please clarify the bold written part? I can’t understand it.

Thanks in advance.

[Bustrofedon]

Quinine is used to treat iron deficiency so maybe it's a metaphor for strengthening the mind.

[Bustrofedon]

Basically he is saying that an Englishman can do in three years what it took 40 Frenchmen 1600 years ( all told) to do.

[JBI]

Quinine is used to treat iron deficiency so maybe it's a metaphor for strengthening the mind.

Also as a remedy for malaria. Though maybe not yet at that point.

[sb70012]

Thank you.

[sb70012]

Thank you.

[sb70012]

This work of Samuel Johnson is about a prince who is confined to a valley, but escapes from the valley to see the world. However, he and his other two attendants finally turn back home.

a. Lives of the Poets
b. The Vanity of Human Wishes
c. Rasselas
d. Rambler

Hello teachers,

This was a test at my university exam sheet. But I couldn’t find the answer.
Any thought?

Many thanks in advance.

[Kafka's Crow]

Answer: C. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

[Jackson Richardson]

And the best known quote is "Marriage has many pains, celibacy has no pleasures." (Johnson had been married and he is writing in an age when no other options than marriage or celibacy where permissable.)

[sb70012]

Thank you both.

[maxphisher]

Not trying to be rude, but you do realize that you just got on the internet and came to this site to ask. . . well, nevermind. . .

[sb70012]

Not trying to be rude, but you do realize that you just got on the internet and came to this site to ask. . . well, nevermind. . .
What do you want to say?

[kev67]

Rasselas was the book Helen Burns was reading in Jane Eyre when they first met.

[sb70012]

Rasselas was the book Helen Burns was reading in Jane Eyre when they first met.

Thank you Kev.

[sb70012]

Cowper’s major work is The Task (1785), undertaken at the bidding-hence the title-of the lively and charming Lady Austen, who, when he complained that he had no subject, directed him to write about the sofa in his parlor.

Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, William Collins (1721-1759)

Hello teachers,

What does the brown part mean? I feel the brown part is not written grammatically good. It makes me not to translate or understand it.
Would you please rewrite it in a simple way?

Many thanks in advance.

[maxphisher]

You could have just used a simple search engine query to look up the answer to this question, especially if you are doing this to answer a question for an exam at school. It's research of the simplest nature. If you weren't able to find results to the search because of internet censorship, then my criticism is out of line. However, based on the posts you have been making over the past few days, it looks like you're really just trying to get out of doing your schoolwork...

[kiki1982]

The two dashes should have a space before and after them to signal an aside, but you're right, it's unwieldy. Not really fluent, but maybe it's an early edition you've got there...

It should read:

"Cowper’s major work is The Task (1785), undertaken at the bidding -hence the title- of the lively and charming Lady Austen, who, when he complained that he had no subject, directed him to write about the sofa in his parlour."

It's perfect English, but of the earlier sort, to me at least. For modern English, you'd re-arrange the parts of the sentence a little bit to put the ideas you get presented with in order of importance:

"Cowper’s major work is The Task (1785), undertaken at the bidding of the lively and charming Lady Austen, who directed him to write about the sofa in his parlour, when [the author] complained that he had no subject, [hence the title of the work]."

That's what I would make of that, but I'm only a non-native translator, so maybe the natives can help out here. Personally I wuld also update the vocab a little bit, but that's maybe going a bit far.

[sb70012]

It was useful. Thank you.

You know what makes me confused? Hence the title makes me confused. I don't know what it stands for and what it means.

[Seasider]

And nocturnal cramp.

[kiki1982]

Hence means 'for this reason', therefore/consequently, but looked at the issue from the other side.

I think usually it's used as it's used here, but simply put, you could say, 'He was hungry, hence why he went to the shop.'

There used to be whence and thence too, in past time. 'From whence he came' and 'he went thence' or 'he came from thence'. They used to be just indications of place 'where' and 'there' to my feeling with an added sense of direction, but they're not used anymore now, although 'hence' is. Maybe, stretching it you could still use thence in the same way as 'hence', but as I said, that would be slightly posh and hoitytoity (or however your spell that).

[edit] the dictionary made me aware of another aspect of this word. It's true, you can also use 'hence' in saying 'from then' 'from now' for periods of time. 'One week hence' is 'one week after that/this one' (depending on the context), but that meaning isn't the meaning you've got in your text there.

[Jackson Richardson]

In my day, I'd have just gone to the school library and looked up the entry on Johnson in the Oxford Book of English Literature.

[maxphisher]

I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, hell, he was already on the internet navigating to this website. Why not just search for the answer to the question?

[sb70012]

Not trying to be rude, but you do realize that you just got on the internet and came to this site to ask. . . well, nevermind. . .

Please don't talk like that. You are not a moderator.
Thank you.

[sb70012]

Thank you. It was useful.

[sb70012]

Thank you.

[sb70012]

Because of the prominence of landscape in this period, “Romantic poetry” has to the popular mind become almost synonymous with “nature poetry.” Neither Romantic theory nor practice, however, justifies the opinion that the aim of this poetry was description for its own sake. Wordsworth in fact insisted that the ability to observe and describe objects accurately, although necessary, is not at all a sufficient condition for poetry, “as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects.”

Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Romantic Period (1785-1830), The Novel

Hello teachers,

I can’t understand the blue part, a quotation said by Wordsworth.
Would you please clarify it to me in one sentence. In fact I know the meaning of
each word but as a whole I can’t conclude what he is saying.

In Word Reference Forum one answered my question but I couldn't understand his explanation that's why I decided to ask it here.

Many thanks in advance.

[cacian]

hi there can I ask what 'The Novel' is? is it a novel called a novel or is it novel from novelty a play on words?

[Drkshadow03]

Because of the prominence of landscape in this period, “Romantic poetry” has to the popular mind become almost synonymous with “nature poetry.” Neither Romantic theory nor practice, however, justifies the opinion that the aim of this poetry was description for its own sake. Wordsworth in fact insisted that the ability to observe and describe objects accurately, although necessary, is not at all a sufficient condition for poetry, “as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects.”



Landscape in Romantic Poetry isn't just a passive observation of pretty landscapes, but a spiritual and mental act in which a person is discovering deeper truths and meanings about themselves in relationship to the external world. Also, how they think about it transforms the external world. To use a rather simplistic illustration, if I'm sad and look at a mountain my description of it will probably be different than if I'm happy and look at the same mountain.

[Charles Darnay]

^ This.

Poetry for Wordworth in particular (but all the Romantics to an extent) was a vehicle for philosophy. Instead of writing out their treaties on metaphysics or epistemology as the philosophers do, the framed their views in poetry, and in nature in particular. The part you are having trouble with says that if poetry were simply to describe and observe (here is a daffodil, it is pretty), the external objects (the daffodil) become superior to the mind, which is not how the world works.

If you really want to understand the Romantic sensibility, you need to read both Addison's "Pleasure of the Imagination" (part of the Spectator and Wordsworth's "Preface to Lyrical Ballads. The second one is in the Norton's you referenced. Addison's work may be in Volume C of the Norton's, I can't remember.

What both essays illustrate is that there is the external world and how the mind shapes the external world - how we view things when they are not in our sight but we are remembering them. The second is where poetry springs from.

[sb70012]

hi there can I ask what 'The Novel' is? is it a novel called a novel or is it novel from novelty a play on words?

its a preface for introduction of novel. the appearance of novel in romantic period. it's talking as a whole. he is not talking about an specific novel.

[sb70012]

Thanks everybody.

[maxphisher]

Just pointing out that everyone here seems to be doing your homework for you. Do we all get copies of your degree when we've earned it?

[sb70012]

Just pointing out that everyone here seems to be doing your homework for you. Do we all get copies of your degree when we've earned it?
It's optional. You are not forced to answer my question.
You are not a moderator. You are not here to order me how to post. Every forum has its own moderator.

[Logos]

There are a handful of moderators here who do an excellent job :)

Members are expected to follow the Forum Rules.

We also expect people to ignore such discussions that cause them any discomfort. Especially when they're started by new members. If you don't like the thread, click the Index button (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forum.php).

Welcome to LitNet sb70012. I hope you will enjoy it here :)

[sb70012]

There are a handful of moderators here who do an excellent job :)

Members are expected to follow the Forum Rules.

We also expect people to ignore such discussions that cause them any discomfort. Especially when they're started by new members. If you don't like the thread, click the Index button (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forum.php).

Welcome to LitNet sb70012. I hope you will enjoy it here :)

Thank you for your warm welcome dear Logos.
All people here are polite. (except....) never mind.
Thanks everybody.

[ennison]

Sam was clever but a bigoted and blind nationalist too.

You should try some Cowper he was a talented poet, an interesting personality and his strange life is itself of interest. I like his poetry a lot.

It's really good to see an Iranian here. Never mind the Mrs Grundies.

Shouldn't that extract read "He never re-married"? I guess it's a metaphor for two different kinds of strength and resilience.

[sb70012]

Many of the major writers, however, did feel that there was something distinctive about their time – not a shared doctrine or literary quality, but a pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate, which some of them called “the spirit of the age.” They had the sense that (as Keats said in one of his sonnets) “Great spirits now on earth are sojourning,” and that there was evidence of that release of energy, experimental boldness, and creative power that marks a literary renaissance. In his Defence of Poetry Shelley claimed that the literature of the age “has arisen as it were from a new birth,” and that “an electronic life burns” without the words of its best writers which is “less their spirit than the spirit of the age.”


Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Romantic Period (1785-1830), The Spirit of The Age

I also took a picture of the page. If you click here, you will see the page. (http://www.8pic.ir/images/80017667780671288949.jpg)

Link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/lear...237844?page=10 Last paragraph, line 22

Hello teachers,

Would you please clarify the blue part to me? I really can't understand it very well.

Many thanks in advance.

[sb70012]

In ........... Coleridge integrated description and meditation. this characteristic wasimmediately followed by Wordsworth.

a. The Friend
b. Dejection: An Ode
c. Frost at Midnight
d. Biographia Literia

Hello,
Would you please help me to find the answer of this test?

[WICKES]

Many of the major writers, however, did feel that there was something distinctive about their time – not a shared doctrine or literary quality, but a pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate, which some of them called “the spirit of the age.”

Well, I guess most great writers are highly sensitive to the anxieties and concerns of the culture and age in which they live. Also, no writer, not even Shakespeare, exists in a vacuum. All writers are a product of their time and place. For example, I believe (and you'd better double check this!!) that Joyce once wrote of how English literature was ruined by the rise of Puritanism. I think what he meant was that a writer like Chaucer is (as Joyce put it) "in love with life" and expresses that love with the earthy, guilt-free crudeness of a medieval man. Even scientists cannot escape their time and place. Some argue that Darwin's theory of natural selection was influenced by the 'spirit of his age'. In other words, he was a middle class English gentleman living in England during the early Victorian period, in which there was no welfare, no 'safety net' for the poor, in which you had a brutal, free market capitalism that rewarded the ruthless and 'strong'. Or look at T S Eliot's Wasteland. Eliot is expressing the 'spirit of his age'- the London of post WW1, a place of spiritual emptiness. Wordsworth was expressing the spirit of his age when he wrote "sweet bliss it was to be alive" (or something like that) about the French Revolution. The tone and feel (or sensibility) of English-British 18th century writers like Henry Fielding and Daniel Defoe is very different to that of Dickens and George Eliot. Dickens and Eliot have a middle class 'respectability' that you don't find in Defoe and Fielding.

[sb70012]

Thank you.

[Ecurb]

Wordsworth on the French Revolution:

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven..."

[sb70012]

Which one of the following statements is wrong about the 20th century?

a.Joseph Conrad, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence are the Novelist of the age.
b.Ford Madox Ford and Robert Graves stood apart from the main currents of the Novel and poetry of the age.
c.Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, two major novels of the age, are written in sequential patterns.
d.Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party is a 20th century play.

Hello teachers,
You know which one is wong?

Many thanks in advance.

[Pen Name]

Dear sb70012 you are asking questions without being critical yourself of those answers. Some of which are less than useful, and then telling people they are not Moderators is missing the point.

You are asking Brits to help you with your homework, get something about the British straight, we take the p1ss (make extreme fun of) mercilessly out of everyone and everything, most of all ourselves:nod: Maxphisher was/is being ironic and sarcastic, the best form of wit.

You started the post by asking about pre Shakespearean poetry then jump to the 17th century as if they were the same era, they were not, the two peoples had different outlooks on life ,this initially left me wondering what you were about.

Likewise you seem to accept Wickes quirky answer to “less their spirit, than the spirit of the age.” a neat bit of Paranomasia (Play on words) which Wickes did not even address. 'less their Spirit' means the soul of a person, but could also refer to spirits as in alcohol, Brandy Whisky, in this case it is the soul, however 'The spirit of the age' means the atmosphere of thought. Shelley was living in an age when Electricity was just being discovered (hence Mary Shelley using Electricity as the life force for the Monster in Frankenstein,) and he was inferring that a lot of what was written was probably nonesense inspired by the atmosphere of the times, rather than the Artistry of the writers.

Also while I am in full flow, I dissagree with your signature, Respect is earned, no two way street involved, of giving respect, Hitler respected Churchill, but Churchill had nothing but contempt for Hitler.

And you are free to ignore this load of old cobblers, as I don't give a fig what the moderators think, it is after all just my opinion, not theirs, however it is exceptionally well crafted, (modesty is my best attribute after my glowing persona) so you do so at your own peril lol

[sb70012]

I asked my questions separately in separate threads but I think the moderator put them in (my thre questions) in one thread. I wish he wouldn't do that.
Ok let me just delete two them.
My friend, I am not a lazy student. You are not forced to answer my question then please don't suppose me a person who is lazy and only comes here to ask his questions. Before asking my questions I do some research and I study my books, if I don't get my answer, I come here and ask my question. Please don't irritate me with those bitter words and don't suppose me a lazy student. I ask it because i really don't know the answer. It's not a homework it's an examsheet which I try to find its answers. Please don't talk like that.

Best wishes to you.
Thanks.