Just got out of college British Literature class. Am American so obviously my opinion here is a little biased, but: I felt the Romantic era was equivalent to the extreme leftist movement we have today. Lots of abundant emotion in writing but very little logic. Victorian era definitely not my favorite, but I feel that's because I failed to really see the literature from the writers' perspectives (won't say this for Romantic era, I felt like even taking into consideration the historical environment it's still a lot of BS) The Modern era I can relate to the most because that's the era I know best, like TS Eliot and Wilfred Owen. I really liked Keats tho Modern feminists should also take some points from Virginia Woolf and Jane Austin.
General Brit Lit discussion thread also
David Wilson
just got done fappin it to pornos
Wyatt Thomas
I think you should call into question your interpretations of literature based on modern internet gender wars, and perhaps take an introspective look at yourself regarding WHY your first critiques run along these lines.
Perhaps you need to get offline, or stop paying attention to the vapid third-wave post-structuralist girls who you will never see again once you leave university (hint, they dont pull that shit in the working world)
Jeremiah Rodriguez
>I felt the Romantic era was equivalent to the extreme leftist movement we have today. Lots of abundant emotion in writing but very little logic.
There is so much wrong in this statement I don't even know where to begin...
John Powell
I wasn't trying to bring that tumblr war stuff into this, I just meant hardcore leftism in general. You really think it's influencing me that hard?
Brayden Martin
Please elaborate. I do feel a little bad about my stance, perhaps I'm just being dense.
Wyatt Wright
>Emotion/Logic dichotomy
This is one of those things that makes no fucking sense whatsoever, but is accepted at face value by far to many people.
Give me a concrete example of 'emotion' trumping 'logic'.
Brandon Parker
I never stated anything like emotion being greater than logic, perhaps I should reword my thoughts. I felt that writers (at least what I read of) of that era were very much about pouring out pure passion and emotion, resulting in very "aloof" or "head in the clouds" writing. Now I understand this era was also a response to neoclassicism, so perhaps extremely liberal writing was needed to balance out extremely conservative writing.
Connor Moore
I might be wrong but I always felt you should analyze literature in the context of when it was written, or at least regarding overall themes (revenge, betrayal, allegory).
Analyzing literature in regards to modern trends RESULTS in stuff like queer and feminist theory, even if your view is on the part of the reactionary. I remember when my English teacher tried to apply modern queer theory to Whitman, its awful.
Nolan Taylor
>Give me a concrete example of 'emotion' trumping 'logic' have you never seen a woman argue
Angel Price
That's what I was trying to bring up in my original post, that my post-modern view on things really affects how I read this stuff. Hence why some of my favorite authors are people like Keats and TS Eliot. Keats wasn't modern I know but I consider him ahead of his time.
Sebastian Bennett
First off, what is 'hardcore leftism'? Is it Chinese-style state-led economics? Cuba? Old-fashioned European social democracy? American social justice movements? Indian Maoists? Bernie Sanders supporters? The FARC? How do these groups intersect? It's a nonsense strawman term. I think you really need to get a more advanced political education before you try to talk about these things. Right now you you sound like a second-rate Cold War military dictator or something.
Landon Thompson
When I said leftist I didn't really mean politically, more culturally/socially. Unless that doesn't change it.
Jacob Campbell
>my English teacher tried to apply modern queer theory to Whitman
Dear Lord...
Are you the same guy from last night who said his English teacher thought Shakespeare wasn't interesting?
I'm worried about the future, boys...
Dominic Morris
'Leftist' is a political term. You can't use it non-politically. Now that you've waded into the political by deploying it you should clarify what you mean by 'leftist'. If you mean 'American social justice movement' then use that term instead, because even within American the wider 'left' does not consist entirely of tumblr landwhales.
Luis Nelson
OP here I actually used to not like Shakespeare until I watched a film based on The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. It was then I realized I was reading his plays like you would a book, not a play.
John Ward
I apologize then. That's really what I meant though, a very radical and liberal response to an era that was incredibly conservative.
Asher Hernandez
No, but its all the same. I had another professor tie Artemis Apanchomene (the strangled goddess) to female oppression within the context of of Attic Greece, and suggest that the female role as secondary sexual objects to most mens initial sexual experiences as objects of older fratry members attentions caused a spate of teen suicides. It always stunk of "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls" which was something of a big deal book when I went to college in the late 90s-early 2000s.
Henry Foster
With that amendment I think you make a very interesting point. I didn't mean to come across as rude, but with politics labels and terminology matters - the simple use of words like "leftist", "liberal", "conservative" etc. in countries like America is what has reduced the discourse to the partisan /pol/ versus tumblr babble that consumes most of Veeky Forums these days. If you're not specific you'll just sound like another shitflinger rather than someone who wants to genuinely share their ideas.
Nathaniel Cooper
Terminology has always been confusing for me. I'll often accidentally use terms that I think are very broad and generally applicable, then get a massive negative backlash when people think I'm trying to make some completely unrelated statement. Back to the discussion though, perhaps I need to re-read romantic era literature and try to remove modern stuff from my mind completely. It just makes me needlessly salty.
Adam Powell
>being an american >knowing what the word leftist means Pick at most one.
Ayden Morales
>have wife that works, want her to be successful >have two daughters, want them to be good students with a secure life >suddenly, am american leftist
Colton Walker
Sorry, I shouldn't have attacked you for your opinion on Romanticism. I just disagree with the interpretation. Just because there is an abundance of emotion, doesn't mean there is a lack of logic, and it doesn't mean that logic is extreme left. Certainly not the extreme left of today.
I understand why you'd think this because that's how it appears in your news feed and on television and what you're seeing every day on campus but, as others here have already iterated, you shouldn't read /pol/ or feminists on Twitter or college morons on Facebook and then read a Romantic-era poem and assume they mean the same thing because it is, "emotional and stuff."
It's cool that you like the more modernist era best. No judgment. You're young, so it's understandable that you're into people like Eliot and Owen (war poems and disillusionment and all that). Best advice I can give you would be to reread Whitman, who was more of a blend between the Romantics and the Realists and, arguably, the finest example of American Poetry. Whitman can help you understand where Romantic "logic" lies because he uses common language to emphasize common principles expressed in an "emotional" way.
It was in Whitman that I first started to understand Poetry better, actually. So, yeah, tl;dr: Read Whitman.
Jose Jenkins
Wow. This just settles my thoughts. And yeah, I'm a young college student in a post-modern world, so obviously I'll relate to modernist writers more easily. I'll do that, thanks user.
John Edwards
The crazy thing with Shakespeare is you can do both. He was, is, and probably always will be the best.
um...wut?
Zachary Kelly
Really? Cause the second I started imagining a play going on in my head, scenes and stuff, I found it significantly more enjoyable. Then again, I do that with everything, perhaps I was trying too hard to dissect and analyze his stuff rather than just read. I was first exposed to him in high school, though, so that probably explains my initial distress.
Robert Adams
>I was first exposed to him in high school, though, so that probably explains my initial distress.
It's amazing how many people I hear this from. How much they hated/ignored him because of high school. Somebody in a higher position of power than me should look into this and maybe think about changing it.
>Cause the second I started imagining a play going on in my head, scenes and stuff, I found it significantly more enjoyable. Then again, I do that with everything, perhaps I was trying too hard to dissect and analyze his stuff rather than just read.
However you got into it is fine by me and it's good that you did. There are some people who think Hamlet, for example, is the greatest play, poem, and novel ever written. All three at once. And I don't have a good argument against them. It probably is.
Kevin Thompson
Lol, OP's mind runs on memes
Sebastian Russell
>radical >liberal Smh
Christopher Adams
Christ I should re-read all of it then.
Kevin Gomez
>Lots of abundant emotion in writing but very little logic. vomit.jpg