Modernism In James Thomson's The City Of Dreadful Night
It was filthy; chockful of human waste, smoke, and sickness. Robert Southey, an English Romantic poet, wrote after witnessing Manchester’s decline, that industrialization led Manchester to become a place where one only hears, “the everlasting din of machinery, and where; when the bell rings, it is to call the wretches to their work instead of their prayers” (Document #1). It is true that as people moved away from their home churches and to the cities, church attendance declined. The duty of work became constant and life was miserable for many of the working class. Southey, as a romantic, is expectedly biased against industrialization because of the romantic nostalgia and sentimentalism towards the past.
The narrator’s changing understanding of the inevitability of death across the two sections of the poem illustrates the dynamic and contrasting nature of the human
During the Renaissance, Europeans rediscovered the ideas of the Greeks and Romans, including the individualist, humanist,and rationalist beliefs. Prior to the 1300’s, it was human nature to have a life revolved around the Church. When the Rebirth started in Italy, people started valuing education, art and writing, a secular life rather than one ruled by religion. However, not all non religious people had the same philosophies on life. Many Renaissance Thinkers believed in individualism, humanism, and rationalism.
As Europe exited the Middle Ages, an era known as the Renaissance began, which was the most influential period of European history, and the effects of this era can still be felt today. The Renaissance, which is French for “rebirth,” was a period of prosperity and cultural revival in Europe. As feudalism broke down and learning spread, the main topics strayed away from religion to other ideals. The Renaissance notably changed man’s perspective of both himself and the world around him. As education became more accessible during the Renaissance, people’s lives began to stop revolving around religion, and instead focused on art, literature, and science.
One may think these conditions only applied to the poorest members of society, but, in fact, entire cities of people were living like this. Manchester, for instance, seen to be the center of English industry and production, changed dramatically because of urbanization and industrialization. The English Poet Robert Southey, in Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, comments on Manchester that it has “...this multitude crowded together in narrow streets, the houses built of brick and blackened with smoke: frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty….”(Document Q). Here, Robert Southey is comparing the older, bucolic and pastoral England with the modern cities in which productivity and profit is valued above maintaining an environment conducive to people’s health and happiness.
The sixteenth century America is primarily dominated by the Puritan idealism, but slowly through the year’s things are changing both in the religion and culture. In human nature the constant need for change is captivating, a change towards something new and different than the current. The events of the growing and changing eighteenth century America reflect just that. Ideas of the Enlightenment take deep root in the transformation of ideas about human’s relationship to God and to nature. Therefore, a deeply religious society starts transforming into a more secular culture, but religion still has quite a large influence.
Coming Suddenly By To The Big Apple After my English teacher assigned my class “Coming Suddenly To The Sea” by Louis Dudek. As Spring Break homework. I was not incredibly excited. To me, it was at first, just another poem exhausted with an adjective and a guy excited about finding seaweed. Definitely not what I wanted to reflect upon or relate to while on holiday.
There is the idea of a city, and the city itself, too great to be held in the mind. And it is in this gap (between the conceptual and the real) that aggression begins” is central to Saunders’ essay, due to the fact that this quote illustrates Saunders’ message that people tend to have misconceptions generated from their own limited experience and misconceptions can easily lead to conflicts and aggression if handled
This unit called Urban Excursions has the common theme of traveling to a place and describing it to the reader in a very detailed way. I chose two essays which I compare and contrast. The first being “Bombing Sarajevo” by Dimiter Kenarov and the other “The Pippiest Place on Earth” by Sam Anderson. These two artist have an incredible way of making the reader sense the environment around them. They both use different ways of describing the places, but that is expected as different places have different characteristics.
Unlike last poem, this time the narrator is not a mirror, because she has the ability to “pinch” and “look at myself in the mirror”, however, this narrator’s attitude is very similar to a mirror: she does not feel the pain and suffering of herself or other people, but it appears that she does not want this, because she is “frightened” by it. Then the narrator headed to the “streets”, where all kinds of misery happen: loud “shouts”; “children with dirty faces”, they are apparently very poor, because they “ask for charity”, even sell their body for money; also there are “tanks” and soldiers with “bayonets”, so the narrator is in a war zone. After she saw the terrible scene, she can “feel” and “hurt”, but soon she “feel nothing” again, the surroundings
During the late 17th and 18th centuries, Europe was going through a cultural and intellectual change and movement, known as the Enlightenment. During this time, writers, philosophers, and politicians heavily defended newer and modern ways of thinking. These ideas and people would eventually set the standards for today’s world and way of thought. The writers, philosophers, and politicians of this age went above and beyond to champion modern ways of thinking.
Birch describes a “darkened” (5) Melbourne, that despite not being “a bombsite”(1), is still “a city of cold light and benign shadows” (4-5), displaying the negative history associated with the city. In his poem, Birch examines that although Melbourne was not “among the rubble” (3) post World War II, it shared a similar pattern of destruction in the form of the devastation brought upon the Indigenous population at the time of the British Colonization. This concept links Burton Pike text The Image of the City in Modern Literature, in which Pike claims every city in the world has its own “individual history” (3), however cities “all seem to exemplify similar patterns” (3). This identifies that the formation of a city follows a general historical structure, and can be seen through Birch’s comparison of Europe’s involvement in WWII with the Colonization of Australia.
Comparative Essay How can different perceptions about one topic be expressed in poetry? The main theme that the two sets of poems convey is war, but it’s expressed in different point of views through the use of diction that builds tone. The tones of these poems play a big role in conveying the differences between the different eras that these poems are written in, and shows how societies have changed from the Victorian era till the time of World War I. The diction and tone in Borden and Owen’s poems is so much different than the diction and tone in Lovelace and Tennyson’s poems due to different perspectives and point of views. In all four poems the main idea is war, but each set conveys a perspective of war, a positive perspective
In “The Trouble with Poetry” the speaker touches on the same idea of how poetry is so forced, and how it has lost its meaning as an expression and has become more of an addiction among
In “Acquainted with the Night”, it embodies the abyss of despair that the narrator finds themselves in. The poem centers on the qualities of the night, and the night’s defining characteristic is its never-ending darkness. The poem’s very title shows how deeply bogged down in darkness the narrator is; the speaker has, ironically, become friends with it. The motif of darkness manifests itself in other examples as well. The speaker writes, “I have outwalked the furthest city light,” showing that he or she has transcended the limits of a normal person’s misfortune and instead exposed himself to complete and utter desperation (3).
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