Intro to The Romantic Period Essay Example for Free

Intro to The Romantic Period Essay At the turn of the century, fired by ideas of personal and political liberty and of the energy and sublimity of the natural world, artists and intellectuals sought to break the bonds of 18th-century convention. Although the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its aftermath had the strongest impact of all. In England initial support for the Revolution was primarily utopian and idealist, and when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals renounced the Revolution. However, the romantic vision had taken forms other than political, and these developed apace. In Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), a watershed in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented and illustrated a beneficial visual: poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination; the truest experience was to be found in nature. The concept of the Sublime strengthened this turn to nature, because in wild countrysides the power of the sublime could be felt most immediately. Wordsworths romanticism is probably most fully realized in his great autobiographical poem, The Prelude (1805–50). In search of sublime moments, romantic poets wrote about the marvelous and supernatural, the exotic, and the medieval. But they also found beauty in the lives of simple rural people and aspects of the everyday world. The second generation of romantic poets included John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. In Keatss great odes, intellectual and emotional sensibility merge in language of great power and beauty. Shelley, who combined soaring lyricism with an apocalyptic political vision, sought more extreme effects and occasionally achieved them, as in his great drama Prometheus Unbound (1820). Lord Byron was the prototypical romantic hero, the envy and scandal of the age. He has been continually identified with his own characters, particularly the rebellious, irreverent, erotically inclined Don Juan. Byron invested the romantic lyric with a rationalist irony. The romantic era was also rich in literary criticism and other nonfictional prose. Coleridge proposed an influential theory of literature in his Biographia Literaria (1817). William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote ground–breaking books on human, and womens, rights. William Hazlitt, who never forsook political radicalism, wrote brilliant and astute literary  criticism. The master of the personal essay was Charles Lamb, whereas Thomas De Quincey was master of the personal confession. The periodicals Edinburgh Review and Blackwoods Magazine, in which leading writers were published throughout the century, were major forums of controversy, political as well as literary. - Although the great novelist Jane Austen wrote during the romantic era, her work defies classification. With insight, grace, and irony she delineated human relationships within the context of English country life. Sir Walter Scott, Scottish nationalist and romantic, made the genre of the historical novel widely popular. Other novelists of the period were Maria Edgeworth, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Thomas Love Peacock, the latter noted for his eccentric novels satirizing the romantics. The Romantic period The nature of Romanticism As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, â€Å"Romantic† is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled â€Å"Romantic movement† at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. Not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Vienna lectures of 1808–09 was a clear distinction established between the  Ã¢â‚¬Å"organic,† â€Å"plastic† qualities of Romantic art and the â€Å"mechanical† character of Classicism. Many of the age’s foremost writers thought that something new was happening in the world’s affairs, nevertheless. William Blake’s affirmation in 1793 that â€Å"a new heaven is begun† was matched a generation later by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s â€Å"The world’s great age begins anew.† â€Å"These, these will give the world another heart, / A nd other pulses,† wrote John Keats, referring to Leigh Hunt andWilliam Wordsworth. Fresh ideals came to the fore; in particular, the ideal of freedom, long cherished in England, was being extended to every range of human endeavour. As that ideal swept through Europe, it became natural to believe that the age of tyrants might soon end. The most notable feature of the poetry of the time is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling. Where the main trend of 18th-century poetics had been to praise the general, to see the poet as a spokesman of society addressing a cultivated and homogeneous audience and having as his end the conveyance of â€Å"truth,† the Romantics found the source of poetry in the particular, unique experience. Blake’s marginal comment on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses expresses the position with characteristic vehemence: â€Å"To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the alone Distinction of Merit.† The poet was seen as an individual distinguished from his fellows by the intensity of his perceptions, taking as his basic subject matter the workings of his own mind. Poetry was regarded as conveying its own truth; sincerity was the criterion by which it was to be judged. The emphasis on feeling—seen perhaps at its finest in the poems of Robert Burns—was in some ways a continuation of the earlier â€Å"cult of sensibility†; and it is worth remembering that Alexander Pope praised his father as having known no language but the language of the heart. But feeling had begun to receive particular emphasis and is found in most of the Romantic definitions of poetry. Wordsworth called poetry â€Å"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,† and in 1833 John Stuart Mill defined poetry as â€Å"feeling itself, employing thought only as the medium of its utterance.† It followed that the best poetry was that in which the greatest intensity of feeling was expressed, and hence a new importance was attached to the lyric. Another key quality of Romantic writing was its shift from the mimetic, or imitative, assumptions of the Neoclassical era to a new stress onimagination. Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw  the imagination as the supre me poetic quality, a quasi-divine creative force that made the poet a godlike being. Samuel Johnson had seen the components of poetry as â€Å"invention, imagination and judgement,† but Blake wrote: â€Å"One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision.† The poets of this period accordingly placed great emphasis on the workings of the unconscious mind, on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive view of the world, this last being regarded as valuable because its clarity and intensity had not been overlaid by the restrictions of civilized â€Å"reason.† Rousseau’s sentimental conception of the â€Å"noble savage† was often invoked, and often by those who were ignorant that the phrase is Dryden’s or that the type was adumbrated in the â€Å"poor Indian† of Pope’s An Essay on Man. A further sign of the diminished stress placed on judgment is the Romantic attitude to form: if poetry must be spontaneous, sincere, intense, it should be fashioned primarily according to th e dictates of the creative imagination. Wordsworth advised a young poet, â€Å"You feel strongly; trust to those feelings, and your poem will take its shape and proportions as a tree does from the vital principle that actuates it.† This organic view of poetry is opposed to the classical theory of â€Å"genres,† each with its own linguistic decorum; and it led to the feeling that poetic sublimity was unattainable except in short passages. Hand in hand with the new conception of poetry and the insistence on a new subject matter went a demand for new ways of writing. Wordsworth and his followers, particularly Keats, found the prevailing poetic diction of the late 18th century stale and stilted, or â€Å"gaudy and inane,† and totally unsuited to the expression of their perceptions. It could not be, for them, the language of feeling, and Wordsworth accordingly sought to bring the language of poetry back to that of common speech. Wordsworth’s own diction, however, often differs from his theory. Nevertheless, when he published his preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800, the time was ripe for a change: the flexible diction of earlier 18th-century poetry had hardened into a merely conventional language. Poetry BLAKE, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE Useful as it is to trace the common elements in Romantic poetry, there was little conformity among the poets themselves. It is misleading to read the poetry of the first Romantics as if it had been written primarily to express  their feelings. Their concern was rather to change the intellectual climate of the age. William Blake had been dissatisfied since boyhood with the current state of poetry and what he considered the irreligious drabness of contemporary thought. His early development of a protective shield of mocking humour with which to face a world in which science had become trifling and art inconsequential is visible in the satirical An Island in the Moon (written c. 1784–85); he then took the bolder step of setting aside sophistication in the visionary Songs of Innocence (1789). His desire for renewal encouraged him to view the outbreak of the French Revolution as a momentous event. In works such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–93) and Songs of Expe rience (1794), he attacked the hypocrisies of the age and the impersonal cruelties resulting from the dominance of analytic reason in contemporary thought. As it became clear that the ideals of the Revolution were not likely to be realized in his time, he renewed his efforts to revise his contemporaries’ view of the universe and to construct a new mythology centred not in the God of the Bible but in Urizen, a repressive figure of reason and law whom he believed to be the deity actually worshipped by his contemporaries. The story of Urizen’s rise was set out in The First Book of Urizen (1794) and then, more ambitiously, in the unfinished manuscript Vala (later redrafted as The Four Zoas), written from about 1796 to about 1807. Blake developed these ideas in the visionary narratives of Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20). Here, still using his own mythological characters, he portrayed the imaginative artist as the hero of society and suggested the possibility of redemption from the fallen (or Urizenic) condition. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, meanwhile, were also exploring the implication s of the French Revolution. Wordsworth, who lived in France in 1791–92 and fathered an illegitimate child there, was distressed when, soon after his return, Britain declared war on the republic, dividing his allegiance. For the rest of his career, he was to brood on those events, trying to develop a view of humanity that would be faithful to his twin sense of the pathos of individual human fates and the unrealized potentialities in humanity as a whole. The first factor emerges in his early manuscript poems â€Å"The Ruined Cottage† and â€Å"The Pedlar† (both to form part of the later Excursion); the second was developed from 1797, when he and his sister, Dorothy, with whom he was living in the west  of England, were in close contact with Coleridge. Stirred simultaneously by Dorothy’s immediacy of feeling, manifested everywhere in her Journals (written 1798–1803, published 1897), and by Coleridge’s imaginative and speculative genius, he produced the poems collected in Lyrical Ballads(1798). The volume began with Coleridge’s â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,† continued with poems displaying delight in the powers of nature and the humane instincts of ordinary people, and concluded with the meditative â€Å"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,† Wordsworth’s attempt to set out his mature faith in nature and humanity. His investigation of the relationship between nature and the human mind continued in the long autobiographical poem addressed to Coleridge and later titled The Prelude (1798–99 in two books; 1804 in five books; 1805 in 13 books; revised continuously and published posthumously, 1850). Here he traced the value for a poet of having been a child â€Å"fostered alike by beauty and by fear† by an upbringing in sublime surroundings. The Prelude constitutes the most significant English expression of the Romantic discovery of the self as a topic for art and literature. The poem also makes much of the work of memory, a theme explored as well in the â€Å"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.† In poems such as â€Å"Michael† and â€Å"The Brothers,† by contrast, written for the second volume of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth dwelt on the pathos and potentialities of ordinary lives. Coleridge’s poetic development during these years paralleled Wordsworth’s. Having briefly brought together images of nature and the mind in â€Å"The Eolian Harp† (1796), he devoted himself to more-public concerns in poems of political and social prophecy, such as â€Å"Religious Musings† and â€Å"The Destiny of Nations.† Becoming disillusioned in 1798 with his earlier politics, however, and encouraged by Wordsworth, he turned back to the relatio nship between nature and the human mind. Poems such as â€Å"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,† â€Å"The Nightingale,† and â€Å"Frost at Midnight† (now sometimes called the â€Å"conversation poems† but collected by Coleridge himself as â€Å"Meditative Poems in Blank Verse†) combine sensitive descriptions of nature with subtlety of psychological comment. â€Å"Kubla Khan† (1797 or 1798, published 1816), a poem that Coleridge said came to him in â€Å"a kind of Reverie,† represented a new kind of exotic writing, which he also exploited in the supernaturalism of â€Å"The Ancient Mariner† and the unfinished  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Christabel.† After his visit to Germany in 1798–99, he renewed attention to the links between the subtler forces in nature and the human psyche; this attention bore fruit in letters, notebooks, literary criticism, theology, and philosophy. Simultaneously, his poetic output became sporadic. â€Å"Dejection: An Ode† (1802), another meditat ive poem, which first took shape as a verse letter to Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, memorably describes the suspension of his â€Å"shaping spirit of Imagination.† The work of both poets was directed back to national affairs during these years by the rise ofNapoleon. In 1802 Wordsworth dedicated a number of sonnets to the patriotic cause. The death in 1805 of his brother John, who was a captain in the merchant navy, was a grim reminder that, while he had been living in retirement as a poet, others had been willing to sacrifice themselves. From this time the theme of duty was to be prominent in his poetry. His political essay Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal†¦as Affected by the Convention of Cintra (1809) agreed with Coleridge’s periodical The Friend (1809–10) in deploring the decline of principle among statesmen. When The Excursion appeared in 1814 (the time of Napoleon’s first exile), Wordsworth announced the poem as the central section of a longer projected work, The Recluse, â€Å"a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society.† The plan was not fulfilled, however, and The Excursion was left to stand in its own right as a poem of moral and religious consolation for those who had been disappointed by the failure of French revolutionary ideals. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge benefited from the advent in 1811 of the Regency, which brought a renewed interest in the arts. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare became fashionable, his playRemorse was briefly produced, and his volume of poems Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep was published in 1816. Biographia Literaria (1817), an account of his own development, combined philosophy and literary criticism in a new way and made an enduring and important contribution to literary theory. Coleridge settled at Highgate in 1816, and he was sought there as â€Å"the most impressive talker of his age† (in the words of the essayist William Hazlitt). His later religious writings made a considerable impact on Victorian readers. No other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion over its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism, then, can best be described as a large network of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. In England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the end of the eighteenth century up through about 1870. Its primary vehicle of expression was in poetry, although novelists adopted many of the same themes. In America, the Romantic Movement was slightly delayed and modulated, holding sway over arts and letters from roughly 1830 up to the Civil War. Contrary to the English example, American literature championed the novel as the most fitting genre for Romanticism’s exposition. In a broader sense, Romanticism can be conceived as an adjective which is applicable to the literature of virtually any time period. With that in mind, anything from the Homeric epics to modern dime novels can be said to bear the stamp of Romanticism. In spite of such general disagreements over usage, there are some definitive and universal statements one can make regarding the nature of the Romantic Movement in both England and America. First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. The individual consciousness and especially the individual imagination are especially fascinating for the Romantics. â€Å"Melancholy† was quite the buzzword for the Romantic poets, and altered states of consciousness were often sought after in order to enhance one’s creative potential. There was a coincident downgrading of the importance and power of reason, clearly a reaction against the Enlightenment mode of thinking. Nevertheless, writers became gradually more invested in social causes as the period moved forward. Thanks largely to the Industrial Revolution, English society was undergoing the most severe paradigm shifts it had seen in living memory. The response of many early Romantics was to yearn for an idealized, simpler past. In particular, English Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology. The tales of King Arthur were especially resonant to their imaginations. On top of this, there was a clearly mystical quality to Romantic writing that sets it apart from other literary periods. Of course, not every Romantic poet or novelist displayed all, or even most of these traits all the time. On the formal  level, Romanticism witnessed a steady loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were pervasive during earlier times. The Neoclassical Period of the eighteenth century included very strict expectations regarding the structure and content of poetry. By the dawn of the nineteenth century, experimentation with new styles and subjects became much more acceptable. The high-flown language of the previous generation’s poets was replaced with more natural cadences and verbiage. In terms of poetic form, rhymed stanzas were slowly giving way to blank verse, an unrhymed but still rhythmic style of poetry. The purpose of blank verse was to heighten conversational speech to the level of austere beauty. Some criticized the new style as mundane, yet the innovation soon became the preferred style. One of the most popular themes of Romantic poetry was country life, otherwise known as pastoral poetry. Mythological and fantastic settings were also employed to great effect by many of the Romantic poets. Though struggling and unknown for the bulk of his life, poet and artist William Blake was certainly one of the most creative minds of his generation. He was well ahead of his time, predating the high point of English Romanticism by several decades. His greatest work was composed during the 1790s, in the shadow of the French Revolution, and that confrontation informed much of his creative process. Throughout his artistic career, Blake gradually built up a sort of personal mythology of creation and imagination. The Old and New Testaments were his source material, but his own sensibilities transfigured the Biblical stories and led to something entirely original and completely misunderstood by contemporaries. He attempted to woo patrons to his side, yet his unstable temper made him rather difficult to work with professionally. Some considered him mad. In addition to writing poetry of the first order, Blake was also a master engraver. His greatest contributions to Romantic literature were his self-published, quasi-mythological illustrated poetry collections. Gloriously colored and painstaking in their design, few of these were produced and fewer still survive to the present day. However, the craft and genius behind a work like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell cannot be ignored. If one could identify a single voice as the standard-bearer of Romantic sensibilities, that voice would belong to William Wordsworth. His publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is identified by many as the opening act of the Romantic Period in English literature. It was a hugely successful  work, requiring several reprinting over the years. The dominant theme of Lyrical Ballads was Nature, specifically the power of Nature to create strong impressions in the mind and imagination. The voice in Wordsworth’s poetry is observant, meditative and aware of the connection between living things and objects. There is the sense that past, present, and future all mix together in the human consciousness. One feels as though the poet and the landscape are in communion, each a partner in an act of creative production. Wordsworth quite deliberately turned his back on the Enlightenment traditions of poetry, specifically the work of Alexander Pope. He instead looked more to the Renaissance and the Classics of Greek and Latin epic poetry for inspiration. His work was noted for its accessibility. The undeniable commercial success of LyricalBallads does not diminish the profound effect it had on an entire generation of aspiring writers. In the United State, Romanticism found its voice in the poets and novelists of the American Renaissance. The beginnings of American Romanticism went back to the New England Transcendental Movement. The concentration on the individual mind gradually shifted from an optimistic brand of spiritualism into a more modern, cynical study of the underside of humanity. The political unrest in mid-nineteenth century America undoubtedly played a role in the development of a darker aesthetic. At the same time, strongly individualist religious traditions played a large part in the development of artistic creations. The Protestant work ethic, along with the popularity and fervor of American religious leaders, fed a literary output that was undergird with fire and brimstone. The middle of the nineteenth century has only in retrospect earned the label of the American Renaissance in literature. No one alive in the 1850s quite realized the flowering of creativity that was underway. In fact, the novelists who today are regarded as classic were virtually unknown during their lifetimes. The novelists working during this period, particularly Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, were crafting dens ely symbolic and original pieces of literature that nonetheless relied heavily upon the example of English Romanticism. However, there work was in other respects a clean break with any permutation of Romanticism that had come before. There was a darkness to American Romanticism that was clearly distinct from the English examples of earlier in the century. Herman Melville died penniless and unknown, a failed writer who recognized his own  brilliance even when others did not. It would take the Modernists and their reappraisal of American arts and letters to resuscitate Melville’s literary corpus. In novels like Benito Cereno and Moby Dick, Melville employed a dense fabric of hinted meanings and symbols that required close reading and patience. Being well-read himself, Melville’s writing betrays a deep understanding of history, mythology, and religion. With Moby Dick, Melville displays his research acumen, as in the course of the novel the reader learns more than they thought possible about whales and whaling. The novel itself is dark, mysterious, and hints at the supernatural. Superficia lly, the novel is a revenge tale, but over and above the narrative are meditations of madness, power, and the nature of being human. Interestingly, the narrator in the first few chapters of the novel more or less disappears for most of the book. He is in a sense swallowed up by the mania of Captain Ahab and the crew. Although the novel most certainly held sway, poetry was not utterly silent during the flowering of American Romanticism. Arguably the greatest poet in American literary history was Walt Whitman, and he took his inspiration from many of the same sources as his fellows working in the novel. His publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855 marked a critical moment in the history of poetry. Whitman’s voice in his poetry was infused with the spirit of democracy. He attempted to include all people in all corners of the Earth within the sweep of his poetic vision. Like Blake, Whitman’s brand of poetics was cosmological and entirely unlike anything else being produced at the time. Like the rest of the poets in the Romantic tradition, Whitman coined new words, and brought a diction and rhythmic style t o verse that ran counter to the aesthetics of the last century. Walt Whitman got his start as a writer in journalism, and that documentary style of seeing the world permeated all his creative endeavors. In somewhat of a counterpoint to Whitman’s democratic optimism stands Edgar Allen Poe, today recognized as the most purely Romantic poet and short story writer of his generation. Poe crafted fiction and poetry that explored the strange side of human nature. The English Romantics had a fascination with the grotesque and of â€Å"strange† beauty, and Poe adopted this aesthetic perspective willingly. His sing-song rhythms and dreary settings earned him criticism on multiple fronts, but his creativity earned him a place in the first rank of American artists. He is credited as the inventor of detective fiction, and was likewise one of the  original masters of horror. A sometimes overlooked contribution, Poe’s theories on literature are often required reading for students of the art form. The master of symbolism in American litera ture was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of his novels represents worlds imbued with the power of suggestion and imagination. The Scarlet Letter is often placed alongside Moby Dick as one of the greatest novels in the English language. Not a single word is out of place, and the dense symbolism opens the work up to multiple interpretations. There are discussions of guilt, family, honor, politics, and society. There is also Hawthorne’s deep sense of history. Modern readers often believe that The Scarlet Letter was written during the age of the Puritans, but in fact Hawthorne wrote a story that was in the distant past even in his own time. Another trademark of the novel is its dabbling in the supernatural, even the grotesque. One gets the sense, for example, that maybe something is not quite right with Hester’s daughter Pearl. Nothing is what it appears to be in The Scarlet Letter, and that is the essence of Hawthorne’s particular Romanticism. Separate from his literary production, Hawthorne wrote expansively on literary theory and criticism. His theories exemplify the Romantic spirit in American letters at mid-century. He espoused the conviction that objects can hold significance deeper than their apparent meaning, and that the symbolic nature of reality was the most fertile ground for literature. In his short stories especially, Hawthorne explored the complex system of meanings and sensations that shift in and out of a person’s consciousness. Throughout his writings, one gets a sense of darkness, if not outright pessimism. There is the sense of not fully understanding the world, of not getting the entire picture no matter how hard one tries. In a story like â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† neither the reader nor the protagonist can distinguish reality from fantasy with any sureness. As has been argued, Romanticism as a literary sensibility never completely disappeared. It was overtaken by other aesthetic paradigms like Realism and Modernism, but Romanticism was always lurking under the surface. Many great poets and novelists of the twentieth century cite the Romantics as their greatest inspirational voices. The primary reason that Romanticism fell out of the limelight is because many writers felt the need to express themselves in a more immediate way. The Romantic poets were regarded as innovators, but a bit lost in their own imaginations. The real problems of  life in the world seemed to be pushed aside. As modernization continued unchecked, a more earthy kind of literature was demanded, and the Romantics simply did not fit that bill.

Arthurian Features in That Hideous Strength Essay -- Hideous Strength

Arthurian Features in That Hideous Strength  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Tales change with every teller. Features may be added or subtracted, stories may be broken apart or combined. Often the story-teller will adapt the tale for his own purposes to emphasize some theme of his own. C. S. Lewis uses and modifies older sources in many ways in his novel That Hideous Strength, incorporating themes and portions of Arthurian literature to add color and emphasize the subjects of his plot.    Lewis includes many direct references to older Arthurian literature in his novel. The leader of his group of heroes is the former philogist Ransom, at first known as "Mr. Fisher-King," who has a wounded foot. The name and the wound are obvious reminders of the Fisher-King myth which produces the quest for the Holy Grail in Malory, and the allusion is further supported when for his meal he is served only "a small flacon of red wine, and a roll of bread" (Lewis, p. 149) -- reminders of the Last Supper and the resulting relics that the Fisher-King is associated with. Lewis' tale differs in that the Fisher-King is the same person as the Pendragon. Yet his tale also combines a quest for holy things (eldilic help through Merlin) to heal the sickness of the land with a great, climactic battle against evil, thus merging the two characters' functions as well as their attributes. Also, as in earlier versions of the story, the Pendragon disappears after his final battle is completed, and the cr owning conflict itself takes place in a dense fog which obscures everything.    When Merlin arrives, his full name is given as Merlinus Ambrosius, the name he is given in one of his earliest appearances in Arthurian literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Reg... ...e medieval world may have been closer, in a way, to the truths of the universe than most of us modern, advanced, proud, scientific, atheistic, ambitious people. Science can be a great blessing, but only if it is used correctly and for the good of all humanity and, more importantly, all creation. Though Lewis deals with small, unimportant people -- fellows of small colleges and maids from small towns -- he places them in a setting and situation of Arthurian scope, and thus brings out the great nobility of ordinary man.       Works Cited Lewis, Clive Staples. That Hideous Strength. Macmillan Publishing Co.: New York, NY (1946). Malory, Sir Thomas. Works. Eugene Vinaver, ed. Second edition. Oxford University Press: New York, NY (1971). White, T. H. The Once and Future King. The Berkley Publishing Group: New York, NY (1958).    Arthurian Features in That Hideous Strength Essay -- Hideous Strength Arthurian Features in That Hideous Strength  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Tales change with every teller. Features may be added or subtracted, stories may be broken apart or combined. Often the story-teller will adapt the tale for his own purposes to emphasize some theme of his own. C. S. Lewis uses and modifies older sources in many ways in his novel That Hideous Strength, incorporating themes and portions of Arthurian literature to add color and emphasize the subjects of his plot.    Lewis includes many direct references to older Arthurian literature in his novel. The leader of his group of heroes is the former philogist Ransom, at first known as "Mr. Fisher-King," who has a wounded foot. The name and the wound are obvious reminders of the Fisher-King myth which produces the quest for the Holy Grail in Malory, and the allusion is further supported when for his meal he is served only "a small flacon of red wine, and a roll of bread" (Lewis, p. 149) -- reminders of the Last Supper and the resulting relics that the Fisher-King is associated with. Lewis' tale differs in that the Fisher-King is the same person as the Pendragon. Yet his tale also combines a quest for holy things (eldilic help through Merlin) to heal the sickness of the land with a great, climactic battle against evil, thus merging the two characters' functions as well as their attributes. Also, as in earlier versions of the story, the Pendragon disappears after his final battle is completed, and the cr owning conflict itself takes place in a dense fog which obscures everything.    When Merlin arrives, his full name is given as Merlinus Ambrosius, the name he is given in one of his earliest appearances in Arthurian literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Reg... ...e medieval world may have been closer, in a way, to the truths of the universe than most of us modern, advanced, proud, scientific, atheistic, ambitious people. Science can be a great blessing, but only if it is used correctly and for the good of all humanity and, more importantly, all creation. Though Lewis deals with small, unimportant people -- fellows of small colleges and maids from small towns -- he places them in a setting and situation of Arthurian scope, and thus brings out the great nobility of ordinary man.       Works Cited Lewis, Clive Staples. That Hideous Strength. Macmillan Publishing Co.: New York, NY (1946). Malory, Sir Thomas. Works. Eugene Vinaver, ed. Second edition. Oxford University Press: New York, NY (1971). White, T. H. The Once and Future King. The Berkley Publishing Group: New York, NY (1958).   

Epic Hero and the Values of the Society Essay

The hero of an epic is characterized by their extraordinary abilities and strength which helped them to meet all the challenges they need to face along their journey. They are the main subjects of these long narrative epic poems. The epic hero is separated from the rest of the people. They are being admired by others for their ability to do what ordinary man would not attempt to do. The birth of these heroes was taken account into. These men are destined to play an important role in their society. They also became the reflection of the values of their society. Epic heroes are mythical characters taken from the ancient times. These heroes are larger-than-life because of their impressive and heroic deeds that can surpass what ordinary man can do. More specifically an epic hero must posses certain qualities to recognize him as a real epic hero. They must possess great physical strength. They are more clever and cunning than the ordinary. They are adventurous and brave. They are not easily intimidated or frightened by the challenges ahead of them. They have goals and are highly determined to attain their quest for something they believed is of great value for him and to his people. They are victorious most of the time with the battles they encounter. Their success gave them recognition. Their society may choose him to be their rightful leader or ruler because of the marvelous thing they proved they can do. After learning this things about an epic hero one can observed among epic poems this pattern of the heroes characteristic. They seem to be similar in many ways. Along with other epic heroes of all times are the names like Beowulf, Gilgamesh and Odysseus. Looking at how each of the heroes had transformed themselves through the various test and preparation they undertake before they are recognize as heroic leaders. They come from different backgrounds and culture which they typically embodies. Beowulf: the Old English Epic Who is Beowulf? What was his exploits? What values where important in his society? These are the questions that will guide us to discover more about the epic hero Beowulf. This epic poem had been written in England though the setting of the story could have been in Scandinavia. Beowulf as many knew is one of the most important surviving Anglo-Saxon classic literatures. This epic was believed to have been written between the 8th and 11th centuries. (Foster, 2003) Beowulf was recognized as a Geat. He was known by others as a super human. One of his greatest achievements was when he defeated Grendel in an encounter. Beowulf fought one-on-one with Grendel which was known as a monster an enemy of the people of that time. Beowulf came to rescue the people of that kingdom from Grendel. To show his successful defeat of Grendel he brought home Grendel’s head. During the struggle, he won because of the help of a magical giant sword. Beowulf then also battle with Grendel’s mother who was plunge deep into the earth. He faced alone the monster found in the underworld. After he won in this adventure he didn’t become immediately the new king. He fought for the throne along with King Hygelac. King Hygelac died during a raid and was then offered the throne but he refused and let the king’s son inherit the throne. Because of his many heroic acts the Danes were please. The Danes and the Geats are then united. The people now anticipated Beowulf to be their new king. He must face other more dangers to prove himself worthy to be called the King of the Geats. His last battle involved a fight with a dragon. By that time he was in old age and has been ruling the Geats when the dragon came and threatened his kingdom. He needs to defeat this dragon to save his people from danger. He must risk his own life to achieve his goal of saving the kingdom. In this battle he successfully killed the dragon but it left him seriously wounded. He then had to face his death. Odysseus: The Greek Mythical Hero After Beowulf is another famous epic hero by the name of Odysseus. Odysseus also with Latin name Ulysses was the reigning ruler of the island kingdom of Ithaca. (Hunter, 1997) unlike Beowulf this man was already enthroned as a king. In the Trojan War he was the key heroic figure meaning he was among the well known leaders of the Trojan War. Odysseus was actually reluctant to join the expedition. Even if he doesn’t want to join the battle he still fought heroically in the Trojan War. He even led the dangerous nocturnal raid together with Diomedes. It was believed that Odysseus was one of the originators of the Trojan horse which were used by the Greeks to finally take over the city of Troy. His journey was specially guided by divine intervention. After the Trojan War Odysseus next quest is to successfully return home with his family. Now returning back on his family was his main goal but the journey is very difficult and there are many things he needed to pass through. He also needs to face the underworld just like Beowulf who fought in the world of the dead. The difference with Odysseus is that he didn’t fight but rather talk and ask some questions. In this journey he came to the point that he need to choose between mortality and immortality. He chose mortality because he wants his home together with his wife Penelope. Going back home he encountered various tragedies like when his ship was destroyed by a thunderbolt and a storm and when he was trapped in island of the Nymph Calypso. Many things have happened after the war and on the way home. When Odysseus came at last he found that there were problems in Ithaca also. It took about twenty years before he successfully returned to his home. He found out that his wife Penelope had remained faithful to him all through those years even though there are pressures for her to get married again. He arrived at the palace and found the suitors of his wife. He pretended to be a beggar and destroyed all of them afterwards.

Willis Johnson and the Egg Beater Invention

African-American Willis Johnson of Cincinnati,  Ohio, patented and improved the mechanical egg beater (U.S. pat# 292,821) on February 5, 1884. The beater was made up of a handle attached to a series of spring-like whisk wires used to help mix ingredients. Prior to his eggbeater, all mixing of ingredients was done by hand and was quite labor-intensive and time-consuming. In fact, what Willis Johnson had really invented was the early mixing machine and not just an egg beater. His device was not intended for eggs alone. Johnson had designed his egg beater and mixer for eggs, batter, and other bakers ingredients. It was a double-acting machine with two chambers. Batter could be beaten in one section and eggs could be beaten in another section, or one section could be cleaned while the other section could continue beating. Egg Beater Patent Abstract The object of [the] invention is to provide a machine wherewith eggs,  batter, and other similar ingredients used by bakers, confectioners, c., can be beaten or mixed in the most intimate and expeditious manner. The machine consists, essentially, of  a mainframe within which is journaled a driving-wheel and a pinion or pulley, the horizontal shaft of the latter having at its opposite ends clutches or sockets, with which are engages square or other non-circular arbors at the inner extremities of a pair of beater shafts. These shafts, which are armed with suitable blades, beaters, or stirrers, are journaled in cylinders that occupy detachable trays or racks applied to the opposite sides of the main frame,  hooks, and staples or the convenient devices being employed for retaining said racks in their proper places. As a result of this construction, either one or the other of both cylinders can be readily applied to the racks, and the latter can be coupled to the machine, so as to e nsure  a very rapid revolution is applied to the driving-wheel, as hereinafter more fully described. Other Types of Mixers Stand mixers mount the motor in a frame or stand which bears the weight of the device. Stand mixers are larger and have more powerful motors than hand-held mixers. A special bowl locks into place while the mixer runs.  Heavy-duty commercial versions can have bowl capacities greater than 25  gallons and weigh thousands of pounds. Mixers that are 5 gallons or less are usually countertop mixers, while larger mixers tend to be floor models due to their size and weight.Spiral mixers  are specialist tools for mixing dough. A spiral-shaped agitator remains stationary while the bowl rotates. This method enables spiral mixers to mix the same size dough batch much quicker and with less under-mixed dough than a similarly powered planetary mixer. This allows the dough to be mixed without increasing its temperature, ensuring the dough can rise properly.Planetary mixers  consist of a bowl and an agitator. The bowl remains still while the agitator rapidly moves around the bowl for mixing. W ith the ability to mix a wide variety of ingredients, planetary mixers are more versatile than their spiral counterparts. They can be used to whip and blend.

Questions On Dealing With Conflict - 953 Words

Gregory Long February 23, 2016 MG 5017 (Program Management) Dr. Dave Clapp Dealing with Conflict Introduction Conflict in the workplace can and will happen. Dealing with different people that come from different backgrounds with different ideas and thoughts, it’s inevitable that conflict will occur. Conflicts, however, if handled in the early stages can be resolved. Conflicts exist in almost every organization and to a certain degree can be viewed as a healthy exchange of creativity and ideas. But if not handled appropriately can become negative for an organization. According to Hrcouncil.ca (2016), â€Å"Counter-productive conflict can result in employee dissatisfaction, reduced productivity, poor services to clients, absenteeism and increased employee turnover, increased work related stress, or worst case scenario, litigation based on claims of harassment or a hostile work environment.† Conflict Types and Descriptions There are several types of common sources of conflict. Values conflict, power conflict, economic conflict, interpersonal conflict, organizational conflict, and environmental conflict just to name a few. Below is each conflict and a brief description. Definitions from Hrcouncil.ca (2016), Conflict Type Description Values Conflict Involves incompatibility of preferences, principles and practices that people believe in such as religion, ethics or politics. Power Conflict Occurs when each party wishes to maintain or maximize the amount ofShow MoreRelatedIndividual Conflict Assessment Worksheet1257 Words   |  6 PagesMaterial †¢ †¢ Individual Conflict Assessment Worksheet In at least 150 to 300 words, respond and include details to the following statements and questions: 1. Take a moment to think about how you generally describe conflict. Complete the following sentences and expand each response to at least one paragraph: a. Conflict is like†¦. a necessary evil; without it we are not able to grow or see those imperfections within ourselves that can be upsetting to others. Conflict, while at times ugly orRead More managing conflicts and negotiation Essay544 Words   |  3 Pages Managing Conflict and Negotiations In week one, the class read and discussed topics related to problem-based learning and managing conflict and negotiation. Also, the Learning Team handbook and tools were introduced and teams were assigned. The required readings, class discussions and sharing of experiences were valuable in learning more about these topics. The 9-step problem-solving model is a valuable, systematic tool used to identify the real problem and make an intelligent decision. This processRead MoreMister1049 Words   |  5 PagesTackling Conflict and Poor Teamwork - Prevention Ultimately there is no guarantee that we will be able to prevent conflict. 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On the Sidewalk Bleeding by Evan Hunter - 720 Words

On the Sidewalk Bleeding Critical Essay Marianne Lavery The story â€Å"On the sidewalk bleeding† by Evan Hunter deals with the issue of identity through the central character Andy, a young gang member who struggles with his identity as his death draws near. A young boy called Andy who left a nightclub to go and get cigarettes. He started walking through the alley when suddenly he got stabbed. As he got stabbed he heard a voice saying â€Å"That’s for you Royal!† Andy had always been proud to be a Royal because the Royals and the guardians were two of the biggest and he was a Royal. Now as he lay dying on the sidewalk with the rain surrounding him, he thought of being a Royal but now all he wanted to be was Andy. It is evident that Andy†¦show more content†¦They said â€Å"if we get a cop, the Guardians will find out who.† I thought this was very cowardly and selfish of them to leave him there, dying just because they were scared. Andy knew he was at deaths door but he didn’t want them to find him and say â€Å"oh he’s a Royal!† So with great difficulty and determination, he rolled over onto his back. He felt the pain tearing at his stomach when he moved. He lay struggling with the shiny, wet jacket. Pain ripped fire across his body whenever heShow MoreRelatedOn the Sidewalk Bleeding by Evan Hunter, The Hunger Games by Susan Collins721 Words   |  3 Pageschoices you make and how you grow up. The four text I studied are a short story â€Å"On the Sidewalk Bleeding† written by Evan Hunter, a novel â€Å"The Hunger Games† by Susan Collins, a film â€Å"Remember the Titans† directed by Jerry Bruckheimer and lyrics composed by Cat Stevens. These four texts express the theme of â€Å"how surroundings can influence your choices when growing up† In the short story ‘On the Sidewalk Bleeding’, the character Andy displays the theme of â€Å"how surroundings can influence your choicesRead MoreAnalysis Of On The Sidewalk Bleeding 1293 Words   |  6 PagesCorrespondingly, Evan Hunter’s â€Å"On the Sidewalk Bleeding† introduces the protagonist Andy, who experiences characteristic growth through the coming of age. Throughout Hunter’s story, Andy is put forth to portray the development of transforming from ignorant thinking to acquiring knowledge, the shift in deliberating realistically more willingly than idealistically, and establishing progression from selfishness to selflessness. Likewise, the main character Andy endures these changes in â€Å"On the Sidewalk Bleeding†Read MoreLooking For Alibrandi By Melina Marchetta Essay1301 Words   |  6 Pagesfreedom, sadly this doesn’t happen for some. I have chosen to look at films,novels and short stories that are to do with being con trolled. This includes the novel ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ written by Melina Marchetta, a short story ‘On the sidewalk bleeding’ by Evan Hunter and the films ‘The Hunger games’ directed by Gary Ross and ‘The boy in the striped pyjamas’ directed by Mark Herman. In the novel ‘Looking For Alibrandi’, Josie who is an Italian girl deals with her traumas of everyday life. Since herRead MoreThe Importance Of Self Identity And Individuality2143 Words   |  9 Pagesand Individuality Stereotypes have been around since the beginning and continue to hurt the lives of certain people in society. Due to stereotypes and prejudice made by certain people, the author, Evan Hunter, successfully demonstrated through the story â€Å"On the Sidewalk Bleeding† the consequences of stereotyping. The story focuses on a sixteen year old boy named Andy, and his last moments being alive after being stabbed by a rival gang known as the Guardians. Andy was stereotyped becauseRead MoreBelonging Essay1048 Words   |  5 Pagesreaffirm or transform their identities. Ultimately, it is the ability to form meaningful and sustaining relationships that allows individuals to assess and affirm their values. Raimond Gaita’s memoir, â€Å"Romulus, My Father† (RMF), Evan Hunters short story â€Å"On the Sidewalk Bleeding’ (OTSB), and â€Å"The Oasis†, a Shark Island Documentary, explore this notion through employing the universal themes of compassio n, alienation and love as they enrich characters sense of hope, significance, comfort and security-Read MoreAnalysis Of On The Sidewalk Bleeding 1500 Words   |  6 PagesWhile differences between Walter Dean Myers Monster and Evans Hunter s On The Sidewalk Bleeding give an insight on morality and how choices of the two characters Steven Harmon and Andy are shaped by their peers, and had an impact on their lives, their loved ones and the way society treats them. Steven Harmon is a sixteen-year-old black male that was part of a robbery and is on trial for murder, and is hard a very hard time in court trying to prove his innocence. Whereas, Andy is also a sixteen-year-old

Special K Product Life Cycle free essay sample

The company has gradually introduced a range of flavors and varieties such as Special K bars apple Pear, chocolate, and Red berry. The parent company for special K is Kellogg’s and it’s a worldwide company for producing cereals. In 2010 sales reached nearly $12 billion, Kellogg Company is the world’s leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods, including cookies, cereal bars, and fruit-flavored snacks, with leading brand such as Pop-Tarts ® and Nutri-Grain ®. My assessment of Kellogg’s Special K is that they are doing well at managing the product line, particularly in the area of advertisement, which has lead to the brand become a household name in the category of healthy snack bars. Despite this still improvement that could be made. Product Life Cycle (PLC): The life expectancy of a product is thought to be finite; the product life cycle diagram is used to describe the change in sales during various stages of the product life. We will write a custom essay sample on Special K Product Life Cycle or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The first stage is Introduction where the product is launched into the market and the sales will most likely start low. The second stage is Growth this means the product is becoming successful and sales will start to grow rapidly as it becomes established. Moreover, the third stage is Maturity; this occurs when the product is at its peak and has displaced the previous market leader for example replacement of CD’s with MP3. The final stage is Decline this is when the product sales begin to fall, this is usually due to lack of successful innovation or creation of new varieties to keep consumer interest or expand the target market. Source: Mintel The graph of percentage market share below shows Special K bars has maintained a steady hold of the market share at 10-11 % over the past 3 years, this lack of change in sales suggests that Special K bars is in the Maturity stage. They hold a position of number 2 in the market leader board in healthy snack bars after Go ahead! ‘United Biscuits’. Future trends: Throughout the international economics crisis for the last couple years, special K cereal bars maintain the market share. In addition the parent company Kellogg’s also as remain constant 3 years with regard to the net sales, although there was a slight decline in 2010, the 2011 year-to-date result from the October 1st shows an increase in net sales from $9,537 to $10,183 shows that the market is growing stronger. In fact Kellogg’s believe that they can â€Å" build long-term momentum in 2012, internal net sales are expected to rise 4-5 % above the long-term annual target† (Kellogg’s Q3 REPORT, 2011). Its look positive that the market will regain in strength and profit will continue to rise. Association with a parent company that has strong sales and seen as successful in the market place can affect the Special K cereal bars positively; in addition perhaps more money from the parent company can be invested into the brand to help more and more product to be developed. Over the last ten years the life style of people has changed and convenience food has become more readily available and the cost of sweets and chocolate has become cheaper, this added to the fact that our jobs are less active and people are now facing obesity. This led people to become more interested in healthy eating and health snacks; the likelihood is that this interest will only increase. Overall my assessment that the company will increase sales and revenue with good management and putting in place my recommendations Source: Kelloggs annual report, 2010 Using the BCG growth share matrix it will appear that Special K cereal bars is a Cash Cow, according to the Market share graph show the last 3 years the brand has remained steady with out any significant changes, yet the market share remain high with brand being second on the leader board. According to Baker Hart it is recommended that the cash cow is ‘harvested’ this means that the company is being managed efficiently on producing good sales without needing too much input in management. However, refereeing back to the PLC and the fact that the brand on the stage of maturity when many products slip into decline or become a dog it is recommended to manage the product and introduce new varieties of products. The result of this the company can increase the market share and growth, will move to become a star and the leader of the market. SWOT analysis: Kellogg’s is the parent company of Special K, which means it can lean on Kellogg’s brand strength and quality. This can help in terms of marketing as people positively associate the bars with their favorite cereals brand. The resources are already available in terms of innovation and research development, the raw materials such as wheat and sugar will be cheaper because of the purchasing power due to buying in bulk along side the parent company. Special K knows their target market well and are great at knowing how to attract them for example by introducing the Special K Plan to help them lose weight with advice and recipes (My special K, 2011). Also by sponsoring popular women’s TV show like Desperate housewives (Sarginson, 2010). They’re innovative and great at mixing taste flavors for example Chocolate with apricot. However, the cost per unit of the bars can seem expansive to some customers compared to other brand such as Jordan’s, 1. 99 pound for a 5 bar Multipack compared to 1. 8 pound for 6 bar multipack from Jordan’s. This is particularly a problem because of economic climate where people have less money to spend on premium products. It also shows a decline with older people partly because of health issues may restrict a high sugar in take and have less desire for sweet snacks. Special K can increase their market share by reducing the cost of the snack by introducing innovative products to extended the growth phase, and slow it maturity phase by appealing to areas of the market its never focused on before, such as kids and men. Potential issues may arise due to further hits to the economy which lower spending and create higher ingredient costs; stringent regulations in health and environment and peoples’ growing awareness of nutrition and ethics of where ingredients come from ‘Fairtrade’. According to Kellogg’s Convenience there was a drop in snacks that has ingredients considered as bad, whilst nutritional snack sales increaed 6. 4 %. Other threats could be intense competition from other companies. Any of these could be an opportunities. Recommendation: Special K can grow their market share by expanding their target market, specifically in the area of men and children. For men introduce a snack bar full of energy and protein, the red bull of the cereal bar world. Kelloggsâ„ ¢ Special Kâ„ ¢ Protein Bars showed a 45% increase in sales from 2009 to 2010 (Kellogg’s connvenience, 2011). This shows an area of opportunity to develop. This could be marketed towards men by changing the packaging maybe changing the color to black keeping the red K logo, these colors will attract men because they associate them with power and sexiness. Moreover, it can be advertised between high adrenaline sporting program such as Formula 1 and men magazines, both sport and health magazines. As similar products are already produce by the company significant changes factory capacity and to product distribution should not be needed. Another recommendation is to focus on children. Special K already has a range of Mini Breaks, which are small packets of bite size bars. These could be made in partnership with Disney, like creating cartoon character visuals on the product packaging. In addition, smaller individual bars could be made for children, perfect for their lunch boxes, again with Disney promotions, maybe with tokens to collect for Disney merchandise. These could be created with child friendly flavors like strawberry yogurt or milk chocolate. Children are a powerfull influence on what products and brand parents choose particularly in decisions for breakfast cereals and snack food (Mangleburg, 1990, p: 813-815). My final recommendation is to create a variety of flavors in one pack so the family can share their snacks happily, each getting their favorite flavor and getting the opportunity to try others. This can expand the special k market for the whole family not just for the woman. Each of these should helped to build a large market share and help it become the market leader head of United Biscuit’s go ahead! Innovation and new ideas are the key factors to keeping public interest and to extend the growth phase.