English Literature

From the Late Renaissance to

the Rise of Romanticism

(17th and 18th centuries)

Student: Gheorghe Emilia

Facultatea de Litere

-Galati-
2017
1. Illustrate the characteristics of the l7th century lyric through textual analysis (open choice
from Cavalier and Metaphysical poems).

2. Illustrate the characteristics of Miltons pre-Restoration verse through textual analysis (open
choice).

3. Illustrate the characteristics of Miltons epic poems through textual analysis (open choice).

4. Illustrate the characteristics of the neoclassical satire through textual analysis (open choice).

5. Illustrate the characteristics of the neoclassical essay through textual analysis (open choice).

6. Illustrate the characteristics of Restoration drama through textual analysis (open choice).

7. Illustrate the characteristics of the 18th-century novel through textual analysis (open choice
from the writings of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne.)

8. Illustrate the characteristics of the 18th-century novel through textual analysis (open choice
from the writings of Goldsmith, Edgeworth, Burney, Austen).

9. Illustrate the characteristics of the Gothic novel through textual analysis (open choice)

10. Illustrate the shift from the neoclassical to the romantic cultural matrix through textual
analysis (open choice from pre-romantic poems).

Page 2
 The Retreat

by Henry Vaughan

The primary theme of Henry Vaughan's "The Retreat" is encapsulated in the title. While
most people look at the world and their lives and want to keep moving forward, the speaker of
this poem wants to move backward, at least in terms of his spirituality.

The speaker clearly believes that he was closest to God when he was born than at any
other time during his life. The reason for that, he says, is that he has grown to set his thoughts on
things other than God and has developed his sinful nature. This poem is a meditation about sin
and worldly concerns getting in the way of man's earliest connection to God.

The first half of the poem is one very long sentence expressing joy about those wonderful
early days of the speaker's life.

The second half of the poem is similar to the first, but instead of just thinking about the
happiness of those "early days," the speaker expresses a deep longing to go back to them.

He wants to, as the title suggests, retreat to a better and more enlightened time in his life,
a time when he was closer to God. Unfortunately, he cannot do that because his soul has been
here on earth too long and is too connected to the pleasures of this world. He is no longer able to
go back because the earthly desires of his soul get in the way.

It is clear that the speaker believes that one is closest to God in childhood, when the
connection is closer, or perhaps the separation is less. As we grow older, that connection grows
more tenuous and that separation is wider. Even worse, both of these things are caused by our
own choices to succumb to temptation and sin.

By the time we are adults, the connection is non-existent and the separation has become
an uncrossable chasm. This is the speaker's truth, and he is not happy with himself for letting his
earth-bound desires get in the way of more spiritual things, like his connection to God and his
more eternal-minded thoughts.

He knows that he may be alone in this kind of thinking, and the last lines of the poem are
the best reflection of his theme.

Unlike those who look to the future with anticipation and always want to move forward
with their lives, this speaker wants nothing more than to move backward, returning to that earlier
state of closeness with God. He wants, as the title says, to retreat.

Page 3
 Lycidas

by John Milton

"Lycidas" is a poem mourning the loss of a good friend, sure. But it's also a specific kind
of poem about loss a pastoral elegy, to be precise. That means it's a poem mourning the loss of
someone (elegy) that also makes extensive use of shepherd themes and imagery (pastoral).

Just think of a funeral. While we have them to remember the dead, they are really about
providing solace for the living. We show slideshows and videos of the deceased. We sing songs
and talk about our memories. It's all in the name of healing and moving on. Well, Milton is pretty
much saying the same thing. Basically, in order to get through the grieving process, Milton has to
invent a story a pastoral that helps keep his friend alive in his mind. Our slideshows, songs,
stories, and ceremonies work in the same way. They all "interpose a little ease"

As a pastoral elegy, "Lycidas" is practically required to pay homage to classical

mythology. Milton does so by tipping his hat to just about every mythological figure ever. We're
not kidding. Practically every line has a god or a goddess in it. The many allusions in "Lycidas"
are partly Milton's attempt to signal to his readers that he is a Poet-with-a-capital-P. And they are
partly an effort to cling to something stable, like a long literary and mythological tradition, after
the devastating loss of his friend.

The connection between music and poetry is an old one, and "Lycidas" finds itself
squarely in that tradition. The speaker makes all kinds of connections between poems and songs,
and often uses the word song when he's actually referring to a poem.

The poem's first speaker describes how he and Lycidas used to compose songs together
while herding their flocks, emphasizing that Lycidas was a poet before he died. By the end of the
poem, however, another speaker enters and distances himself from the song that has occupied
most of the poem, almost as if he were turning his back on Lycidas, a

Page 4
 nd on a certain type of poetry.

Milton's best bud Edward King (Lycidas) drowned at sea, so it's no wonder that water
plays such a big role in this poem. A boatload of bodies of water, both real and mythological, are
mentioned. Sometimes the speaker refers to them for inspiration, or because he wants his readers
to make a connection to something with which that particular body of water is associated. At
other times, he just wants to remind his readers that his close friend met a tragic end at the hands
of the sea.

The speaker addresses the "fountain Arethuse" and "smooth-sliding Mincius." The
Arethuse is a fountain near the city of Otygia, on the island of Sicily. The Mincius is a river
("flood") in northern Italy. This was Virgil's native river, and in the Eclogues, he comments on
the "reeds" near it. Arethuse is a symbol of Greek pastoral, whereas the Mincius symbolizes
Roman pastoral. Readers who are clued in to these associations will understand the wink and the
nod.

This poem has more shout-outs than drive-time radio. The echoes, allusions, references,
and sources in "Lycidas" are practically innumerable.

Paradise Lost

by John Milton

Paradise Lost opens with Satan on the surface of a boiling lake of lava in Hell; he has just
fallen from Heaven and wakes up to find himself in a seriously horrible place. He finds his first
lieutenant (his right-hand man), and together they get off the lava lake and go to a nearby plain,
where they rally the fallen angels. They have a meeting and decide to destroy Adam and Eve
(God's children and precious science experiment) in order to spite God. Satan volunteers for the
job and leaves Hell to go look for Adam and Eve.

Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve's loss of Paradise; their eating of the Forbidden
Fruit has often been called the "Fall" (as in, "fall from innocence" or "fall from grace"), so it's no
surprise that images of falling occur throughout the poem. The first characters we meet Satan
and his legions are newly fallen, both morally (they disobeyed God and attempted to overthrow
him) and literally (in Book 6 they actually fall out of Heaven and into Hell). Satan's first words
to his legions are: "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen." To be fallen, in this poem, is to have
sinned, or to have disobeyed God.

Page 6
 We never actually see Milton's God; the only real thing Milton says about him is that he's
really bright, or that he's like a giant light, hidden away somewhere. One of the ways in which
Milton indicates a particular character's virtue is by how "bright" they are. So, for example, Satan
refers to the "bright confines" of Heaven, and Milton notes that "God is light,/ And never but in
unapproachd light/ Dwelt" .Other references to God's "glorious brightness" are scattered
throughout the poem.

The idea of the "one man" is very important in Paradise Lost. It represents Milton's idea
of the difference that one man can make whether literally or symbolically. The poster child for
the "one man" is Jesus Christ, the son of God. At the very beginning of the poem, Milton notes
that the damage caused by Adam and Eve's disobedience can only be remedied by "one greater
man" (Jesus) who will "restore us" and "regain the blissful seat." In Book 3, we actually see
Jesus he's not called that yet because he has yet to become mortal and assumed that name; he's
just the Son volunteer to become mortal and die for man's sins.

Paradise Lost is about the loss ofwell, Paradise. So it's no surprise that images of
paradises abound. First and foremost, we have the Garden of Eden. Milton makes it abundantly
clear in Book 4 (our first view of paradise) that this is the best paradise of them all. He mentions
a number of famous artistic and literary paradises, only to say that the Garden of Eden is much
better than them all. In addition to Adam and Eve's Paradise, there's Heaven. It's really bright
there, and it doesn't even really get dark.

MacFlecknoe

by John Dryden

Mac Flecknoe is the poet-king of the realm of nonsense. After many years as ruler,
however, it comes time for him to step down. Ultimately, he chooses his son Thomas Shadwell, a
poet of unparalleled dreadfulness, as his successor. Shadwell is the worst writer in all the land,
and thus, the perfect man for the job.

Upon arriving in the city of August (a.k.a. London), Shadwell is crowned king of the
realm of nonsense. Mac Flecknoe himself delivers a brief speech on his son's merits (or lack
thereof) during the coronation.

At this point all the action pretty much stops, as the poem devolves into a thinly-veiled,
full-force condemnation of Shadwell's writing and character by the speaker. In the end, crowned

Page 8
and ready to rule in his father's footsteps, Shadwell is poised to sink poetry to an even lower
level.

What's a king without a kingdom? Thomas Shadwell is heir to the throne of the "realm of
nonsense," and this is the fictional setting in which the poem's action takes place. The "realm of
nonsense" is pretty much exactly how you might imagine it to be: it is a place defined by bad
poetry, bad taste, and complete squalor. Only Shadwell, the worst writer in town, is fit to take
over. Lucky him. Dryden ironically invokes Augustus and the Romans in his discussion of these
"realms of Non-sense," juxtaposing the epic, classical imagery of kings and empires against the
bumbling Flecknoe and his hapless heir, Shadwell. s king of nonsense, it will be Shadwell who
will be charged with the defense of the state. And by defense of the state, we mean, "wage
immortal war with wit." That's just part of the job description. According to Dryden, Shadwell is
about as witless as it getstruly a match made in heaven.

In case you missed it, "Mac Flecknoe" pretty much entirely consists just of John Dryden
going really out of his way to call someone stupid. That being said, Dryden offers no shortage of
hilarious jokes, jabs, japes, and jests at his archrival Thomas Shadwell's expense. He
uses irony, metaphor, puns, and even Shadwell's own writing to cleverly skewer his victim,
easily winning this battle of wits. Wallace Shawn's character in The Princess Bride should have
taken notes. All the great epic heroes had a defining characteristic. Unfortunately for Shadwell,
his is stupidity. Dryden cleverly uses this mock-heroic motif to make Shadwell appear as inept as
possible. Dryden uses a few of Shadwell's own lines to point out his shoddiness as a writer. He'll
do anything for a cheap laugh, Dryden argues, at the expense of good taste and genuine
cleverness. Thus, Shadwell's plays aren't really works of art, but merely farces.

Welcome to the world of "Mac Flecknoe," which contains more shout outs than sense.
Dryden throws out numerous references to the classics, including to numerous Greek and Roman
stories and myths and the Bible. His entire poetic style is a shout out to the epic tradition,
following in the footsteps of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, while employing Chaucer's heroic
couplets.

And then, of course, Dryden manages to name drop every single freaking English literary
figure within 100 years. Most of these references are pretty obscure; guys like John Ogleby and
Thomas Dekker aren't exactly heavy hitters in British literature. But Dryden does remind us of a
few noteworthy names, including the great playwright Ben Jonson.

Page 10
 Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern

by John Dryden

In this Preface Dryden deliberately compares Ovid to Chaucer as he believes these two
poets have a great deal in common, and for this reason he chose to translate examples of the
work of both poets to enable his reader of this work to draw their own conclusions about the
relative merits of these poets.

However, in his Preface, he clearly states that he favours Chaucer over Ovid. Dryden is
very clear to state that he is biased towards Chaucer, but he also appeals to the reader to support
his view that Chaucer is superior.

Dryden thus argues that both Ovid and Chaucer are distinguished in their understanding
of the different emotions and characteristics belonging to humans, and both are able to create
characters so convincing that the reader feels as if they are known to them personally.

However, the crucial difference, for Dryden, is that the characterisation of Chaucer's
characters are that much more vivid than Ovid's characterisation, as good as it is.

Dryden therefore bases his opinion that Chaucer is superior on this argument, even
though he states he has "not time to prove" it. What is clear, however, is that Dryden offers his
opinion up to the reader and gives them the chance to make their own mind up; the subsequent
text of which this is the preface includes examples of both poets' work and the reader is thus free
to "clear" Dryden from "partiality" or not, as the case may be.

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

William Congreve is a super-important playwright of the Restoration period, and a

disciple of John Dryden's. He is known for his comedies, which catered to the tastes of the time:
bawdy and full of sexual innuendo. Hmm. That sounds kind of like comedy today. Maybe some
comedy themes are timeless?

Page 12
 Congreve's popularity didn't last long, however. By the end of the Restoration period in
1700, audiences were turning away from the "Comedies of Manners" that Congreve specialized
in, and the author pretty much much gave up on theater toward the end of his life. We hope he
found a new, old people-friendly hobby, like shuffleboard.

Love for Love is a comedy about love and money. It involves a romantic triangle between
Valentine, his father Sir Sampson, and the woman they both fall in love with: Angelica. Things
get really messy when Sir Sampson, who is mad at his son for wasting so much money, proposes
to Angelica.Uh, yeah. That sounds insanely awkward.

Love for Love is a typical Restoration comedy. In it we find the usual themes of romance,
trickery and a focus on social class and social hypocrisy.

The Way of the World is considered to be Congreve's most accomplished comedy. It was
published right at the end of the Restoration period (in 1700), at which point theatrical tastes
were beginning to change. Congreve's work fell out of favor soon after this play was performed.
It took some time before critics began appreciating the work again.

This is another comedy whose plot revolves around all sorts of romantic entanglements.
The two lovers at the center of the playMirabell and Millamantwant to get married, but
Millamant's rich old aunt stands in the way. The play focuses on the two lovers' attempts to get
around the aunt.

William Congreve's Love for Love is a classic of Restoration comedy.William

Congreve's The Way of the World deals with themes of social class, money, and romance. Like
many works of the period, it focuses on the ins and outs of social life.

Tom Jones

by Henry Fielding

Let's say that it's, oh, 1749, and you are author Henry Fielding. You come from a fairly
aristocratic family. But sadly, your dad is also a gambler and you have no family money. You've
got a great education but not much else going for you. What do you do? You become a
professional writer. In fact, you write for the stage, and you have a lot of success. But the
government frowns on your spicy satires and shuts you down. Now what?

Well, in the face of all of these obstacles, you don't give up. Instead, you decide to write a
novel. A really long novel. And not just any novel: an introduction to a particular mode of funny

Page 14
realism that would influence later writers such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. You got it:
this novel is Tom Jones.

There are surprisingly few symbols in Tom Jones, especially given how long the novel is.
We think that part of the reason for this relative lack of symbols is that Fielding keeps
emphasizing the importance of realism and believability in fiction. Literature that relies heavily
on symbolismon objects and images that actually mean something elsetends to be less
strictly realistic than what Fielding appears to be going for here.

Still, there is clearly one thing in the novel that symbolizes Tom and Sophia's love for one
another: Sophia's fur muff. (A muff is a tube of fur or fabric that women used to use to warm
their hands back in the day.) Mrs. Honour is the one who first points out the deeper meaning of
Sophia's muff, when she tells Sophia that she spotted Tom kissing it and calling it "the prettiest
muff in the world"

The muff reappears twice more: at the inn at Upton, where Sophia discovers that Tom is
sleeping with Mrs. Waters, she bribes a maid to stick the muff in Tom's room somewhere where
he will spot it. Tom finds the muff and realizes that he just missed Sophia, and that she is
probably angry with him. And when Tom refuses Arabella Hunt's attractive proposal of marriage
in Book 15, Chapter 12, he takes out Sophia's muff and kisses it to affirm his loyalty to her. Each
time, the muff stands in for Sophia and for the relationship between the two.

Tom Jones's narrator is definitely first person, since he says, "I" all the time. In fact, he
makes references to his real life off the page, as Henry Fielding, so we know that the narrator is
supposed to stand in for the author. (As an example of the narrator/author blur, check out our
notes on Charlotte Cradock, Fielding's first wife, on our list of "References.") But the narrator
does not participate directly in the action of the book. He stands off to the side, observing and
commenting. That's why he's a "peripheral" narrator: he tells the story, but he's not part of the
central action.

This off-to-the-side point of view allows the narrator to speculate freely about why the
characters do what they do. But it also means that he often can't say, with a hundred percent
certainty, that he's right about their motivations. So, for example, the narrator says he's not sure if
Lord Fellamar bribed Lady Bellaston to help him marry Sophia

Fielding doesn't just leave us to guess what kind of a novel this is: he comes out and tells
us. He announces that he is a "comic writer" so Tom Jones is a comedy. And because it's a
classic comedy, we know that it will end with a marriage and a happily-ever-after for our hero.

Last but not least, we're going to add one genre that's important for Tom
Jones specifically: Tom Jones is a picaresque novel. "Picaresque" comes from the Spanish
word picaro, meaning rogue; this form of writing started out in Spain in the sixteenth century.
Picaresque novels focus on lovable, attractive anti-heroes who travel around having funny

Page 16
adventures. They also tend to be super-long and episodic, without the same strong
beginning/middle/end structure that later novels take on.

The picaresque is not really a popular genre now (maybe because these books get so
long); probably the closest we come to it would be Jack Kerouac's On the Road. But Tom
Jones fits in to this genre because Tom (while not being a bad guy) wanders around getting into a
lot of trouble, much of which is his own fault. He also likes to wander, and he is super-attractive.

The big mystery at the start of Tom Jones surrounds our hero's origin story: is
Tom really the son of Jenny Jones, the servant, and Mr. Partridge, the former schoolteacher? As
an illegitimate child, Tom can't really expect to inherit a ton of money from Squire Allworthy.
The whole estate is going to go to the squire's legitimate nephew Blifil. So what's going to
happen to Tom, who is technically lower class by birth, but who is also still being raised as an
upper-class gentleman? How is he going to find any stability in his life, when he is caught
between high and low social positions and has no money to his name?

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

In every single one of her novels, Austen is always letting readers follow the money trail.
Say what you will about whether it makes sense that Darcy goes for Elizabeth, there's never any
doubt that the transfer and flow of wealth is being described flawlessly.

In Pride and Prejudice, money means land ownership. Most of the plot happens because
people either own or don't own the place where they live. The whole thing starts because Bingley
randomly decides to rent Netherfield. This means that he's rich (because he can afford
that sucker, baby), but that he's not staying long (since he's gotta go buy an estate of his own
sometime).

Meanwhile, the Bennets are hustling to get the girls married off because their house is
going straight into Mr. Collins' pocket as soon as daddy dearest kicks the bucket, and there's
nothing anyone can do about it. This is why it's so awkward when Mr. Collins visits (because it
just looks like he's measuring for new drapes) and why he proposes to Elizabeth (he feels bad
that he's going to get the house and wants to make it up to them).

Finally, there's Pemberley. Now, that onethat's owned outright by Darcy, without the
stress of anyone coming to take it away, and it is just heavenly and perfect in every way. Check
out the novel's other housesthe Collinses' small house, Lady de Bourgh's house, the place
where Lydia goes off with Wickham. How does their ownership work in the novel?

Page 18
 The narration typically stays with Elizabeth, although it occasionally offers us
information that Elizabeth isn't aware of (like Charlotte's pursuit of Mr. Collins). This third
person view lends a cold dimension to the novel, in the sense that dialogue, opinions, ideas, and
events dominate the story rather than emotions. Elizabeth is the exception to this ruleChapter
36, for example, is devoted entirely to her emotional transformation following her receipt of
Darcy's letter. In contrast, even though we do often get to hear the thoughts of others, it's usually
in shorter, less complex bursts.

One totally cool feature of the way the book is narrated is Austen's use of a tricky little
doo-dad called "free indirect discourse." This is when a character's thoughts or spoken words are
reported without quotation marks (or some other kind of indication, like the phrase "she thought"
or "he said"). This lets Austen hook the reader into some of Elizabeth's bad judgment. (And the
bad judgment of, well, everyone.) How long would we have gone along with Wickham's lies if it
weren't for the way every time he gives some long rationalization, Elizabeth's voice pipes up
through the narrator? For example, after Wickham spins his sob story, we get this passage:

Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and they continued
talking together, with mutual satisfaction till supper put an end to cards, and gave the rest
of the ladies their share of Mr. Wickham's attentions. There could be no conversation in the
noise of Mrs. Phillips's supper party, but his manners recommended him to everybody.
Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully.

Reading this novel is kind of like having a conversation with someone who says snarky
things in a deadpan voice while constantly raising her eyebrow.

But really, Austen is just clearly amused by her characters and their nonsense and
committed to discretely pointing out their foibles. It's not that she hates them, but her narrator
definitely keeps a distance and functions as an observer who is always elbowing the reader to
look at the next funny thing.

First, we've got the overhead view, meaning the narrator takes in the scene and shows us
the ridiculous in all its glory: it's funny to try to picture just how not "short" Mr. Collins' "long
speech" would be. There's also that great joke in the idea that the proposal is "settled to the
satisfaction of both" (because the satisfaction is kind of pragmatic since Charlotte is Mr. Collins'
third choice and he's her choice only because he's got a job and a house and it beats living at
mom and dad's).

Next, we get to laugh at Mr. Collins more from Charlotte's point of view. Even though they
aren't in quotes, the words about his "stupidity" and the lack of "charm" in his "courtship" are
clearly her thoughts as he goes on and on in his pompous way.

Finally, we circle back around to the narrator mocking the characters again, as we check
out how Charlotte is going to deal with the fact that she can see how awful Mr. Collins is.

Page 20
(Answer: she's going to deal with things on a purely matter-of-fact basis.) You can have
your Seth MacFarlane: this right here is comedy gold.

We start off well. Sir William is a well-off guy who even gets to make a speech in front of
the king. But check out the long third sentence, as the narrator masterfully goes from Sir
William's point of view (he now finds actually working for a living "disgusting" and moves to a
house in the country) to an outside perspective on Sir William's growing egotism (all he does
now is "think with pleasure of his own importance"), and then, finally, rounds it off with an
amazing judgment on the way climbing the social ladder creates a useless man out of an
industrious one (Sir William is free from the "shackles" of his work and now just spends his time
being "civil").

Funnybut we're not done yet. The problem isn't really just that Sir William himself has
become totally purposeless ever since getting his knighthood and becoming too high class for his
business. The narrator next expands the issue further, pointing to the culture at large, which is
more than happy to go along with Sir William and his new attitude. Check out how, because he's
all fancy and titled, in the eyes of his neighbors he gets a fancier adjective to describe his
behavior: instead of simply "friendly" he's become "courteous," which also carries the pun of
"court" (as in royal court) inside itthe place where Sir William has picked up his new status).

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

It though the frame story is exclusively set aboard Captain Walton's ship in the frozen
waters of the Arctic, the events of the story happen all over Europe, from Geneva to the Alps to
France, England, and Scotland, as well as the university at Ingolstadt.

Whew. Better make sure our passports are still valid.But for all that we travel over half
the globe, Frankenstein isn't a travel diary. The most important setting (we think) is still the
frozen waters of the Arctic, for two reasons:(1) Being stuck in ice sounds like a pretty hellish
experience. We've never experienced it personally, but we can guess. So hellish, in fact, that it
sounds particularly reminiscent of Dante's description of the ninth and innermost circle of
Hell in The Inferno. (We feel justified in bringing up Dante, because Shelley has Victor tell us
that the monster was "a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived")

Our point is, Dante tells us that the ninth circle of hell is reserved for those who have
committed betrayal. All the sinners are stuck in frozen water, up to their shoulders or necks or
Page 22
eyes or whatever depending on just how bad their betrayal was. Satan's there, of course, stuck in
the middle of the lake and pouting. The worst kind of betrayal, Dante tells us, is betrayal against
your God. And isn't trying to penetrate the secrets of naturelike Victor and Walton doa kind
of betrayal of God?

(2) Guess who else gets stuck in ice? The poor sailors of The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, one of the landmark poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth's 1798 Lyrical Ballads, the
book of poetry that basically inaugurated the Romantic movement in England and that Shelley
had most definitely read. It's not clear why the sailors get stuck in ice, but it is clear that the
mariner of the title commits a major no-no by killing an albatross and ends up getting all his
comrades killed. No one can agree exactly how to interpret the poem, but it's pretty clear that
they're punished for some crime against nature.

So: being stuck in ice is a pretty good sign that Walton is doing something wrong. He
might be depressed about turning around to go home, but we can't help breathing a sigh of relief
and we're pretty sure his sister will, too.

What the point of having all these different stories?Science is all about trying to figure
out how the world works. Victor himself tells us that when he says he wants to "penetrate the
secrets of nature" So, you could say that the scientist is trying to adopt the perspective of God,
who's the ultimate third-person omniscient narrator: he knows everything about everyone.

But in Frankenstein, we never get that perspective. All we get are a bunch of people's
stories, and we have to piece together the truth from that. Do we believe the monster's own story
about himself? Or do we believe what Victor says about him: that he's a heartless, cruel, ugly
monster? You could say that Shelley makes us like scientists, having to piece together imperfect
informationand you could also say that, by giving us so many different stories, she shows us
it's impossible to ever really know.

You know how when you go see a horror movie, and it starts out with some really happy
scenesay, some kids in a boat or skinny dipping in the ocean in the middle of the nightyou
just know that something bad is about to happen? That's how we read Walton's description of
himself as a child in a little boat. Sure, maybe we're just projecting. After all, Frankenstein was
written 150 years before Jaws..But Shelley was a savvy lady, and we're pretty sure she knew
what she was doing.

Because there are so many different narrators, the tone shifts slightly throughout the text.
Walton is a little more reserved and reportorial; Frankenstein is fatalistic ("Destiny was too
potent"; the monster is enraged. But everyone seems to agree: bad things are going to happen.

Okay. Hands up out there if you did this at least once while reading the book: (1) rolled
your eyes, (2) sighed with exasperation, (3) shouted, "Get over it already! Everyone has daddy
issues!", or (4) all of the above.

Page 24
 We hear ya, Shmoopers, really we do. Frankenstein can be a challenging read for modern
folks. The characters go on and on in complex sentences. When they aren't admiring the scenery,
they're talking about their, you know, feelings all the time. And they do it in ways that would
make us totally walk out on our friends if they tried to pull that stuff. Still, Mary Shelley's
writing style does serve a purpose. In fact, it serves two.

Nature is a really big deal. Considering that it encompasses everything around us, we
guess that's kind of stating the obvious. But for the Romantics, Nature was a really big deal. Of
course, Mary Shelley's husband Percy was a leading figure in the Romantic literary movement,
so she would naturally have been similarly influenced by the Romantic viewpoint that the natural
world is something to be noticed, admired, and for oooo emo, you guys. The Romantics put a
premium on the importance of feelings in their work, and Mary Shelley is no exception. Okay,
sure, we're used to sharing everything from what we ate for breakfast to who we're listening to
on Spotify right now. But we don't usually share our deepest thoughts and feelings. (That's a
quick way to get yourself blocked from most people's newsfeeds.) But the Romantics wanted to
remind readers that human emotions mattered, too. We aren't just rational brains wandering
around on two legs. egrounded in human experience as evidence of greater truths.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" takes placeyou guessed itin a

country churchyard. And that means that it was written among all the gravestones of the dead
members of that church. It's shaded by elm and yew trees, and there's an owl hooting in the
background. Spooky, right?

But it's not supposed to be a spooky poemthis isn't about dead people coming back to
haunt the living, it's about how the living remember the dead. And as the speaker imagines what
these dead people's lives were like, the setting of the poem shiftsthe speaker imagines their
everyday lives in their country cottages. Most of these people were farmers, so he imagines them
plowing their fields, and coming home to their wives and children at night.

But then the speaker imagines what people will say about him, when he dies, and the
setting of the poem shifts again. Now we're in the shoes of some passerby who happens to see
the name of the poet on a gravestone, and happens to ask someone what he was like. The speaker
imagines that he'll be remembered mostly as a thoughtful guy who loved nature, who was often
seen lost in thought under a tree or by the creek.

Page 26
 So, in spite of the poem's title, the setting really isn't creepytown. The emphasis is on the
average, everyday, simple "country" part of the setting. There are lots of trees, and creeks, and
farms, and no ghosts in the graveyard at allunless you count the memories of the past that we
all carry with us.

The speaker of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a thoughtful, pensive guy. He

likes to be alone. At night. In graveyards. So that he can think about death. Good times. But you
know the type, right? You might find someone like this speaker in your local coffee shop,
wearing all black and maybe just a tad too much eye makeup, reading Camus or Sartre and
thinking deep, deep thoughts.

But there's more to this speaker than his arguably morbid tendency to hang out in
graveyards. He wants to make sure that we all remember the lives of people who lived before us,
even the lives of simple, country folks like the ones buried in the churchyard where the poem
takes place. He wants to be conscious of the way that he himself will be remembered after he's
dead and gone, and that means thinking carefully about how other people see him now.

Sure, this might seem morbid, but the speaker seems to want to set himself apart from the
kind of rich, snobby people who just care about erecting huge monuments and mausoleums in
their own honor after they die. Instead, he wants to leave something less concrete behind him in
the memories of the people that he cares about.

Gray only published his most famous poem, "An Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" after some hack publishers got hold of a copy and tried to publish it without his
permission. Good thing for us that they did, or the world might never have seen this poem!

Various famous writers and critics have argued about Gray's use of language since the
time he was writing. Samuel Johnson (yeah, the guy who wrote the first Dictionary of the
English language) once said that Thomas Gray had two languages: a public and a private
language.

Poems written in his private language, like the "Elegy," were considered waaaaay better.
William Wordsworth (yeah, the poet who wrote "Tintern Abbey") said in his "Preface to Lyrical
Ballads" that Gray's language was too stilted and formal, at least in poems like his "Sonnet on the
Death of Richard West."

Matthew Arnold (the guy who wrote "Dover Beach") said that because of the time in
which he lived, Gray never spoke at all. That's a lot of different opinions by some otherwise very
reliable writers!

Page 28