DEJECTION SHIT Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality.

" In his own poem, Coleridge

echoes Wordsworth's themes of disillusionment in love and the loss of imaginative powers.

The Poem Ode to Dejection, is a confession of the poet Coleridge’s failure, and one of the saddest of all human
utterances.The poem is written in the year 1802, in a way it is considered to be a swan song .In the poem Coleridge
laments the loss of his creative imagination and also mourns his moral and spiritual loss. It is a deeply personal and
autobiographical poem which depicts the poet’s mental state at the time. It records a fundamental change in his life
and is a lament on the decline of his creative imagination.

Coleridge at this time felt that his inborn gift of imagination was decaying and that his interest was shifting to
philosophy. In other words, he found that he was becoming more and more of a philosopher or thinker and less and
less of a poet. This change greatly distressed him. He was grief-stricken at the thought that his interest in abstruse
research was crushing his poetic talent. The poem is an expression of that grief: A grief without a pang, void, dark,
and/A stifled, drowsy. unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief /In word, or sigh, or tea.
Seldom has grief found such tragic expression as in this poem which has been called “the poet’s dirge of infinite
pathos over the grave of creative imagination”. The poem proceeds with an ever- deepening sadness, each stanza
charged with heavy gloom. Coleridge here contradicts his own previous view of Nature, thus challenging
Wordsworth’s Nature-creed also. In The Aeolian Harp and Frost at Midnight, Coleridge had expressed a belief in
pantheism—the view that Nature is a living whole, that a Divine Spirit passes through all objects of Nature, that man
can establish a spiritual intercourse with Nature, and that Nature exercises an ennobling and educative influence upon
man. But in this poem, Coleridge completely denies this belief. Here he asserts that Nature has no life of her own—
that it is we who attribute life to her.

Coleridge, on seeing the old moon in the arms of the new, fears that it portends stormy weather. As he is contemplating on the superstition
associated with the phenomenon the storm begins to blow. Coleridge feels that the sounds of the wind and storm which used to inspire him in the
past, might give their usual impetus to his soul on that night, and might stir up his sense of frustration and even intensify it. Coleridge gives
expression to the grief from which he is suffering. It is such a dark and dismal sorrow that it finds no expression in words, tears or sighs. He feels
that nature cannot cure him of his pessimism and melancholy as he is no longer stirred to his depths by nature. He believes that the sources of
poetic inspiration lie within the human mind or the human soul. Thus when the mind is paralysed nature cannot inspire the poet. The poet
challenges the popular notion of Wordsworthian Philosophy. He says that it is we ourselves who invest nature with life, soul, beauty or gloomy. It
is we who attribute feelings and emotions to inanimate nature. Nature is lifeless—it has neither intellect nor soul. Further, he believes that the
poetic inspiration is an echo of the poet’s soul. He defines poetic inspiration as a ‘light, a glory, a fair luminous mist’ which is not only beautiful
in itself but which enables the poets to create beauty. It is joy—exultation. From it flows all fine arts like music, poetry and painting which
captivate the ear or the eye. Referring to his past, Coleridge says that he used to feel inspired and hopeful then, in spite of difficulties and
hardships. Now, however, misfortunes overpower him. He however does not lament so much the loss of mirth arid joy as the loss of his Poetic
faculty. He feels that he is drifting more and more towards the study of ‘Metaphysics’ and fears that by and by this new interest would ‘kill’ the
poet in him, though, by nature he is a poet rather than a Philosopher. He finds escape from torturing and tormenting thoughts of despair by
turning to the wind that is raving outside. The wind, so it appears to him, is imitating tragic human sounds. At times it seems to imitate the Sound
of a defeated army, retreating in a disorderly manner. Like an actor the wind imitates perfectly the Sounds of trampled wounded and shivering
soldiers of the defeated army. After a pause, the wind seems to be imitating the cries of a small child who has lost her way in a lonely forest,
situated near her home. Though it is midnight, Coleridge has little inclination to go to bed. He, however, prays that his beloved may never have to
keep awake at night. Likewise he prays that she may enjoy eternal happiness and that thoughts of sorrow or dejection may never invade her heart.
The poet describes the outburst of a storm after a calm evening and laments his own torpor and inability to be moved by the awful grandeur of the
night. His own mood is wan and heartless. The fountains of life fail within him; he lacks that emanation from soul necessary for the appreciation
of Nature.
He looks back upon the imaginative days of his youth, when joy and hope had arisen naturally in his heart. But pain and grief have taken all these
away; abstruse research has superseded the imaginative faculty. The wind’s expression of human cries only re-echoes his afflictions. His one
comfort is to pray that those whom he loves may not share such unrest.

The power of imagination/dreams, another recurring motif in Coleridge’s work, is also prominent in “Dejection.” The
one thing that Coleridge particularly misses is his power of imagination and the ability to pretend that he is happy.
Interestingly, R.A. Benthall highlights “the irony implicit in the fact that Coleridge should write a poem about the
inability to create” (613). Coleridge’s mention of the healing powers of sleep in the last stanza and his claim that he
will not go to sleep tonight (and most likely cannot because of his depression) both suggest that dreams offer a
portal to happiness. This implication could be the reason why Coleridge wishes for his beloved Lady to have a
peaceful night of sleep.
TWTW

ACT 1

ACT 2  Happens in St. James' Park, where Mrs. Fainall and Mrs. Marwood fake friendship
for one another, Mrs. Fainall suspects that Mrs. Marwood is in love with Mirabell.

MIRABELL SCHEMES TO HAVE WAITWELL, HIS VALET DISGUISE HIMSELF AS HIS IMAGINARY UNCLE THE HONOURABLE SIR
ROWLAND, WHO WOULD BE AN EXCEPTIONAL MATCH FOR LADY WISHFORT, GIVEN HER SOCIAL STANDING, AND THE FACT
THAT MIRABELL HAD EARLIER HURT the latter’s PRIDE BY REJECTING HER WOULD SERVE HIM RIGHT AS MIRABELL WOULD BE
EXCLUDED FROM HIS INHERITANCE IF SIR ROWLAND WAS MARRIED TO LADY WISHFORT, THIS WOULD SOOTHE HER
VANITY. SO MIRABELL PLANS WAITWELL’S MARRIAGE WITH LADY WISHFORT’S MAID FOIBLE BEFOREHAND IN ORDER TO
PREVENT HIM FROM ACTUALLY MARRYING LADY WISHFORT AFTER HAVING SUCCESSFULLY WOOED HER.

The relation between the characters seem to be strained, we find undercurrents of tension in their
apparently friendly conversation, both Mrs. Marwood and Mrs. Fainall have reason to be wary of
one another as the former is the mistress of the latter’s husband and presently in love with the
former lover of Mrs. Fainall, Mirabell. This was emblematic of the cynicism and bitterness
underlying the witty interactions of the high society of the Restoration era.

ACT 3 Lady Wishfort is a stock character, the vain older woman, eager to capture a husband. She ardently desires to
conceal her age behind layers of paint, and does not smile much lest the paint should crack. Mrs. Marwood’s
love for Mirabell turns into hatred and she thus embodies the “woman scorned.”
Congreve's famous line in The Mourning Bride that hell has "no fury like a woman
scorned.” In the last scene of this act through the interaction between Mrs. Marwood and Fainall, the
counterplot (that is the anti-plot or the narrative going against the hero) is established.

ACT 4

The PROVISO SCENE of the play is a symbol of the conventions of Restoration Comedy at its finest. In each of
the interactions of such a play, convention calls for the men and women to construct a narrative uplifting their
own egos, and both Millimant and Mirabell interact with complete decorum, we find no emotional outbursts
in spite of them being deeply in love with each other.

ACT 5

Yk what tf happens
GRAY’S ELEGY SCHTUFF (the idea of memento mori) 
Lines 25-28: The dead will also no longer be able to enjoy the pleasures of home, wife, and children or
the happiness of work, of plowing the fields each day. This stanza points to the way in which the “Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard” contains elements of both Augustan and Romantic poetry. Poetry that
describes agriculture—as this one does—is called georgic. Georgic verse was extremely popular in the
eighteenth century. Note, however, that Gray closely identifies the farmers with the land that they
work. This association of man and nature is suggestive of a romantic attitude. The georgic elements of
the stanza almost demand that we characterize it as typical of the eighteenth century, but its tone looks
forward to the Romantic period.
Lines 81-84: the term “rustic moralist” here is open to interpretation. It may refer to
anyone who is in the countryside thinking about the meaning of death. But more likely, it
refers to the speaker, who is himself moralizing—preaching or contemplating—about the
nature of both life and death.
The last three stanzas are, in fact, the speaker’s epitaph; the way in which the speaker imagines
his epitaph will read. Through the epitaph, the speaker asks the passerby (and the reader) not to
remember him as wealthy, famous, or brilliantly educated, but as one who was “melancholic” or
deeply thoughtful and sad. The speaker asks that we remember him for being generous and
sincere. His generosity was, in fact, his willingness to mourn for the dead. Because he was so
generous, the speaker reasons, heaven gave him a “friend”—someone who would, in turn, mourn
for him after his death. This friend is unnamed, but we can deduce that it is any “kindred Spirit”—
including the reader—who reads the speaker’s epitaph and remembers him. The speaker
concludes by cautioning the reader not to praise him any further. He also asks that his “frailties,”
his flaws or personal weaknesses, not be considered; rather, they should be left to the care of
God, with whom the speaker now resides. The poem, then, is an elegy not only for the common
man, but for the speaker himself. Indeed, by the end of the poem it is evident that the speaker
himself wishes to be identified not with the great and famous, but with the common people whom
he has praised and with whom he will, presumably, be buried.

Stylistic techniques in Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift was a Tory and believed in conservative political agendas.

Satire is social criticism. But it is really tricky. First readers have to figure out what the author is making
fun of. Then they have to understand what the author is suggesting as the just and proper thing to do.
With Swift, in particular, this is often very hard to judge. The purpose of satire is to change people's
minds. Satirists use humor, exaggeration, and ironic juxtaposition to show readers that the way they are
accustomed to looking at the world is unreasonable. Good satire, however, doesn't merely criticize; it
also shows an ideal against which to measure just how bad current circumstances are. Sarcasm and
Irony: Fourth graders are probably already all too familiar with sarcasm, one of the main tools of a
satirist. They also probably understand that sarcasm is usually meant to criticize the recipient in some
way. That's why people get mad at sarcasm. But how do people say the very opposite of what they
mean and still expect people to understand them? How can you tell if people are being sarcastic? How
much of it is tone of voice? (Writing has tone too, but it's not quite as easy to pick up as it is in speech).
Sometimes the content itself is so exaggerated that the author couldn't possibly mean what he says, as
when Swift suggests in “A Modest Proposal” that one way to get rid of poverty in Ireland would be to
sell the infants of the poor to rich people for food. In Gulliver's Travels the narrator calls the King of
Brobdingnag ignorant, but Swift expects the reader to understand that the King is wise. Ironic
Juxtaposition: This means putting something really important next to something really trivial and
appearing to give them equal weight. When Alexander Pope says, "Not louder shrieks to heaven are
cast/ When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last," he is making fun of women who care more
about their little doggies than their husbands. Pope is saying indirectly that reasonable women ought to
love their husbands better than their little pets. Swift does this when he has the king of Brobdingnag call
Gulliver a "groveling insect" and then shows how terrifying and repulsive insects can be when 19
Gulliver is attacked by flies and wasps. Similarly after describing the laws of the Lilliputians against
ingratitude, Swift shows their blind ingratitude to Gulliver for delivering the Blefuscudian fleet to them.
Much of the irony in Gulliver's Travels comes from the contrast between self-image and reality: the big
and little perspective. Gulliver is constantly full of himself until he is abruptly reminded of his puniness
as he falls into a cowpie or is nearly drowned in a cream pitcher. The Narrator: One thing teachers have
to make sure students understand is that the narrator of a satire is not the author. In a satire like
Gulliver’s Travels, the author pretends to be someone else--a naive traveller to an imaginary or foreign
land, or a sophisticated, reasonable man of the world. Gulliver is most like the first, although he thinks
that he is sophisticated. Alert readers see that, at least in Brobdingnag, he is much less wise than the
king whom he calls ignorant.

Key Facts about Gulliver's Travels

 Full Title: Gulliver’s Travels, or, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the

World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of
Several Ships

 When Written: 1720-1725, Published: 1726

 Literary Period: Augustan

 Setting: England and the imaginary nations of:

 Voyage1: Lilliput, Blefuscu,

 Voyage2: ( land of Brobdingnagians) Brobdingnag, the giants, there he sees

them to be unsophisticated and he’s sold to the queen and is carried around in a
 box LoL and one day On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver
leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea. . Gulliver

is often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times

magnified by their huge size.

 Voyage3: Laputa, where people are too intellectual and scientifically inclined, out
of touch with reality. and are incapable of holding a normal conversation where a

floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppresses the land below, called

Balnibarbi., Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib and meets ghosts of history, whom

he finds much less impressive than in books, visits Luggnagg and meets the power-
crazed Luggnaggian king and the grim immortal senile residents of
Struldburg, prove that age does not bring wisdom and sails to Japan
finally returning to England.

 Voyage4: On his fourth voyage he is mutinied and stranded in the land of

the noble horses, the Houyhnhnms, who try to best control the vile and
wicked humans, the Yahoos. Gulliver’s mentor, the master horse, sees
that gull is diff from other humans cause dude is reasonable and wears
clothes. On his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of
his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. This land is

populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike

creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets about learning their language, and when he

can speak he narrates his voyages to them and explains the constitution of England. He is treated

with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and is enlightened by his many conversations with

them and by his exposure to their noble culture. He wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his

bared body reveals to the horses that he is very much like a Yahoo, and he is banished. Gulliver is

grief-stricken but agrees to leave. He fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island,

where he is picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treats him well, though Gulliver cannot

help now seeing the captain—and all humans—as shamefully Yahoolike. Gulliver then concludes
 his narrative with a claim that the lands he has visited belong by rights to England, as her

colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism.

 He concludes by assuring the reader that everything he’s described is

true and that he’s written his travels solely for the public good so that
the wretched Yahoos around him might learn from the virtuous beings of
other lands.
 Gulliver’s main caretaker in Brobdingnag is Glumdalclitch.
 In a satire, authors use humor, exaggeration, and ironic juxtaposition to portray the
follies of the real world and its systems.

 first-person narration of his travels, there is lack of emotional self reflection.

LONDON by SAMUEL JOHNSON

London is an idealistic outsider’s view of England’s depraved capital city, summed up in the poem’s Juvenalian
epigraph, “Quis ineptae/ Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se” (“For who can be so tolerant of the city, who
so iron-willed as to contain himself”)

Poverty and Violence

In Samuel Johnson’s poem “London,” the speaker claims that London is a

dangerous place for the average citizen. His friend Thales agrees, believing that
London has become so full of crime and violence that he no longer feels safe
walking through its streets.

As a result of economic inequality and a crumbling public infrastructure, crime rates

have risen, including violent crimes such as rape and murder. Even most of the
buildings are unsafe, for “falling houses thunder on your head”; it wasn’t
uncommon during Johnson’s day for entire buildings to collapse due to poor
construction.

Both Thales and the poem’s speaker agree that the violence plaguing the city of
London is not limited to the denizens of the streets. Much of it comes from the
city’s wealthy elite, such as “the fell attorney [who] prowls for prey” or politicians
who “devote [themselves] to Vice and Gain.” By hoarding and lavishly spending so
much wealth that could be used to help the poor, the elite classes create an
atmosphere of desperation in which the poor must resort to lives of crime in order
to survive.

The Corruption of Education

Thales argues that the status of education in London is deplorable. He claims that
“unrewarded Science toils in vain,” indicating that the city no longer prioritizes education
and higher learning. The intelligentsia (of which Johnson was a member) is unrecognized
and undervalued. Moreover, the scholarly class are either unable or unwilling to use their
knowledge to help the city’s poor or reform its broken social systems, rendering their work
useless and unhelpful. In another instance, the speaker complains about how often in the
city “a female atheist talks you dead,” as if philosophers have become as predatory and
harmful as the “ruffians” or “fell attorneys” who prey on the weak and unsuspecting. As
both Thales and the speaker see it, the corruption of the city has infected every level of
society, including the well-educated.

The Lure of Pastoral Life

While giving his diatribe against London, Thales stands ready to disembark for Wales, which
was then known as Cambria. He encourages his audience to do likewise:
Quick let us rise, the happy Seats explore,
And bear Oppression’s Insolence no more…For Thales, London’s problems are unsolvable,
meaning that the only real solution is to move away. Even though the speaker regrets his
friend’s decision to leave, he can understand it as well. They share the romanticized vision
of the countryside that characterizes pastoral literature, which looks to the country as a
place “Where honesty and sense are no disgrace.” Thales imagines escaping to “[s]ome
pleasing Bank where verdant Osiers play” or a “peaceful Vale with Nature’s Paintings gay.”
He longs for a natural setting full of life and color as opposed to the decay and filth of the
streets of London near the Thames.