Response on

Response to Ozymandias

            Percy Bysshe Shelley in this poem speaks about what remains of a person’s legacy when he dies. In the beginning of the poem, Shelley introduces the narrator through a statement of action “I met a traveler” and he gives the readers hints about the place where the traveler came from “an antique land” to bear in mind while reading the rest of the poem. The phrase “an antique land” opens a wide range of expectations to what the traveler is going to tell the narrator. Shelley, in the second line, surrenders the narrative to the traveler using a speech tag that takes the spot light from the narrator to the traveler: “Who said— “Two fast and trunkless legs of stone””. This technique allows the poem to go on and on as a flashback to what the traveler told the narrator without interrupting the narrative with speech tags.  

            Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

                                                            Stand in the desert …. Near them, on the sand,

            Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

                                                                        And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Shelley shows what remind of the huge statue over the years “legs of stone” and “shattered visage”. Although the statue as whole was shattered, the remaining of the face demonstrates the personality, of the person depicted in that statue, through the facial expressions, “frown” “wrinkled lip,” and “sneer cold command”. The poem started from the end since it brought up what was lift of Ozymandias “Ramses II” civilization and power that he counts on to speak about his majesty. Shelley pokes fun at the engraving before the statue, “my name is Ozymandias king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” because what remains is his arrogance shown in his shattered face everything around his statue is covered by sand. Decay in the end will destroy everything no matter who you were or what you did, you someday will be covered with the sand.

                                                               

Walpole's "Description of the Villa"

While reading Horace Walpole’s A Description of the Villa, I tried to keep in mind several questions raised at the end of our last class: if we contend that a list can, in fact, make an argument, what is the argument here? What is the purpose of publishing this list and what did Walpole achieve by doing so?

In considering these questions, I spent far too much time thinking about the life of teacups and what it means to take an object created for a specific, practical use and making it a display-object.  In the list of objects in The China-Room, he includes items that don’t seem to have much to recommend them compared to items described as having some exotic origin or material, or were either given as a gift or previously owned by someone of consequence. For example, included in the list is “A tea-pot and milk-pot, six cups and saucers, of modern china, with grey landscapes” (28). The items in this entry would certainly have a use-value outside of this collection (they have a purpose: serving tea, which is an everyday affair), but would they have any kind of display value if not included with the other objects? It seems that its display value (and therefore its exchange value) is increased significantly merely by its proximity to other items of value and its inclusion in this collection. So one purpose, I think, of publishing the list is to solidify the exchange value of comparatively unremarkable items by virtue of having once been a part of Horace Walpole’s collection. In this sense, Walpole has set himself up as the arbiter of the item’s exchange value.

In the preface he notes that one purpose of publishing the list is to offer future owners “an authentic certificate of their curiousities” (13), but how does he authenticate them in the first place, in a way that gives him the authority to authenticate them into the future? As we’ve seen with other authors we’ve encountered so far, he calls on the aristocracy and “people of taste” to lend credibility to value, and he states that much of his collection was gleaned from collections of other people of consequence. If the list (as he seemed to intend) survives the existence of the collection, he ultimately hijacks the history of the object. We now know little more about the object’s origin other than that it came to him from a particular source. He authenticates the value of the object with reference to other “celebrities,” and sets himself up as the “celebrity” that lends it value into the future.

I would be interested to discuss some of these questions in regard to Baudrillard’s suggestions about the collection (and in this case the catalog of a collection) as an idealized reflection of self and as a deep-seated (and potentially destructive or damaging?) psychological project.     

Walpole’s “Description of the Villa”

The consistent theme of Walpole’s objects – or, more accurately, the way that he describes them, i.e. the features highlighted – is the relation of the objects to historical figures, primarily aristocracy but also artists as well an entire section of Indian objects as well as many items of Japan. The value he places these items seem almost exclusively based on their reflection of him as a man of global concern and cultural significance (I can point to examples in class discussion, if needed), which, again, is demonstrated by his choice of description. The objects feel almost entirely abstracted from their physical characteristics (sometimes “very fine” is the most detail he provides and the more detailed descriptions often involve emblems, armor, and the like, alluding to their significance and not necessarily objective physical characteristics), though Walpole claims in his preface that his purpose is preservation. Perhaps he seeks to preserve the objects, yes, but as Baudrillard points to in these kinds of systems, these objects have value and are chosen by such as Walpole by what they reflect about him, and the preservation project that Walpole enacts is one primarily of self. Indeed, in the preface, Walpole tries so very earnestly, bless his heart, to position himself humbly before the reader of his catalogue, to claim that his intention is to preserve Gothic architecture and the historical objects within, but his intention toward curation seems aimed at himself due to these relational descriptions, which, again, is a central motivation of collecting as posited by Baudrillard.

Reading both Walpole and the Baudrillard side-by-side gives way to a slew of questions competing for attention and analysis in my mind. What is the significance of Walpole’s preoccupation with preserving Gothic architecture and his use of it is his own writing? Considering Walpole’s lifelong singleness and his close relationships with only two other men, what might a queer reading of Walpole as subject and Baudrillard as theorist (which would need to be the gap left – or a reading “in relief,” if you will – by his straight male oriented interpretation of collecting) uncover? And lastly, why does he work so hard to position himself as a preservationist, characterizing his personhood (in the catalogue) as little more than a reflection of the significance of his villa and his collections, a kind of concerted self-marginalization? Is this simply cultural or is there more at work here? It jumps out at me because the previous collectors and preservations we have studied thus far in this class seem interested in promoting themselves just as much if not more than their collections.

Okay, I’m over my word count. More tonight. J

Baudrillard's "The System of Collecting"

Jean Baudrillard’s “The System of Collecting” examines the relationship between a human subject and his objects. The essay relies heavily on a Freudian interpretation of this relationship and takes the poststructuralist/linguistic assumption that meaning is made through systems for granted as a foundation (i.e. “without the series… no more object either” (14)). There’s a lot that could be summarized here. Baudrillard proves very deft at packing many claims, implications, and leaps into a small amount of space. As the essay is essentially about a certain kind of relationship, it might be best to start there. Following the Freudian through line of his argument, we could say that Baudrillard begins by way of a distinction, “any given object can have two functions: it can be utilized, or it can be possessed” (8). This object as possession is what Baudrillard is especially interested in. This kind of object is said to be in some way essentially a love object or “anything which is the cause or subject of a passion” (7), yet this system of desire seems very different than something we might find in Plato’s Symposium. Here the passion is said to be “tempered, diffuse, and regulative” (7), the object “simultaneously personalized and cataloged” (11), and the subject regressing to the anal stage, “manifested in such behavior patterns as accumulation, ordering, aggressive retention” (9).

Rather than eros or privation (how can one desire what one already has?) between the subject and object, we have what Baudrillard calls the desirable, which seems something more akin to invention than desire: “the singular object never impedes the process of narcissistic projection” (12). The subject is not initially seeking something he doesn’t have from the object, but rather looks to impose or imprint something of himself on it (which admittedly does lead to a later kind of acquisition). We can see this in the example Baudrillard gives of the castrated pets. In fact, the object is stripped of all agency or meaning outside the collecting subject and the system of his collection. Ultimately, Baudrillard concludes that “for although the collection may speak to other people, it is always first and foremost a discourse directed toward oneself” (22).

The subject is also jealous for his objects, “because these objects are … the narcissistic equivalents of oneself: and were such an object to be lost or damages this would mean symbolic castrations” (18). The subject must castrate his objects, but cannot allow himself to be castrated by anyone other than himself. Another sexual byproduct of this kind of collecting is the fetishization of the parts of one’s partner mentioned on page 19.  

Fanaticism is another word that is used to describe this relationship: “Hence the collector partakes of the sublime not by virtue of the types of things he collects… but by virtue of his fanaticism” (9). It doesn’t matter what the subject is collecting, he will derived pleasure from whatever it is, so long as he keeps collecting it. We could say that fanaticism has to do with habit, and that “Habit has to do with repetition, and also with discontinuity” (14). This element of discontinuity points us to a possible difference or lack in the traditional sense that can be mixed in with the joy of repetition, i.e. the orientation of the collection becomes all the more acutely aware of whatever it is it is missing or whatever may be out of place as it comes closer and closer to completion. Here Baudrillard notes that “what makes a collection transcend mere accumulation is not only the fact of its being culturally complex, but the fact of its incompleteness, the fact that it lacks something” (23). Ultimately Baudrillard concludes that this relationship ends in loneliness since “in so far as he is the one who dictates its signifiers—the ultimate signified being is, in the final analysis, none other than himself” (24).

            This essay is highly gendered. Baudrillard makes the claim that the majority of collectors are men, either in their latency period or of the mid-life crisis variety, and just runs with that without much thought otherwise. Collecting is explored in terms of a strictly male sexuality, whether as a presence or absence. This left me wondering about what a female or gender queer collecting might look like? How might these other understandings of sexuality operate within the frame or system of collecting as Baudrillard presents them? Or how might they disrupt some of Baudrillard’s assumptions or claims?

            Another thing to wonder about is the issue of technology. On page 22, Baudrillard writes, “the object is a priori lacking in cohesion; it is easily destructed by thought. All the more so where the object (and especially the technological object) is no longer associated, as in the past, with a human gesture, a human dynamic.” This essay in its original form was written in 1968, so it might be interesting to reconsider a few things in a contemporary light. Here I was thinking about incorporating the issue of pets, where Baudrillard says they are in between persons and objects, and that the subjectivity and collecting available via video games is sometimes similar to this in between state. I have some possible examples, but I’m already running over the word count, so I can just share these in class if we have time.

            Two of the sections I had the most the most difficulty with were OBJECTS AND HABITS and OBJECTS AND TEMPORALITY. Perhaps we could go over those pages to get a better understanding of how these collections work as system.

            One thing I found very effective about this essay was Baudrillard’s use of concrete examples to elucidate some of his logic and ideas (i.e. the fridge, the harem, the car vs. the horse, the wristwatch), but felt that an easy acceptance of these examples may lead to too easy an acceptance of Baudrillard’s larger idea or argument (This wristwatch example is great or really makes sense to me, therefore, Baudrillard’s claim that “time ceases to be the perilous dimension of praxis and become a domesticated quantity” (15) must be true).

The Prose of Things

Article Summary

The Prose of Things

             

            The revolutionary expansion of the British Empire, improvement of transportation, a national wide carrier system, the wide spread use of advertisement in newspapers and the mobility among population had huge impact on changing the people’s ideology of commodities and their use to an extent that the era came to be known as the World of Goods (Wall 150, 51). Moreover, the interest of acquisitiveness was not the only reason for some people, especially from the middle class, to collect such specimens or commodities, but also it was used as means of climbing up in the social leader as Wall asserts “auctions catalogs and auctioneers seems to have done something in the way of gentrifying themselves and their position” (Wall 174). The blind interest of these goods or commodities that does not bring any profit either scientific or economic and only collected to show off demonstrates the social shallowness (Wall 188).Furthermore, people’s eagerness to know or to see what other people have coincided with the revolutionary blast of goods from all over the world. Therefore, new methods of seeing things were invented, recycled or perfected to encapsulate and guide this demand to the tradesmen benefit (Wall 149). 

Wall after that brings up the history of shopping and advertising and how they improved over the years. Before the sixteenth century, much of the trade was carried out in street markets; tradesmen used tables to present their goods. Soon after, some craftsmen in the 16^th and 17^th century started using their front rooms or the ground floor as a workshop and salesroom. However, it was not until the 19^th century when the era of space innovation and development spread around England and shops were built and incorporated into a uniform. Defoe asserts that “it is a modern custom to have tradesmen lay out two thirds of their fortune in fitting up their shops” (Wall 160). Industrialization and urbanization were main reasons for the increase of retail shops. By 1750 more people worked in industry, trade, commerce and services than in agriculture.

The article flushes out the importance of literal transparency and its role as media. Shop-window as a new style of advertising changed the ideology in which the goods are arranged. Before the appearance of newspaper, shopkeepers depended on the shop’s sign and their local reputation as means of advertising. Wall, then illustrates how new methods of advertising led people into attending auctions and buying catalog of houses. Auctions were not only assembled for buyers, since they display items that are not for sale at that moment, but also for amusement. For instance, the catalogs give background of the furniture and their past owner and how they will change the future of their buyer (Wall 169). Toward the end of the chapter Wall highlight some of the narratives and writers who changed the ideology of critiquing and structuring great houses or castles.

I loved the argument on page 154, when Wall introduced James H. Bunn claims that the escalation of things in the eighteenth century estranges the world making it difficult to encompass visually with words. And shortly after, she introduces Warren Hunting Smith’s idea that writers did not know the interior of the houses which their characters inhabited. Then he argues against these ideas by providing evidence that people in general were acquainted with houses through tours of great houses, many writers at that time had first-hand experience in great houses, and that most of the characters in these narratives are from the middle sort who could travel between classes. To sum up, the part of the book that I have read was really helpful for me to understand the process in which collecting, advertisement, shopping and auctions grow to become phenomena in the western countries.  

  

D. Stuart's Composition/Publication/Reception History of Clare's 'Village Minstrel'

Composition/Publication/Reception History of John Clare’s “The Village Minstrel”


I. Composition
Even before his first volume, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in January of 1820, John Clare had been preparing material for a new collection of poems. In fact, much of the work that would come to be known as The Village Minstrel and Other Poems was composed prior to the release of ‘Poems Descriptive’ in the autumn of 1819. “The Village Minstrel” itself was written between October of 1819 and January of 1820. However, the decision to foreground this particular poem as the title in the collection was not made until relatively later in the negotiations between Clare and his publisher, John Taylor. In fact, it took several rounds of editorial correspondence to work out the final draft of “The Village Minstrel.” In fact, though the poem and its accompanying works were relatively ready for publication by the later part of 1820, it was to be September of 1821 before the full collection was released to the public.
The poet’s first volume had been an anthology comprised of various poems about his rural and “peasant” experiences, a “kind of selection from the best of Clare’s early verse and the fresh crop he produced” (Dawson 236). ‘The Village Minstrel’ was to be more of a coherent, organized collection headlined by the title poem, though this was largely at the discretion and direction of Taylor than Clare. “The Village Minstrel” itself was composed and completed soon after the original volume of ‘Poems Descriptive’ made its appearance. By early February of 1820, the poem itself was submitted within “a Great Quarto” of other prior poems to Taylor. Over the course of several weeks and months however, great pains were taken to edit and revise the specific language and pronunciation of “The Village Minstrel,” ultimately titled “The Peasant Boy.” Edward Drury, the bookseller who originally discovered Clare, having a copy of the manuscript in his possession took his time in passing the document on to Taylor, even at the behest of Clare who ultimately submitted his own copy to Taylor in early 1820.
The poem was composed by Clare to fit inside 119 Spenserian stanzas and positions a “Village Minstrel,” a peasant named Lubin who traverses a small English country town, commenting on the observations perceived. Clare, in contemplating Lubin, was almost certainly imitating James Beattie’s poem “The Minstrel” which features a similar dynamic, that of a village player named Edwin telling of what he sees in the people and places around town (Spenserian Tradition, 1). In developing his verse, Clare reflected on his fascination with quaint country customs and traditions; it is also likely that the poet, himself a fiddler, was familiar with the role of music and leisure. Further illuminating Clare’s own voice and narrative position within the poem are his descriptions of Lubin’s childhood, reminisces of seasonal amusements, fairy tales and superstitions, and, most of all, his love of nature.

II. Publication
A rather interesting aspect of the composition of the poem is its transition and dissemination between not only its author and publisher, in manuscript editions which circulated into the hands of Edward Drury. Drury, already possessing an original copy of “The Village Minstrel” and several other poems was reluctant to pass it on to Taylor, his cousin. This caused the relationship between Taylor and Drury to worsen and ultimately alienated Clare from Drury. Meanwhile the relationship between Clare and Taylor was growing stronger, in large part due to the receptiveness of Taylor to Clare’s own conviction for the general authenticity of the work. Tim Chilcott states this relationship, based around Clare’s increasing reliance on Taylor to “transform rambling and untidy manuscripts into poetry” dates from at least 1821 (Chilcott 96). However there is reason to believe that it was largely during the spring of 1820 that the relationship between Clare and Taylor was really solidified.
The partnership between the two, while harmonious, was conflicted at times. Correspondence dating from the period conveys Clare’s trust in Taylor as somewhat tentative, even conflicted in nature. There is some evidence to believe that the two disagreed over the title and placement of “The Village Minstrel” poem. Originally, titled “The Peasant Boy,” the poem was, as stated earlier, part of a collection that was submitted to Taylor as a manuscript. According to P.M.S. Dawson, Taylor was evidently under the impression that the poem “in Spenserian stanza” was to be an offshoot or “outgrowth” of another poem entitled “Week in a Village” which Clare had intended to headline his next published collection. After several weeks of deliberation however, it was concluded by Taylor to rename the ‘Peasant Boy’ poem “The Village Minstrel” and to have it headline the collection ultimately to be titled The Village Minstrel and Other Poems. Though this letter was written from Clare to Taylor in late 1820, the first two-volume printing of the book and the poem were not to be released to the public until September of 1821. The delay “was entirely due to Taylor,” who was under other demands owing to the fact that the publishing firm had acquired London Magazine. However, the time gave both Clare and Taylor to work together on a formative introduction to the book and this was aided by a “prose account of the customs mentioned in ‘The Village Minstrel’” submitted by Clare to Taylor during this period (Dawson 268).

III. Reception
Arriving over a year and a half following the publication of his first collection of poetry, the second volume of poems by Clare was less commercially well-received. The Village Minstrel and Other Poems, despite operating under the more critical eye and coherent vision of John Taylor, failed to sell as well as Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery. Jonathan Bate, in his biography of Clare, has mentioned several reasons for this, among them the delay in publication and a growing disinterest among readers for rural poetry. The critical reception of “The Village Minstrel” itself received mixed reviews. Though realized as being penned in the same vein as Beattie’s “The Minstrel,” Clare’s own Spenserian chronicle of a peasant musician was praised for its novel style and pastoral eloquence. The Literary Chronicle, in its October 1821 review, cited the poem for its “vivid descriptions of rural scenery” and lauded its “originality of observation and strength of feeling, richness of style and delicacy of sentiment.” Clare himself was observed as potentially “[ranking] with the best poets of the day, though a humble and untutored peasant” (624-625). The Morning Post noted that it “can certainly never be read without delight and admiration, independent of the source whence it springs” (347) and the Gentleman’s Magazine stated it as being “simply and beautifully written” (475).
– As Clare’s popularity has been reborn among various poets and critics, the reception and analysis of “The Village Minstrel” has become more acutely fashioned. In acknowledging the partnership between Clare and Taylor, Dwight Durling has noted that the poem itself “shows a marked advance” of the poet’s skill and lyrical dexterity and states that “he [Clare] never did more vigorous pictures of peasants” (187). Other critics such as A.D. Harvey have noted the “earthier” qualities of “The Village Minstrel,” advocating its less pretentious and more organic verse and language. This identification of the poem with the most well-preserved rural attributes has attracted critics drawn to the simultaneous verisimilitude of Clare’s pastoral expositions and ecological concerns. Of most note has been the critical roundtable of Eric Robinson, David Powell, et. al. who have cited Clare as rejecting the “artificiality” of other similarly themed efforts. Robinson, himself, editor of the latest Oxford edition of Clare’s collected works has gone further to say that the poem “exhibits . . .” For Theresa Adams, writing in 2008, Clare's “The Village Minstrel” poem “evokes Mikhail Bahktin's “‘carnival,’ a world turned upside down that ‘celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions’ . . . Even the poem's form is a carnivalesque revision of georgic, in which leisure replaces labor as the defining experience for the common people” (375-376).
The new renaissance of Clare scholarship and critical appreciation has a special relationship to “The Village Minstrel.” The poem itself serves as a microcosm of Clare’s worldview and convictions, deeply concerned as it is with socio-cultural subtleties and political attitudes towards nature. This can be seen in the verses themselves as towards the end of the poem, after Lubin has chronicled all of his observations, he emerges as the historian of his village, recording transformations of society and landscape in the wake of enclosures and attempting by some measure to preserve the heritage of its people. There is found more than a hint of melancholy as he presides over his changing world: “Fate’s close-kept thoughts within her bosom hide;/She is no gossip, secrets to betray:/Time’s steady movements must her end decide,/And leave him painful still to hope the day” (stanza 119, lines 1-4). Lubin, and Clare himself, are forced to seek an inward solace as the world associated with the rural village, once so assimilated and acclimatized to nature, are now being segregated from it. No longer do the two systems of civilization and nature share in the congruity and harmony that they once did.
So too can we, the reader, resonate with the encroaching demarcation between man and the natural world. Clare’s voice is perpetually poignant in its affection for the preserved traditions of a country village; likewise is it meaningful in its deliberate remorse for the restrictions placed upon it. For there is a sense of fear and trepidation that accompanies minstrel Lubin’s voice, denoting the sense of reluctance to release the feeling of solitary interdependence acquainted with the village. We today might sense this point in time, in the history of the civilized world, as being the end of an era. In England, it marked the consolidation of property, the disruption of populations, and the arrival of technology. It was an age signifying man’s appropriation of nature, a harnessing of it through crude methods and discordant practices. Like Lubin, we see, now in retrospect, the place in history where man’s communion with nature became disoriented.
And yet it is also interesting to note the reception of this poem for its contradictions. While the sentiment of “The Village Minstrel” is certainly exquisitely applied, it is understandable to question the validity of its author’s credibility as a mere “Peasant” bard. Marketed as the work of “an artless village poet,” “The Village Minstrel” is a poem that accomplishes a representation of the pastoral with little affectation. And, going from the verses alone, it is difficult to not accept the poet’s identity as advertised as authentic and bearing an intrinsic rustic quality. Moreover, his correspondences with both Drury and Taylor bear out the fact that he was only marginally educated. Even still, the criticism both then and now explores the idea that Clare’s genius and novelty was a part of a larger, more collective effort, one which benefited from the expertise of Taylor and a preoccupation of the public with the ongoing changes in British society. Today, through the vetted process of archival research and further speculation regarding Taylor’s actual role in “creating” Clare, not to mention the depreciating commercial success of the poet’s work, we can surmise that the success of ‘Village Minstrel’ was at least due, in part, to Taylor’s efforts to promote Clare’s verse.


Works Cited

Adams, Theresa. “Representing Rural Leisure: John Clare and the Politics of Popular Culture.”
Studies in Romanticism, 47.3 Boston: Boston UP (Fall 2008) Literature Resource Center. Online. 10 February 2016.

Bate, Jonathan. John Clare: A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. Print.

Chilcott, Tom. A Publisher and His Circle: The Life and Work of John Taylor, Keats’s
Publisher. London: Routledge, 1972. Print.

Clare, John. Major Works. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Dawson, P.M.S. “John Clare’s Village Job: The Making of The Village Minstrel” Romanticism.
Volume 12, Number 3, 2006. Project Muse. 236-271. Online. 10 February 2016.

Durling, Dwight. Georgic Tradition in English Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press,
1937. Print.

Harvey, A.D. English Poetry in a Changing Society, 1780-1825. New York: Palgrave
MacMillian, 1980. Print.

Nichols, John, ed. “Extracts from Clare’s Poems” The Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical
Chronicle. London: Chatto and Windus, (November 1821) British Periodicals. 7 January 2010. Online. Proquest. 10 February 2016.

Radcliffe, David H, ed. Spenserian Traditions: English Poetry 1579-1830. Virginia Tech University. February 2006. Online. 10 February 2016.

Peale and Bullock, by Kaitlyn Willy

After reading these texts, I have noticed many similarities between the contents of Peale’s museum and the contents of Bullocks, but also many differences in the way that they view and engage the animals in their writing.

First, I noticed that both texts show fascination with animals that we might think of as common or base, such as bats and armadillos. It is interesting to think that common people might not have been as familiar with these specimens as we are now. I was also struck by the sheer amount of effort and organization required to keep track of all of these specimens with analog tools. I can barely keep track of my book collection with my computer! Since our theme for the semester is collecting, I think that it would be interesting to talk about the way that collections in the Romantic period were so much more detailed than what we might have now, but all of the work is done with analog tools. I believe that this is before there were readily available fountain pens, so much of this may have been written with dip pens! What an endeavor!

My thoughts on individual texts:

Peale, Catalogue:

 Of course, the first thing I noticed about Peale’s catalogue, and the most horrifying part of the whole affair, is that there are not only animal, but human remains included. The idea that a person, even an eighteenth century person, would dig up the body of an American Indian, particularly one who had been helpful and had served alongside them, and put their remains on display is just sickening to me. I know that I am looking at this through the eyes of a modern reader, but surely there were some of their contemporaries who were equally horrified to find human remains in a museum? And not only did they do this, they listed them as quadrupeds and not bipeds. (I do note that there is a popular traveling collection in museums that features human cadavers that were donated, but also some that were stolen. I believe there is a lot of talk around this. I see a vast difference between a body donated by its owner to science and stealing a body from burial grounds.)

Also, I guess this is the first time I’ve paid close attention to the way that Linneus grouped animals, because some of these groupings surprised me. I never would have thought to put some of these animals together, but you have to classify them somehow. I also giggled on page 25 when he says “though we pretend not to criticize the ingenious system…” then goes on to criticize it. Good to know that they were willing to question the system as it was being developed.

I know that the page selection we read was not meant to include the cats, but I found his description of them very entertaining. I recommend it if you have time. 

Peale, Guide:

There were three things that I noted about the guide. First, the guide mentions that there were pieces from Pompeii and Herculaneum. I find that strange and amazing, as they had only been rediscovered in the 1740s. That there were already pieces from the most important archaeological find in history making their way around the world is just phenomenal.

Another thing I noticed about the guide was the common presences of railings throughout the museum. I usually think of children in this period (at least those who would be able to afford admission to the museum) as well behaved and quiet, but there are still railings around everything. Apparently the human desire to touch things we aren’t supposed to is innate?

Lastly, why did the PA legislature give Peale part of the statehouse for his museum? This might be something to talk about. 

Bullock, Address:

I find it interesting that unlike the paintings we have seen of specimens in cases lined up, Bullock’s museum did include a few animals presented in scenes meant to mimic their natural habitat. I wonder how the audience experienced this. It would have been a wholly new experience. I had thought this was a later development in natural museums, but apparently not.

I also found it interesting that Bullock had an option of buying an annual or life membership to his museum. I wonder if the lifetime subscribers got their money’s worth before the museum closed.

Bullock, Catalogue:

I feel that Bullock is different from Peale in that he very much anthropomorphized the animals. He places a great deal of emphasis on their gentleness (or lack thereof). He classifies them in tribes and describes them with diminutive, almost fond language, as if all these dead specimens were really his pets. Yet, although he sometimes describes intelligent behavior, he doesn’t applaud it. Gentleness, apparently, makes up the personality of the perfect animals for Bullock.

My Thoughts/In Conclusion: 

I find it both interesting and frustrating the difference in how Peale and Bullock view animals and the way that we would view them today. They have made wild animals into something to be tamed, a commodity to be used up. In the past, I have thought about and studied how colonialism uses up the environment, natural resources, land, and even people (through slavery and genocide), but have given little thought to the wild (or tame) animals and the way colonialism uses and changes them.

That the creators of these museums would hunt animals for the museum is one thing, but they also sometimes kept them alive for a while to ensure a more pleasing specimen. Peale mentions that they kept live animals, but did not have the sense to keep African animals warm and so they died. Bullock even writes about healing wounds of a baboon who had been abused. What does the desire to fatten an animal or heal its wounds, particularly aesthetic wounds, before killing it and using it as a museum piece say about the value of animal life at the time? 

I think that this relates really closely to what we’ve talked about in terms of Nature and “wildness” being a commodity to be consumed. We saw a couple weeks ago that human cultures were turned into a commodity for consumption. Now animals are a commodity, too. I suppose that the belief of the time is that everything in existence was solely for the entertainment of Europeans? 

John Clare Reading Response - Jessica Lyle

Jessica Lyle

Selected Poems by John Clare - Reading Response 

Upon first reading of the selection of poems assigned for today’s reading I was struck by how much I liked them.  They moved me in a way I am not usually moved by nature poetry.  I am going to focus on “Recollections after a Ramble” and “I Am.” 

“Recollections after a Ramble,” being the first listed on the syllabus, was the first of John Clare’s poems that I read.  I expected to be underwhelmed by a poet I had never heard of, but I was pleasantly surprised.  The language and meter flowed pleasantly, and unlike the various poems entitled “Song” that we also read for today, did not sound too sing-songy when read aloud. (To be fair, I also enjoyed Clare’s “Song” poems, I merely felt they were less enjoyable to read aloud).  Why did I expect to be disappointed by the poems of an author of whom I had never heard?  Why exactly did I enjoy this poem so much?  I think I enjoyed John Clare’s nature poetry so much because there is an element of humanity in each one.  In “Recollections” he reflects not only on all he sees in nature, but he also reflects upon his own childhood with a sense of melancholy and regret that he has to return to an adult life, devoid of his childhood activities.

“I Am” is possibly one of the most chilling poems I have ever read. This poem, written during Clare’s descent into madness, is rife with melancholic self-reflection.  Clare laments his perceived lack of friends and admits his longing for a place devoid of mankind, where he and his God can be utterly alone.  My question is: What exactly was Clare’s affliction that he was committed to an asylum for?  What would be his diagnosis today?  Did his friends truly forsake him or was this only Clare’s perception as a result of his mental instability?   There is so much that can be said and discussed about all of Clare’s poems, I look forward to today’s class discussion.

links on South Seas voyages and collecting

Cook Voyage Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Sydney Parkinson's Art at the State Library of New South Wales

Transcriptions of Endeavor journals by Cook, Banks, and Parkinson, along with the official published voyage narrative compiled by Hawkesworth. This site allows you to compare what each person said of any particular date.

Discussion and images of the Endeavor Botanical illustrations at the Natural History Museum of London

Specimens and illustrations from the Endeavor voyage, from the Picture Library of the Natural History Museum, London

Welcome

What function do collections serve? To order the world, to preserve the past, to consolidate self, class, nation? What do they express? Desire, anxiety, a drive to contain, the embrace of chaos? What is the relationship between collector and the objects in her collection? Between observer and observed? Between the material object and its representation in/as art? To answer these questions, this course will take up a wide range of primary text readings, including voyage narratives, scientific reports, literary essays, museum catalogues, and books of poetry, in tandem with recent scholarship on things, materiality, collecting, and aesthetics from the fields of museum studies, book history, science studies, and cultural studies. Through these readings, we’ll consider how things become (or resist becoming) objects by way of their incorporation into systems of representation (whether Linnaean taxonomy, the museum, the catalogue, or the anthology). Throughout the course, we’ll spend time untwisting the arguments critics have made about collecting, and testing their conclusions through detailed analyses of literary works. Most of our case studies will come from the Romantic period, 1780-1830, but we will range across the 19^th and 20^th centuries for additional materials, examples, and scholarly work. You will leave the class having studied a small group of Romantic period writers, including John Clare, William Wordsworth, and John Keats, that are often associated with the turn to materiality in literary studies.

This course is designed to provide students with the theoretical and philosophical grounding in a specific topic—the theory and practice of collecting—and to introduce a set of “portable methodologies” that can be applied across literary periods. I encourage students to follow their own interests for the final project, which will be developed in consultation with me after spring break. 

Please use this forum to post article summaries, reading responses, and your composition/publication/reception history. Reading responses should be uploaded by 3pm on any given Tuesday.