“Sleep No More” Again: Melville's Rewriting of Book X of Wordsworth's Prelude1

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
The Face ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract In the poem “The House-top” in his collection of Civil War poetry Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, Herman Melville attempts to rewrite the climatic “Sleep No More” episode of Book 10 of William Wordsworth’s Prelude to speak to the issues of post-Civil War America by revisiting the mix of violence and idealism Wordsworth encountered during the French Revolution. Hoping to escape Wordsworth’s loss of faith in ideals in the face of violence, Melville deconstructs Wordsworth’s use of language, stripping it of some of its timelessness for a greater time-full-ness to address the needs of the age rather than asking reality to conform to Romantic ideals, while also building on Wordsworth’s courageous example. Melville reconstructs the American narrative by rousing it from the “sleep” of Romantic idealism and calls his nation to awake to a new day of vast possibility in which exuberance and restraint coexist by demanding that ideals serve society rather than society blindly (and sometimes self-destructively) follow those ideals.

Christianity as Insurrection

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-324
Author(s):  
P. Matheson
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Women Slaves ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The French Revolution

To suggest that authentic Christianity is an insurrectionary faith, a standing provocation to the conventional values of society is, on the face of it, to invite derision. Yet the ferocity with which the first Christians were persecuted was in no small part due to their subversive teachings and practices which gave women, slaves and artisans ideas above their station. This subversive dimension may often have been forgotten. It can hardly have been very evident to the inhabitants of Wittenberg in 1515, for example, yet within a decade Germany was to be embroiled in an unprecedented crisis of authority, one which led not only to turmoil in the world of student and scholar and cleric, but to the greatest social upheaval prior to the French Revolution, to the uffrur we know as the Peasants' War.

Class Struggle and Culture Wars in the Springtime of the French Revolution, Year II (1794)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-235
Author(s):  
Sophie Wahnich ◽  
Alexander Dunlop ◽  
Sylvia Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Political Community ◽  
French Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract In the spring of Year II (1794), the future of French society was uncertain. This article looks at the response to the uncertainty of three members of the Committee on Public Safety, who discussed the need to choose between a revolutionary political community and civil war, even as they disagreed about what form the future republic should take.

The Structure of Modern Ideology

1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-399
Author(s):  
Francis G. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
Social Theorist ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
The French Revolution

“THEORIES of Government!” exclaims Thomas Carlyle in the early pages of The French Revolution. “Such has been, and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in her great process.” The social theorist of today takes more seriously than Carlyle the existence of ideology, for ideology is an expression of spiritual unrest in the face of history-making issues. In turn, ideology itself becomes a problem, and we are led to examine its nature. Especially is this true today, which is a time of passionate affirmation of ambiguous positions rather than the observation of political behavior.

scholarly journals Frigørelsens poetik

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Ladegaard
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The People ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
Poetic Imagination ◽  
The Face ◽  
Common Principle ◽  
Exclusive Property ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Jakob Ladegaard: "Frigørelsens poetik - Den franske revolution og poetisk indbildningskraft i Wordsworths The Prelude"AbstractJakob Ladegaard: “The Poetics of Emancipation – Poetic Imagination and The French Revolution in Wordsworth’s The Prelude”It has often been argued that William Wordsworth’s tribute to poetic imagination in his great epic poem The Prelude (1805/1850) should be read as the mature poet’s farewell to the historical and political world of The French Revolution to which the young Wordsworth was greatly attached. The present essay argues to the contrary that the elaboration of the concept of imagination in the poem is tied to an affirmative re-interpretation of the popular and democratic elements of the revolution in the face of its disappointing decline into elitism, terror and The Revolutionary Wars. A close reading of The Prelude’s narration of the poet’s travels to France during the revolution suggests that poetic imagination is not the exclusive property of the artistic genius, but a common principle put into democratic practice by anonymousmasses on the roads of France. The relations thus established in the poem between the poet and the people are interpreted through the lenses of the English republican tradition and recent democratic theories advanced by French philosophers like Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort and Jacques Rancière.

The Barbet Movement in the Times of the French Revolution: Peasants, Counter-Revolutionaries, Bandits?

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7 (105)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Andrey Mitrofanov
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
French Government ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Popular Movement ◽  
The Times ◽  
New View ◽  
The French Revolution

During the French Revolution, an anti-French rebel movement, known as the barbets, took place at the territories of the County of Nice and Piedmont. Barbets were the forerunners of the Italian Insorgenze of 1796—1814. At the territories where the barbets units operated, the power of the new French administration was weak, the roads were unsafe, robbery and smuggling flourished. From time to time, small and large uprisings broke out in rural communes and cities in the region. The Nice region and part of Piedmont were in a state of permanent civil war, which in the official French discourse was called “banditisme” or “brigandage”. The rise of the Barbet movement was in 1796—1800. Only at the time of the Consulate the French government managed to partially eliminate this threat to order and civil peace. The author of the article, based on archive sources and newest historiography, presents a new view on the barbet movement, paying a special attention to clan conflicts among rioters and the social composition of this popular movement in general.

Authority, prescriptivism and the French standard language

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Anthony Lodge
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Language Standardization ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
The Face ◽  
French Standard ◽  
The French Revolution

AbstractPrescriptive attitudes to language seem to be more deeply engrained in France than in many other speech-communities. This article traces their development between the sixteenth century and the present day within the model of language standardization proposed by E. Haugen and in the light of the notion of ‘standard ideology’ proposed by J. and L. Milroy. It will be argued that early definitions of what was considered ‘the best French’ were based simply on the observed usage of ‘the best people’; later it was felt that the standard required more permanent jusitification, giving rise to the idea that the ‘best French’ was the ‘best’ because it was the variety most closely in line with clarity and reason; a third stage was reached with the French Revolution when this variety of French became mandatory for everyone wishing to be considered ‘French’ and ‘reasonable’. Powerful institutional forces are engaged in promoting and maintaining this ideology in contemporary France, but excessive rigidity in the traditional standard in the face of the alternative norms which exert countervailing pressures on speakers could lead to a sitution of diglossia.

Bangladesh: An Unfinished Revolution?

1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 891-911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talukder Maniruzzaman
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Revolutionary mass upheaval generally weakens the people's respect for authority, law, and discipline; and it brings in its wake social, economic, and political disorders, facilitating the establishment of an authoritarian regime. The French Revolution was based on the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but the destruction of the old social and political fabric, and the failure to institutionalize the new ideas, led Frenchmen to search for “the man of genius destined at once to carry on and to abolish the revolution.” The Russian Revolution of 1917 was also followed by several years of civil war, which led to the establishment of the ruthless totalitarian regime of Stalin, itself reminiscent of the Thermidorian Reaction. In Algeria, Cuba, China, and North Vietnam, successful mass armed revolutions have been consolidated only because of their one-party dictatorships.

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