engl 335 midterm

“All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about, in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragicomic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed and sometimes mix with each other in the mind: alternate contempt and indignation, alternate laughter and tears, alternate scorn and horror”

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): burke is talking about the revolution in france, arguing against it

something smart: calling it ridiculous, can’t believe they’re losing to these morons, word choice, core belief, revolution is a disruptive force that’s destroying the nature of things

“You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity—as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves a unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties from a long line of ancestors”

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): burke is talking about the revolution in france, arguing against it, saying that monarchy is a system of rights that we’ve inherited but cannot change, nothing is inevitable

something smart: we only have rights bc those before said so (aka NOT self-evident), happened to live in this place that happened to make these laws a long time ago, can’t change to democracy without any history of it

“Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts, wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, molding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression”

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): burke is talking about the revolution in france, arguing against it

something smart: this description of the political system as something too big to understand but beautiful is a reflection of burke’s politics (deliberately overloaded)

pg 117: arrest and imprisionment of the king and queen

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): burke is describing what happened to the king and queen, the horrors of it

something smart: goes back to burke’s ideas of sexuality (thing we have no control over) and how he thinks every man shares the same sexual attraction to Marie Antoinette’s body —> writes it like a scene of sexual violence; what is rotten with the supporters is that they have distanced themselves from their sexuality

pg 118: describing when he first saw the queen

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): literally said above, once again connected to sexuality, overdramatic on purpose

something smart: external features of antoinette, yay violent masculinity and being brought together over heterosexuality and desire to fuck her, but now men aren’t reacting like that and that’s so messed up and unnatural, an attack on her is an attack on chivalry

“But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.”

author: burke

text: reflections on the revolution in france

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): burke is criticizing the revolution and the Enlightenment

something smart: acknowledging that all of this is fiction and society is a pleasing illusion, there are no first principles, there are just stories that we’re found long ago, accept and ignore this bc the alternative is worse

“Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice.”

“Besides, whilst they are only made to acquire personal accomplishments, men will seek for pleasure in variety, and faithless husbands will make faithless wives; such ignorant beings, indeed, will be very excusable when, not taught to respect public good, nor allowed any civil right, they attempt to do themselves justice by retaliation.”

author: wollstonecraft

text: vindication on the rights of woman

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): main idea of this piece, also calling out men for being unvirtuous

something smart: women need to be educated or they’re fucked moving forward, COMPANION of men rather than subordinate to them, need to understand these concepts to be virtuous aka true virtue requires independent reasoning

still acknowledging the patriarchy and how women will get married (trying to find new spaces for women’s self-contentment while also knowing the inevitable)

“In this work I have produced many arguments, which to me were conclusive, to prove that the prevailing notion respecting a sexual character was subversive of morality, and I have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were, idolized when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand traces of mental beauty, or the interesting simplicity of affection.”

author: wollstonecraft

text: vindication on the rights of woman

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): thesis statement of piece

something smart: stop idolizing women (aka Marie Antoinette bullshit needs to stop), gender norms ruin true morality, connection between morality, reason, and education

(also: gender is discourse, it is something that is constructed, NOT biologically or theologically determined, can be rewritten by competition texts, can be the subject of theory 

very specific about her words/language because women are defined by language)

wollstonecraft on sexuality (too lazy to find good passage)

need to extract sexuality out of the social order if women are going to be present in the social order (exact opposite of Burke), sexuality ruins marriages (everything that is wrong in the home is due to men’s uncontrollable sexual urges), a society centered around sexuality will lead to tyrany

“If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong passions and groveling vices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.”

author: wollstonecraft

text: vindication on the rights of woman

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): arguing that women need to be educated and making a critique of innocence

something smart: can’t shame women for not understanding if you don’t let her actually learn. also saying that innocence is not a positive virtue but rather something negative that patriarchy has made ppl believe is positive

obviously not positive or else men would want to be innocent too

“Probably the prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from Moses’s poetical story; yet, as very few it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that Eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam’s ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to show that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke; because she as well as the brute creation, was created to do his pleasure.”

author: wollstonecraft

text: vindication of the rights of woman

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): critique of the Bible

something smart: calling the bible fiction/saying that we’re reading poetry, not literal history —> Old testament is made up, the bible is a fiction that reveals through metaphors things about God; ALSO  

Genesis hates on women —> the fact that this is a story from a bijillion years ago proves that men have been writing stories about women since the beginning --> bible is a book written by men for men 

richard polwhele

the unsex’d females: attack/response to mary wollstonecraft, barely talked about in class

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy”

author: paine

text: age of reason

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): beginning of what we read for age of reason, paine’s personal beliefs

something smart: paine believes in deism and also believes that organized religion goes against the things he listed here

“Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

author: paine

text: age of reason

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): talking about various churches or religions and what they believe/their similarities

something smart: every act of belief is an act of disbelief —> believing in one religion means not believing in other religions; argues that disbelief is the fabric of religion –> everyone is criticizing others for not believing what they believe

“It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other; and consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call any thing a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

author: paine

text: age of reason

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): talking about his issues with the concept of revelations

something smart: secondhand account of someone's experience with/revelation from God is hearsay, not true divine law

paine’s problem with christian belief of salvation

the idea of someone else (Jesus) atoning for your moral failure is NOT moral justice or even justice at all, so why would we have a religion that celebrates this concept —> Christian church thinks of religion in terms of money, not morality —>

THUS invented a Jesus that works similarly to a debt that someone else could pay for someone who couldn't

paine believes that the greatest redemption you could have is to believe there is no redemption – you don't need to redeemed, you are perfect/loved as you are

“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.”

author: paine

text: age of reason

situate it (who’s speaking/what’s happening/what’s at stake): talking about how the bible is just claims about god/what others have claimed about him

something smart: the way of the universe (nature, astronomy, science) is better; the natural world is the only true way to understand God and his creation, also better bc it’s not multivocal, but rather clear

paine’s problem with jesus

doesn’t make God look reasonable – stories don't add up, would make more sense if Jesus stayed on earth rather suffered for a sec 

paine’s problem with mystery, miracles, and prophecy

mystery: stops ppl from questioning and thinking critically about religion

miracles: more likely that someone is lying than a law of nature was broken; have to balance probability to make sense how the world --> is it more likely that a miracle didn't happen or that everything else we've ever know is a lie?

prophecy: use vague and obscure language, another made up thing

william blake reading(s)

songs of innocence: what does innocence mean (pure, infant joy, catastrophically suspect and problematic)

songs of experience: skeptical of experience, problems of building a theology out of nature, importance of god vs man made ideas (experience in a sense)

the marriage of heaven and hell: series of critiques that’s not interested in creating a dogma that replaces a new one, wants you to be a skeptical reader, the bible doesn’t teach you a specific kind of theology but rather a style of reading

annotations to an apology for the bible: defending paine against the bishop, critiquing miracles. critiquing idea of chosen ppl

visions of the daughters of albion: oothoon, criticizing and admiring a vision of hope for his nation/vision of rehabilitation

(if it’s rhyming, it’s blake (does NOT mean all blake passages will rhyme though))