tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939290855438272306.post5841367646848124547..comments2023-09-19T08:52:46.269-05:00Comments on Alms for Oblivion: Romanticism, Romantic, Romancepiershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12042745369869839918noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939290855438272306.post-68004595763659011742008-03-25T12:51:00.000-05:002008-03-25T12:51:00.000-05:00I think the Wordsworth poem is a deploration of wh...I think the Wordsworth poem is a deploration of what I.A. Richards (?) called "the neutralization of nature" -- the process ongoing since the 18th century whereby nature was drained of its supernatural element (and, with that, as was mistakenly thought, its ability to compel wonder).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4939290855438272306.post-64532258276645391642008-03-25T11:10:00.000-05:002008-03-25T11:10:00.000-05:00I look upon DON QUIXOTE as an anti-Romance, an att...I look upon DON QUIXOTE as an anti-Romance, an attack against aristocratic ideals and chivalry and the Middle Ages in general.<BR/><BR/>As you know, Piers, I see most of Shakespeare's characters as hooligans, as I wrote under my English name in "Shylock among the Hooligans" under "Miscellaneous" in www.jochnowitz.net<BR/><BR/>Cervantes (1547-1616) and Shakespeare (1564-1616) were contemporaries who looked in opposite directions. Don Quixote, who thought he was a knight but was merely a hooligan, subcribed to the values of chivalry and traveled around looking for a fight. He was always defeated, even by the windmills he attacked, and the other characters in DON QUIXOTE refer to him as crazy. Don Quixote was indeed delusional; the adjective "quixotic" doesn't apply to him. He persisted in clinging to the rules of an earlier age, which had been rejected during the Renaissance because the rules themselves were crazy.<BR/><BR/>The Wordworth poem can be interpreted in several ways. It can be read as a call to broaden one's horizons and learn more about the world—an Enlightenment point of view.Lao Qiaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15295030239306528508noreply@blogger.com