Romantic Victorian Project

1. One of the two historical events that occurred during the beginning of the romantic period was the beginning of the French Revolution. The French Revolution began in 1789 with the storming of a prison called that Bastille. The French were rebelling against Louis the 16th because he was rich and noble. The common people were being taxed outrageously and were hungry. Louis was not taking care of his country. The French therefore rebelled and Louis fled from Versailles to Paris. The revolution scared English conservatives because they thought that it would spread into England. English liberals liked the rebellion and were excited about it until took over and a few hundred aristocrats got their heads chopped off with the guillotine.

Just before the French Revolution, America also held a revolution against England. The revolution resulted in the colonies of the New World separating themselves from the control of England and becoming their own bosses. The very confident and powerful England felt a little differently after the declaration of the colonies independence. The separation not only hurt England's pride, but also hurt their economy.

2. During these times, I imagine that people living through these events were one of two kinds of people. The first kind being the rebels and supporters of change, who stomped their foot down and told the government how things were going to be. These were the people that participated in the riots and were literally the "Revolutionists" or the ones who made the change happen, or supported the cause without participating. These types of people were just plain out angry with the government or monarchy and were willing to show their behinds to prove their point. The settlers in the New World for example did exactly that, when they rebelled against England and declared their independence.

The second category of people were those who liked things just the way that they were. These were the people who did not support change and were usually extremely conservative and supporters of the controlling government or monarchy and had money. Money playing an important factor especially in the French Revolution. I imagine these people living in a lot of fear during this time, hence king Louis the 16th fleeing Versailles to take cover in Paris. Old Louis was afraid of the revolutionists chopping his head off with that scary looking guillotine. His supporters were just as scared, including those in England who did not want revolution to spread.

3. I think that in their literature, poets were expressing what was going on during the times of revolution. To me, it seems that they used nature a lot to express what was going on nationally and politically. The poets also explore the human mind by challenging it to think "outside of the box" and gave nature a voice. I think that the poets tried to use their poetry to send a message to the people and get the readers to think along the same lines as they did.

William Blake- I Heard an Angel

http://www.online-literature.com/blake/2886/

This poem is saying that no matter what "blessing" comes along there is always a curse that comes with it. When the angel came and sang the song of relief and positivity, "mercy, pity, peace is the world's release" the devil comes along and kind of curses what the angel said by saying that good things can't exist without the bad things. Or in other words, the bad things is what makes the good things good. I think that the poet is trying to also send a message of peace as well as tell everyone that with every good thing comes suffering.

I think that this is a perfect example of Romantic poetry because it uses spirituality and tries to get the human mind to "think outside the box" and see things from a different, more imaginative perspective. For example, no other person would really think to put a message of peace and suffering into a poem using the devil and an angel, which are complete opposites to express the message. For one thing, it is really smart because people of the time would listen to anything religious and an angel and devil theme would really catch their attention and give them something familiar to think about and process the message that is trying to be expressed.

William Wordsworth- "The Nightingale"

http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/2221/

The nightingale was about a bird who is supposed to be a happy creature and always sings happy songs. However, one day the poet hears the nightingale singing a sad song when he is in the woods one day. He states in the poem that "In nature there is nothing melancholy". I think that he is trying to say that in these times there is no happiness and that even nature itself is sad. To the extent that a nightingale, who is usually a happy bird is singing sad songs to express it's sadness.

I think that this is a good example of Romantic poetry because it was written in 1789, right when the romantic period and the French Revolution was beginning. It is already starting to show the sadness that was emerging from a time of lots of revolution and people being frightened or extremely angry. I imagine it was hard not having a reliable government and people were trying to overthrow what was running the country. So, I think that this poem was mainly expressing the emotions of the people as a whole at the time.

George Gordon, Lord Byron-"Solitude"

http://www.online-literature.com/byron/696/

This poem was really interesting. He is putting a new description on the word solitude. He describes being alone in the woods, appreciating nature and as he puts it "Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled". Although he is all alone, he says that this is not solitude. this is something that you can appreciate because you are kind of at peace with yourself and in the presence of nature. Then he describes being in a crowd of people who are "Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!" and he is wandering in what I think is what he is describing the political situation of the time. He says that being alone with nature is not solitude because you are connecting with nature and you are in it's presence and everything is peaceful. But when he is in a crowd of people who are mixed up and confused and distressed in a mixed up time, this is what being solitude is.

I think that this is a good example of Romantic poetry because he makes a reference of the conditions at the time "And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;" which were very sad and depressing. The people felt as though there was no guidance because people were rebelling against governments (France and the New World) and the monarchies were freaking out and not taking care of their countries (hence the rebellion). Plus, monarchies were scared of the rebellions and fleeing or hit hard economic hardships, so that is where I think that he is describing the roaming alone part. This poem as well uses nature to describe the feelings and emotions of the people and describes the social conditions.

Percy Bysshe Shelley-Ozymandias

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

This poem is a little more difficult to understand than the rest. It talks about a sculpture that is alone in the middle of a desert. The person who made it put some expressions on the sculpture that were described as "whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command". These expressions were apparently the emotions of the sculptor and he made the sculpture be represented as the "king of kings". The message on the pedestal says "`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'" I think that the poet is using the sculptor as a representation of himself, expressing his own emotions onto the king sculpture and representing his idea of the monarchy, or what was representative of authority and saying that everyone should despair.

This example of Romantic poetry displays the emotions of the people with the frown and wrinkled lip mentioned as well as representing the poets and obviously the people's opinion of the king. The people of the time were disgusted with the monarchy hence the rebellions, and this poem displays what the people thought of it by making the stature a representation of the king who was frowning and saying that all should despair and be sad. He also used the desert (nature) to represent solitude and struggle for survival.

John Keats-"To Sleep"

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/499/

In this poem, I think that he is using sleep to represent his desires to escape from the time and world that he was living in. It is like, when he thinks that sleep is coming on he practically begs it to stay. He asks sleep to "Save me from curious conscience", which is of course being awake and living from day to day. He describes sleep as a way to get away from having to live and suffer life. This is a good example of Romantic poetry because it describes how people just wanted an escape and wanted to find a way to make everything bad go away. He states that he does not want to see day because it is when you have to be awake and dealing with every day. He welcomes night because it is when everything is calm and he can sleep and go into an entirely different world.

Victorian Period

Two events that happened during the Victorian period was that there was a depression in 1842 that put a million and a half unemployed workers on a type of welfare. The government was finding out about child labor and thing that happened to the children. One of the things that happened to children is that they got caught in machines and died because they fell asleep after working for 12 hours straight with no break. This was a huge problem in England and the economy began to suffer considerably as a result.

Queen Victoria began her reign in 1837 which was the first year of the depression that hit the country. During her reign, there were mass rallies protesting government policies that kept the prices for bread rising and unaffordable. There were some good outcomes from the rallies, like the Factory Acts, that limited child labor and reduced the working day to 10 hours and everyone got a half holiday on Saturday. State established schools were also a good thing that happened post-rallying.

Life for normal people during this time was really hard because of the economic conditions. England got a population boom when there was a famine in Ireland that forced 2 million people to emigrate to England. This caused an over population in cities and 10-12 people lived in one room with 1 toilet for every 250 people. These were hard conditions to live under and on top of that, the people had hard working conditions. These people who lived during this time had it hard all around.

The difference between the Romantic and Victorian periods is that Romantic times were really depressing and the monarchies took no initiative to improve the hard times that hit their countries. peopled rebelled and everything was violent. During the Victorian time, the monarchy at least tried to make improvements to relieve the stress and poverty. People still got mad and rallied, but improvement came without the people running the monarchy out of town or beheading them.

I think that the Victorian poets tried to express sadness that was felt at the time due to poverty. Poverty was a big major thing that took place during Victorian times and there was a depression going on so people were very poor and struggling for survival. Survival was another thing that I think Victorian poets tried to express in their poems because in times that were so poor, that there was 1 toilet for every 250 people, there was a lot of struggling no matter where you turned. So Struggling, Survival, sadness and poverty were the things that I think that poets during the Victorian poets expressed in their poetry the most.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson-"Wages"

http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/734/

This poem is about a woman who is just wanting to live and nothing fancy. I think that the author is trying to use the woman to say that she is fighting for life and her right to live. As a result of fighting to live, she does not want glory or to sit on a throne as a hero. The only thing she wants to do is live her life and enjoy the simple pleasures that life gives her. She is fighting to live and wants no other reward such as glory, but just wants to be rewarded with her life.

I think that this example of Victorian poetry defines the era well because it talks about the struggle to survive and how this person is fighting to live. It describes the common person's simple desire to have the right to life and that that was what was worth fighting for. The poem says that she only wants the "wages of going on, and not to die." The wages that are talked about is what I think are representative of the low wages and poverty that these people were living in. All that they wanted was enough money to make ends meet and support their lives. This was a poem reflecting the depression that was going on.

Robert Browning-"The Pied Piper of Hamelin"

http://www.online-literature.com/robert-browning/2764/

This poem was REALLY interesting. This was basically about Peter Piper who lured a bunch of rats out of a city. The rats were taking over the city and destroying everything and eating all of the food and biting children. Then the town went to town hall and said that if the mayor did not find a solution they would run him out of town. Then the piper showed up and said that if they paid him he would take all of the rats out of the city. He did just that and when he came back for his payment, the council refused to pay what they owed him. To get back at them, Piper lured all of the children into a cave and shut them inside never to be seen again. People went looking for them to give piper silver and gold or whatever he wanted in exchange for the children. They were never to be found however and the story of what happened to the children was written on a column across from the cave where the children disappeared to remind people to keep their promises.

I think this relates to the Victorian period because the whole country is taken over by vermin and the monarchy and the government is promising to do something about it. The government however is not keeping their promises at the time to end poverty and as a result worse things happen. For example, Piper wants his money that he is promised and the council refuses and tries to give him less than they promised "But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!" They did not do what they said that they were going to do and things get worse. All of these bad things happen because the government did not keep their promise and the people suffer as a result. So as said in the poem, the moral of the story is "If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!" or in other words, keep the promise that you make because if not bad things can happen. This is from the Victorian government saying that there was going to be relief an none was coming.

Matthew Arnold-"Youth and Calm"

http://www.island-of-freedom.com/ARNOLD2.HTM

This poem is about death and youth and it talks about how calming it would be to be dead and not not have to go about day to day. The youth is also mentioned in this and how the youth do not want calmness. Maybe what the author is talking about is how in the poverty and times of suffering, some people want everything to be calm and others, like the youth want to rally and get what they deserve. I think that this is a good example of Victorian poetry because it goes over the escape thing again where there is no calm in the world only how everyone is dying. He says that "Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,But 'tis not what our youth desires." So he says that calm is good but the youth does not want calm, they want to rally.

Thomas Hardy-"The Man He Killed"

http://www.online-literature.com/hardy/910/

This poem was a little weird and I had a hard time understanding it's meaning. Apparently this man met another man outside an old inn. Then he describes shooting the other man dead. "I shot him dead because--Because he was my foe," so apparently they were enemies and the second that they saw each other they wanted to kill each other.

I think that this poem may reflect the foes that the people had with each other at the time. People fighting over jobs with one another, people fighting with the government. I think that the man also makes a reference to the times because he says that he sold the other man's traps and that is why they were foes. "I--Was out of work--had sold his traps--" He says that they were both out of work and so he sold his traps to get money. That was a characteristic of the Victorian time because many were out of work and poor. I think that the author is portraying this aspect of their time when he wrote the part about being out of work and the means of survival. Even if it meant stealing and killing.

Mentor Log 6

Because my mentor left Athens to go home for summer vacation on the 6th. I only completed 7 hours and 45 minutes of my 10 mentor hours. As a solution, Mr. Siegmund said to rent a foreign Japanese movie and pay attention to the cultural aspects of the movie. The movie was 132 minutes so it was a little over two hours. These two hours covers the hours that I need to complete the mentor section of my project.

The name of the movie that I rented was called The Hidden Blade, the entire movie was in Japanese so I had to read the captioning the whole time. The movie was about a samurai who was living in the time when everything was becoming modernized and "westernized". Samurai fight in battle using only swords and traditional weapons. The character Munezo was teaching and being taught how to use guns, which is not a samurai thing. Due to this modernization, Munezo was having a hard time making personal and political decisions because he was raised using the traditional tactics in all aspects, including political and personal aspects.

In the movie, Munezo and his sister's husband have a friend that leaves to join some kind of a political clan. Later, this friend gets captured and they find out his name and who he was trained by. Munezo and this friend trained together and they matched each other in skill. So, Munezo gets ordered to go and kill his friend to prove that he is innocent and had no part in the political clan. He is accompanied by guys from the community who have guns and his friend gets shot. He has to live with making this decision because it came between his honor and duty. Later he in a way deals with his decision by seeking revenge on the man who ordered him to kill his friend. His friend's wife kills herself because she slept with the man who ordered her husband be killed. She slept with him because he promised her that he would spare his life is she did. He lied of course and Munezo kills him.

All in all, I learned from this movie that the Japanese and the Asian culture hold their honor and duty in the highest regards. But, when one has to make a decision between the two, that is when a lot of trouble starts. Mostly I think that honor is what is most important to the culture because even when people have to follow their duty over their honor they usually go back and avenge their loss of honor.

Mentor Log 5

5/2/2008

11:00-1:00



This was the day that things really needed to get done. Time was of the essence and my mentor was going to be leaving in four days. We concluded that we needed to spend a little more time than we usually did on this day than any other. We got to the Tate Center and started talking about the presentation that I have to give. I asked him if he could give me some pointers on public speaking and how to keep things moving along. I told him that I really wanted to grab the judges attention and keep them from getting bored.

He gave me some general pointers about public speaking and told me that the best thing that I can do is practice behind closed doors by myself first, then to a friend or someone I know. Then, I will be a little more secure and I can make adjustments and know where my weak spots are. He said that every little bit of confidence that I have during my presentation will count a lot and that people will be able to sense it. Then he told me the old classic tricks about looking at the wall behind the people. He said that imagining them all naked did not work well for him because it made him laugh and that made him insecure because everyone would wonder why he was laughing. I found the practicing tip very helpful and I think that it will help me a lot in realizing what I need to work on. Also, it won't be the first time that I will have done it and I will not feel so unprepared.

After the discussion of the presentation, We folded an origami snail, which took about 30 minutes (it was really hard) and we folded an origami beetle. The folds were getting a lot more complex so we could only finish three in this amount of time and discuss my presentation. The last origami that we folded was a tyrannosaurus which also took about 30 minutes. They look extremely simple but are actually really hard to get all the little folds down.

When we finished , it was about 1 o'clock and my mentor said that he had to go. He said that he would send me an email telling me what would be a good time to get together and do some more hours before he leaves on the 6th. I told him that that would be fine that I was sure that my teachers would let me leave school to meet with him if that was what we had to do. Unfortunately, he never sent me an email and I assumed he was very busy moving and getting his summer arranged because I never heard back from him. I am going to pick out a foreign Japanese movie or something to complete my last 2 hours and 15 minutes. This session completed 7 hours and 45 minutes with my mentor.

Mentor log 4

5/1/2008
6:00-7:30

As planned before, I met Nate at the Tate center. Instead of going inside we went to another study place that was beside what looked like a cafeteria and sat inside there. The place had a TV right behind us. Anyways, we sat down and I pulled out some origami paper and we started looking at some origami diagrams and looking for some that we could handle folding. We found some more complicated ones that we really liked and we kept them in mind so that maybe we could try them later. The ones that we liked were the snail and the dragon. I thought maybe we could save them for one of the final pieces that were the hardest to complete to show my progress in the art of paper folding.

I told him that I wanted to try to fold the azalea. I have to admit that out of all of the origami pieces that I have dome I like folding the flowers the most. For some reason the complexity of the is so challenging and the result of such a pretty flower is so satisfying because you know that you did it yourself. I told my mentor that and I realized why the doctors that say that they use origami in rehabs and how it can be "healing" because it feels so good to know that you can create something so beautiful. For some reason flowers gave me the most satisfaction.

So we folded the azalea and I am proud to say that it turned out really well and it will be a successful addition to my origami collection mobile. Unfortunately folding this one took a lot of time. It took about 20 minutes to go through each step successfully. Like I have said before, origami folding is very time consuming. After we folded the azalea we folded the "Bird of Paradise" this one was a little less complex but it was fun to watch a piece of paper transform to a bird.

After we folded the "Bird of Paradise" it was about 7:15 and we started talking about what time we should meet tomorrow. Nate said that he had an exam at one thirty and if we met it need to be before one. So we agreed to meet at eleven and stay until about one o clock so that he would have time to get to his exam.

Mentor log 3

4/30/2008

4:30-6:00



My mentor and I decided that it would work out to meet today and try to squeeze in as many hours as possible before my project was due. So, once again I met my mentor at the student Tate center and I told him that this time I would like it if we could spend a little extra time together so that we could work on my presentation. What we started to do was collect small facts from my paper and he basically gave me an outline. He told me to make my PowerPoint short and to the point and that I need to use up my time explaining what I know not reading off of the PowerPoint. He advised me to begin the presentation with just a definition of origami, then go into the history of it. Later in the presentation, he said to begin talking about the therapeutic aspects of the project and to be sure to include some visuals.



So, when I had my outline all figured out, he helped me gather a few facts from my paper and told me that my PowerPoint and everything that I talk about should come from my paper so that the information stays consistent. This helped me a lot because it made me feel confident that I would have a successful presentation and that I had a way to make it flow together. So after he helped me with discussing my PowerPoint presentation I asked if I could talk to him about how to present my product.

I told him my idea about making an origami mobile. He gave me the idea to make sure that the mobile had dimensions so that the pieces were showing and it did not look like one big mess. I told him that that seemed to be the only way to keep the origami pieces from getting disorganized.

This time we pretty much talked about ideas for my presentation and he told me how to make it sound and look good. We did not fold any origami this time and he told me that we would do some more next time. We decided that in order to get the most hours possible we should meet definitely tomorrow and the day after that. He said that he wasn't sure about the other days because it was finals week. He also informed me that he would be leaving on the sixth of May so we should try to get in some hours Thursday and Friday. So we left it at that and I told him that I could meet him later after school at around 6:00 the next day.

Restoration Question Five

It seems to me that the most important thing to these people was surviving. In all of the text that I have read from this period in time, it seems that everyone is either dying from plague or begging on the streets for food. It seems like this was a hard period of time for all of the people in Europe. In the Journal of the Plague Year, everyone was dying from sickness and fleeing to London. The main thing that was important was surviving and getting you and your family away from the plague.

In A Modest Proposal, the main thing that was discussed was how terrible and oppressed it was in Ireland. There were people on the street, mainly women, begging for food and money to feed their many illegitimate children. It talked about how people and families and children had to steal food from the street market just to survive. Everything about this time was depressing because of all of the deaths from sickness like in the Journal of the Plague Year. In a Modest Proposal, the oppression had gotten so bad and the people were so poor that this man wrote an awful sarcastic passage about eating children because the country could not afford them and selling them and eating them would help the economy. So, I think that surviving during these times was the most important thing to these people during this time.

A Journal of the Plague year

The beginning of this reading assignment was really hard to stay attentive to. The beginning was boring because all he talked about was how the plague was starting and everybody was scared. Later he goes on about how his super religious brother was trying to tell him to flee to London away from the plague. He was going to do that but his servant who was going to assist him deceived him and left without him. His brother continued to persuade him to come to London. In the end, he decides to stay in town and says that "as my times were in His hands, He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in His hands, and it was meet He should do with me as should seem good to Him." So basically, he says that his life is in God's hands and if God wants to take him he will and if not that is the will of God.

Later, he explains measures that were ordered by the parliament to get rid of the sickness. Some were that if you were infected or in the house of someone who was infected you were to be shut up in your own home for twenty eight days to keep it from spreading. They also ordered that all dogs and cats be killed and "That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or conies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the city," because it could spread the disease. Then later the man goes on and on about how London is infected and how death rates drop and increase and some people come back to their homes and sometimes die of the plague themselves. After talking about the measures that were taken to prevent and try to get rid of the plague, Defoe explains how the town got better and relieved from the plague. There was apparently a fire that was in London. Then the plague deaths decreased and people actually started recovering from it. At the end, people are coming back to town and cleaning their houses to live there again.

The Journal was a lot of talking and hard reading but it is an interesting account of the things that happened in those times. It made me think about what we would do different nowadays if there were a terrible deadly plague to break out. I wonder what would be done differently and if it would spread as quickly as it did in 1664.