An amazing version.
Once Upon a Midnight Dreary,While I Pondered Weak and Weary.
An exploration of various literary works. https://twitter.com/Jessica_Esa
Friday, 1 November 2013
Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven read by Christopher Lee
The poem that inspired this blog.
An amazing version.
An amazing version.
Location:
Cardiff, UK
Lets sail away in a beautiful pea-green boat...
Edward Lear (1812 – 1888).
Lear was a writer, artist and the son of a stockbroker, well known for writing ‘nonsense’ poems which he wrote to explore the excitement of the world around us to discover ‘undreamt-of lands and wonders not only unseen but scarcely even imagined’ The Owl and the Pussycat is one such poem.
Lear was a writer, artist and the son of a stockbroker, well known for writing ‘nonsense’ poems which he wrote to explore the excitement of the world around us to discover ‘undreamt-of lands and wonders not only unseen but scarcely even imagined’ The Owl and the Pussycat is one such poem.

It would be impossible to find an owl and a cat together in the first place and to have them sailing to sea makes it even more improbable.
There is a slight hint of a tongue in cheek humour to have imagined a strange sight like this. The cat that he writes about could have been his own cat ‘Foss’ on which he based this poem.
The strangeness continues when we read that ‘they took some
honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five pound note, and the owl
manages to play a guitar and sing to the cat while looking up at the stars
‘What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
It is quite a sweet and romantic scenario if it wasn't so impossible in the real world.
‘What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
It is quite a sweet and romantic scenario if it wasn't so impossible in the real world.
The cat is charmed by the elegant ‘fowl’ and suggests that
they get married because they have waited too long. There is just one problem,
there is no ring! It seems strange for the cat who signifies the female to
propose to the owl who is the male equivalent but it is showing the dominance
of the woman to take the first step. Now they travel to a land for a year or so
where a ‘bong-tree’ grows to find a pig who will have a ring on his nose. Again
the fairy tale quality of this poem shows through to reveal a child like
quality in Lear’s nature to have imagined such a situation.
.jpg)
There might be an underlying meaning to the words in this
poem where the animal characters might actually represent real people that Lear
knew in his life. Or it could have been his interest in animals that made him
write this poem. Some other poems include ‘The Pobble’s Toes’ and ‘The
Jumblies’ and the fairytale quality of these poems was enjoyed and appreciated
by children. Lear must have enjoyed cultivating this creative side of his
character for their benefit.
The emphasis on the aesthetics of language and the use of
techniques such as repetition, meter and rhyme are what are commonly used to
distinguish English poetry from English prose. Poems often make heavy use of
imagery and word association to quickly convey emotions. It is lyrical and easy to uderstand, but the
word 'runcible' and ‘Bong-tree’ does not exist in the English language and were
coined for this poem adding to it's nonsensical theme. One theme of poem “The
Owl and the Pussy Cat” is love/marriage.
Poetic form
This poem is Rhyme verse Forms.
Stanza I: a-b-c-b-c-d-c-d-d-d-d
Stanza II:
a-b-c-b-d-e-c-e-e-e
Internal rhyme
· They took
some honey, and plenty of money
· Pussy said
to the owl, you elegant fowl
· O let us be
married! Too long we have tarried
· They sailed
away, for a year and a day
· And there in
a wood a piggy-wig stood
· They dined
on mince, and slices of quince
Approximate / Half-rhyme
· In a
beautiful pea-green boat
Wrapped up in a five pound note
· How
charmingly sweet you sing
But what shall we do for a ring
· The owl
looked up to the stars above
O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love
· To the land
where the Bong-tree grows
With a ring at the end of his nose
· Said the
Piggy “I will”
Labels:
Edward Lear,
Owl,
Pussycat,
Rhyme,
Victorian
Location:
Cardiff, UK
Sunday, 16 June 2013
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Revisiting Strawberry Hill
Horace Walpole, author of The
Castle of Otranto and several other works, discovered Chopp’d Straw Hall in
1747 while it was one of the last remaining sites available on the banks of the
Thames in fashionable Twickenham. Possibly inspired by Gibb’s Gothic Temple
after a visit to Stowe, Walpole set about transforming what was then a couple
of cottages into his “little gothic castle” (Walpole) with a veneer of pointed
arches, fretworks and battlements set in vast grounds. The inner walls were
papered with imitation stonework and it was on the central, dimly lit staircase
he experienced his waking vision of a giant armored fist. This inspired what is
continuously described as the first Gothic novel which was successively printed
within Strawberry Hill on the first private printing press in the country.
In creating Strawberry Hill,
Walpole inspired a new fashion for Gothic in both architecture and literature.
While houses like nearby Marble Hill were based on classical traditions of
order and symmetry, Walpole chose the architecture of Gothic cathedrals as the
inspiration for his villa.
Winding corridors and gloomy
passageways open into the sudden splendor of rooms like the gallery and the
library where furnishings included a mixture of, “period pieces and quaint
oddities.”
Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto
in less than two months, he is often described at this time as a man possessed,
“the castle possessed him like a spirit.
Walpole is quoted as saying that,
“there is no wisdom comparable to that of exchanging what is called the
realities of life for dreams. "Old castles, old pictures, old histories
make one live back into centuries that cannot disappoint one.” Walpole’s
sensitive personality had accessed at an early point of the eighteenth century
the stirrings of romantic influence. Literature in reaction to the Age of
Enlightenment gave way from formality and reason to the wondrous unknown, to
beauty intertwined with mystery.
Friday, 10 May 2013
The Corpus and the Corpse. Thomas Lovell Beddoes and the Limitations of Anatomy.
Little known Physio-poet Thomas Beddoes was born into a literary
family, his mother was the sister of the novelist Maria Edgeworth and his
father (a physician, scientist, and radical educator) a friend of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
Beddoes was educated
at Oxford and, like his literary hero Percy Bysshe Shelley, published his first
book, a Gothic romp entitled The Improvisatore, while still an undergraduate.
His next work, The Bride's Tragedy (1822), follows in the tradition of the
revenge drama, and was heavily influenced by Shakespeare and other Renaissance
writers; it had the further distinction of being the only financial success
Beddoes ever had. He spent most of his adult life in various cities in
Continental Europe (once being banished from Göttingen because of drunkenness,
later being banished from Bavaria and Sweden for radical political activity),
studying medicine and anatomy as well as writing. Most of his literary energy
was devoted to Death's Jest-Book, begun in 1828.
“I search with avidity for every shadow of proof or
probability of an after-existence” Sadly Beddoes never achieved his goal and
his growing sense of disillusionment eventually led to his second,
and this time, successful attempt at suicide in 1849. “I am
food for what I am good for – worms”, he wrote in his last letter and will to
friend Revell Phillips. Beddoes is often described by his critics as having a
‘death drive’ or ‘skeleton complex’ which has been linked not only to early
bereavements but to his father the elder Dr.Beddoes habit of performing
dissections in front of his children, for educational purposes.
Throughout
his medical studies and writing Beddoes displays an obsession with an
explanation for death, the nature of the soul and the existence of an
after-life; his scientific search concealing an “emotional one of almost manic
intensity.” Beddoes has been known as a ‘poet of fragments’ as he destroyed
much of his own work demonstrating a perfectionist nature which ultimately to a
creative dry-spell, meaning that arguably his best known work Death’s Jest-Book
was not published until 1850 posthumously, with a memoir by his friend T. F.
Kelsall. Death’s Jest-Book was a piece
of work that had frustrated Beddoes, he himself naming it ‘still-born’,
‘never-ending and a ‘horrible waste of time’. His collected poems followed in
1851. Critics have found it difficult to neatly summarise Beddoes, as
illustrated in this quote by Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning.
The last Elizabethan,
a Jacobean scion, an eighteenth-century graveyard poet resurrected in the
Romantic age, an original interpreter of the English-German vogue of ‘Gothic’
terror, the dark rearguard of second-generation Romanticism, a soul-mate of
Baudelaire and Poe, the first modernist and, with his comic grotesqueries, a
precursor of the twentieth-century theater of the absurd.”
.jpg)
I intend to look at Beddoe’s exploration of the body and the
soul in his selected works and place it in the context of the “nineteenth
century medical culture’s treatment of the soul (uneasy with the notion of its
existence yet unable to deny the possibility) The question being whether he
achieves his goal of “healing the disjunction” between the soul and the
physical body.
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Local Literary Landscapes - Coleridge's Cottage
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is one of the earliest poems that I genuinely felt inspired by.
Coleridge's cottage situated in Nether Stowey, Somerset is a great day out for literary lovers and landscape enthusiasts alike.

Coleridge's cottage situated in Nether Stowey, Somerset is a great day out for literary lovers and landscape enthusiasts alike.

The 17th-century cottage was home to Coleridge for three
years and it was during this time that Coleridge wrote
his finest works, including: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Frost
at Midnight, The Nightingale, Cristabel and This Lime Tree Bower my Prison.
Both Coleridge and Wordsworth are seen as crucial in the development of the literary romantic movement.
Both Coleridge and Wordsworth are seen as crucial in the development of the literary romantic movement.
The cottage that Coleridge knew would have looked very
different to the present building as extensive alterations took place in the late 1800s when
'Moore's Coleridge Cottage Inn' attracted Victorians visiting the area.
As a result of a major redevelopment project in 2011, you can now explore parts of the cottage never previously open to the public and explore atmospheric cottage rooms which have been recreated as though the Coleridge family had just walked out for a stroll themselves.
As a result of a major redevelopment project in 2011, you can now explore parts of the cottage never previously open to the public and explore atmospheric cottage rooms which have been recreated as though the Coleridge family had just walked out for a stroll themselves.
This inspirational area housed not only the Coleridge family
but, for a time, William Wordsworth and his wife at Alfoxton Park, which is now
a country hotel.
Wordsworth and Coleridge worked together and later produced the Lyrical Ballads, which are often thought to mark the beginning of British Romantic literature.
National trust - Further Information
Poetry and Biography of Coleridge
Wordsworth and Coleridge worked together and later produced the Lyrical Ballads, which are often thought to mark the beginning of British Romantic literature.
National trust - Further Information
Poetry and Biography of Coleridge
Thursday, 4 April 2013
A Collection of Folk Tales - Two - The Welsh Bards.
The tragic tale of Edward I's massacre of the Welsh bards has long inspired artists and poets.
Thomas Gray popularised the legend in his romantic poem The Bard (1768) and in 1774, Thomas Jones painted a scene of the dramatic moment when rather than submit to King Edward's invading English army, the last Welsh bard takes his own life.
comes from Thomas Gray's poem
and depicts Edward I's Conwy Castle looming overhead.
Frowns o'er old Conways foaming
flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air)
(II. 15-20)
He curses the departing armies:
'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait'
(II. 1-2)
Between the seventeenth and eighteenth- century there was considerable research being carried out in to British History and the legitimate line of the monarchy and through this interest grew a fascination with Celtic literature and the role of the bard.
The bard was often pictured standing on a precipice, a lonely
poet amongst ruins and decay.
Emerging from this were several literary forgeries, ancient manuscripts claimed to have been found by the likes of Chatterton and Macpherson's Ossian became a phenomenon.
A fascination with the Celtic languages and history became widespread.
Here as some useful links for more information.
BBC History Video - 'The Bardic Tradition'
The Bard by Thomas Gray with artwork by William Blake
Emerging from this were several literary forgeries, ancient manuscripts claimed to have been found by the likes of Chatterton and Macpherson's Ossian became a phenomenon.
A fascination with the Celtic languages and history became widespread.
Here as some useful links for more information.
BBC History Video - 'The Bardic Tradition'
The Bard by Thomas Gray with artwork by William Blake
Rossetti and Renunciation

Rossetti, was the product of an unusual upbringing
of Italian and English Victorian middle class. Raymond Chapman elaborates on
this interesting point, “the sensuous hunger of her southern temperament warred
with a growing sense that her lot was to be renunciation. If her religion was a
release of tensions it partly created, there is no derogation of that faith or
of the writing which it influenced.” The theme of renunciation runs not only throughout her poetry, which is
often mystical in tone, but throughout her life. In one of Anthony. H Harrison’s
most recent works he states that, “historically, criticism of Rossetti has
properly emphasised her renuciatory mind-set. Vanitus Mundi is her most
frequent theme.”
Rossetti also demonstrates the consequences of failing to resist temptation as explored in perhaps Rossetti’s most famous work Goblin Market. In this poem, Laura succumbs to temptation and takes the goblin fruit from the goblin males which results in a rapid decline in her life on earth. She is then regenerated only by the self-sacrifice of her sister who resists temptation and takes the abuse of the goblins. Mary Arseneau adds, “Laura is committing the error warned against; she is focusing exclusively on the senses and is ceasing to look beyond the physical to the more important spiritual and moral issues.”
Similarly in Maude, the spiritual breakdown of the
protagonist who feels unworthy of going to communion due to the worldly
temptations resulting from her art eventually results in her death.
Harrison elaborates;
“this literary construct usually
involves initial desires for fulfillment of passion in this world, which are or
have been) undermined by an experience of betrayal (either by the beloved or
illusory ideals). Renunciation or at least withdrawal from the active pursuit
of love follows disillusionment; often the speaker craves death, either as an
anodyne or as a transposition to an afterlife of absolute love, in which the
beloved regenerated as an eschatological figure or is replaced by God,” (139) which
demonstrates both Laura and Maude’s desire for death.
Additionally, in Betty Flower’s
introduction to the 2001 collection of Rossetti’s poetry she speaks of the poem
The World;
“Rossetti reveals meaning through her
lyric diction, utilizing such phrase choices as "subtle serpents" and
"ripe fruits." The English love sonnets that inspired her work often
used romantic images of "fruits" and "sweet flowers," which
use in "The World" creates a seemingly paradoxical image when
preceded by the phrase "subtle serpents." This paradox therefore
reveals her contradiction between innocent romantic love and sinful erotic
desire. When viewed in terms of the Fall, the two phrases remain completely
analogous, thus implying that romantic love and erotic desire are one in the
same sin. Rossetti had, in fact, "a great horror of Ôther world' in the
sense which the terms bears in the New Testament; its power to blur all the
great traits of character, to deaden all lofty aims, to clog all the impulses
of the soul aspiring to unseen Truth"
Jerome .J. Mcgann, a particularly
influential critic on Rossetti states that,
“her poetry is an oblique glimpse into
the heaven and the hell of late Victorian England as that world was meditated
by the experiences of Rossetti. Rossetti’s heaven and hell are always
conceptualised in terms of personal love relations: true and real love as
opposed to the various illusions of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment.”(139)
This point by Mcgann also demonstrates
one aspect the platonic influences upon Rossetti’s poetry. Rossetti utilises
the cave allegory often as she speaks of the illusions we experience here on
earth, shadows of the real thing which we can unveil when eros is renounced, or
as Harrison adds “she exemplifies the pathway, the ladder of love, its joyful
ascent toward a more perfect beauty than we have ever actually yet seen.” (133)
Diane D’Amico makes a similar point, simply
put that “renunciation in this life leads to reward in the next” (64) and it is
this fundamental belief which focuses Rossetti on a life of renunciation. She
adds,
“when considering the renunciatory
state of Christina Rossetti’s poetry,, it is also essential to recall that for
Rossetti , renunciation of worldly pleasure was only a part of the spiritual journey;
the goal was always to heaven. Therefore, in reading Rossetti’s poems that urge
the reader to renounce the world or to beware the temptations of the world, one
must keep in mind her belief in a reward of individual mortality and spiritual
joy.”(64)
If this has led you to wanting to learn more about Rossetti,(and I sincerely hope it has - she is wonderful), then here is an interesting newspaper article and a link to the Goblin Market poem to get you started.
Guardian poem of the Week - Goblin Market.
Christina Rossetti - Goblin Market Full Poem
Jessica's Twitter
If this has led you to wanting to learn more about Rossetti,(and I sincerely hope it has - she is wonderful), then here is an interesting newspaper article and a link to the Goblin Market poem to get you started.
Guardian poem of the Week - Goblin Market.
Christina Rossetti - Goblin Market Full Poem
Jessica's Twitter
Monday, 1 April 2013
Poet's Corner - One
I walk through the winding streets
the twists I know so well.
To the fire with my kin
to meet the judge of all.
Dressed in holy robes
to hide the demonic brand
that surely adorns the body of he
who executes on steadfast land.
The city walls are my final comfort
only abandoning us at the close,
for who could keep out such a serpent
or save us from the fire he chose?
the twists I know so well.
To the fire with my kin
to meet the judge of all.
Dressed in holy robes
to hide the demonic brand
that surely adorns the body of he
who executes on steadfast land.
The city walls are my final comfort
only abandoning us at the close,
for who could keep out such a serpent
or save us from the fire he chose?
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Burke's Sublime
The mind becomes more creative when we are imagining rather than perceiving infinite elements.
Best known for his political work Reflections of a Revolution in France, Burke became a reference point for many of the Gothic writers with his definition of the sublime.
A framework entitled Philosophical Enquiry in to the Origin of our Idea of the Sublime and Beautiful. Within this framework are seven points, all concerning obscurity which are essential to an object gaining the description of ‘sublime’.
Here are some key quotes from the text:
Astonishment - “The passion caused by the great sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror.”

Delicacy- “An air of robustness and strength is very prejudiced to beauty. An appearance of delicacy and even of fragility is almost essential.”
Terror - “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Whatever, therefore is terrible with regard to sight, is sublime too.”
Power – “Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, I know nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. The emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength should be employed to the purposes of rapine and destruction.”
Privation – “Vacuity, darkness, solitude and silence.”
Vastness – “Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished.”
Infinity – “Another source of the sublime is infinity. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful terror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime.”
Obscurity – “To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.”
Obscurity itself branches off in to seven further points, for Burke names seven types of obscurity.
Meteorological: such as mist, fog, storms and tempests.
Topographical: which concerns impenetrable forests, ivy covered ruins, ice, deserts and boundless oceans.
Architectural: such as labyrinths, castles, abbeys, secret passages and doors, turrets and statues.
Material: is where we find people in disguise or hidden.
Textual: when we are puzzled by riddles, prophecies, broken text and intertextuality.
Spiritual: Catholic settings, rituals and occultism.
Psychological:which deals with the idea of the uncanny, dreams and doubles.
This method becomes formulaic in the Gothic novel ,and is parodied in magazines and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
As I am currently carrying out research in to the 'Gothic' expect many more related posts!
Here is a full copy of the piece. Burke's Sublime and Beautiful
Jessica's Twitter Account
Best known for his political work Reflections of a Revolution in France, Burke became a reference point for many of the Gothic writers with his definition of the sublime.
A framework entitled Philosophical Enquiry in to the Origin of our Idea of the Sublime and Beautiful. Within this framework are seven points, all concerning obscurity which are essential to an object gaining the description of ‘sublime’.
Here are some key quotes from the text:
Astonishment - “The passion caused by the great sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended with some degree of horror.”

Delicacy- “An air of robustness and strength is very prejudiced to beauty. An appearance of delicacy and even of fragility is almost essential.”
Terror - “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Whatever, therefore is terrible with regard to sight, is sublime too.”
Power – “Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, I know nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. The emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength should be employed to the purposes of rapine and destruction.”
Privation – “Vacuity, darkness, solitude and silence.”
Vastness – “Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished.”
Infinity – “Another source of the sublime is infinity. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful terror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime.”
Obscurity – “To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.”
Obscurity itself branches off in to seven further points, for Burke names seven types of obscurity.
Meteorological: such as mist, fog, storms and tempests.
Topographical: which concerns impenetrable forests, ivy covered ruins, ice, deserts and boundless oceans.
Architectural: such as labyrinths, castles, abbeys, secret passages and doors, turrets and statues.
Material: is where we find people in disguise or hidden.
Textual: when we are puzzled by riddles, prophecies, broken text and intertextuality.
Spiritual: Catholic settings, rituals and occultism.
Psychological:which deals with the idea of the uncanny, dreams and doubles.
This method becomes formulaic in the Gothic novel ,and is parodied in magazines and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
As I am currently carrying out research in to the 'Gothic' expect many more related posts!
Here is a full copy of the piece. Burke's Sublime and Beautiful
Jessica's Twitter Account
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