As previously mentioned in class, the first thing I really noticed about the play after relfecting was the fact that it was so similiar to nearly any given Shakespeare play. It showed many aspects of the comedy such as having marriage at the end and the freqeuncy of role changes and diguises. The theme of trickery and irony is extremely prominent, and I think that Tony can almost be considered the "fool" whom we want to both jest with and at. In one sense he brings comedy to the play with his trickery and lies, but he is also an idiot because he can't read, spends all of his time drinking, and basically has no real working or intelligent future.

Generally if felt as if Tony had the upper hand during most of the play. He is of course the character who created the whole plot. Because of his jesting character there is much deception and confusion between many of the other characters. He seems to create the base of a plot, and then others are able to build off of it from there. Constance uses it to catch the eye of Marlow, by "stooping" as a barmaid. The disguises and roles played by the characters makes many of the occurances very ironic as well. The fact that Marlow acts so rude to Mr. Hardcastle is, of course, extremely ironic because he is the very person he should be impressing. I found those scenes the most comical, but half-expected someone to figure out the mix up a little faster than the characters really did. It also gave a bit of a criticism on the attitudes of class. When Marlow thinks someone is below him, he is extremely rude, and not shy in the least. However, when he is dealing with higher class women or other upperclass persons, he becomes much more conservative and polite. I think this may have been Marlow's biggest role in the play.

While Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes was considerably difficult for me to entirely trudge through while capturing most of its main points, I am going to interpret it as best I can. It seems that Johnson is making a critisism on people as a whole, and their different opinions on happiness and how to achieve it. He walks through many different types of people, from war heros to mythical gods. One of the mains themes throughout these critisims is war Johnson continually brings up different people who have fought and died in wars or were caught in the middle of them as kings or other important rulers. Many of these people died for what they believed, whether it was fighting in a war for their cause or in an uprising against rulers. Supposedly these things were worth the death and destruction of families and cities to these people, which is where they found their happiness. In line 191, Johnson asks, "On what foundation stand the warrior's pride?" I think he's suggesting that some "war heros" die in an act of hoping to be remembered throughout history, though many are no longer even heard of. After all, how can one be happy if they are too dead to see it? It seems like Johnson is critisizing some of the illusions of happiness these people have throughout time, and enjoys pointing out why a lot of them don't really work.

Another one of the themes Johnson brings up near the end of the poem is of beauty. He talks about how mothers are so anxious to produce offspring with "the fortune of a face," which also happens to be alliterated to pick up on the emphasis of this desire for beauty. He also brings up the downfall in this, as in beauty there is a lack of virtue, which is obviously an important thing to have as a human being. All in all, this is yet another illusion of happiness, which has no beneficial purpose in life.

I liked how Johnson wrote this poem in the form of a heroic couplet. Though at first I felt that the catchy sounds of the rhyming were a little distracting and made it more difficult to understand, I thought it added an over all sound effect. The heroic couplet almost seems more demanding, as you must take in everything be written from line to line, while keeping up with its fast pace. It also felt more traditional, which seemed appropriate because Johnson brings up many allusions to the past where this type of poem structure might have occured. At least that's the feeling I got from it.

Wow. What the heck was up with the end? "So that when I stretched out my hand, I caught hold of the fille de chambre's -- END. The fille de chambre's what?! Oh my! Could he be talking about her boob?!

A little too goofy in my opinion.

Something I noticed going on through out this novel is an undying love for animals (pun intended). It seems that when anyone is sad, it is due to the death of an animal, or a general loss. I suppose this is a play on the sentimental novel genre, as humans are supposed to be more concerned with love for humans and their own sprituality. Certainly not over animals. The first place we see this is with the man and his ass, who is convinced that his donkey loved him back. He goes on about how he feels bad that his own hardships (ie his whole family dying!) overwhelmed the donkey and caused its death. Funny how the man feels bad for the fact that his hardships are upsetting his donkey, on not because of his hardship himself. I mean if my family died I'd probably be more upset about that, than if I was making my donkey so sad that he too died. So maybe that's just Sterne being ironic.

The next time an animal comes up is with the appearance of the Sterling. The chapters about it were very interesting to me, as there seemed almost no point, yet so much was written about it. The narrator even drew a crest with the bird at top. I'm not sure why, but that must be significant. I hope that we go over this in class. Perhaps one of the important reasons for this sterling's presence is what it represents, and I think that it is "confinement." Throughout the entire story and history of the bird, we learn that it is always confined in its cage. He goes from one owner to the next, yet is never freed. The bird even says "I can't get out" as it's only words, which might represent the trappedness the narrator might be feeling. He is on this journey through Paris and Italy, yet somehow he is still confined within himself. It seems that no matter where he goes, there is always some type of ironic trouble he runs into. Nothing good ever really seems to happen to him on these travels. I might be wrong, but I think when the narrator begins to imagine the terrors of confinement he is imagining himself at a distance. For some reason he thinks about what it might be like to be in a prison for so many years, and this upsets him a great deal. Maybe that's why he is on his journey - to run away from the threat of confinement.

Something I wanted to point out just because it actually made me laugh out loud, is one of the ironic passages I noticed right away. On page 115 the narrator is speaking to Mons le Count about his opinion on the French people. When the count seems to be put off by what he is saying the narrator starts rambling along with the most wonderful description of qualities for the French people. Then at the end of the list he says, "If they have a fault -- they are too serious." Obviously this is not that bad of a quality, if anything, but then the count says, "My God!" in French because it has insulted him so badly. I thought this was hilarious because he is doing exactly what the narrator mentioned - being too serious! I don't know, I just really enjoyed that part.

Reading Fantomina reminded me a lot of the early American novels written by women that we went over in my American Literature course. I believe they were called "seduction novels" and they always carried a few of the same elements. There would always be a woman somewhat chasing after a man she wasn't supposed to be with, and the woman would always end up pregnant at the end, sometimes dying as well. We were taught to believe that most of these novels were written as "warnings" to other women against falling into the snairs of men set up for women, and that they will always find their doom in a pregnancy, which they sometimes deserved. Basically because I was already introduced to this time of novel, all I could do was try and pick out the same elements that Fantomina was "supposed" to entail. I pretty much knew that she would get pregnant in the end because that's how they all ended, and even though it seems like Fantomina could have been the "villain" because she tricked Beauplaisir so many times, my brain has been programmed to see the man as the jerk.

As far as seeing Fantomina fit in to our anthology, I'm not so sure that it does. I was surprised to see that a "novel" was included, but perhaps it's just because of my preconceived notion of what the novel is supposed to be. If anything, Fantomina was a short story, but maybe they just didn't write "short stories" then. Perhaps this narrative was not included in the anthologies previously because it was a novel written by a woman, and not particularly fascinating or note-worthy. Obviously it's written quite well, but I don't think the orginal "seduction novel" is very popular in our current studies of literature. Fantomina is about a woman who disguises herself to keep the interest of the man she pines for, then ends up pregnant in the end. Before my American Literature course, I had never been even heard of this type of narrative, while most of the other poems and authors we have gone over in this class I have already been pretty familiar with. I definitely think that Fantomina should be included in the anthology, and is "valuable" for our learning. Not to sound feminist, but the mere fact that this novel was written by a woman in the early 18th century, should be important. If this was the during the early developments of the novel, I also find it significant enough to include in an early English lit course. In fact, it was one of my favorite readings all semester just because it was readable, interesting, and on a subject that had not quite been tackled yet. That is, the negative portrayal of men made by a woman.

The character Fantomina seems a little naive on how to find a man she wants to be with, but she shows exactly how woman must have portrayed their husbands and lovers to be during that period of time. The man acts romantic and does a good job at seducing women, but he is never faithful. Even though technically the man is being faithful in this story, the point is that he thinks he is being with other woman and swears there is no one else in his life. Eliza Haywood must have been experienced with the notion that when men get bored they tend to stray, and this novel was her way of expressing it. In The Canterbury Tales we had some looks on the portrayal of men and women in The Wife of Bath's Story, but Fantomina really expresses exactly what women think of men, and the empowerment women wish they had over men, but could never truly obtain. In the end Fantomina was "punished" for her promiscuous ways, and the man was let off scott-free. I think it's important to see every view of human and sex interaction during this time through literature, whether it by man, woman, or child (?). Now that would be interesting.

The Rape of the Lock Cantos 1: Lines 1 - 12

What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,
I sing—This Verse to C—-, Muse! is due;
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:
Slight is the Subject, but not so the Praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my Lays.

Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel
A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?
Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplor'd,
Cou'd make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then?
And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?

I thought that the beginning of the poem spoke most about reason and what idea Pope was really trying to establish. While it took me over an hour to really understand anything going on in the poem at all (maybe because I'm tired?). Basically what we've got here is a mock epic poem, and in it Pope basically makes the claim that people do not use the reason that they have available to them. It seems that he is making fun of the fact that epic poem writers create a huge fuss of the most ridiculous things. Later in Canto 3 a good example of this comes out when Belinda's hair is snipped in half and it basically becomes the end of the world. Pope must think that the great epic writers through history were not using their common senses when composing such works. They wrote about things that meant nothing to the world, thus adding no real greatness to our collections of literature.

Pope uses the concept of the "muse" to further add to his mockery of epic poetry. Because many of the great epic writers so commonly used their muses to put sole responsibility on for what they wrote down (ie Milton in Paradise Lost), Pope asks why in the world a muse would choose to write about such unimportant things. In lines 7-8 Pope asks, "Say what strange Motive, Goddess! cou'd compel A well-bred Lord t'assault a gentle Belle?" Here Pope is basically mocking poets for using their "muses" as excuses for what they write, as if they become more credible or something. Using apostrophe, Pope poses the question of why reason is not being used when common sense is so readily accessible within ourselves. When Pope says in line 2, "What mighty contests rise from Trivial things," he uses the word "mighty" to contrast with the word "trivial" to show how ridiculous it is when so many times small matters are blown way out of proportion and people do not have the reason to see their own stupidity. The way Pope points these things out is rather interesting to me. In a large way, what he's saying in this passage makes a lot of sense. Even today people still forgo their own common sense for other reasons. Humans are the only creatures who will go back and repeat their same mistakes even right after getting either hurt or "caught." An animal who bites a piece of food connected to an electric wire and gets zapped is going to learn right away not to do it again. A human on the other hand, would probably try again. And it may even be the smallest trivial thing, but we still do it. I think this is largely what Pope is trying to get across here.

Addison's The Royal Exchange: Spectator No. 69

Somehow I really enjoyed this essay by Joseph Addison, which basically just talked about the wonders and benefits of London's financial institution of trade. This English writer is extremely obsessed with money and wealth, as he brings up the fact that the Royal Exchange "adds wealth to the rich" (2480) more than once. In this quote, it seems that he believes that the already rich deserve to become even richer. While this idea is extremely backwards to me, the fact that it must make sense to Addison, shows how centered on wealth he is. I'd even say that this essay demonstates how greedy and materialistic he is, despite the fact that other topics are brought up of the benefits of trade.

The trade market is more than just a place to get wealthy, it is a place where countries each exchange their own goods of their country for another's. As Addison points out, it creates an interchanging variety of spices, fruits, clothing, and other luxuries within each country, as they trade for one another's goods. In a extremely convincing and positive statement, Addison says that nature not only provides wonderful "blessings" from one portion of the world to the next, but creates a way through trade so that people "might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest" (2479). This is great, except that this common interest seems to be materialism and greed. I say this because the trade market is basically a place to exchange for things that you don't really need, while helping you become very wealthy in the process. For example, today Americans do not necessarily need a brand new Hummer, but they'll buy it because they can and because it's not in everyone else's driveway. This is materialism because it is something you don't need, but you want anyway. Again, supporting this interpretation of Addison's essay, he says that he is "delighted to see such a body of men... bringing into their country whatever is wanting" (2479). Key word here: wanting. Addison supports pure materialism.

The sad thing is, Addison is so in love with the Royal Exchange concept, that he cannot even help himself but cry with tears of joy when he thinks about it (2479). It's bad enough to be obsessed with wealth and making the already rich even richer, but to actually cry to tears over the joy it brings, just really crosses the line. Although Addison does give some good point about bringing different cultures together, I don't see an emphasis placed on it. He does mention how wonderful it is seeing all of the different kinds of people at the Royal Exchange, but it is only because it makes him feel "that he was a citizen of the world." That sounds like something a rich, wealthy man would say, so it seems that wealth and materialsim is truly all that Addison cares about in this essay.

Rochester's "The Imperfect Enjoyment"

The incredibly explicit and crude language in this poem was rather shocking to me. Most of the sexual descriptions, if you pay attention, are either really disgusting or just bluntly explicit. My favorite couplet near the end of the poem was, "On whom each whore relieves her tingling cunt/As hogs do rub themselves on gates and grunt" (63-64). Not that I really enjoyed those lines, but they were just so utterly explicit, creating this terrible image that was probably pretty accruate to what Rochester was describing, and it really stuck with me. He pretty much gets his point across, which partly is that whores are basically completely and totally disgusting.

I think a lot is said through the fact that this poem is written in to heroic couplet form. It really does a lot for both the flow and pace of the way the lines are read. I think because Dryden writes such sexually explicit poems with a lot of inappropriate imagery, he wants the pace to go much faster. All of the other poets we've studied used the same type of techniques to create a certain flow, but Dryden's different content is what really seperates his from the others. I think the shocking parts of the poem really need to come through at a quick pace so that readers won't linger on the lines as long as one might in a love sonnet, which usually reads much slower. Otherwise people will get put off and not continue. But the fast pace and flowing rhymes really makes you want to continue even if you really'd prefer otherwise.

Another reason for this fast paced choice of poetic form could be a way to relate with the subject matter. That is, if I'm not mistaken, pre-mature ejaculation. This speaker of the poem is so caught up in the beauty of this women whom he apparently is so in love with, that he cannot hold himself together. Several lines make this clear: "In liquid raptures I dissolve all o'er...A touch from any part of her had done't:/Her hand, her foot, her very look's a cunt" (14, 16-17). Here even the language gets very explicit. I've also noticed that Dryden uses blazon twice in this poem. Once in the line above, and also in the first part of the poem when Dryden describes the foreplay going on between him and his lover, "With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace" (4). I think it gives a loving element to the poem because it's describing what a typical sonnet writer may include in one of his works. And this is something important to Dryden because the speaker wants his lover to know that all the other whores mean nothing to him, and that love making with her is something special. So I guess the "imperfect enjoyment" Dryden is referring to nust be the speaker's pre-ejaculatory error. This event taints the love supposed to be experienced between these two people and reminds us that love making is not always as perfect as the romantic writers illustrate it, even when it should be.