Abstract The paper explores the issue of the importance of personal freedom and its limits in the work of Thomas Carlyle, "Past and Present" written in 1843. The paper refers to the beliefs of John Stuart Mill and then explains Carlyle's view of freedom that personal freedom must be limited by the communal good otherwise it produces bad consequences for all.
From the Paper "The book Past and Present was an effort to explain the social order of Britain at a time of crisis, the crisis being an economic crisis then prevailing in England. The Industrial Revolution was changing the nature of work and the society organized around work, and the process was now affected by a recession that led to the closure of factories, the loss of jobs, an increase in the slums of the cities, and more people starving in the streets. This crisis caused Carlyle to consider the nature of the leadership the nation then had and to compare them to leaders from other eras and other situations."
Tags: Mill, greater, good, morality, individual, government
Abstract This paper discusses the literary works of Keats, Tennyson, Carlyle and Ruskin, focusing on the medieval element in their works. The paper analyzes how John Keats and Alfred Tennyson captured the essence of the medieval in their work, returning to a time that was simpler but just as exotic. The paper presents Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, who also refer to medieval aspects of society to enhance and emphasize their messages about society. The paper contends that these writers build on themes that are familiar to us, explaining that their references allow us to make connections that might otherwise be lost in the barrage of descriptions.
From the Paper "The notion of the medieval romance has inspired literature for generations. The magic of the Arthurian romance can be traced to Celtic origins, which adds to it appeal when we look at it through the prism of post-medieval literature. The revival of the medieval romance can be viewed as an opposition against modern and intellectual movement that became vogue in modern Europe. These romances often emphasized the human emotions rather than the human intellect and a return to more classical traditions. Poets and writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not want to feel the oppression from the constraints of their time. Instead, they looked beyond the intellectual to a more mystical and emotional realm. They wanted to achieve another level in their writing--one that allowed them to stretch their imaginations and their knowledge. The medieval aspects that we find in literature from this era accentuates a different type of thinking and writing that desired to be different yet familiar."
Abstract The paper provides the reader with new perspective, and insights on the subjects of love and friendship: the difference between the two, and how they connect and relate to each other. The author utilizes various poems in exploring this matter, such as those of Shakespeare, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Emily Bronte.
From the Paper:
"Everyday life is dependent upon one's relationships with others around them. This is evident in routine encounters with mail carriers, bank tellers, and neighborhood grocers to more intimate experiences with family and friends. These relationships seem to run along a complex continuum -- from casual business connections to friendships and family relations to passionate, romantic love. It is at this latter extreme where the defining lines get fuzzy ? where strong emotions run rampant and often cloud conventional definitions of friendship and love. Is it always possible to distinguish one from the other, and where does one draw the line? Poets have long been trying to tackle these issues and offer a variety of insights and perspectives on friendship and love."
Abstract Historians approach the subject of history from different perspectives and interpret their findings according to underlying beliefs, attitudes, methodologies and even ideologies. Whatever method is used is usually found to be adequate and most correct by the person using it, but not all methods are equal. This paper examines two quotations regarding history and the study of history to show different views of what history is and how it is to be analyzed - "The history of the world is but the biography of great men" (Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle) and "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle" (German political philosopher, Karl Marx).
From the Paper "The kind of history envisioned by Carlyle would focus on individual leaders and their exploits as the subject matter of history and would define how history is studied. The lives of great men would be examined in detail, and the events of their lives would be attributed to their actions as warriors, statesmen, political leaders, and so on. History is organized around this idea when we talk of different regimes, as when we order British history according to the succession of kings and speak of different eras as Elizabethan, Victorian, Edwardian, and so on."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine literary uses of history on the part of Victorian men of letters. The plan of the research will be to set forth the basis for evidence that Victorian writers made use of history as a narrative or rhetorical device, and then to discuss specific works of the period that illustrate the manner in which history is employed with a view toward amplifying a poetical, narrative, or rhetorical image.
The Victorian Age has been described as having have a strong, if idealized, vision of history. In a review of Jenkyns's The Victorians and Ancient Greece, Harris cites the "Victorians' glorified vision of history" as consistent with the presumed ideals of British imperialism, noting that "George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde, architects, painters, and sculptors .."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the psychological aspects of clothing. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which clothing may be considered of psychological importance, and to discuss decoration of the body, genital modesty, and protection from the elements as motives for wearing clothes.
To discuss clothing as a feature of psychology is also to deal with the fundamental self. Freud's discussion of the ego is decisive in this regard, for it points up the manner in which the self is projected into the realm of what is distinctly the not-self, or Other, i.e., the everyday world.
Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self. . . . This ego appears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from.."
Abstract This paper examines how the character of Sydney Carton from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" is a man who does not even believe in his own life, who drinks to escape reality and lacks any kind of ambition - and succeeds in presenting himself as a suitably plausible hero to the Victorian reader. It looks at how Dickens creates a fascinating but enigmatic character and one whose status as hero is only gradually realised by the reader as Dickens carefully and deliberately constructs Carton's heroic identity.
From the Paper "Superficially, Carton is an unlikely hero, indeed he is often labelled this in criticism of the novel, but one must deconstruct his character to discover that he is merely unexpected, due to the reader (and the other characters in the book) immediately dismissing the possibility that he may become the "hero". In an initial reading of ?A Tale..? one would be forgiven for making the assumption that the "quite self-possessed" (Bk. 2, chap. 2) Charles Darnay is to be the champion of the novel. Indeed, Dickens puts a great deal of effort into encouraging this sentiment in the reader, thus heightening the suspense of the novel's finale - when the predicted hero's death on the guillotine seems inevitable, Dickens has ensured that the reader will have difficulty in guessing who will eventually save him."
Abstract Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish writer and poet, and one of the greatest historical novelists. His historical romances encompassed technical repertoire of prose fiction and raised its cultural status. This paper examines Scott's works and career from his first work in 1805 ("Lay of the Last Minstrel") to his death in 1832.
From the Paper "It follows that Scott, who wrote many other things during these years, was a hasty and careless writer. His daily work quota amounted to thirty printed pages, and he claimed to have written two-thirds of Waverley, his first novel, inside of two weeks. As a result there are errors and contradictions in detail in even his best books. His prose style is flabby and tedious to the modern ear. He often bores us with long, involved sentences, too many of which never quite make grammatical sense."
Tags: The, Lady, of, the, Lake, Abbotsford, Thomas, Carlyle
Abstract This paper discusses the debate over the pros and cons of capitalism for society. The paper presents the views of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who are known for their support of socialism and discusses the reasons that they felt capitalism was a negative option. It then discusses Andrew Ure's support of the factory system and Thomas Carlyle's more moderate approach in support of capitalism.
From the Paper "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are known for their support of socialism and their disapproval of capitalist mode of production. In the communist manifesto, they make it clear that while they understand that machinery increases production, they couldn't possible consider factory system a good thing since it destroys human relations, creates an inhumane society and almost kills everything as it was previously known.
"Marx attacked capitalism on many occasions and in The Communist Manifesto explained in clear terms why his attack was justified. He felt that capitalist led to cruel pursuit of monetary ambitions which resulted in reduced human value, unfair wage structure, inhuman work conditions, unethical work practices and acute class struggle. Thus he completely disapproved of industrialization and work practices established under a capitalist economic system."
