Chronic Wound Care Essays

Chronic Wound Care Essays Chronic Wound Care Essay Chronic Wound Care Essay The management and care of persons with severe or chronic wounds with their extensive effects have a challenge to both practitioner and patient. The challenging bit is the paucity of the treatment based on evidence strategies for the care of chronic wounds. After going through numerous databases, this paper will try to review chronic wound care and its management articles. Applying this available information, this literature review will be based on evidence concepts relating to the treatment of the chronic wounds while focusing on the basic principles for treatments. Chronic wound management According to Srensen (2012), a wound is a distraction of the normal functioning of the skin or skin structure. An acute wound damage caused by trauma inflicted on skin cells. This can be intentional as in cases where doctors conduct surgical procedures or by accidents such as blunt objects, chemicals, electricity or heat. The best approach to the study was through classification and treatment to wound care. In his findings he concluded that; An acute wound is expected to heal progressively through the normal wound healing stages and with time the wound will close up. Srensen (2012), further recommend that; It is important to recognize that, different causes of wound determines the length of time the skin would heal, the higher the level of trauma the longer the time the skin cells would take to have a quick recovery. Romanelli (2014), establishes that chronic wound in his study found out thata chronic wound; is one that fails to respond to normal treatment or does not progress as other normal wounds over the normal expected healing time frame (usually four weeks). Instead, the healing process stagnates at the inflammatory phase. Chronic wound care the essentials Chronicity of wounds can be attributed to a series of intrinsic and extrinsic factors which include poor nutrition and inappropriate dressing. Other factors such as diabetes also lead to chronicity of a wound, poor nutrition and improper dressing alone do not determine the wound healing process. Medical interventions such as a boost of the immunity should be able to reduce the chronicity of a wound. Dettmers, Brekelmans, Leijnen, Ritchie (2016)found out that there are numerous causative types of wounds; acute surgical wounds: during surgical procedures, a sharp object may be used to deliberately cut through the skin tissues. Acute wounds normally undergo a natural process of healing where the damaged tissues and cells will undergo restoration and body anatomy, and functioning will ultimately achieve their integrity. An acute wound that fails to heal within a period of 6 weeks might end up becoming a chronic wound. Acute wounds require proper dressing, it also needs the patient to watch over their nutrition at the time. Medical interventions alone is not enough to help absolve the problems of chronic wounds. Trauma wounds are as a result of a stressful event caused by mechanical or chemical injury that leads to damage of tissues. Trauma can have a serious short term and long term effects based on its level. It is important to treat each level of trauma with utmost care to avoid would chronicity. Chronic wound care management and research According Jeschke Rogers (2016)Burns are injuries sustained by skin tissues due to heat, electricity, friction or radiation. Heat causes rug burns while friction cause rope burns. Chemicals, on the other hand, cause caustic burns when one comes into contact with them. Chronic wounds usually fail to heal orderly and within the expected times. There are different environments for chronic and acute wounds. Some of the clinical signs of chronic wounds include lack of reduction of the size of the wound as time progresses, frequent and recurrent breakdown of the wound, and the granulation tissue is unhealthy. Burns should therefore be handled through the use of heat dissipation mechanism in order to reduce any inflammatory conditions. Pressure injuries according to Melbourne 2016,are injuries to the skin and the underlying tissues mostly on a bony surface as a result of friction or pressure, or a combination of both. Infected wounds: pathogenic microorganisms can invade wound tissues, causing additional damage to cells and tissues through secretion of toxic substances. It is valid to say that pressure injuries need more attention as they can turn to be inflammatory and swellings are a common part of it. Protection against festurization of the wound is important. Dickinson Gerecht (2016)study have generated sufficient evidence to show that a moist environment is ideal for the healing process of wounds. As a result of this, there has been a proliferation of wound dressings that have higher acquisition costs than standards dressings, leaving wound care providers in a state of confusion as to when be the appropriate time to use these relatively more expensive methods. Burn wounds, chronic wounds and pressure wounds require specialized dressing, other wounds such as sharp object wounds do not need any specialized care. Chronic wound treatment Ubbink et al. (2013) found thatadvanced wound dressing, using foam, for instance, has more control of the wound surface through the retention of moisture and absorption of exudates; in the process, the wound base and the surrounding tissues are protected. Maintenance of optimal moisture content ensures that the patient remains comfortable before, during and after the wound dressing process. The choice of which dressing to use will vary depending on the nature of wound base and the exudates. The selection of the dressing to be used therefore calls for training, experience and a level of expertise in wound care. Wound dressing using foam should be used in cases where a patient has experienced a high level of trauma on the skin such as a burned skin. This mechanism of dressing works best for wounds that are highly septic and require multiple change of dressing. Paul (2015)established that; the inflammatory phase takes up to three days from the point of infliction of injury. It is characterized by the bodys natural reaction to injury and is characterized by vasodilation that leads to increased blood flow that leads to swelling, pain and redness. At times wound ooze may be experienced which is a normal function of the body response. The proliferation phase takes between 3 to 24 days and is the phase when the wound is undergoing healing. The body generates new blood vessels and tissues that cover the wound surface. It is the reconstruction phase, and the wound will ultimately become smaller as the healing process progresses. The maturation phase takes between 24-365 days is the final phase of healing and is characterized by the formation of scar tissues. At this phase, the wound is still at risk and should be adequately protected. In many other cases, wound healing takes a shorter time that the projected 24 days, the level of trauma and chroni city of the wound can push the healing period past the 24 days mark. Inconclusion chronic wound care and management based on evidence should recommend the following healing mechanisms; Primary intention: this is where surgical wounds and recent traumatic injuries are dealt with by primary closure- the edges of the wound are secured by staples and minimal tissue loss and scarring occurs. Delayed primary intention is the surgical closure of a wound that is performed 3 to 5 days after a thorough cleaning of the wound bed has been done. Skin graft: this is the removal of a partial or full segment of the epidermis and the dermis, removing it from its blood supply source and transplanting it on another site to expedite the healing process and prevent infections. Skin grafts can be a perfect mechanism of hastening the healing process but it is important to be highly careful when selecting a skin graft section as a mismatch can create another wound due to poor match of the skin parts. A skin graft can be a perfect cure but it is a risky measure in wound heali ng process. References Dettmers, R., Brekelmans, W., Leijnen, M., Ritchie, E. (2016). Negative Pressure Wound Therapy With Instillation and Dwell Time Used to Treat Infected Orthopedic Implants: A 4-patient Case Series | Ostomy Wound Management. O-wm.com. Retrieved 18 September 2016, from o-wm.com/article/negative-pressure-wound-therapy-instillation-and-dwell-time-used-treat-infected-orthopedic Dickinson, L. Gerecht, S. (2016). Engineered Biopolymeric Scaffolds for Chronic Wound Healing. Frontiers In Physiology, 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2016.00341 Hirsch, T., Limoochi-Deli, S., Lahmer, A., Jacobsen, F., Goertz, O., Steinau, H. et al. (2011). Antimicrobial Activity of Clinically Used Antiseptics and Wound Irrigating Agents in Combination with Wound Dressings. Plastic And Reconstructive Surgery, 127(4), 1539-1545. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/prs.0b013e318208d00f Jeschke, M. Rogers, A. (2016). Managing severe burn injuries: challenges and solutions in complex and chronic wound care. Chronic Wound Care Management And Research, 59. http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/cwcmr.s86762 Melbourne, T. (2016). Clinical Guidelines (Nursing) : Wound care. Rch.org.au. Retrieved 18 September 2016, from rch.org.au/rchcpg/hospital_clinical_guideline_index/wound_care/ Paul, J. (2015). Wound pruritus: pathophysiology and management. Chronic Wound Care Management And Research, 119. http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/cwcmr.s70360 Romanelli, M. (2014). Chronic wound management and research. Chronic Wound Care Management And Research, 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/cwcmr.s57937 Srensen, L. (2012). Wound Healing and Infection in Surgery. Annals Of Surgery, 255(6), 1069-1079. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/sla.0b013e31824f632d Ubbink, D., Lindeboom, R., Eskes, A., Brull, H., Legemate, D., Vermeulen, H. (2013). Predicting complex acute wound healing in patients from a wound expertise centre registry: a prognostic study. International Wound Journal, 12(5), 531-536. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/iwj.12149

Luddites

Luddites Luddites Luddites By Maeve Maddox The word Luddite originated in the nineteenth century as a label for an organized group of English workers and their sympathizers who set out to destroy manufacturing machinery in the midlands and north of England between 1811 and 1816. These enemies of the new technology were called Luddites, Ludds, and Ludders. Luddite is the term that has survived. The noun Luddite has come to mean anyone who opposes the introduction of new technology, especially the kind that results in the loss of jobs. The abstract noun Luddism refers to the type of thought that questions the commonly held belief that unfettered technological progress is inherently good for the human race. In current usage, the word Luddite is used disparagingly. The term neo-Luddite is sometimes applied to modern thinkers who question the belief that unfettered technological progress is a good thing. An explanation published in 1847 asserted that the term Luddite originated in the name of Ned Ludd, â€Å"a person of weak intellect,† who broke into a house â€Å"about 1779† and destroyed two weaving frames. As the OED puts it, â€Å"The story lacks confirmation.† I think a more likely source than mythical Ned Ludd may be the mythical King Lud. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Lud was the founder of London and was buried at Ludgate, one of the major entrances to London. In 1378, a prison for petty offenders- such as debtors- was established in the gatehouse at Ludgate. Prisoners there came to be known as Ludgathians. Note: The connection between Ludgate and King Lud persisted until the late 17th century. When the gatehouse was rebuilt following the Great Fire of 1666, a statue of King Lud and his two sons was placed on the eastern side. When this gate was deliberately demolished in 1760, Lud’s statue was moved to the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, where it may still be seen.    In the seventeenth century, Ludgathian was a synonym for debtor. Ben Johnson uses the word in his comedy Every Man Out of His Humor (1600): Always beware you commerce not with bankrupts, or poor, needy Ludgathians. The OED etymological note points out that during the 1811-13 riots, the nickname â€Å"Captain Ludd† or â€Å"King Lud† was commonly given to the ringleaders of the Luddites. It’s a roundabout connection between Ludgathians and Luddites, but the Luddites feared that the mechanization of their crafts could reduce them to penury. Imprisonment for debt continued to be a possibility for the jobless in England until 1869. Note: I recently heard a speaker on NPR pronounce the word â€Å"LOOD-ite.† The lud in Luddite is pronounced with a short u, as in mud. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Apply to, Apply for, and Apply withConnotations of 35 Words for Funny PeopleThe Difference Between "Shade" and "Shadow"

EPISODIC and Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

EPISODIC and Analysis - Essay Example He is also complaining of shortness in breath, stuff nose and persistence of cough. On the other hand, T.M. denied smoking cigarettes, taking prohibited drugs and drinking alcoholic beverages. He has no allergic reactions to any food, any drug or medication, or any environmental factors. As a patient, he had not complained of pains or of any past hospitalizations. But he is sexually active and had undergone AIDS test. His two other brothers also tested negative of the AIDS test last year. He has had vaccination for milestones completed. He had no previous medications taken or OTC drugs. His parents are positive for hypertension. This seventeen (17) years old African American male was a mesomorph. His physique could be characterized to be predominantly muscular. He was alert being very much aware of his surroundings when he was oriented three times. He had low grade fever at 990F. This was way below the margin of 100.40F or 380C. He was positive for adenopathy for some swelling on the perineal area because of the yellow perineal discharge present. However, he does not have inflamed eyes. He had also no visible wounds, not even rectal rashes. His lungs were clear. This means his respiration was normal. His heart rate was normal at P: 58; RR: 18; T: 99.1 and BP is 139/91. Finally, his nose drainage was clear, but, his voice was hoarse (+). Subsequently, the following plan was designed and suggested for an assessment of the patient after consulting with school clinic: 1) Gonorrhea/ Chlamydia Test – for Urethral Infection – a Non-culture detection of N. gonorrhea – b. Culture positive for N. gonorrhea, with or without confirmation tests; 2.) Test for Rectal/Pharyngeal Infection; 3.) Test for HIV from the patient’s blood collected sample; 4.) DNA probe test must be done to rule out Chlamydia; 5.) Immunodiagnostic test must be done for the antigen-antibody reaction (Engelkirk and Burton, 2007); 6.) For medication, the patient must take: Rocephin 125mg

Strategic Perspective - Zara Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Strategic Perspective - Zara Report - Essay Example However, the company has been influenced by certain external factors throughout its dominant apparel retailing business. It has been found from the external analysis of Zara, it has been found that the company has been able to obtain substantial advantages within the global business environment. Moreover, the external analysis of Zara has revealed that in the fast fashion retail industry the bargaining power of buyers is quite high, therefore the company needs to constantly strive towards their varied and altering altering preferences. Additionally, the company has developed robust internal resources based upon its competent human resource capabilities. On the other hand, in relation to corporate social responsibilities, Zara follows certain ethical code of conducts in its business practices which facilitates the company to achieve sustainability. However, Zara in recent years has been dogged with certain public relations related crisis due to certain undesirable conducts. Therefore, certain strategic options and choices as well as recommendations such as expanding outsourcing activities and focusing on PR along with CSR initiatives have been advised to the company so that it is able to maintain its dominant position in the global fast fashion retail industry. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 I. Introduction 5 II. External Environment Analysis 6 II. I. PESTEL Analysis 6 II. II. Five Forces Analysis 8 III. Internal Environment Analysis 9 III. I. SWOT Analysis 10 III. II. Internal Resources and Capabilities 11 III. III. Value Chain Analysis 13 III. III. I. Primary Activities 13 III. III. II. Support Activities 15 IV Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) 16 IV. I. Ethics 16 IV. II. Public Relations (PR) Crisis 17 IV. III. External Stakeholders Issue 18 V. Strategic Options and Choices 18 V. I. Expanding Outsourcing Activities to Other Developing Countries 18 V. IV. Emphasising Upon PR Campaigns 19 VI. Implementation and Evaluation 20 VII. Recommendations 21 V II. I. Improvement of the CSR Initiatives 21 VIII. II. Emphasise Upon Greater Initiatives on PR Activities 21 VIII. Conclusion 22 References 23 I. Introduction According to the present increasing competitive business scenario witnessed in the fashion retail industry, Zara has been recognised as one of the renowned fashion brands. The company has been playing a leading role in the respective industry through expanding in different global regions across the world. Zara is the major brand of its parent company The Inditex Group, one of the dominant clothing retail organisations within the globe (Corporate Excellence, 2011). It can frequently be observed that the company highly seeks to represent unique fast-fashion clothing to the global customers. In accordance with the present day context, the company is performing its leading role in 86 countries through its more than 1750 stores across the different nations of the world (Inditex, 2013). Emphasising upon the present competitive glob al clothing retail segment, the primary objective of this report is to demonstrate an in-depth analysis of Zara in the global clothing retail industry. The discussion of this report will be focused on analysing external environment of Zara through incorporating PESTEL and Porter’s Five Forces framework. Moreover, the discussion of t

Experience At Work Speech Essay Example for Free

Experience At Work Speech Essay At McDonalds lines of communication are pretty open especially for the ones still in high school or college. They give whatever hours you request and how many days you want to work. If you need off one of the days just be sure to ask off two weeks in advanced and they will make sure you get the day off. The overall experience at McDonalds after being there for over a year now is outstanding. I know most people think hey its McDonalds, but the benefits they aren’t bad at all. For one they are lenient with their hours and give however many hours you want. Secondly, they allow you to have $6 of free food each time you work, but that is only good of course if you like McDonald’s food. Third, on thanksgiving and Christmas they give bonuses depending on the amount of time you have worked there. For example around Christmas last year Ms. Geneva, the manager, gave me a $100 bill. The pay starts at minimum wage but steadily increases, I am at $7.80 per hour at the moment. Once you get to know the managers and workers everyone becomes intriguing to talk too as they all have unique stories. The customers are the only thing bad about working at McDonalds. Some can be nice and understanding, but then there are always those customers that are rude and impatient. Consequently, they do not understand that sometimes it is difficult to get their order right when they change it 5 different times. And it takes time for the food to be made if we run out for the moment. Other than that the only thing McDonalds has control over that gets me trouble is not being allowed to have any sort of beard. I like having a chin strap so I keep it trimmed, but every now and then they still get onto me†¦ and I don’t even work with food. The thing about McDonalds is you are never bored because there is a constant flow of customers at every hour of the day. At other jobs if you are not busy they send people home, but at McDonalds you are always busy especially in the mornings. That is another perk of McDonalds, if you are not scheduled to work that day and you are available to work you can always go ask if they need anybody and more days than not, they will say yes and you can go get extra hours in. McDonalds will more than likely be my job until I leave for college where I will hope to find a new job based on my engineering skills. I would have probably left McDonalds by now if it were not for the great experience and overall  benefits I get at McDonalds.

Motivation In The Workplace Essay -- Business Management

Motivation in the workplace is one of the major concerns that managers face when trying to encourage their employees to work harder and do what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis. According to Organizational Behavior by John R. Schermerhorn, James G. Hunt and Richard N. Osborn the definition of motivation is "the individual forces that account for the direction, level, and persistence of a person's effort expended at work." They go on to say that "motivation is a key concern in firms across the globe." Through the years there have been several theories as to what motivates employees to do their best at work. In order to better understand these theories we will apply them to a fictitious organization that has the following three types of employees: salespeople, production workers, and administrative staff. We will discuss which of these theories would or would not be most effective to motivate these employee groups and try to explain why. The motivation theories that will be discussed are: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, ERG (Aldefer), Two-Factor Theory (Herzberg), Equity Theory (Adams), and the Expectancy Theory (Vroom). Let's start with salespeople. Salespeople Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory says that there are five levels of individual needs from self-actualization and esteem at the top levels, to social, safety and physiological levels at the bottom. Maslow felt that some of these needs are more important than others and that the important ones must be satisfied before the rest of a person's needs can be satisfied. Since a salespersons basic responsibility is to sell merchandise this motivational theory would not be a good choice for an organization to use to motivate them. The reason for this is because s... ...nt from one culture to another and even from one individual to another. Clayton Alderfer's ERG theory emphasizes a unique frustration-regression component. This means a lower-level need can become activated when a higher-level need cannot be satisfied. This would not be a good motivation theory for administrative staff since their goal is to usually get ahead. Both the Equity and Expectancy theories focus on thought processes. The equity theory may or may not motivate administrative staff depending on how each individual perceives the fairness of their work outcomes relative to others. The Expectancy theory does not specify which rewards will motivate particular groups of workers. Individual motivation directly determines work effort, and the key to motivation is the ability to create a work setting that positively responds to individual needs and goals.

Hoaxes: Deception and Cardiff Giant

Hoaxes What is a Hoax? A hoax is something that is intended to deceive you or better described as a theory. They are many hoaxes in the world that have been developed over time. The two I have decided to tell you about are in the top 10 famous hoaxes in the world. These two are the Cardiff Giant and then the Cottingley Fairies. As you will out while you continue to read is both of these came out not to be completely true. George Hull who was a tobacconist created the hoax, Cardiff Giant. â€Å"He decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist meeting about a passage stating there were giants that once lived on the earth. The men he hired to carve the man, were instructed to make it long out of gypsum. Edward Burghardt was hired by Hull to carve the stone into a man and not tell anyone. To make the stone man look old and weathered, they used many stains and acids. By the time he was transported to a farm the United States has already spent 2,600 dollars trying to figure out the hoax, this was in 1868. In almost 1869, two men dug up a well and discovered the giant. One of the reporters said, â€Å"I declare some old indian has been buried here! Later some guy set up a tent and charged 25 cents for people who wanted to see the giant. Hull later sold his interest for 23,000 dollars to a man with the name of David Hannum. They moved it to Sycacuse, New York for an exhibit. It was so popular that a man named P. T. Barnum offered 50,000 dollars for the giant; he was turned down. He later hired a man to model the giants shape and cover it in wax and created a plaster replica. The replica was put on display at New York and claimed that it was real and the other one was fake.Barnum got sued by Hannum for calling his giant fake. Barnum got sued by Hannum for calling his giant fake. Hull eventually confessed to the press on December 10. On February 2, 1870, both of the giants were revealed in the court as being, fake. Barnum was ruled by the judge that he c ouldn’t be sued. The story of Cottingley Fairies is based off of a series of five pictures that were taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. Elsie borrowed her dad’s 25 cent camera one day and toke pictures behind the family house. As Mr.Wright was developing the pictures, he saw fairies in them, but he said they were, fake. She was banned from taking anymore pictures, but her mom, Polly, was convinced they were real. In the summer of 1919, the whole situation became public and an author wrote an article saying these fairies were real. The next fifty years od there life was spent avoiding the public and is particular hoax continued to be believed by a lot of people. Frances and Elsie both admitted when they were about to die that the first four that were taken was fake, but the fifth photo was, authentic.

Did Wordsworth or Coleridge Have Greater Influence on Modern Criticism? Essay

After a brief introduction of the period that will contrast the Romantics with the century that preceded them, we shall move on to analyze the great poetic, theoretical experiment that most consider the Ur text of British Romanticism: â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†. We shall explore both the unique plan of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, and the implications of that plan for literary theory. In this elaborate introductory summary, we shall consider the contributions of the British Romantic poets. Our texts will be: Wordsworth’s Preface to the â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, Coleridge’s â€Å"Biographia Literaria†, Shelly’s â€Å"Defense of Poetry†, Keats’ Letters. After this initial lecture on â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† itself, we’ll then devote one talk to Wordsworth. Coleridge, and Shelly. Rather than devote an entire lecture to Keats, we’ll consider Keats’ theories in relation to those of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelly. So he will be fitted in the additional talks. Like Pope and Dryden, all four of our theorists were poets before they were critics. Thus their theory is a reflection of their own poetic technique. Because the four Romantics were poets, when they wrote their criticism, they were doing so out of their own experience. So this gives a little more practicality or pragmatic touch to their theory. Now the difference is that they’re like Pope and Dryden in the sense that they’re poets, however, there’s a big difference. The Romantics treated the poet, rather than the rules of decorum, as a source and touchstone of art. When we look at Pope and Dryden, especially the former, we notice that they were theorists very interested in decorum, following those rules. Yet we’ll see our poets/critics following the idea of the poet. In addition, we’ll find they fashion a new social role for the poet, very different from the 18th century (mainly to delight and teach or more precisely to teach and delight). Another introductory matter is all four of our Romantics altered the epistemological theories of the Germans. Now the Romantics are epistemologists[1], but there’s a difference. Whereas the German epistemologists were stillpragmatic theorists and interested in the relationshipbetween the poem and the audience, the British Romantics were what we might callexpressive epistemologists, interested in the relationship between the poem and the poet. Another different is that whereas the theorists of the last century portray an 18th century or Enlightenment orientation, particularly true in the case of Burke and Kant, as proto- or pre-Romatics, yet still very much interested in reason and analysis. The Romantics often define themselves in opposition to the Age of Reason. They borrow some ideas from it, but basically they are a kind of revolution, a reaction against what was going on in the age before. Now although they are still interested in mental faculties, like epistemology, they replace the 18th emphasis onanalysis, with a new focus on synthesis[2]. In addition, they privilege imagination over reason and judgment. Of course, we talked about this in quite some detail in the last unit. 12 Origins of Romanticism So before moving on to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, we’ll survey one more thing. There are three competing events for the cause or origin of Romanticism, that we’ll just run-through quickly. Rousseau’s â€Å"Confessions† The first possible origin is the publication of Rousseau’s â€Å"Confessions† in 1781, with itschampioning of the individual and its radical notion that the personal life and ideas of a single individual, is matter worth of great art. So the great Jean Jacques Rousseau, although he lived and died in the 18th century, really is one of the great origins of Romanticism. He was one of the first people to dare to write an autobiography. Rousseau is writing an autobiography because he thinks that he himself is matter worthy of great literature.That is a radically new idea, that you could spend a whole book, writing about yourself. Rousseau actually delight sin his individuality, saying he is unique, no one is like him, when they made him, they broke the mold! This is a radical, Romantic notion, which says that the individual, rather than society or God or anything else, should be at the center. So that’s an origin or cause of Romanticism. French Revolution The second one often discussed, is the start of the French Revolution, the storm of the Bastille in 1789. That event offered the hope of not only internal and external freedom, but promised more radically that internal dreams could affect and even alter the external world. In other words, the French Revolution not only showed that we can throw off our chains, that we can change the world, but more radically, that an internal vision that people have, of freedom, can be taken and projected onto the world, changing it in accordance with their dreams. That’s very Romantic, as we’ll see in this unit. â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† Finally, the third origin, which we are most interested in, is the publication of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† in 1798, and what it was followed within 1800, when a second edition was published, to which Wordsworth added a preface. Now in this lecture we’ll look at the â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† of 1798, while the next lecture looks at the preface itself because the preface in some ways, really caused the revolution, even more than â€Å"Lyrical Ballad†, but we’ll split them up. So why is â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† a third source? It championed new subjects for poetry, and a new approach to those subjects that changed literary theory forever. So that’s what we’ll do in this lecture, by showing how â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† did just that. Wordsworth and Coleridge planned together â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, wanting to make it a new kind of poetic volume. Now as some of you may know already, the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridg e is one of the most wonderful in all of literary theory. It was one of the most artistically stimulating friendships, perhaps of all time. It was unique and the two men really played off each other, helping the other in terms of strength and weaknesses, so that together they did some great things. It was fruitful in terms of poetry and theory. Now the origin of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† is described a little by Wordsworth in his Preface, but if you want to really learn of the origin, you want to read chapter 14 of Coleridge’s â€Å"Biographia Literaria†, his autobiography. It’s a wonderful reading and is excerpted in â€Å"Critical Reading Since Plato†. In 1797, Wordsworth and Coleridge were neighbors in the beautiful Lake District in northern England. They spent many days discussing and talking about poetry and life, doing what British love to do up there, taking long walks along the beautiful grass they have there. They’d walk, talk, and let their mind run free. So out of these conversations, they c onceived the idea of composing a series of poems of two distinct but complementary kinds. Neither remembered who first came up with the idea, but they decided to both write different kinds of poems, yet they would complement each other in a special way. These two kinds of poems and how they complemented each other is now discussed. The former kind of poem, from Wordsworth, would select its objects from nature, from the common, mundane, everyday world of the countryside and its inhabitants. In short, these poems would focus on things so familiar, that we often overlook them, things whose very commonness renders them invisible. In other words, he would take everyday things of nature, rustic farmers living in the Lake District as subject matters not rich people, aristocrats, but common everyday things, people and objects on nature. That would be the source or object of the poetry. However, what made these objects unique is rather than merely copy or record these things in a straight mimetic fashion, rather than simply describing the object, the poet would throw over them an imaginative coloring that would allow his readers to see them afresh. In other words, the trouble with everyday things is that we see them so often, we take them for granted. We don’t even notice them anymore. They lose their mystery and wonder. We’ve got a sort of tired clichà ©, to â€Å"stop and smell the roses.† Well, here we might say, we need to â€Å"stop and SEE the roses.† We miss the mystery of it all. The best example of this, comes from painting. The great Romantic painter Vincent van Gogh, we’ve all seen some of his pictures of sunflowers. Yet the first time you see any of them, you think to yourself, my God, I’ve never seen a sunflower before, I missed something all along. Well the same thing van Gogh does in his painting, is what Wordsworth is going to do in his poems. By lending these objects, these common things, a charm of novelty, the poet wants to evoke a sense of child-like wonder in his reader, a feeling more often associated with the supernatural than with the natural. Again, he wants us to see it afresh, as if we’ve never seen it before, the way a child sees the world. Every time a child sees the moon in the evening, it’s a whole new experience. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, they grab their parents and say, look up there, isn’t it magical? Well that’s what Wordsworth wants to restore in us, not childish, but child-like. Now this process by which the veil of familiarity is suddenly, mystically, ripped away from everyday objects, is known as defamiliarization. Now what do we mean by the veil of familiarity? We all can understand the veil of mystery. Certain mysteries like death, we can’t fully pierce through, because they’re a mystery. Yet the veil of familiarity means that when something becomes so familiar because we see it every day, we don’t see it anymore, so it’s as if a veil has covered it, we’re missing it. We’re not seeing it. Defamiliarization means that suddenly through poetry, our familiarity is ripped away and we’re forced to look at it, as if for the first time. Coleridge says that most men are like what God says of the Jews in Isaiah VI, we have eyes but we do not see. Recall we have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear. They are like their idols. Well many times that happens to us as well. We see it, but we don’t really see it. Defamiliarization opens our eyes to the wonders around us. It’s apocalyptic, it rips away the veil or covering, to allow us to see the true mystery that lurks behind. Now as we’ve said, Wordsworth was responsible for this portion of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, and he composed a series of poems centered around such humble, rustic characters, as Simon Lee, Goody Blake, and the Idiot Boy. Believe it or not, those are the titles of some of his rustic people, not the kind that an 18th century poet would think worthy of writing any kind of serious poem about. They are very simple, rustic characters, usually illiterate, or barely literate. Yet despite their commonness, Wordsworth’s poems infuse them with dignity, power, and mystery. Romanticism is much more democratic. It sees the dignity in the common. The 18th century looked towards the aristocratic, to the refined. So that’s what Wordsworth does in his portion of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†. One way to put it is that he takes natural objects and makes them seem almost supernatural. The latter kind of poem, which Coleridge did, would select its object from the realm of the supernatural, so it goes the other way. Wordsworth takes the natural and makes it supernatural, while Coleridge takes the supernatural and makes it natural. His â€Å"Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner†, Coleridge’s main contribution to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, is richly suffused with supernatural characters and events. It’s a magical, mysterious sea journey that takes place in this world, but is really in another world. It’s a place of mystery, straight out of the Arabian Nights or something! So just as Wordsworth presents his natural objects in such a way as to stimulate an almost supernatural response, so Coleridge presents his supernatural world in such a way as to render it almost natural. That’s what we mean when we say that they are complementary, as opposed to simply opposites. Now, Coleridge accomplished this poetic feat, by uncovering behind the sup ernatural veil of his tale, dramatic and emotional truths. In other words, yes the story of the Mariner is supernatural, not really a part of our world, finally. Yet the dramatic and emotional truths,what’s going on in his psyche as he goes through the journey, are realistic. So we can identify with them, and they do seem very real and natural. Also, our recognition of the psychological truth of the Mariner’s journey, compels us to give to the poem, our â€Å"willing suspension of disbelief.† Many of you have heard that phrase before. This famous Coleridgean phrase,signifies our ability to temporarily suspend the claims of reason and logic, and to enter, through the power of the sympathetic imagination, into the life and heart of the poem. In other words, he writes it in such a way, that he gets us as readers to say all right, I know this is not real, I know it’s a fantasy. Yet I’m going to forget about that now, or I’m going to suspend that. I’m going to move into the poem, via sympathetic imagination, move toward the poem, just as when we’re in sympathy with a person, we move towards t hat person. So we are going to allow ourselves to just accept the poem as true. For in fact, dramatically and psychologically, it is true. So we’re going to suspend all that logical, mathematical-side of ourselves, and just enter into that world which Coleridge creates. Now another aspects of this, is that Coleridge tells us, to inspire in its readers, this moment of what he calls â€Å"poetic faith,† the poem must invite them into a higher realm of illusion, rather than merely delude them with fanciful images and events. So the distinction between illusion and delusion. Illusion is when we are pulled into it and say, ah what a beautiful world, it’s not real and yet it is real. It’s an illusion, like that of the stage. Delusion is when we suddenly feel like we’re being manipulated and fooled. The best way to get the distinction is to do so in terms of movies. The Star Wars films are the best example of illusion. They take us away to a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Now this is total fantasy, yet we buy-into their illusion because they’re so real, the relationships and whatnot going on, all seem so real to us, that we move into these movies and accept them as such. The Batman movies are examples of delusion. If any of you have bothered to see them, they are so phony that you feel manipulated and deluded. Maybe some teenagers buy it, but we certainly do not buy those worlds as real. Perhaps even the director does not either, so how can we? You feel deluded, so you sit there and watch, perhaps entertained by special effects, yet we’re not being moved in any emotional level, as in Star Wars or other good movies. Implications of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† Now with the idea of this basic plan, let’s tell you about the implications of â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, to the history of literary theory. Why is it so important and central? â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, calls for a new kind of mimesis. That rather than simply imitate or even perfect its object, it transforms it into something rich and strange. That is to say, nature or supernature, is merely the occasion for the poem. The poetic act itself, the transformation, is the real point. In other words, the point of the poems in â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†is not the object itself, not merely to record the object. Although this is interesting and important, it isn’t not the key function in the poem. So what the poem is really about, is what Wordsworth or Coleridge do with that object, how they transform it through their poetic imagination. They change it into something new. That’s what it’s about, the poetic process, rather than about the object. So it’s about the subject then, if you will, that’s the importance of epistemology. In other words, it’s not the rules of decorum that control the art, but the imaginative vision of the poet that determines the shape and end of the poem. That’s why expressive theories are interested in the relationship between the poem and poet, because it’s the poet’s perceptive powers that determine what the poem is going to be like. Even more radically, the plan or â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† carries out a supreme form of epistemology in which objects or things take their ultimate nature not from what they are, but from howthey are perceived by the poet. This is radical, and since this is epistemological, perception is important. Yet now, really, the object is not even important at all. Now, the way we perceive the object, is what it becomes. The object now is a mix of what it is, and what we make it. William Blake This is very interesting and needs further explaining. Wordsworth and Coleridge were certainly influenced – even more than they were by the Germans – by a great poet named William Blake with his masterpiece, â€Å"The Songs of Innocence and Experience†. In this work, Blake demonstrates how the same images and events, take on a different coloring, form, and reality, when viewed through the eyes of innocence and experience. The subtitle of his work, â€Å"Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul,† captures perfectly the radical Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived, and that we half-create the world around us. Let’s explain further once again. The â€Å"Songs of Innocence and Experience† have two volumes of poetry, meant to be linked together. Often, there will be a poem in the â€Å"Songs of Innocence†, which has a parallel in the â€Å"Songs of Experience†. For instance, there are two poems called the â €Å"Chimney Sweeper†, on in Innocence, one in Experience. They’re both about the horrible reality of these little boys who were forced to clean chimneys. It was a terrible job involving social manipulation, and many died young from cancer and all kinds of diseases. Yet in the world of Innocence, even though there is horrible exploitation, the focus of that poem is innocence. It’s on how the child-like faith and innocence can rise above the horrors of social exploitation. The version in experience though, we always see the exploitation and manipulation. In other words, the world, the reality, the event, is exactly the same, but because theperceptive point of view in each poem is different, it makes everything else different. So things are not as they are, but as they are perceived. We create the world around us. Example for perceptive point of view You are somewhere. It’s around 9 in the evening, and you’re about to walk out to go home, and it’s raining. Now the same exact setting, yet a different background now. Just before one walks out to go home in the rain, her friend of many years is visiting, and they’re excited because they’ve been waiting for this meeting, so it’s a beautiful rain, and you’re just on top of the world. On the other hand, before the other girl walks out into the rain, her friend of four years has just died. You are just horrified by that. You both walk into the rain, and now each is to write a poem/fiction/nonfiction about the rainstorm. It’s the same rain, same time of day, same place. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã ¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ So what are we saying here? It’s the exact same rain, so shouldn’t their poems be the same then? Why instead are their poems so different? Each is working out of a different perceptive mood. The state of their soul is different. One girl is in a state of innocence, while the other is in a state of experience, a more cynical state. So their world in which they see the storm, is now colored by what’s going on in their soul. Another example is whenever you’re mad, we always say that you’re seeing red! It’s as if everything you see is covered by that color. That is what it means for things to be as they are perceived. This is what it sometimes called the externalization of the internal, because what happens is you take something inside you, and externalize or project it onto the world. Now this concept lies behind the Romantic faith that: â€Å"if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.† That’s something Blake says, and he was most radical in this idea. In other words, if we could just see it right, everything would be beautiful. Now we should say that this Romantic thing has a dark side to it as well. It very easily can fall into what we like to call the abyss of solipsism[3]. What is the latter? It’s the belief that the entire world is a projection of you. It’s kind of like a child that’s autistic, where they live in their own little world, as if the world is the way they see it. When a child plays peek-a-boo they cover their eyes and figure if they can’t see you, then you can’t see them. Thategocentrism is very dangerous to fall into, like this solipsism where you think the world is a reflection of yourself. Many don’t realize that the religion of Christian Science, though most perhaps don’t follow this and are just like regular Christians, their real doctrine is actually a bit more eastern than western. Pure Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, believed that disease is not really a physical thing, that it’s bad perception. So if we can just think of ourselves as being well, then we’ll actually be well. For even sin, disease, and evil, all are just bad perceptions. We don’t see the world right, which is almost a kind of Hindu concept. Again, most Christian Scientists probably don’t strictly follow that, so are more like regular Christians. Yet interestingly, this system is very close to Blake, this idea that you can change the world by the way you perceive it. Now this new, more radical epistemology, places the poet and his perceptions at the center of literary theory. Poetry is now to be regarded as self-expression, as a journey of the unique perceptions of an individual. Now what poetry really is, is self-expression. It’s what’s inside that’s coming out. So now, when we read a poem, what we want to read about, is his poem and his unique perceptions of the world. A break in decorum One more thing that â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† changed is that it shifted old 18th century notions of decorum, which declared certain subjects unfit for serious poetry. Recall that for the neo-Classicists, and also for the Classicists as well, poetry should be written about serious people, aristocrats, kings, knights, princes, all of that stuff. Well, the rustics treated by Wordsworth would have been subjects for comedy in the 18th century! Yet Wordsworth ennobles them to tragic heights! No one in the 18th century would write a serious tragic poem about Goody Blake or the Idiot Boy. They might write a comedy about that, but not anything serious. So this is a big change in the subjects for poetry. â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† also breaks with the neo-Classical world, by mixing the realms of the real and ideal. Indeed, it often sees the ideal in the real, the supernatural, the natural, and vice versa. In other words, a break in decorum, so that we’re mixing things. We shouldn’t be mixing real and ideal, supernatural and natural, but should keep those things separate. Wordsworth and Coleridge have no problem breaking decorum, which is one aspect of Romanticism. Finally, not only does â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† often take children as its subject, but it privileges their naà ¯ve sense of wonder, their freshness and innocence, over the refined urbanity and studied wit of the 18th century. Let’s move away from this elitist idea of refinement and urbanity. The whole city court-life of the 18th century is in many ways rejected by the Romantics. They want to move to a new way of seeing the world. So it’s not childish, but child-like. They want to see the world afresh and with wonder like a child does. Again, that’s a big break from the 18th century, which for the Romantics was artificial and unnatural. William Wordsworth’s Preface This space will be devoted to a close analysis to Wordsworth’s Preface to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†. We shall explore how he radically redefines both the nature of poetry and the poet, as well as the function of poetry and the poet in society. We shall conclude with a brief look at Keats’ famous distinction negative capability and the egotistical sublime. â€Å"Lyrical Ballads† was published in 1798, and the preface does not come until the second edition of in 1800. The reason was that the first edition did very well, and many people said they’d like to know what these poets were thinking about, if there were a theory behind all this. Now really, Coleridge should have been the one to write the preface, as he was the much more critical and philosophical of the pair. Yet Coleridge had a way of putting things off and being a little bit slothful, so it fell to Wordsworth. Indeed, this may have changed history because although he was not first and foremost a critic, this sent him in a critical way he probably wouldn’t have gone if Coleridge hadn’t turned the buck over, so to speak, to Wordsworth. Now, in his Preface to â€Å"Lyrical Ballads†, Wordsworth redefines the nature and status of poetry, along expressive lines. Once again, these theories are interested in the relationship between the poem and the poet. Rather than treat poetry as an imitation of an action (mimetic theories), or as an object fashioned to teach and please a specific audience (pragmatic theories), Wordsworth, who was expressive, sees poetry as a personal reflection of the poet’s interactions with himself and his world. Again, this is the idea of poetry as self-expression, which is basically taken for granted today. So this concept is essentially invented by the Romantics, Of course, this is not to say that Wordsworth is unconcerned with imitating or teaching and pleasing. He is very much, as we’ll see later in this lecture. Yet these theoretical concerns, imitation, teaching, and pleasing, now are going to flow directly out of his view of the poet. So he’s interested in imitation, teaching, and pleasing, yet he now looks at those things from a new perspective or point of view, that of the poet. What is poetry[S1] ? As we saw in our previously, it’s not the rules of decorum anymore, but the visionary imagination of the poet that is now to become the source and end of poetry. In a famous phrase, Wordsworth defines poetry as â€Å"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings†. That is to say, as an externalization of the internal emotions, moods, and perceptions, of the poet where the poet takes what is inside of him and projects it, or externalizes it, onto the world. This spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings is where the feelings inside are overflowing and spilling onto the page, onto the world. Again, this is a radically different concept of what poetry is. Indeed, Wordsworth’s nature poetry is less a reflection on nature, than on the feelings and ideas excited in the poet as he contemplates nature. There’s a very bad stereotype that Romantics are all nature lovers, running around like â€Å"nature boy† and hugging trees. Now they care about nature, yet that’s not so much what their poems are about, as their experience of nature, their reflection on nature. So that’s a light misnomer, as they do care about nature, but the way we think of it, is really a misnomer. Wordsworth asserts that it’s really the feeling that gives importance to the action and not vice versa. In other words, the feeling is what we’re looking for, the action can be anything. So the action doesn’t determine the feeling, but the feeling determines the action. Notice that this turns Aristotle on his head. Recall he said plot was more important that character? Well if Wordsworth wrote about drama, which he did not, he probably would have said that character is more important than plot. It’s not the action, but the feeling that is at the heart of poetry. Rustic Versus urban Nevertheless, as I suggested before, there is a strong mimetic element to Wordsworth’s theory. Although he’s interested in the expressive, there is a mimetic element. He often wrote on rustic subjects, not so much because the country made him feel good, but because in such a setting, he felt that men were more in touch with elementary feelings and durable truths. It was these essential passions, this emphatic unmediated kind of life that Wordsworth wanted to capture and embody in his poetry. There is something that he wants to imitate, that he wants to incarnate, to embody in his poetry. It’s a kind of life or experience. He felt that rustic life, because it was in touch with nature, was in touch with something that was more eternal. We all know that in the countryside, things change very slowly, whereas in the city, it’s the new fad, the new fashion, it’s whatever is fashionable today. Romantics don’t like that! They want things that stay the same. It’s not to say that they’re more conservative, because they’re actually more liberal than the way we define it. Those words have changed in their meaning, but it’s saying they want to get at the essence of things, to what is emphatic, unmediated, direct and true. Wordsworth found that in the countryside, more than in the city. Indeed, for Wordsworth and all Romantics, the city court life of the 18th century poets, was something to them as artificial, insincere, and out of touch with the wellsprings of our humanity. Again, they don’t’ like the city, and Jean Jacques Rousseau agreed with that. We want to get away from the city, towards what is authentic. If you want to see a great Romantic movie, see the French flick Jean de Florette. It’s about a man who leaves the city to seek what he calls the authentic. So he is a true Romantic, seeking the authentic. To sum up, Wordsworth looks to both the freer life of the country, and within his own heart, for real passions and truths. So the way he can be both expressive and have a mimetic element, is that when he looked inside of his soul, he saw that same eternal nature that he saw in the countryside. Both of those things come together in Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth agreed with Aristotle and with Sydney, that poetry is more philosophical than history, because it deals with both specific facts and general truths. So maybe we say he finds these specific facts in the countryside, but he wants to link them to general truths, to eternal things, those he finds that are even deeper than he sees in the country, and deep inside of himself. Again, another thing on what we’re trying to say here is that for Wordsworth, self-expression is not an end in itself, but a means to reach that which is most permanent and universal. You see, that we’ve gone too far. People believe that self-expression is an end in itself. They think that all they have to do is express themselves, and that’s worthy of a rt. The Romantics didn’t go quite that far. Again, they opened the door for it, but for Wordsworth, again, self-expression is not an end in itself. He’s using it to get at eternal truths. Again, that makes Romantics different than the post-Romantics of the modern era. That is, Wordsworth’s poetic verse, this is what we’ll call Wordsworth poetic version of Kant’s subjective universality. For Wordsworth believes that in describing his own feelings, the poet describes the feelings of all men. In other words, Wordsworth felt that by exploring his subjective experience, by getting his ideas onto the page, he felt he was also expressing what all men believe. That’s why Wordsworth believes that his self-expression is not cut-off from everything, but is linked into the eternal â€Å"unchangingness† of his beloved Lake District. We want to make this distinction between modern self-expression, and original Romantic self-expression. Language of poetry[S2] Just as Wordsworth sought to imitate the life and passions of his native Lake District, so he sought to imitate the simple, direct language of the country. He not only wants to capture their manners, view of life, and traditions, but he also wanted to imitate their way of speaking. Wordsworth rejected what to him was the phony poetic diction of the 18th century, with its purposelycontorted syntax and artificial poeticisms. When a Romantic reads Pope and others, he sees their poetic diction as phony. Now again, perhaps that isn’t very genial, because to an 18th century person, that’s what a poet is supposed to do. In other words, he’s supposed to write poetry that’s a totally different language. We would say with â€Å"thees and thous,† the sort of way the language and syntax are all turned and mixed around. In other words, to an 18th century person, he wants you to know that it’s poetry! Let’s put it that way. Yet again, the Romantics reject everything that to them seems artificial about the 18th century, and he believed their manners, their way of life, even their poetic diction, the way they wrote poetry, was to the Romantics, especially to Wordsworth, artificial. So Wordsworth adopted a more natural, less-mannered style, that mimicked the syntax of good prose. He called it the â€Å"real language of men,† a famous Wordsworthian phrase. He actually said that good poetry is not that different from good prose. It’s interesting because what he’s saying is that he doesn’t want a poetry with contorted syntax all over the place. He wants it pure, unmannered, and natural, the real language of men. Now, when 17 years later, Coleridge wrote his own version of the Preface, in his â€Å"Biographia Literaria†, he tried to go back and fix up the mistake that he made in not writing the Preface himself. By then, Wordsworth and Coleridge had gone through a falling out, unfortunately. So Coleridge would quibble with the phrase, the real language of men, saying that Wordsworth went too far in his rustic manners of speech, saying that’s not true. it seems that Coleridge is being a little unfair to Wordsworth, as Coleridge is taking it too literally. For just as Wordsworth tempered his expressivism with a mimetic focus on truth, in the same way he tempered his celebration of the so-called real language of men. The poet, Wordsworth asserts, should not slavishly imitate the rustic, as Coleridge seemed to think he meant. Yet through a process of selection, he should purge his natural speech of its grossness. In other words, poor people sometimes use a lot of profanity and whatnot. Wordsworth is not going to put that in, but will purge it and purify it. So again, Coleridge took it a bit too literally. When Wordsworth said real language of men, he meant a simple, unsophisticated kind of speech, but again, purified. Who is the poet[S3] ? Just as Wordsworth redefined poetry, both subject-wise and language-wise, in the same way, Wordsworth offers us a new vision of the poet himself. For Wordsworth and all the Romantics, the questions of what is a poem, and what is a poet, are considered synonymous.If you understand what the poem is, you understand what the poet is, and vice versa. So, just as poetry is to be written in the real language of men, the poet is to be a man speaking to men. That is to say, the poet is not to be viewed as a different creature, he is of the same kind as all other men, though he does differ in degree. In other words, the Romantics want to break from this 18th century idea of the coterie of poets. That is, poets as an elite little group who meet together and read to each other. They want to break from that idea. The poet is like every other man, like a man speaking to men, but he differs in degree. He’s like all men, but has a little bit more, again, breaking from the 18th century. So what is this degree that the poet has? What is this thing he has more of, than other people? Well. The poet possesses a more organic, comprehensive soul, than do other men. The phrase â€Å"organic, comprehensive† is interesting. In other words, he’s got a bigger soul, we might say, that can just take everything into it. Wordsworth says he has a more lively sensibility, and is more in-touch with his feelings. This modern idea that the poet should be all sensitive is very much a Romantic idea. That’s not to say that 18th century poets are insensitive, but the idea is that the Romantic ones have lively sensibilities, and they are in-touch with everything. Another way to put this is that the Romantic poets need little stimulation to experience deep emotion. They’re so sensitive to things, that the tiniest touch, a sunflower, opens his heart. Indeed, they are ableto feel absent pleasures as though they were present. They don’t even need it there, but the memoryof[S4] beauty will inspire the sensitive, comprehensive soul of the Romantic. Wordsworth says that he rejoices, in his own spirit of life, and seeks to discover that joy in the world around him. You know what? If he can’t find the joy there, he’ll create it. He’ll take the joy inside of him, and put it in the world. He wants joy around him[S5] . The Romantic poet also has a rich store of memories that he can tap for poetic inspiration. Romanticism is very much based on personal memory and bringing that up, being able to tap it. Also, they are not only able to call-up the memory, but they are actually able to relive their memory and the emotions attached to them. Much of Wordsworth’s greatest poetry is a memory of his childhood. Wordsworth was able to actually re-experience his childhood with all those emotions that were attached to it. That’s how sensitive he was, how in-touch with his feelings he was. Today, we would call it being in-touch with his feminine side. Actually Romantic poetry is much more feminine than masculine, and tends to be very popular with women, who always love Romantic poets, because they are more feminine, in-touch with that side. Another, a Romantic poet can sustain an inner-mood of tranquility and pleasure. Once he gets into that mood, he can hold onto it, at least for a little while, as he writes. A final aspect of the Romantic poet, is that he is a lover of his fellow man, who honors what Wordsworth calls the native, naked, dignity of man. He does this by humanizing all things in accordance with the human heart. Louis wrote his dissertation on Wordsworth, who is one of the people that drew him into English. The reason he loves him, is that he treats humanity with such respect, whether in the court or in the countryside, he loves humanity and believed we were all linked together. The 18th century people loved satire, such as Jonathan Swift, an 18th century character. Yet there is very little satire in Romanticism. They don’t want to cut down and criticize, but they want to bring together, so there’s a love of man. The Romantic poet is a friend of man, says Wordsworth, who binds all things together with passion and love. Whereas the scientist seeks truth as an abstract idea, the poet rejoices in the presence of truth, as our visible friend and hourly companion. For scientists, truth is abstract. For a Romantic poet, he is what a true philosopher should be. What does philosophy mean? It’s the love of wisdom. Well that’s what the Romantics are. They love this truth and seek it as if it were a real flesh and blood person. That’s why their poetry is so human. Indeed, it’s interesting Wordsworth prophesied that if science were ever to become so familiar an object that it would take on flesh and blood. Then it would be the poet and not the scientist who would help transform and humanize science into a kindred spirit. Now Wordsworth was living at the very beginning of the industrial revolution, and science was just taking over. Yet if Wordsworth lived today, where science and technology have become a part of our world, of who we are, he would probably write odes to science and technology. For he would believe that it would be his role as a poet,to take science and humanize it, and make it a part of who we are. So Wordsworth is not just rejecting science or those things, only because they weren’t really a part of people at that point, but once they do become a part of it, the Romantic poet will humanize it, and make it part of the human experience. Functions of poetry Status of Cities Finally, Wordsworth ascribes to the poet and poetry, a new social function, very different from the social function of the 18th century. Wordsworth warns against the ill effects of urbanization and industrialization[S6] . We remind you that this is just starting right now, and Wordsworth is credibly prophetic about it. He says that the massing of men into cities, and the repetitive drudgery of their jobs, produces in them an ignoble craving after extraordinary incident, and a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation. Wordsworth felt this was terribly unnatural, pushing people into cities. Do you know that London was the biggest city since the Roman Empire. In other words, no city was as large as Rome, until London 1800 years later. So this is something new, the real massing of men into cities. This assembly-line work, over and over again, Wordsworth felt this to be terribly unnatural, and it killed the soul. What happens to these people is that their senses grow dull, and they need grosser, more violent, and more scandalous stimulants to satisfy their blunted psyches. So they need more and more, in order to rise them up. Now Wordsworth calls this state of emotional and spiritual deadness, this loss of the ability to be moved by simple beauty and truth, he calls it savage torpor. He sees people in the city, walking around sort of insensitive, cut-off, callous to the world, no longer picking-up on things, a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation. The city destroys the souls of its inhabitants. They’re just banged over the head, again and again. So what happens is that they lose their subtlety, their ability to appreciate small or subtle things. For Wordsworth, this is a terrible thing. This is a killing of the soul, in a way like what Longinus[4] said about materialism and hedonism, which kills our soul. This again, is something that blunts our powers. Well as you might guess, Wordsworth then, saw it as the role of poetry to restore this lost ability to be sensitive, to really bring us back to ourselves. Wordsworth felt that poetry, by enlarging and refining our sensibilities, has the power to re-humanize us, to bring us back into the human community. Wordsworth is serious about this, and Romantic poetry has helped to bring them back in-touch with themselves, to make them stop and see the roses, the way Vincent van Gogh does in his painting. He says Romantic poetry restores our child-like wonder, and revives our ability to take joy and delight in the natural world, and in the quiet beatings of our heart. Again, there’s so much noise in the world out there, and the Romantics help us to be quiet and listen again, to he ar again, because we’ve grown deaf. For we have ears and do not hear, eyes and do not see. Now considering this new social function, poetry is more, not less, necessary in an industrial age, than in a rural pastoral age! Sometimes people will say that this is a technological industrial age, so we don’t need poetry! Wordsworth would say no, we need it more because people are more and more out of touch with themselves, so they need poetry even more. The rustics don’t need it as much, because they’ve got it all around them, so to speak. It’s in an industrial and technological age, when we really need it. Now we might note here, that although Wordsworth rejects the refinement and wit of the 18th century, he does promote a new aristocracy of sensitivity. You could say that he’s elitist in a way; he’s also heading towards being a bit elitist. So there is a kind of aristocracy, but it’s one of refinement and sensitively, rather than of courtly manners and whatnot. Wordsworth was educated at Cambridge, but you see him as a kind of m an of the people. He doesn’t come across as an academic in any way. So finally, Wordsworth says that though poetry does instruct, it does teach as we saw, it exists first and foremost to give pleasure. Wordsworth says it is through pleasure that poetry draws us back into touch with our world, our fellow man, and ourselves. So entertainment and pleasure are very important to the Romantics[S7] . In fact, in a weird way, it’s even more important than the neo-Classicists, because the Romantics believed that pleasure is actually something that unites them. Think of the joy, the happiness of a wedding, and the way we’re united by that joy. Well that’s what Wordsworth wanted, a joy and pleasure in the poetry. The pleasure that poetry gives, is no mere entertainment. In other words, it’s the very spirit through which we know and live. So in the same way that Schiller says we should not look down on playing in the play drive, Wordsworth says don’t look down on pleasure . That’s good, for poets should give pleasure. The final note now includes a bit about John Keats and something he says in one of his letters. He wrote no essays of literary theory by the way, but in letters he’s sent to people, there is literary theory embedded in it. In one of them, John Keats makes a distinction between what he called negative capability, and the egotistical sublime. This distinction offers an interesting critique on Wordsworth, and that’s why it is included here. Let’s define these terms. Whereas poets who posses negative capability are able to enter into the lives of other beings, and see the world from their perspective, those possessing the quality of the egotistical sublime, always mediate their visions of the world, through their own strong, dominant personalities. Let’s give an example. Shakespeare is the ultimate example of negative capability, where one can move out of themselves, towards other people, even losing themselv es in other people. Think about how Shakespeare loses himself in his characters. You cannot say, although people try to, but you can’t say that Hamlet, MacBeth, or Othello is Shakespeare. None of them are Shakespeare! He loses himself in his creations, in his characters. That’s negative capability. Milton and Wordsworth would be the other. Egotistical sublime means rather than moving out, you draw everything to yourself. Milton, even when he’s writing about God and paradise, is still writing about himself, in one way or another. In a way, Wordsworth is always writing about himself and his perceptions as well. Yet that doesn’t mean he’s callous, as it’s just about his perceptions. Now to link Wordsworth to the egotistical sublime, is not to say that he is arrogant or selfish. That’s not what he means. His personality is such that it both draws all things to itself, and colors all things by its perceptions. So egotistical does not mean like we think of it, as someone being all stuck-up, or something pompous. What it means is that his ego, his personality, is so strong, that he draws everything to it. One of the reasons we read Wordsworth, is because we’re interested in him, and his perspective on the world. Coleridge also noted in his Biographia Literaria – so that he would agree with Keats in this respect – that even in his poetic studies of others, Wordsworth is finally a spectator â€Å"ab extra† (Latin for a spectator from the outside). What he was saying was that although Wordsworth had sympathy, he never really had empathy. Wordsworth was able to feel for people, yet in a way, Wordsworth could never really enter into the rustic, and see the world through their eyes. That’s just a different kind of person than he was. A little bit more about negative capability now. Keats’ desire to move out of himself, this negative capability – because he wanted to be a negative capability person, not an egotistical sublime – is not so much a rejection of, as an antidote to, the Romantic belief that things are as they are perceived. That idea is more egotistical sublime, where everything is the way you perceive it. Keats is not so much rejecting th at, as he wants to find an antidote to it. Let’s explain. Keats noticed that this strong focus on the poet and his perception that we’ve been talking about, often leads to the Romantic disease of over self-consciousness. In other words, what happens is that the poet thinks so much, that he loses his ability to feel and experience the world directly. Sometimes because of this subjective epistemological perspective, what happens is the Romantics think too much. You all know, we’ll all been through this, when we think too much, it sort of ruins things. This is a terrible irony, because what happens is that the Romantic is forced to choose between that direct unmediated vision of the world that he wants and desires, and his own poetic practice, that says everything is a perception of reality. Do you understand that angst here? In one way, they want to be unconscious, unmediated, direct, and emphatic. While their process of poetry keeps making them self-conscious, overly so. So they can’t just enjoy anything, because they’re thinking too much! Keats wants to break away from that. Finally, let’s mention that in unit five, we’ll look at an anti-Romantic turn, a turn away from the Romanticists. Those people in the next unit, are going to reject the struggle between the unconscious and super self-conscious, in favor of a more impersonal, objective view of poetry. They’re going to use Keats’ negative capability as a springboard for this more impersonal view of poetry.

Preparing for a layoff 7 steps you need to take

Preparing for a layoff 7 steps you need to take Sometimes you see the warning signs coming- you got a bad performance review, or your coworkers are being laid off left and right. Whether it’s the business itself showing signs of budget cuts or just a gut feeling you have, if you’re worried that a layoff is coming your way, now is a smart time to get financially prepared for when you need a cushion to fall back on. 7 steps to preparing yourself for a job lossSpend time job-browsing each weekKnowing what companies are hiring and what opportunities are available now can help you later on down the road. It takes about three to six months to find a new job after a layoff, but if you start researching your next best job now, you can get closer to the three-month mark or even beat it.The better prepared you are for finding your next job, the better your financial situation will be. Keeping an eye out for openings of a company you’d love to work for will help you get in the right routine before the pressure is on. Eve n searching potential part-time opportunities to help keep you afloat as you find a full-time position could be an excellent option. And if your company has any networking events, take advantage! Get started on making a connection now so you don’t have to worry later.Budget nowFor some, it’s enough to make ends meet with steady employment. If you don’t like spreadsheets or math, or spending time on your budget, get over that quick. Being aware of how you spend your money can be eye-opening, and simple changes can help you stretch your dollars.  Analyzing your spending habits and challenging yourself to spend less- whether it’s eating out less or making your own coffee at home rather than buying on the way to work- can help you prepare for a job loss so you are aware of the amount you need to cover the essentials.Start an emergency fund (if you don’t already have one)Your finances should be more than a matter of simply paying your bills on time- u ltimately, you want to be able to save for the future. But not everyone is in that position yet. Even if you live paycheck to paycheck, try to pay into an emergency fund a little each week, like it’s a bill you owe to your future self. Future you, suddenly caught without a functioning hot water heater, will thank you.Get what benefits you can nowDoes your current job offer dental coverage? Go see the dentist now before you’re hit with a layoff. Same goes with your primary physician. Get a routine physical done before you potentially lose those benefits. Many jobs also offer career advancement opportunities, or other perks like a Health Savings Account or 401K matching. Figure out how you can get the most out of these opportunities now. If your company offers severance pay, calculate that into your budget to see if it will be enough to keep you afloat for several months.Build a new revenue streamAssess your skills, and explore opportunities for side gigs. Some ideas are freelancing, being an Uber driver, or bartending, but there are many ways to make extra cash each week beyond your current job- even if you simply want to sell stuff you no longer need on eBay. Finding small ways to earn extra cash will help you save more, and if you do get laid off, you will have another source of revenue to fall back on- and another opportunity to build upon.Target your debtBeing in debt means you’re paying more for something than you should because you’re paying interest over time. Many people have crushing student loan debt, credit card debt, or mortgage payments to make each month that can be hard to tackle when you’re laid off. There are temporary fixes, like deferments for student loans or transferring credit card debt to zero interest cards, but ultimately you need to make a plan to pay it off. Even consider looking at refinancing or discussing potential payment reduction plans with lenders- because the longer you delay actually paying, the more you end up owing over time.Research unemployment benefitsUnemployment benefits will differ by state and by job and can be difficult to navigate, especially while you feel the emotional and financial effects of job loss. Learning the rules a little before you’re hit with a layoff can help you prepare. Even simply figuring out what amount of money you’ll receive can help you target the budget you’ll need to stick to as you search for your next job opportunity.

Biography of Anne Lamott

Biography of Anne Lamott Anne Lamott was born in 1954 in San Francisco, CA. Anne Lamott, the daughter of the writer Kenneth Lamott, grew up in Marin County, north of San Francisco. She attended Goycher College in Maryland on a tennis scholarship. There, she wrote for the school newspaper, but dropped out after two years and returned to San Francisco. After a brief stint writing for WomenSports magazine, she began working on short pieces. The diagnosis of her fathers brain cancer prompted her to write her first novel,​ Hard Laughter, published by Viking in 1980. She has since written several more novels and works of nonfiction. As Lamott told The Dallas Morning News: I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness- and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine. Lamotts Books While Ann Lamott is well known and loved for her novels, she also wrote  Hard Laughter, Rosie, Joe Jones, Blue Shoe, All New People, and Crooked Little Heart- a popular nonfiction piece. Operating Instructions  was  her raw and honest account of becoming a single mother and chronicle of her sons first year of life. In 2010, Lamott published Imperfect Birds. In it Lamott explores teenage drug abuse and its consequences with her trademark humor. This novel is about how incredibly hard it is to know and communicate the truth, Lamott told an interviewer. Then in 2012s Some Assembly Required, Lamott revisits the topic of child-rearing that she mined so well in Operating Instructions, except this time from a grandmothers point of view. In this memoir, Lamott takes her readers through the birth and first year of the life of her grandson, Jax, the son of her then nineteen-year-old son Sam. Taken from the notes of her journal during that year, Some Assembly Required also includes other happenings including a trip she takes to India in which she carries readers away with her visceral descriptions: We were on the Ganges at five in the morning, in a riverboat in the fog... All four mornings we were in Varanasi, our boat was socked in with fog. This mornings riverboat man said, Too much the foggy! which I think captures all of human life. It was a thick, white pea-soup fog- a vichyssoise fog- and apparently we were not going to see any of the sights Id assumed we would see, and in fact had come here to see. But we saw something else: We saw how much better mystery shows up in the fog, how much wilder and truer each holy moment is than any fantasy.

Military Uniforms and Standards Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Military Uniforms and Standards - Essay Example A distinct uniform and corresponding heraldic sign was one of the most essential factors in the ancient warfare enabling soldiers immediately determine the belonging of combatant   and at the same time maintain the unity of their group on the battlefield (Martin and Ullrich, 1963).However, in the medieval times there was barely a single feudal lord rich enough to maintain a standing army and, therefore, uniforms were extremely diverse. It was not until the end of the 17th century that the growth of commercial trades and development of centralized states led to emergence of large standing armies and typical military uniforms in the modern sense of this word. Those days on the military uniform started to increasingly acquire the meaning of patriotism and pride going beyond its initial purpose of mere identification. As a famous historian of European military costumes wrote, â€Å"The esprit de corps of standing armies on the Continent owed much to the jealously preserved traditions linked with their uniforms† (Martin and Ullrich, 1963, p.139).Eventually, the color of uniforms worn be large national standing armies became traditional. Thus, the British army adopted their famous red uniforms that lasted for more than two centuries until the transformation of warfare methods and strategies required camouflage clothes; the Russian army stuck to green uniforms, the French and Austrian militaries were dressed in white colors, and the Prussian troops wore blue colors. These colors dominated uniforms of all national militaries.... Those days on the military uniform started to increasingly acquire the meaning of patriotism and pride going beyond its initial purpose of mere identification. As a famous historian of European military costumes wrote, "The esprit de corps of standing armies on the Continent owed much to the jealously preserved traditions linked with their uniforms" (Martin and Ullrich, 1963, p.139). Eventually, the color of uniforms worn be large national standing armies became traditional. Thus, the British army adopted their famous red uniforms that lasted for more than two centuries until the transformation of warfare methods and strategies required camouflage clothes; the Russian army stuck to green uniforms, the French and Austrian militaries were dressed in white colors, and the Prussian troops wore blue colors (Keegan, 1993). These colors dominated uniforms of all national militaries while the distinction between various regiments within the army was achieved either through use of different colors of trousers, buttons, cuffs or other accessories. For example, up to now the five regiments of the British Foot Guards differ from each other due to the particular grouping of their uniform buttons (Wright, 1965). However, despite these differences the function of military uniforms worn those days was similar: to demonstrate belonging of the person to the army of a state showing the difference between particular branches or regiments without going beyond one unique style. This remains one of the key functions of the military uniform used nowadays. The importance of military uniforms worn by modern armies also act as a symbol of order and discipline that have traditionally been considered the most essential feature of military organizations. A