Week 14 - Liberty: Freedom and Governments

When examining these works by Locke and Hume to see how they reflect today's society, I found that Hume's "Of the Liberty of the Press" seemed to fit into today's society a bit more than Locke's works, although they are still somewhat relevant to the way that we govern our lives, or rather, the way that we give up natural rights in order to exist within a society which will protect us and our property. "Of Slavery" by Locke is somewhat irrelevant because slavery was made illegal in most places over two hundred years ago (Although seeing the videos of slave trade in Africa may make this piece a bit more relevant).

When I read "Of the Liberty of the Press" I immediately thought of the absurd amount of new articles that get published every single day on the internet, both real and fake. While Hume was more-so discussing the way in which it was important to have freedom of press in order to be able to share one's ideas about governments and various nuances of the society, it seems like nowadays more news articles are about things that don't necessarily matter, like sports and popular culture.

Of course, if one considers social media rants part of freedom of press, then look no further than Donald Trump's twitter and his millions of followers. Only in a country with freedom of press and speech could someone of his power get away with being so openly contradictory and hypocritical while also offending someone while pushing political agendas. But as Hume makes fairly clear in his piece, as a member of the society one has a choice to not read it. Nobody is able to digest the information that you are reading alone except for you.

Week 7 - Jack of many trades: Journalism, Criticism and a Dictionary

Have newspapers and magazines changed much from the 18th-Century to now? I do not think so. At least, not very much as far as content goes, but there is no question that the formatting and style of them has changed significantly.

One needs only to look at the difference between say, Spectator and The New York Times to see some obvious differences, with the most obvious being the difference in amount of images present. Now that technology has improved significantly, with inventions like the computer and the laser printer, it is much easier for a newspaper company to include images in their paper. Before, each image had to be hand carved into a piece of wood and the image was stamped upon the paper. Of course, now it only takes moments to download an image and format it into a paper and print it.

As far as content goes, I do not think that much has changed. People still want to know about what is happening around them, and will seek out newspapers or magazines like National Geographic or Time, or they wish to know about various celebrities or anything like that and will seek out magazines like Cosmopolitan or any of the other hundreds like it. This will always be true, I think. Only the language and syntax that is considered correct will change.

As far as my writing goes when in a private sphere versus when I write on something like this blog, I definitely notice a difference. When I am trying to write for an academic paper or something more scholarly, I will try to use a voice that matches that appropriately. I am not trying to show conversational flares or make people laugh or smile. I am seeking to inform, discuss, or argue. I am also seeking to prove that I can write on an academic level and do not write substandard for my college level.

When I am writing for something like this blog or on Facebook or whatever, I am definitely a lot more casual. Just being able to use first person pronouns opens me up to being a lot more jovial and less scholarly in my jargon and the way I present ideas. I like to make my writing for public things a lot more easy to understand and enjoyable to read overall (whether or not I succeed in doing so). I do not want people to think I am overly pretentious by using words that someone who is not an English student or does not read much would know. I think that is pretty apparent even through this post. Either way, I think there are appropriate times for both, but you have to know when to switch between them.

Week 6 - The Anonymous Lady

I have to start by mentioning that the way that these poems were printed honestly made it somewhat difficult to read. What I mean is that the lower case s's look like f's, I suppose because of the limitations of the early printing presses. I realize this is just a simple gripe, but it still gave me a bit of trouble.

Anyways, the Anonymous Lady's poems were honestly pretty good in my opinion. I enjoy a good love poem every now and again, and these were written quite well. I particularly enjoyed "To the Same. A Pastoral" because it flows very well, probably due to its rhyme scheme.
Another poem I enjoyed was "[250]" because it is short and sweet, consisting of only four lines used to say that this lady can only express her love through writing.

What is probably the most important piece by the Anonymous Lady is "On Being Charged with Writing Incorrectly." It is humorous in a satirical kind of way, and it really sends a good message about the writing conventions that were the standard for the time period. I love how this anonymous lady was so unafraid to call white male writers out for being so dependent on the approval of "Busby," who was a renowned professor at the time, I believe. Instead of writing because they enjoy writing, they want to be able to write exactly like everyone else, which this author thinks is wrong. I just really enjoy the progressiveness of this piece, even if something like this could never have been published in England.

If looking for some good love poems to read or gain inspiration from, the Anonymous Lady is a good place to start. It is simple to read and a simple subject matter, but it is still quite eloquent in its own way, I think. As long as the reader can get past the weird way it was printed, then it should yield something for each person who reads it, because most people have written a simple love poem at one point or another.

Week 5 - Representing the New World

Within "Captains and Slaves - Aphra Behn and the Rhetoric of Republicanism" by Warren Chernaik, a lot of good points are raised regarding Behn's actual stance on various important topics to the story of Oroonoko, namely the morality of owning slaves. This topic was particularly interesting to me because it is often overlooked that slave owners felt that they were perfectly valid in doing so under their religion. How could that be true? How could any Christian person feel comfortable owning another human and treating them like animals?
It is often assumed by people in current time that all slave owners and people benefiting from the slave trade had this opinion, but this article expresses that many were against the slave trade, at least in the cases that people are being captured expressly to be made slaves.

While I in no way condone slavery, another part of this article I found interesting was the bit about Locke's opinions on slavery. He, according to "Captains and Slaves - Aphra Behn and the Rhetoric of Republicanism," believed that it was okay to own a slave if they had been acquired through war, but not if they were captured expressly to be sold into slavery. What is most interesting is that he was a colonial administrator who was often dealing with the trading of slaves and plantations, so can one really take his opinion for what it is if he was so involved in the slave trade? Did he simply turn a blind eye to the fact that he was going against his own opinion just for money?

Week 4 - Law & Philosophy

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, published in 1690, is essentially a short exploration of human knowledge and understanding that Locke wrote and published in his spare time. It was, as the text reveals, simply a way of Locke to record different ideas that he and his friends had while relaxing and discussing different things. The text goes into different ideas such as how people perceive things, ideas being derived by experiences, how words connect to ideas, and the limits of human knowledge.

It is fairly easy to see that many of these ideas being discussed, even if they were not meant to cause any major upheaval in society, sewed the roots of just that. Locke is putting into words the ways in which every single person perceives and learns different things, and that we should always be seeking out new knowledge. Putting the idea in people's minds that each person can think for his or herself and should always be questioning the things around them would do nothing but disrupt the thought process that the monarchy in charge at the time would want people to have. People being curious about their livelihoods, especially in direct response to the actions that their, at the time tyrannical, government is making, would cause them to, more likely than not, be wondering if there is a better way of living they could have, or at least a better government above them. Obviously, this way of thinking contributed greatly in the century following the publishing of this to the American Revolution. Of course, this way of thought is very closely related to the ideals of the Enlightenment period of questioning the world around oneself, including natural phenomena and even religion being the basis for all facts.

Obvious to us, this way of thinking is basically how mostly all research nowadays works. We seek to find answers to the things around us, whether it be through quantifying and qualifying things, or just seeking out what something means to us. How we perceive things and our ability to speak out about our own ideas is a relatively new development in our societies, but has changed the very fabric of our societies and cultures. People no longer have to depend on religion or their government for an explanation for everything.

Week 3 - Religion and Science

Out of the three texts that were assigned to be read for this week, I think that The Pilgrim's Progress and "A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton" continue to be relevant today.

Firstly, and a text that will almost definitely be continuously relevant, is "A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton." This text is still relevant because it is simply Isaac Newton discussing his theories on color and prisms. Our understanding of colors has not been updated much, if at all, since Isaac Newton's theory was published through this letter. Really he is just discussing the idea that light is always white until it is either refracted through a prism or a colored filter is placed in front of the light source. There really is not a lot to talk about with this text. It is what it is, and the theory still holds up today, as most of Newton's theories do.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, however, is a lot more interesting in how it is still relevant today. The Norton Anthology of English Literature really describes it best by saying, "The Pilgrim's Progress is the most popular allegory in English. Its basic metaphor--life is a journey--is simple and familiar..." (2142). I think this is pretty accurate and literally any person can agree with the sentiment. Life is a journey, and each location in this piece is a metaphor for some aspect of life that each person has to deal with in order to reach their ultimate goal. In the case of the character 'Christian' from the piece, that goal is to reach 'The Celestial City,' which is a stand-in name for heaven.


While the piece most definitely was intended to be digested with its obvious Christian themes, I think it can still be looked at with a contemporary lens where those themes don't necessarily have to be considered. For example, 'The Slough of Despond' can represent the doubts and fears that drag anyone down. It does not have to represent sin or things that keep one from religion. Another example could be that of 'The Vanity Fair.' While in the context of The Pilgrim's Progress it is supposed to be representing all of the temptations in life that cause one to sin, it can still simply represent temptations in life that cause people to lose their way in life, whether it be alcohol, sex, money, etc.

Although the language of The Pilgrim's Progress can be a little bit difficult to digest, especially for a non-English major, I think just about anyone could get something out of it. While the Christian themes are not as relevant in our more secular society, the ideas that each part of the piece represent are still very much relevant because they represent different aspects of the human condition. In that way, it is very possible that The Pilgrim's Progress will continue to be relevant until humans either die off or evolve beyond our current emotions.

Week 2 - Heroic Verse

To understand the difference between satire in the context of John Dryden versus satire today, one must understand exactly what satire is and its importance to literature, politics, and culture. John Dryden is considered to be a very impersonal writer, as he incorporated almost every important aspect of life into his poetry, and his poems usually commemorate specific events that happened during his lifetime.

John Dryden was mainly a playwright, so it is not surprising that he is comfortable using wit and satire in his works. As theater was the contemporary form of entertainment at the time, the audiences were also very familiar with both satire and wit, which greatly contributed to Dryden's popularity. It makes perfect sense that a poem such as "Mac Flecknoe," which satirizes another poet at the time, Shadwell, a self proclaimed successor of Ben Johnson, would be found smart or at the very least entertaining to contemporary audiences of the time.

The way in which Dryden used satire in regards to events happening in his lifetime is most certainly still used today. The only differences are that now more people are educated enough to read and recognize satire, and the events and aspects of everyday life that are being satirized are different. Poetry is also not necessarily the main form in which things are satirized nowadays, as online articles and other forms of digital media are the more favorable outlets.

Perhaps one of the best examples of contemporary satire is the long-running and popular television series, The Simpsons. While it is nowhere near as popular (or clever, in my opinion) as it was about a decade ago, the way in which it comments on popular culture and events is the same. Usually, if there is something particularly unfavorable that an important figure does, or there is an event that happens worth satirizing, the writers will incorporate some aspect of that particular happening into a character who mirrors the figure, or a theme of the episode relating to the event. Sometimes it can even be a simple joke, but the viewer must still be able to recognize that it is satirizing something contemporary. This is definitely similar to Dryden's use of satire because, as previously mentioned, he tried to incorporate every important aspect of life into his poetry.