Aimed at the head, but reached the heart.

Cadenus was ashamed and surprised. He knew that the world would blame him, especially as she had "five thousand guineas in her purse." But Vanessa argued well, and, to his grief and shame, Cadenus could scarce oppose her. After all, it was flattering to be preferred to a crowd of beaux. He told her it was too late for him to love, but he offered friendship, gratitude, esteem. Vanessa took him at his -word, and said she would now be the tutor. What success she had was yet a secret; whether he descended to "less seraphic ends" or whether they decided "to temper love and books together" must not be told.

As this poem was preserved by Hester Vanhomrigh, we may assume that she did not think Swift had done her injustice in the clever apology for his own conduct. As in the case of the correspondence, it is pleasant to turn from the verses about Vanessa to the pieces which Swift wrote year by year on Stella's birthday. With laughing allusions to her advancing years (when she was thirty-eight, he wrote "Stella this day is thirty-four (We shan't dispute a year or more)"), he dwells on her wit and the lustre of her eyes. Hers was "an angel's face a little cracked," with an angel's mind. He "ne'er admitted Love a guest"; having Stella for his friend, he sought no more. She nursed him in his illness, coming to his relief "with cheerful face and inward grief."

When out my brutish passions break,

With gall in every word I speak,

She with soft speech my anguish cheers,

Or melts my passions down with tears.

If her locks were turning grey, his eyes were becoming dim, and he would not believe in wrinkles which he could not see. On her last birthday, when she was sick and Swift grown old, he wrote that, though they could form no more long schemes of life, she could look with joy on what was past. Her life had been well spent, and virtue would guide her to a better state. Swift would gladly share her suffering,

Or give my scrap of life to you,

And think it far beneath your due;

You, to whose care so oft I owe

That I'm alive to tell you so.

DEMANDS FOR WRITING PENALTY ESSAYS

SIZE:three A-4 format printed pages (Times New Roman 12, interval 1,5; all margins - 2 cm) in doc. format; OR: five A-4 format hand-written pages;

LANGUAGE:English;

DEADLINE: the date of the next seminar_class;

CONTENTS:a briefly formulated academic answer to a given question; with the use of provided theoretical material; on the basis of English literary text; your own thoughts and specultations are welcome.

PLAGIARY WARNING:essays copied from internet or blindly rewritten from book sources will not be accepted. Usually, they are very easily distinguished.

SUGGESTED SAMPLE TOPICS FOR DEFOE AND SWIFT PENALTY ESSAYS:

1. The optimism of Enlightment in Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe".

2. The difference in narrations applied in "Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver's Travels" and their role for the general structure of novels.

3. Positive and negative Utopias in "Gulliver's Travels".

4. Satire as an instrument of revelation in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". 5. The role of religion in Crusoe's life on the desert island.

(You are welcome to suggest your own topics but they have to be agreed beforehand).

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 814