Jeeves and Wooster

          Though he wrote during the time period when Modernism was at its height, P.G. Wodehouse used comedy and not realism to compose his commentary on the culture of his time. As Laura Mooneyham states in her article “Comedy Among the Modernists: P.G. Wodehouse and the Anachronism of Comic Form,” Wodehouse knew that “no force pose[d] a greater threat to a welcoming reception of his comedies than the modernist sensibility of the twentieth century” (114). Though being familiar with many of Wodehouse’s contemporaries, such as Evelyn Waugh, W. H. Auden, or even James Joyce, many modern students lack any sort of knowledge of his writings. Our specific cultural preoccupations lean toward a tendency of considering only what is considered scholarly, and therefore serious, and so has allowed us to discount the comedic form of criticism. Mooneyham elucidates the point well when she states that “over-seriousness incapacitates us from viewing comic endings as even remotely memetic of experience” (116). Wodehouse lived through two world wars and was even held as a prisoner of war by the Nazi regime. As one who undoubtedly experienced an excess of seriousness and turmoil, it is not surprising that comedy is his weapon of choice–one that he uses effectively to deride and mock the established ways of traditional Britain.

          I chose to look specifically at a short story that was later turned into a television episode, both are entitled “Comrade Bingo.” While Wodehouse wrote his Jeeves and Wooster stories during the years of 1915 to 1974, the television series was produced and directed from 1990 to 1993. The modern televised interpretations remain very close to the original stories, though each episode due to time constraints does often combine the plots of two to three stories. The original story of “Comrade Bingo” is only 17 printed pages long–the hour long episode then combines the story of “Comrade Bingo” with that of “Jeeves Makes an Omelette” and added aspects of Wodehouse’s novel, The Code of the Woosters. While Wodehouse did use his writings to express social and political sentiments, he wrote them mainly to entertain. George  Watson states in his article, “The Birth of Jeeves,” that Wodehouse “had conceived them, he wrote from New York in 1951, in a letter, not in order to make a point about the England of his youth, as Orwell had imagined, but because these ‘exaggerated dudes’ were what Americans wanted. ‘It was as simple as that.’” Wodehouse as a struggling writer in his youth had experienced hunger and want and vowed to never do so again–he was prepared to write what his readers would pay for (Watson).

          Though his main intent may not have been to produce social reformation through change, Wodehouse uses subtle irony and satire to question the modern validity of traditional institutions, while simultaneously honoring them. Jeeves, the omniscient valet, acts as the savior in all of the scandals that Bertie gets involved in–for if Bertie is “inept” then Jeeves is ever “wonderfully suave, well-informed, and resourceful” (West 12,13). In so constructing his characters Wodehouse ever so slightly and comically puts the traditional class structure of England if not on its head at least in a rather uncomfortable position. The classically educated Bertie cannot quote Shakespeare to save his life, yet it is Jeeves who always has the proper literary epithet for any situation. This characteristic is displayed continuously throughout the stories and also the television series. In the “Comrade Bingo” episode Jeeves knowledge of the ideals held by the fictional communist/socialist society the Heralds of the Red Dawn enables him to aptly sum up his and Bertie’s political opinion by stating that it is “as well to know what tunes the Devil is playing.”

          The differing political and cultural temperatures between when the stories were written and when the television series aired allowed the producers and directors to emphasize not only the comic relief of Jeeves providing such a drastic antithesis to Bertie, but also gave them the liberty to depict Jeeves himself in moments of outdated snobbish and foppish ridiculousness. The television series tackles the issues of class structure more violently than ever the stories did. “Comrade Bingo” being an example, the film takes the liberty of not only highlighting the political and class differences between the right-wing traditional class and the communist/socialist party but also introduces into the plot the recurring fascist character of Sir Roderick Spode and his political party of the Black Shorts.

          The film’s interpretation illustrates not only the culture of London in the time of P.G. Wodehouse, but also sheds light on what a modern audience may think of the traditions of past times. The exceeding nationalism of the characters and the fact that each character becomes a caricature demonstrates the hilarity that a modern viewer finds in a feudal run household based on the outdated practice of servility. While political and cultural lessons can be definitively drawn from the television series, they are less so from the stories–the reason being as one detractor stated, that P.G. Wodehouse in his quest to entertain was viewed by some as “British literature’s performing flea” (qtd. in West 13). His end goal always was, through his writing and the monetary profits resultant, to be able to enjoy “the prospect of endless leisure with a private income acquired through inheritance, like Bertie Wooster” (Watson). Perhaps the idyllic and idealistic world he hoped to inhabit with Bertie and Jeeves enabled him to keep his political and cultural wit sharp but never quite cutting.

Works Cited:

“Comrade Bingo.” P.G. Wodehouses’s Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series. Writ. Clive Exton. Dir. Ferdinand Fairfax. ITV. 3 May 1992. DVD. A&E, 2009.

Mooneyham, Laura. “Comedy Among the Modernists: P.G. Wodehouse and the Anachronism of Comic Form.” Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 40, No. 1 (1994): 114-38. Jstor. Kennesaw State U. Lib., Kennesaw, GA. 3 July 2009. online.

Watson, George. “The Birth of Jeeves.” Virginia Quarterly Review. Vol. 73, No. 4 (1997). Literary Reference Center. Kennesaw State U. Lib., Kennesaw, GA. 3 July 2009. online.

West, Robert H. “The High Art of Quality Frivolity.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Vol. 37, No. 1 (1972): 12-19. Jstor. Kennesaw State U. Lib., Kennesaw, GA. 3 July 2009. online.

Modern Art and Post-Modern London

          While being one of oldest cities in Europe, London has not only a storied ancient history but also a vivid and interesting more modern past. Examples of not only modern art and modern thinking are evident in the city but also that of the post-modern persuasion as well. As it has all semester, art has been a way to access the way in which people have viewed and continue to view this ever changing city.

          Of the numerous museums located in London, the Tate Modern deals exclusively with what is termed “modern” art. While it encompasses much more than just the art that was created directly after World War I, during what has come to be known as the time when the “modern” way of thinking arose, the Tate represents well the searching that imbued the modern quest with its mission—meaning. One painting in particular illustrated the way in which modern artists came to interpret the new world in which they now lived. The painting entitled Morning by the artist Dod Procter, which was painted in 1926, illustrates a return to realism. As the explanatory plaque notes, the painting symbolized hope and many modernists returned to the realist style of painting after the war—demonstrating their search for meaning, even if that search is of the past. In fact it makes sense that in a world so chaotic, so full of wrack and ruin, that people would cast their gaze backward to a time of more traditional, even classical, values. The more realist style of painting also suggests that in a culture that had been so destroyed and divided that the survivors were trying to find a common view of the world that could be shared. Such is not the case with post-modern thought.

            While the more traditional medium of paint on canvas was able to aptly express the emotions of modern thinkers the more non-traditional art of architecture communicates clearly the feelings and thoughts of what can be termed the post-modern world. The newly erected London Eye exemplifies the post-modern view of the world—in its construction and design and also in the actual view of London that it offers. In the post-modern world it is the individual and individual perspective that counts. The London Eye typifies that philosophy as each spherical “eye” that surrounds the circumference offers a different view of the city—a view that no other capsule can offer at that exact moment. Within the capsule each person has a vantage point different from that of anyone else at that moment. All of the passengers may be seeing the same landscape but out of different eyes—literally and figuratively. Though in close proximity to other people, the point is brought home to each passenger that their exact view, and more importantly personal interpretation, is being experienced by no other person in the world. All of this emphasizes the individuality of perspective regarding the same perceived object, which was and is of prime interest to the post-modern world.

          The London Eye, in its place of prominence across the river from Big Ben and Parliament, not only physically elevates people above the rooftops of London but also in calling into question the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, symbolically also elevates people’s thoughts. In seeing imposing structures, political and cultural, from a completely new perspective, the implication is to challenge your regard of them ideologically. The art of the Tate Modern also serves to challenge the viewer. The art housed within its walls, opposed to its more classical predecessors, does not ask only to be merely appreciated but mainly to be thoughtfully considered.

The Buddha of Suburbia

Though many of us like our lives to be as neatly organized as possible, pigeon-holed, and easily categorized, life is chaotic, varying, and is always a juxtaposition of numerous influences and ideas. Hanif Kureishi’s novel, The Buddha of Suburbia exemplifies this amalgamation throughout the novel, beginning with its very title. While it is a coming of age tale, the protagonist, Karim Amir, can speak to numerous audiences. With our unique and differentiable cultures becoming more and more global in their aspect, Karim represents the citizens of this new culture that exist within the spaces between.

As a character that is half Indian and half Caucasian, Karim, from the first page, struggles with issues of identity. He states that “perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me restless and easily bored” (Kureishi 3). It is these antithetical ideas, of belonging and not belonging, of being here and being there, that define Karim and define his struggle to find a place within his culture, a culture that even he is not sure what it consists of. Not only does Karim exist within an amorphous idea of race but he also operates within a rigid class system, while remaining almost fluid within that system.

Karim is able to make the move from suburb to city. And while not without its difficulties, he still manages to do so successfully. If we see, as Kureishi depicts it, the suburbs as representing a working blue-collar class and the city representing an educated white-collar class, Karim’s ability to not only move from one to the other but also retain the ability to go back and forth between the two can be seen as quite a cultural achievement. The fact that Karim desires and decides to go back to the suburbs at the end of the novel also illustrates the growth he has experienced as a character as well. He is no longer the yearning boy we encounter at the beginning of the story, but a man who realizes that life can encompass more than one place and more than one situation.

Throughout the novel Karim has to learn to live within a variety of cultures, reside in a variety of places, and consider numerous ideologies. While during the story he seems to exhibit no loyalty to any idea or culture—trying, almost frantically, to experience anything and everything—he is no passive observer, but by the end of the novel has made a pastiche of his life and has obtained some sort of success as he has learned how to communicate within the various circles he inhabits. Not only has he learned how to communicate within them he has been able to retain relationships that exist within all of the social arenas he operates in. One of the most important realizations in regard to that communication is actually one of negativity. At the end of the novel, while Karim is talking to his father, he realizes that they are “misunderstanding each other again! But it was impossible to clarify” and in answering his father Karim states that he much “chose [his] words carefully” (Kureishi 280). In Karim’s acknowledgement, we see that he has realized that residing within a culture and communicating in that culture takes work and requires effort—a realization that characters like Charlie never come to.

Kureishi illustrates well the numerous spheres we all inhabit on a daily basis. Through Karim we see a reflection of the complicated cultures that we all live within and realize that as uncomplicated as it is to be able to be summed up in one word or one general statement, it is also unrealistic. In this ever globalizing economy and culture, more and more lines of distinction are being blurred, but as Karim learns at the end of the novel we have as much responsibility to help shape our culture, be it large or small, as does our culture towards us.

Works Cited:

Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

St. Paul’s and the Tower of London

          St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London: two of England’s most imposing structures. One a bastion of faith and the other a very formidable fortress. One designed to direct mankind’s thoughts toward God and the other designed to demonstrate the dominance of a monarch. Though built for very different purposes they share the distinction of being erected to protect and preserve an idea, be it faith or power.

St. Paul's

 St. Paul’s Cathedral at one time dominated the skyline. During the thirteenth century it was one of the grandest buildings in all of Europe, making it one of the earliest versions of a skyscraper. As Michelle Brown states in her booklet St. Paul’s Cathedral, “it has been the public stage upon which kings and queens, mayors and civic dignitaries, leading public figures and prominent clergy have performed the pageant of history” (1). It has played a prominent role in British culture for the last 1,400 years. It serves not only as a symbolic reminder for its congregation of God’s magnificence and grandeur, but also serves a less spiritual function. It creates a culture and brings a community of worshippers together. As a structure it symbolically protects the shared ideology of those who gather inside. It serves not only to provide a shared space for those who worship but it also serves to send a message to those who don’t, for it is formidable in its scope and grand in its design. The message is that of confidence, strength, and intimidation–for the building must, according to tradition, represent the qualities of the one who is worshipped within its hallowed halls.

          The Tower of London also seeks by its size and its strength of defense to demonstrate sheer power to the viewer. According to the guide book the original architect, William the Conqueror, “intended his mighty ‘White Tower’ not only to dominate the skyline, but also the hearts and minds of the subjugated Londoners” (3). While St. Paul’s was built to demonstrate the omnipotence of a god, the Tower of London was built wholly to demonstrate the sovereignty of a man. The modern day treasure–the Crown Jewels–which is housed within one of the towers still seeks to illustrate the authority and power that the ruling class posses.  One of the most striking similarities between the two structures is that the magnificence of these two edifices speaks as much to the threats that they were trying to keep out of their walls as it does to what they were trying to encompass within them. For it is not the masses within them that grant them power, it is the ideas that they represent and seek to preserve that allow them dominance.

The White Tower

          It is these ideas that the buildings are supposed to shelter, though, that leads to their most modern similarity. And that is that the ideologies that they stand for–faith and power–and the two most precariously perched cultural standards in this modern climate. Church attendance is decreasing at a great rate and the idea of a ruling family with multiple palaces and many jewels is becoming more and more politically out of date. While these two structures at a time did dominate the skyline and dominated the minds and hearts of the people, they have begun to be antiquated and their power is being reduced more and more to that of a tourist attraction. For as their own storied histories demonstrate, power is never constant.

Works Cited:

Brown, Michelle P. St Paul’s Cathedral. Whitefriars: Jarrold Publishing, 2006.

Kilby, Sarah and Clare Murphy, eds. Historic Royal Palaces: Tower of London. Surrey: Historic Royal Palaces, 2009.

Mrs. Dalloway

          Class–it is a subject that none of us can escape as we must all operate within its limits and its bounds. The characters of Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway are continually aware of the structure that the class system imposes upon their lives. It is the different ways in which the characters decide to operate within those pre-imposed limits that defines and diferentiates them. The two characters of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith represent an intersting duality within the book. They function within entirely different class levels and within completely different gender roles as well, and yet they reflect each other not in a mirror like way but in a way more similar to that of the relationship between a film negative and the picture that it produces.

         While the two characters have both struggled with mortality, Septimus as a result of the war and Clarissa as a result of an illness, they both do it in different ways. In the book, Septimus struggles with the idea or the ideology of death and Clarissa struggles with the physical possibilty of it. Yet it is the idea of death that is more powerful, as it is Septimus who by the end has embraced what Woolf classifies as defiance–death (184). Though through Clarissa we become aware of the satisfaction she feels regarding her party it seems almost with a tinge of jealousy she states “If it were now to die. ’twere now to be most happy” (Woolf 184). She for all her “horror of death” has found a hope and has been able to articulate it–”the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death…” (Woolf 153). Septimus, on the other hand, cannot seem to bring order to his thoughts, his beliefs. His words are “perfect nonsense…about death” (Woolf 67). In the end Clarissa’s ability to communicate and articulate her thoughts, bring order to them–sometimes at the expense of passion–is what endows her with the ability to survive in this class system where everything must remain neat and perfect, even when the word perfect can be used as an insult. It is Septimus who is left afloat and cannot communicate to others  his words, his toughts. It is his wife, Rezia, who must bring order to his thoughts and transcribe his words.

          Though the novel is one containing people from all levels of society, the comparison between Septimus and Clarissa is one of being able to communicate within their specific class and being able to perform perfectly the roles they are designated to play. While Clarissa can play her part and does become the perfect hostess, Septimus cannot play the role assigned to him by his culture and therefore cannot remain within it.

Works Cited:

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, 1981.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

          A picture is worth a thousand words. Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Epigrams that have become so common place in our culture that they have begun to lose any true meaning they may have actually had. What about them is true enough, though, that they became common sayings in the first place? Does a picture have the same power as that of a thousand words? Are beauty and truth synonymous? These are only some of the questions that Oscar Wilde poses in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which itself is not short of interesting epigrams. The layers of meaning and of communication are complex in the novel–for Wilde uses words to paint a picture in our mind’s eye and that imagined painting then stands in turn for other words that are left unsaid. The picture of the novel is not only the painting Basil Hallward makes of Dorian Gray, but more importantly it is the picture of Dorian that each reader individually sketches for himself.

          Though the physical picture the plot turns about is a painting of Dorian Gray, Dorian, though he is the only character to be represented on canvas in any sort of concrete form, is the character who is most like a tabula rasa within the novel. He changes himself and his mind based upon the whims of others. The painting of him, not his physical body, is then what represents his continually changing nature. Wilde used the painting to signify what at the time was a culture that was more preoccupied with keeping up appearances than with actual personal morality.  Lord Henry, while being the character who most intensely questions societal dictums, never breaks character with who his culture dictates that he be. Conversely, Dorian while appearing to uphold cultural standards goes completely against the mores of his time. The painting, in a sense, becomes a sort of carnival mirror reflecting the horrors of Dorian’s life. The hideousness of the painting and the physical perfection of Dorian act as two sides of the same coin, illustrating that sometimes truth is not beautiful–it is, as another common saying goes, the ugly truth.

          Though it is by means of a painting that Dorian is illustrated, the catalyst to his transformation is a book–in short he is changed through words. The book that is so influential in his life is described as “a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music” (Gray 104). Dorian cannot free himself from the influence of these words–words, which are communal signifiers of the concrete and the existential. These words evoke in Dorian “a nature over which he seemed…to have almost entirely lost control” (Gray 105). These signifiers of culture and civilization then have the antipodal effect on Dorian; they cause his nature to revert ever more closely back to that of actual, physical nature–uncontrolled and uncivilized. If words are synonymous with culture, the words of this book then strip Dorian of his individual words–his ability to communicate; his sense of culture–and in fact he becomes a mere symbol. In becoming his painting he loses his grasp on society and culture and can no longer express words of his own but can only reflect the words and ideas of others.

          The Picture of Dorian Gray holds up not only a painting for all its readers to gaze and wonder at but also holds up a mirror in which every reader must examine himself. And if looking in that mirror we seek to see beauty we must also seek to see truth. As a painting Dorian came to represent the words of anyone else who wished to impose their language on him. And while every individual viewer of a picture can articulate their viewing of it with thousands of different words, the painting itself has no words that it can speak. That is the distinction between a reader of Dorian and Dorian himself, one that he realizes too late–without words we are without culture.

Works Cited:

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

British Cultural Studies

          The term “culture” denotes not only the idea of being “cultured” in regard to what is considered aristocratic or scholarly but also, as described in Graeme Turner’s British Cultural Studies, “‘when we are at our most natural, our most everyday, we are also at our most cultural’” (Willis qtd. in Turner 2). Turner sets out, through his own arguments, and also through those of his peers within the field of Cultural Studies, to inform his audience of the wide scope that Cultural Studies encompasses, from that of high culture to that which is termed low or everyday culture. His main argument, and the main focus of Cultural Studies as a whole, is the reading and textualizing of cultural systems other than that of literature. As an arena where meaning is constructed and also experienced, culture is also where the social realities of those meanings are interpreted and defined (Turner 12). By examining such tools as language, semiotics, and ideology, Turner strives and succeeds in guiding the readers of his book to become readers also of culture.

          In examining the use of language within a culture, Turner turns to the theories of Saussure. Saussure propones that language is not inherently natural, it is societally and culturally constructed–therefore, the meanings it denotes are constructed as well (Turner 11). A culture’s ideas as to what determines and defines the natural world are expressed through its common language. But once outside of that culture, language, which within the bounds of the culture is so accommodating, cannot communicate universally what it so eloquently states in its native tongue. In the field of Cultural Studies, language can be just as much of a hindrance as it can be a help. Therefore we must turn not only to the study of language but also to that of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, to be able to truly read a culture.

          The importance of signs and signifiers within a culture can be traced back as far as Plato and his Theory of Forms, where he puts forth the belief that the components of the material world act only as kinds of physical signs and representations for a perfect and universal form or idea. Just as the relationship between the signifier and the signified has been historically ambiguous, even for Plato, the relationship between the culture and those who study it has also faced its own ambiguities. Signs that to a modern audience are obvious–the fashion of news anchors associating them with a certain political party, the atmosphere and mood in which that news is broadcast–are all things that Cultural Studies had to establish before it could become so obvious to us. Turner’s discussion of early Cultural Studies can therefore get almost tedious before the recognition that at one time such realizations were revolutionary.

          While signs to a certain extent can communicate what language cannot, they too in a textual sense have to be encoded before they can be decoded. They are therefore no more natural a component of culture than that of language. Stuart Hall describes three common ways that these signifying codes can be read: a preferred reading, a negotiated reading, and an oppositional reading (Turner 75). The preferred reading would be that most in line with what the original encoder had in mind when coding the text–an oppositional reading would consist of the most antithetical reading possible in regard to the purpose of the encoder. A negotiated reading of the text is closest to what in literary criticism is called reader-response theory. It is based on the idea that any person decoding a text brings what is individual about themselves to the reading and imposes that individuality upon any context they may read the culture in.

          It is this idea of the individual and the ideology that guides the individuals of a culture that must also be examined in conjunction with the idea of language and semiotics. With the progression of Cultural Studies “‘reality could no longer be viewed as simply a given set of facts: it was the result of a particular way of constructing reality’” (Hall qtd. in Turner 170). The constructed reality, or ideology of the time, then becomes an area in which a never ending struggle for cultural dominance is acted out between numerous groups (Turner 172). The affect of the ever changing ideology is that of an ever changing way in which to read the language and signs presented within a culture.

          Culture is always dynamic and the ways in which to read culture are numerous. Fish and Hartley state it best when they say “‘a cultural text is always to a certain extent ambivalent. It never merely celebrates or reinforces a univalent set of culturally located attitudes, but rather reflects the tensions caused by the many contradictory factors that any culture is continually having to reconcile in a working equilibrium’” (qtd. in Turner 84). As culture is always changing so must the ways in which we study it be. Just as with any good book, no reading of culture should ever be exactly the same.

Works Cited

Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2003.

The National Gallery

         

Bathers by Paul Cezanne

          Though it is language that connects the people within a culture, it is art in its physical forms–painting, sculpture, photography–that tries to connect numerous cultures. Within many of the famous museums of Europe, languages such as English, French, Spanish, and German can all be heard, yet the paintings on display do not change dependent upon the native language of the viewer. The language of art transcends any differences of vocabulary to communicate wordlessly that which is common to all of humanity.

          Of the numerous paintings housed within London’s National Gallery, the one that most caught my eye was that of the Bathers, by Paul Cezanne. The large canvas, located in the gallery designated for paintings dating from the 18th century to early 20th century, was painted between the years of 1894 and 1905. The painting is so large as to almost dominate the wall that it is situated on. It depicts a scene of eleven women, all in a state of nudity, in a communal sort of gathering. Cezanne fails to give any of the women any distinguishing factors, none can be recognized as a specific person that he may have had in mind or that may have modeled for the painting. Though all of the woman are white and therefore to a certain extent can only represent a specific subset racially, Cezanne depicts a scene of womanliness and a space reserved for femininity that all cultures are familiar with. The addition of the animal, which could possibly be a dog, in the forefront of the painting also strengthens the domestic aspect of the scene, while conversely the state of undress that all the women are in is contradictory to societal conventions regarding the modesty of women at the time.

          The diagonal lines used not only in the women’s postures but also in their surrounding landscape give the scene a sense of motion, although in their state of rest it is most definitely a subdued motion. The figure that seems to be the most dynamic is the figure that captured my interest initially and it is that of the woman on the farthest right of the painting. She seems to be at a further distance and retains, from all appearances, all of her clothing. While the other women share a sense of camaraderie, she is solitary in her space. She is framed by a darker blue, which hue dominates the entire landscape of the painting, but gives her a more thoughtful and more poignant aspect. In one sense she can represent the social solitude that can result from rejecting any cultural customs that one may be surrounded by. As a Post-Impressionist painter it is not a stretch to imagine that the artist himself must have at times been plagued by such feelings as well.

         Cezanne wonderfully captures a moment that is shared by many cultures–that of female togetherness. He depicts the women within nature but through the use of color very much differentiates the women from that nature. The eleventh figure, by her line and her color, is the most similar and therefore the closest to nature of all of the women, and as such may be even the more shunned for it. The painting evokes silently what no number of languages can express audibly.

Westminster Abbey

          Art—be it painting, architecture, or poetry—must be experienced firsthand to truly understand and appreciate its numerous forms. As far as art’s cultural significance, many historians agree that it is not until a people begin to exhibit artistic creativity, be it the cave paintings in Lascaux or the calligraphic poetry of the ancient Chinese, that the words culture and civilization can be applied. The art available to view in London is magnificent not only in its scope but also in its magnitude. The building of Westminster Abbey possesses artistic value not only as result of the breathtaking architecture but also due to the art and the memorials to artists that are housed within its beautifully sculpted walls.

     

Westminster Abbey

     The intricate, almost filigreed look of the façade of the Abbey acts as a stunning foretaste to the sight that greets visitors upon entering the Great North Door—the massive vaulted ceilings, which are meant to draw the eyes and the thoughts of visitors upward toward God. The spiritual attitude and beliefs of many of the literary artists whose memories are hallowed in those magnificent halls did not during their lifetime acquiesce to the views of any established church. The first literary figure to be buried in the area known as Poets’ Corner was Geoffrey Chaucer in the year 1400, followed by that of Edmund Spenser in 1598. The more controversial memorials of poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Oscar Wilde were quite contemporary additions, being added in 1945, 1969, and 1995 respectively.

          The reason for their late commemoration is due in part to the lifestyles they were reputed to have lived. Shelley was expelled in his youth from Oxford for publishing and circulating a pamphlet entitled, The Necessity of Atheism. Stories of Byron’s debaucheries abound and vary from tales of homosexuality to incest. Dean Herbert Ryle, who turned down a petition to have Byron memorialized in the Abbey in 1924, stated that Byron “‘partly by his openly dissolute life and partly by the influence of his licentious verse, earned a world-wide reputation for immorality among English-speaking people’” (Wilkinson 29). Oscar Wilde lived a notoriously homosexual life, which led to his imprisonment. The addition of a commemorative window to him still incited heated debates nearly a century after his death.

          From the letters, unfinished poetry, and writings they left behind, none of these acclaimed Romantic poets would evidence surprise regarding the fame they have achieved, as they were all quite confident of their literary genius though others, at the time, may have doubted them. The irony of being memorialized within an institution that railed so forcefully against them would not be lost on these men who put tools like satire and paradox to such great use. Perhaps that is why they are commemorated in name only; no marble effigies stand in their honor—for even a modern sculptor, I believe, could not keep a sardonic smile from off their lips.

Works Cited

Wilkinson, James. Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. London: JW Publications, 2007.

The Museum of London

Though culture is often classified as high or low, sophisticated or common, culture is in actuality a complex, ever dynamic, and sometime chaotic combination of elements that seem, at times, diametrically opposed. The Museum of London can be read as a meeting place of many of those dissimilar elements blending together in harmony. The highly modern, rotunda-style architecture houses one of the oldest Roman wells excavated in Britain. The modern bricks of the structure overlook the ancient stones of the Roman wall that surrounded the city of Londinium. While the stones of the outer structure so eloquently express the changing nature of the modern city, the stones and the actual texts housed within the museum speak to how a modern audience can read the history of the city of London and also give voice to how previous generations have read the story that preceded them as well