John Clare and the Ubiquitous Editor
Editors have always played an important and powerful role in the works of John Clare, from Clare’s own time until the present. An Invite to Eternity presents a model of that relationship between text and editor in microcosm, from its composition inside the walls of a mental institution to its transcription by an asylum attendant, to its early publication and its modern re-presentation today. Written in the 1840s, no extant manuscript of the poem exists in Clare’s own hand and each version of the poem is inflected by its editor in different but always significant ways. In recent years, this is reflected in the sole copyright control over Clare’s work exercised by his most prominent editor, whose own interpretation of Clare governs the way the poet and his poems are presented to a modern audience.
The publication history of all of John Clare’s work is, in the end, a history about editorial control and influence. Even An Invite to Eternity, written within the confines of a mental institution seemingly distant from the literary world, is not an exception to this rule, for it and Clare’s other asylum poems do not escape the power and problem of the editor. And, further, this problem of the editor is not one confined to the past, to the actions of Clare’s original publisher John Taylor or to W.F. Knight, the asylum house steward who transcribed the poetry Clare wrote during his 20 odd years of confinement. In fact, debates continue and rankle over the role of the editor in re-presenting Clare’s work to a modern audience: should the modern editor present the unadulterated, raw Clare manuscript or a cleaned up, standardized version as Taylor did? Only exacerbating and exaggerating this problem o...
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(29)Haughton.
(30)Hugh Haughton and Adam Phillips, “Introduction: Relocating John Clare,” John Clare in Context. Ed. Hugh Haughton, Adam Phillips, Geoffrey Summerfield. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 19.
(31)Haughton and Phillips, 19; see Robinson, xii.
(32)Robinson, xii.
(33)See The John Clare Page for a bibliography of news and journal articles concerning the controversy.
(34)Robert Mendick, ‘Poets Protest as US Scholar Corners Clare’, Independent on Sunday, 16 July 2000. Online.
(35)John Goodridge, “Poor Clare,” The Guardian, July 22, 2000. Online.
(36)Goodridge; The John Clare Page.
(37)‘John Clare’s Copyright’ (letter), Times Literary Supplement, July 14 2000, p. 15.
(38)See Times Higher Education Supplement
(39)See the Robinson version of the poem and the Grigson version, an example of the “standardized” Clare.
Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)
Racial profiling in the dictionary is “the assumption of criminality among ethnic groups: the alleged policy of some police to attribute criminal intentions to members of some ethnic groups and to stop and question them in disproportionate numbers without probable cause (“Racial Profiling”).” In other words racial profiling is making assumptions that certain individuals are more likely to be involved in misconduct or criminal activity based on that individual’s race or ethnicity. Racial profiling propels a brutalizing message to citizens of the United States that they are pre-judged by the color of their skin rather than who they are and this then leads to assumptions of ruthlessness inside the American criminal justice system. With race-based assumptions in the law enforcement system a “lose-lose” situation is created due to America’s diverse democracy and destroys the ability to keep the criminal justice system just and fair. Although most police officers perform their duties with fairness, honor, and dedication, the few officers who portray to be biased then harm the whole justice system resulting in the general public stereotyping every law enforcement officer as a racial profiler (Fact Sheet Racial Profiling). When thinking about racial profiling many people automatically think it happens only to blacks but sadly this is mistaken for far more ethnic groups and races such as Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, Native Americans, and many more are racially profiled on a day to day basis. Many people believe racial profiling to be a myth because they see it as police officers merely taking precautions of preventing a crime before it happens, but in reality racial profiling has just become an approved term for discrimination and unjust actio...
Before any argument can be made against racial profiling, it is important to understand what racial profiling is. The American Civil Liberties Union, defines racial profiling as "the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin"(Racial Profiling: Definition). Using this definition we can determine that racial profiling excludes any evidence of wrong-doing and relies solely on the characteristics listed above. We can also see that racial profiling is different from criminal profiling, which uses evidence of wrong-doing and facts which can include information obtained from outside sources and evidence gathered from investigation. Based on these definitions, I will show that racial profiling is unfair and ineffective because it relies on stereotyping, encourages discrimination, and in many cases can be circumvented.
Jokinen, Anniina. "Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature." Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. N.p., 1996. Web. 9 Nov. 2013. http://www.luminarium.org/
...thern Literary Journal. Published by: University of North Carolina Press. Vol. 4, No. 2 (spring, 1972), pp. 128-132.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
Racial profiling is defined as “The practice of substituting skin color for evidence as grounds for suspicion.” In Layman’s terms, racial profiling is when police officers stop, search, and arrest more people of one minority race that a majority race. Typically, American Latinos and African-Americans are among the main targets of racial profiling, mainly caused by decades of stereotypical beliefs that most “gangsters” and other criminals are of one of these two races. Since the disaster of 9/11 and the wars in the Middle East, Arabs and South Asians have become much more likely targets of racial profiling, especially with airport security and in major cities. The act ...
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
Margaret E. Goertz. Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 80, No. 2, Federalism Reconsidered: The Case of the No Child Left Behind Act (2005), pp. 73-89
Racial Profiling is wrong. There should be laws that make the use of racial profiling illegal, because it causes harm to people of different race, religion and ethnicity; moreover, it has a major effect
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1c. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print. The.
Holbrook, David. Llareggub Revisted: Dylan Thomas and the State of Modern Poetry. Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1965. 100-101.
The speaker in “Publication—is the Auction” successfully portrays his or her anger toward publishing and expresses that reducing a poet’s words and thoughts to a commercial value is irreverent. In four stanzas, the speaker argues that publication puts a significant strain on a writer by pressuring him or her to conform in order to turn a profit. This is an act not even justifiable by poverty and publication is ultimately selling out.
During the time-period when they authored this essay, the commonly held notion amongst people was that “In order to judge the poet’s performance, we must know what he intended.”, and this notion led to what is termed the ‘Intentional fallacy’. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the intention, i.e., the design or plan in the author’s mind, of the author is neither available nor desirable for judging the success of a work of literary art. It is not available because the author will most certainly not be beside the reader when he/she reads the text, and not desirable because intention as mentioned already is nothing but the author’s attitude towards his work, the way he felt while writing the text and what made him write that particular piece of writing and these factors might distract the reader from deciphering the meaning from the text. This method of reading a text without any biographical or historical background of either the poem or the poet practiced by the New Critics was known as ‘Closed Reading’. This stemmed from their belief in the autonomy of the text.