Friday, March 20, 2020

Wilderness Versus Wildness Essays

Wilderness Versus Wildness Essays Wilderness Versus Wildness Essay Wilderness Versus Wildness Essay Essay Topic: Into the Wild Letters From an american Farmer Wild Wilderness Versus Wildness BY teeiku1620 Wilderness and wildness are two words that present two different views of how nature effects civilizations. Wilderness has a positive connotation, meaning the forest and the beautiful aspects of nature. Wildness means living with no rules, and relying on the basic human instinct to survive. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur has displayed contradictory views on New Britain, and how the people living there conduct themselves. Both wilderness and wildness are concepts that represented New Britain nd show the struggle between incorporating what the Europeans brought to a new land, and the untamed land they settled. In Letters from an American Farmer, de Crevecoeur does not show any respect for those for those he considers wild. He views those who live in the forest as little more than savages. (p. 4) He believes that eating uncultivated meat has a physical and mental effect on them, which is ironic since now it is has been proven unhealthy to eat anything other than natural meat and unprocessed food. He onsiders people who live in the wild to be ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable. (p. 4) Also, he believes that they do not have much of a future, because they do not trust the other people who live like them. He views as animals, wing with each other for the next big kill. He is exaggerating some characteristics of frontier culture, and does not show proof for his generalizations. Although he is a little harsh in his beliefs and criticisms of people living in the forest, he does, however, tap into a core feature of settlers coming to a new untamed land. De Crevecoeur is making a case for pastoral living as opposed to hunting and gathering which can be more risky. Like so many others at the time, de Crevecoeur is quick to point out the beauty and opportunity for European immigrants that lay in New Britain at the time. He is amazed by the idea of infinite space and opportunity. Here, de Crevecoeur is not Just thinking of wilderness in terms of nature, but in terms ofa lack of restrictive social structure. He confirms this by saying, the rich and poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. (p. He is especially excited about the removal of the aristocratic families. He said, We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed. (p. l) This quote also incorporates the idea of opportunity. The profits they make in this new land are for themselves, because there is no hierarchy requiring them to pay high taxes. Even though de Crevecoeur was harsh in his description of the wild people, he has really captured one of the biggest challenges of establishing a new civilization on a new open land. How do you protect the promise and opportunity of vast amounts of ature without living like a savage? If men are truly like plants taking all of the aspects of their lives from the environment around them, their social structure, and their religion to create their civilization, how do they prevent themselves from becoming an invasive species that crowd out all of the natural elements that existed before they came? (p. 2) There may never be right answers to these questions. As you can see with de Crevecoeur, he was constantly changing his mind about the balance between infinite space and an idealistic civilization.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Bombast Definition and Examples of Bombast

Bombast Definition and Examples of Bombast A pejorative term for pompous and inflated speech or writing. Adjective: bombastic. Unlike eloquence, a favorable term for forceful and persuasive discourse, bombast generally refers to empty rhetoric or a windy grandeur of language (Eric Partridge). Dickensian Bombast My dear Copperfield, a man who labors under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments before those emoluments are strictly due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally to the honor of his head and of his heart.(Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) Shakespearean Bombast Full thirty times hath Phoebus cart gone roundNeptunes salt wash, and Tellus orbed ground;And thirty dozen moons, with borrowd sheen,About the world have times twelve thirties been;Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,Unite communal in most sacred bands.(Player King in the play within a play in William Shakespeares Hamlet, Act III, scene two) Bombast and Hyperbole Bombast and hyperbole . . . are not interchangeable terms. Hyperbole is a figure of thought and one of the devices used to achieve bombast. Bombast is a stylistic mode, a manner of speaking and writing characterized by turgid and inflated language. The Elizabethans seem to have understood bombast to be more of an acoustic and an almost renegade quality of language, in contrast to rhetoric which was generally organized into a system. . . . Hyperbole shares with bombast the force of exaggeration, but not necessarily its lexical limitlessness and inelegance.​(Goran Stanivukovic, Shakespeares Style in the 1590s. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeares Poetry,  ed. by Jonathan Post. Oxford University Press, 2013) Alexis de Tocqueville on American Bombast I have often noted that Americans, who generally conduct business in clear, incisive language devoid of all ornament and often vulgar in its extreme simplicity, are likely to go in for bombast when they attempt a poetic style. In speeches their pomposity is apparent from beginning to end and, seeing how lavish they are with images at every turn, one might think they never said anything simply. ​(Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835) The Lighter Side of Platitudinous Ponderosity The following remarks on style appeared anonymously in dozens of late-19th-century and early-20th-century periodicals, ranging from Cornhill Magazine and the Practical Druggist to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Monthly Journal. Decide for yourself whether the advice is still appropriate. In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity.Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensiveness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency.Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectation.Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast.Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity.Shun double entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully, purely. Keep from slang; dont put on airs; say what you mean; mean what you say; and dont use big words! (Anonymous, The Basket: The Journal of the Basket Fraternity, July 1904) Honey, dont let the blonde hair fool you. Although  bombastic  forms of  circumlocution  should be generally avoided, one mustnt shy away from big words in the right  context.(Aphrodite in Punch Lines.  Xena: Warrior Princess, 2000) Etymology:From Medieval Latin, cotton padding Also Known As: grandiloquence