John Clare: "I Am"

Anna Roberts
Section IA

John Clare (1793-1864)
-son of a field laborer and an illiterate mother
-began writing to vent his frustrations for having to be a field laborer
-a blank notebook would cost him a week's wages
-he became a brief celebrity in 1820 but after the failure of his next three books he became insane in 1837 and spent the rest of his life in an asylum

"I Am" (1848)
-under the theme "Imagination and Self"
-ways self and thought were put together changes dramatically during Romantic period
-concept of what it means to inhabit an imagination and view the world as an individual explored during this time as well
-the poem expresses sense of "What am I?"
-wrote when he was locked up in an insane asylum
-demonstrates ways we articulate ourselves against others
-Makdisi put up this quote by Blake, "I am like an atom/A nothing left in darkness, yet I am an identity/I wish and feel and weep and groan. Ah terrible terrible"
-individuality not something to celebrate
-awful to be locked up in the self
-late 19th century/19th century construction of self ends up not being as wonderful as we were told it would be