Old Leisure Diction

The demand carried by hundreds of trade unionists through Worcester’s cold streets in the winter of 1889 was the same carried throughout American labor struggles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, “eight hours for what we will.” Equally, or in other words, logically, a day divided consists of three-eight hour sections and what countless American laborers sought during this time was eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep/rest, and eight hours for what he or she sought for leisure. This historical monograph focuses on how workers sparred to keep those eight hours for leisure and for them, what those hours signified. Centering the focus on working-class recreation in

     Our society craves an escape from life.  When our tedious jobs bog us down, we escape into a hobby.  When the responsibilities of school tire us, we escape in a vacation.  When world affairs take a frightening turn of events, we escape in a good movie or absorbing book.  There are countless distractions available to lighten our heavy minds and ease our anxieties.  But it was not always as easy as it is today.  What if distractions such as these were available only to a leisured class?  What if the average person did not have the means to escape, even in small ways?  This was the dilemma in late Victorian England.  The people who needed and craved escape the

In Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, ‘education for leisure’ and Sheenagh Pugh’s, ‘she was nineteen and she was bored’, both poets look on modern society in a negative way. Both poems look at the themes of suffering and unhappiness when cast out from society.which are two states that are inextricably linkable. Unhappiness can come as a result of suffering, or the need to make others suffer can come from pure unhappiness. Duffy and Pugh both make these distinctions in their work, and are able to engage the reader by exploring these universal themes.

What do we do for entertainment? These days, we amuse ourselves with our cellphones, tablets or computers. Back in the 1840s, the people there didn’t have any of these electronic devices. Does that mean that there was no entertainment? The 1840s was a time of suspense and excitement. Slaves were still legal, but abolitionists all across the country were crying out to stop slavery. The Native Americans’ land were being taken away forcefully. If you wanted to talk to someone who lived far away, you couldn’t since this was even before the Pony Express. Disease was uncontrolled and seemed to be incurable and vituperative. To cure yourself of diseases, doctors put leeches on your face thinking that they would

T.S Eliot’s poem, “The winter evening settles down” is a short, simple to read poem with several different examples of imagery. Eliot uses descriptive words, for instance, “withered leaves”, “broken blinds”, and “lonely cab-horse” (lines 7-10). He paints an extremely bleak image of a town that seems to be deserted of people. The tone of the poem plays hand-in-hand with the imagery used. This town is an unpleasant place where it has seemed to be neglected for some years now. Eliot’s use of imagery takes the reader to this deserted, torpid place; however, at the same time, his goal is to bring the life back into this grim town.

Additionally, Prufrock is surrounded by a scene where impermanence reigns, where “women come and go talking of Michelangelo” and people seem less than eager to understand that time is of the essence. Prufrock longs to repeatedly convince himself that “there will be time” for anything he wishes to do, be it “murder and create” or “prepare a face to meet the faces that [he will] meet” (Eliot 27-28). However, he understands the precariousness of time, namely that it is a precious, finite resource that does not allow for an infinite number of modifications to one’s own life. A “hundred…revisions” to Prufrock’s lifestyle would not really matter if all of these are delicate enough such that “a minute will reverse” them anyway (Eliot 33, 48). Prufrock understands the grim underlying reality that there is not much time after all and implies this society in which he lives is drenched in its “empty fullness of its life” (Schneider 1104). In fact, the promise of time is a false consolation here, a “pathological insistence” by Prufrock to scrape up the seconds as they quickly fall through his fingers (Cahill 8).

Eliot spoke about has been achieved by Amy Lowell magnificently. Therefore, she reached the Traditional sense as both the Historical and Traditional sense are the faces of the same coin. She knew that the past and the present are both connected by one web. It was apparent when she connected the chain of events in the poem to her advantage just to show this problem. The problem by living a life of “patterns” and being bound by society, which makes this poem not that original, because many people spoke about this problem before, but she herself as a talented writer, she added more to it. These “patterns” would represent us going into life with the same cycle over and over, almost like a daily routine, that each day takes a part away, till we all left empty-handed without any sort of feelings or

In “No Time to Think” and “Time Ain’t Money”, the authors paraphrase how new technology has affected businesses and its workers. In “No Time to Think”, Levy talks about how workers need more leisure time. In “Time Ain’t Money”, Rushkoff talks about how business are having to adjust due to new technology. Both of these authors talk about how Americans are living in a much faster society. In “Time Ain’t Money”, Rushkoff explains how new technology is affecting businesses which helps perceive why Levy talks about in his article “No Time to Think”, how people are over working and have less leisure time due to new technology which explains why we are living in a much faster pace society. Leisure is very important and everyone needs it. Levy explains leisure as down time. “Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.” (Levy, 67)

Society today looks down on laziness and criticizes those who choose to stay home and do nothing rather than go out and be productive. Christopher Morley, writer of the essay “On Laziness” (1920), makes points about how living the lazy life can lead to a happy human soul. You might question, is he being true to his words or is it simply just satire? With the use of irony, humor, and sarcasm, Morley gently criticizes the lives of indolent people to persuade his audience towards the opposite path in life.

     Leading up to the turn of our present century, changes in culture and society of America triggered modernization throughout much of our commerce, social, artistic and educational lives. The past century or so has brought new obstacles and opportunities for the nation of America. This changing is reflected through some of the works by writers such as, Robert Frost, William Williams, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Examining people’s mindset in modernization one common feeling of people is “nervousness” which is due to the nation’s reluctance to change. T.S. Eliot is quoted with the statement "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history."1 Modernism

Leisure as a concept is not easy to define, and is subject to differing opinions and class-structure. Where a working-class person may define leisure as a way to display wealth, conversely, the upper class may simply view leisure as a means of having free time away from the demands of work or duties. In Ancient times, leisure was possible, due to the work of slaves and poorer citizens (Price, 2008 p 10). Whilst leisure has always been associated as a pursuit for the wealthy, in the19th century with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and the development of the railway, this began to change. The working classes had more disposable income, and the opportunity to travel cheaply and experience ‘freedom from work’ (Price, 2008 p 7).

In this essay, I will be looking closely at leisure activities from both the ancient world, and the modern one, and discussing how social status impacted on the way people experienced leisure. I will start by discussing leisure amongst the Romans, giving brief examples of what they did for leisure, then moving on to talk about if, or how, social status amongst them affected their experience of it. Then, I will move on to discuss leisure in the modern world, again, giving brief examples of what we do for leisure, then talking about whether or not social status affects how we experience it.

Veblen views leisure time as a non-productive consumption of time (46). Wealth and consumption of goods desired by others makes one honorable. For him, lower class people cannot avoid labor and can only be regarded efficient in their work.

During the time period of modernism, society saw a massive shift, especially from the everyday life of people in the cities. With improvements being made in transportation and technology this shifted the way of life to a much faster pace, shrinking the distances between people around the world thus creating a more rapid pace of life. The emphasis on radical innovations left many people will feelings of despair, a sense of meaninglessness, and hopelessness. With the ever growing developments to society, a lack of traditional and cultural norms and beliefs in closely held faiths were strained. These concepts were much illustrated in the literature of the time. Literary figures such as T.S Eliot flawlessly depicted the perception of the troubles of the “modern man” in his poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, while also integrating the new way of looking and appreciating life will all the good and bad components, ideas brought forth by the forerunners of modernism.

He makes the point that this is apparent in how when choosing a “nursemaid”, a parent not only takes into consideration a candidate’s virtues, but also aesthetic personality traits that go along with how entertaining they would be for a child. He points out how these same standards are not held to every position in the world, for there are boring kings, clergymen, and cabinet ministers who are not renounced for their lack of entertaining qualities. Thus, society allows boredom to advance. A argues that a focus on “circenses [games],” or entertainment is what allowed Rome to prevail for so long, and this focus is precisely what modern civilizations are