'Spain' revisited again...

Here is a link to an interesting blog posting on Auden's poem 'Spain'. It gives some extra background, which may help you understand the context better. It then discusses many of the points that came up in our class discussion today. For the author, "'Spain' is indeed, as some of you suggested, "the most reluctant of political poems", yet as he also recognises, it "still compels by its potency". He makes some interesting arguments, too, regarding the source of that potency. He also makes reference to Auden's poem 'In memory of W. B. Yeats', the poem we shall look at tomorrow.  The Norton anthology website also has a section on Auden's  poem on Yeats, with some other links you might find interesting.

And here is Picasso's painting, 'Guernica', which depicts the bombing of the Spanish town by fascist forces (more information - in Turkish! - here). Click on the image to see a larger version. Like 'Spain', 'Guernica' was completed in 1937, and was intended (at least in part) to serve an expressly political end, drawing attention to fascist atrocities and encouraging support for the Republican cause.

Auden, Orwell and 'Spain'

Joan Miro, Aidez l'espagne ('Help Spain!')

George Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm) was shot in the throat fighting for the Republic in Spain on the same day that W. H. Auden's poem, 'Spain', was published as a 5-page pamphlet to raise money for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee (20 May 1937). Orwell praised Auden's poem, describing it as “one of the few decent things that have been written about the Spanish war.” However, he criticized line 95 of the poem, "The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder", and Auden himself later changed the line (see the note in your anthology). In fact, Auden eventually suppressed the poem entirely, refusing to publish it in his collected poems. There's an interesting article here about the debate between the two men.

I'd highly recommend George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, his record of his experiences fighting in the International Brigades in Spain during the civil war there. It's a book that made a profound impression on me when I was in my late teens, and a great read. 

AN INVITATION

This afternoon some of us met to discuss the performance of George Peele's The Arraignment of Paris which we will be putting on in April, and to read through the text. Thanks to everyone who came along.

If you didn't come to the meeting but would like to perform in the play, or to help with scenery, costume design, music or any other aspect of the production, it is not too late! Simply let me know, or come along to our next meeting, which will be held on Thursday 6th January at 2pm.  Don't be shy...

Early film and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Here's a link to a famous (well, famous-ish) silent early film adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I hope it might interest both those of you studying the novel and those of you interested in film at the time of the modernsits. I admit I turned the volume off when I watched it - I can only take so much dramatic organ music.

Please note that the film is an adaptation - it makes changes to the plot, introducing new elements and eliminating others. Watching the film(s) is not a substitute for reading the book!

And if you are reading this on Tuesday (or Wednesday morning) remember that tomorrow (Wednesday) there will be a quiz on the novel, and a catch-up class from 2-4pm.

'Spain' and Psychoanalysis

Here is a link to what looks to be an interesting article on W. H. Auden's poem, 'Spain'. I haven't had a chance to read it all yet, but even if you only read the first few paragraphs it will give you some useful context.

Presentation and bibliographies

Presenting your work well is very important. Probably the most popular set of rules for presenting academic work on literature is that of the Modern Languages Association. Here is a very useful website giving guidelines on how to present your work, including your bibliography or works cited and any quotations or references. 

More good Milton sites

Luminarium is a useful site, whatever you are studying: here is their page giving additional resources for the study of Milton. There are images, essays, articles and books online, and various other things you might find helpful.

You might also find interesting (if challenging!) this article on Milton by Frank Kermode, published in the New York Review of Books. Thanks to Meri for putting it in her bibliography exercise, and thus drawing my attention to it! Until his death in August, Frank Kermode was probably the best-known living English literary critic, and he's a wonderful read.

Turkey, the EU, & Orhan Pamuk

Some of you might be interested in this article by Orhan Pamuk that recently appeared in The Guardian. I'm not sure I agree with much of his analysis, at least of Europe - I don't yet know enough about Turkish politics to comment, although I'm fascinated and want to learn more. It's an interesting and thought-provoking piece, though, and well worth a look.

The article is followed by lots of comments, many of them stupid or ignorant, a few genuinely informative and insightful. They will perhaps give you an intriguing view of some of the attitudes toward Turkey current in Britain. You can also comment yourself - it would be good to see some more comments from Turks on there, and you'll be reaching a readership of thousands! 

Modernism and Film

I've just sent by email some notes on Modernism and Film to those of you on the Modernism and British Poetry course. I hope you find them interesting. Please note that this is extra material for you to look at and incorporate into your work if you wish to do so.

Here are links to a handful of modernist films you may find interesting:

Marcel Duchamp's Anemic Cinema (1926)

Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel's short surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) (1928) - with its famous scene of a razor cutting into an eye: sometimes interpreted as an assault on the viewer, on we who watch the film. There are obvious parallels here with what we discussed in today's class concerning art as acid, a cleansing or surgical burning or cutting away of spiritual and aesthetic corruption. Here is an interesting essay on the film, Bunuel, Dali and Sigmund Freud.

Finally, here is a link to the famous Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin (1925), which shows the Tsarist soldiers shooting at the crowd.  This is a scene that has been the subject of many pastiches and parodies. As in your assignments you are writing your own pastiches of modernist poems, you might be interested in the following re-workings of Eisenstein's scene, the first from The Untouchables, starring Kevin Costner, and the second from Terry Gilliam's Brazil - a personal favourite! (I'm sorry both of these are in Spanish - I couldn't find English versions online. I'm sure if you have time you can find English and/or Turkish versions.)

The sonnet form

Here is a website that gives a good introduction to the sonnet, if you want to revise this topic for tomorrow's Outlines course quiz. If you click through the pages, you come to a short practice test. You might also find this diagram useful in understanding the differences between the Shakespearean and the Petrarchan sonnet forms.

South Park does Great Expectations

If you need some light relief from too much Dickens and George Eliot (if there is such a thing!), you might want to watch this: 'Pip', the episode of South Park that parodies Great Expectations (both Dickens' novel and the famous 1946 film adaptation). I don't want to see the Genesis Machine appearing in any essays, though....

(Thanks to Sema for the link!)

Darkness Visible

Cambridge University have put together Darkness Visible, a wonderful resource for reading Paradise Lost. It has sections on Milton's language, on the main characters, on illustrations of Milton's epic, and many others. It is all put together by Cambridge academics and students, and is written as an introduction for newcomers to the poem.
Another resource you might find helpful is this introduction to Paradise Lost, provided by Dartmouth College. It deals with Milton's cosmology, the poem's genre, ideas of God and marriage and many other topics.

I hope some of these are useful. Let me know if you find any other helpful material.

A raid on the inarticulate

For those of you who stayed behind today...here is the excerpt that I mentioned - and quoted badly from memory - from 'East Coker', the second of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory

A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,

Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle

With words and meanings.

'East Coker' was completed in or around 1940. It is a poem I return to again and again. Here is that quote about 'a raid on the inarticulate' in context. I think it is worth quoting this passage at length. The idea of 'the general mess of imprecision of feeling, / Undisciplined squads of emotion' seems to me to go straight back to Pound and Imagist theory (if not always Imagist practice).

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres*   Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

                          [* the two (world) wars]

Here is another, related passage, which comes a little earlier in the poem:

    You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again,

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

  You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

  You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

  You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

  You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

At this point I should probably just send you to read the whole poem in all its weird glory. I'd be interested to know your thoughts.

Paradise Lost-athons!

I thought some of you might be interested in the phenomenon of the Paradise Lost-athon. This is something that has become increasingly popular both in Britain and the United States, and probably elsewhere too. Basically, a group of students, staff and anyone else who is interested gets together to read Paradise Lost together, aloud - ALL OF IT!  Here is an example - one that recently took place at my old university, to raise money for the blind (a particularly appropriate aim, I think, given Milton's blindness). And here's another, from a few years back, in the States.

If enough of you were interested, we could perhaps do our very own Paradise Lost-athon at IKU, combining readings in English and Turkish, perhaps (and maybe a little French and Greek too?), and even a little dramatization. Always wanted to dress up as Satan? Normally refreshments and a fun atmosphere, and sometimes even costumes, are an important part of the event. Let me know if this is something you might want to do and I'll try to organise it. It's an excellent way to get to know the poem.

Run-on sentences

Run-on sentences were perhaps the single most common grammatical problem I came across when marking your midterms. I'm not going to fully explain what they are and how to avoid them here. If I identifed run-ons as a problem in your writing, though, I recommend that you look at this website. It gives a simple explanation of how you can join together separate, independent clauses. (You can also try the exercises; the answers are given on the same page).  In particular, note method 3. You cannot simply join two independent clauses with a comma; instead, you need a comma and a connecting word (e.g. and, but, or, for - when for means because). So, instead of writing

Mrs. Joe is cruel to Pip, she often beats him. 

you should write

Mrs Joe is cruel to Pip, and she often beats him.

or

Mrs. Joe is cruel to Pip; she often beats him.

or

Mrs. Joe is cruel to Pip. She often beats him.

I hope this helps a little.

Modernism, metonymy and fragmentation

Fragmentation and disintegration, and substitutions of parts for wholes, were occurring at many different levels in the early twentieth-century.  As Terry Eagleton observes:

Modernism reflected the crack-up of a whole civilization. All the beliefs which had served nineteenth-century middle-class society so splendidly - liberalism, democracy, individualism, scientific inquiry, historical progress, the sovereignty of reason - were now in crisis. (After Theory (London: Allen Lane, 2003) p. 63)

Which of these levels was most significant is disputed. I mentioned in class Henry Ford's perfection of the assembly line. In 1908, Ford's company began selling his famous Model T. The car became popular, and soon Ford found he was unable to meet the enormous demand:

His solution was to invent a moving industrial production line. By installing a moving belt in his factory, employees would be able to build cars one piece at a time, instead of one car at a time. This principle, called "division of labor," allowed workers to focus on doing one thing very well, rather than being responsible for a number of tasks. (source).

You can see film of  Ford's assembly lines at work here.

It is Terry Eagleton (see above) who points to a modern move from metaphor to metonymy. The critic Michael North connects this to 'Prufrock': 

The general fragmentation of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is obvious and notorious. The poem seems a perfect example of what Terry Eagleton calls the modern "transition from metaphor to metonymy: unable any longer to totalize his experience in some heroic figure, the bourgeois is forced to let it trickle away into objects related to him by sheer contiguity." Everything in "Prufrock" trickles away into parts related to one another only by contiguity. 

 As North goes on,

In this poem the horror of sex seems to come in part from its power to metonymize. Like Augustine, Eliot sees sex as the tyranny of one part of the body over the whole. Though Eliot is far too circumspect to name this part, he figures its power in his poetry by the rebelliousness of mere members: hands, arms, eyes. Sexual desire pulls the body apart, so that to give in to it is to suffer permanent dismemberment. This may account for the odd combination in Eliot's work of sexual ennui and libidinous violence. The tyranny of one part scatters all the others, reducing the whole to impotence. In this way, the violence of sex robs the individual of the integrity necessary to action.

North also discusses metonymy and time in 'Prufrock' - you can find a more complete extract from his book, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound (Cambridge University Press, 1991), by following the link in the post before this one, or simply clicking here and scrolling down.

We will return to this in greater detail next week.

Criticism on 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

Here is a link to a series of short critical extracts on 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. See what some of the brightest critics have had to say about the poem. Remember, quoting or referencing critics in your work and in your exam essays is a good thing to do! Reading critics is also an excellent way of learning how to write criticism.

'Grasshopper', by e. e. cummings

I have sent this around as an email already, but I know some of you don't always get my emails, and posting it here will allow you to discuss it, should you want to. A couple of you were asking about poems (rather than manifestoes) that use typographical experimentation. This is one of my favourites, by the American poet, e. e. cummings:

If you are confused, look at the poem's last word for a clue to the subject. If you know what a grasshopper is (and how it moves) you can begin to read this poem!

I'd be very interested to know what you think. You can see a very useful selection of critical interpretations of the poem here, but make up your own minds before seeing what the critics say.

Cummings was another American poet who came to Europe and was involved in the First World War, and lived in Paris in the 1920s. He was also a painter and met Pablo Picasso, and was influenced in his poetry (like so many others) by Ezra Pound. He is a strange mix of the avant-garde and the traditionalist - some of his poetry is quite traditional, and his use of nature in his poems especially is in some ways close to that of the Romantics.

Daphne and Apollo 2

...and here is the same sculpture from a different angle. I think you can see how Bernini represents the process of transformation better here. Again, click on the image to enlarge it.

Daphne and Apollo

Here is the sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini of Daphne metamorphosing into the laurel tree just as Apollo, the god of poetry, is about to catch her. (You can click on the picture to make it bigger.) The story is told in the Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet, Ovid. You can read Ovid's story (in an English translation) here. The Metamorphoses is one of the most important of the many Roman texts that fascinated writers and artists in the Renaissance.

Modernist Film - Buster Keaton's Cops

I've discussed with a couple of you now the relation between film and modernism. I'll post more on this later - and if there's enough interest and I can sort out the technology, we can run an extra session on it. For now, though, have a look at Buster Keaton's Cops. Suspend your prejudices about what you think you are about to see, and you might be surprised. Keaton influenced Bunuel and Salvador Dali, and later worked with Samuel Beckett.

(If you would be interested in an extra session on film, add a comment below - this will give me an idea of the levels iof interest. Thanks!)

Dulce Et Decorum Est (2)

Yet another engagment with the 'old Lie'.... although a slightly more recent one!

First World War poetry on film

These short clips might be interesting:

1. an extract on Wilfred Owen from a BBC programme

2. an extract from Regeneration, the film I mentioned today, in which Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon discuss poetry at Craiglockhart military hospital in Scotland.

There are also lots of good clips on Youtube relating to other First World War poetry, and the First World War more generally. Have a look!

Dulce Et Decorum Est

I forgot to draw your attention today to the passage in 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley' where Ezra Pound quotes the same 'old Lie' that Wilfred Owen uses in the title and the close of his poem. There Pound writes

 These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case . .     

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some "pro patria, non dulce non et decor". .

By chance, I also found this translation into Turkish of poem V of 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'. I have no idea whether it is good, or accurate, but it might be of interest. Perhaps one of you can tell me?

You might also be interested to see the manuscript of Wilfred Owen's first draft of 'Dulce Et Decorum Est', here, at the British Library's web page. Click on 'see transcript' to see a typed version of his first draft. The page also has some brief commentary on the poem. If you click on 'enlarge' - or directly here - you can see the whole first page of the manuscript properly.

Among other things, the British Library website states the following, which I didn't know (and probably should have - and so should you!):

At the time of the First World War, the poet Owen Seaman, who was editor of Punch magazine, wrote patriotic verses under the title, 'Pro Patria' that urged young men to the fight - though he himself, being 53 years old, remained as one "whose burden is to watch and wait." Those at a less comfortable distance from the fighting saw it differently. In his revelation of the reality of war Owen uses the Roman motto ironically, calling it "the old lie".

Finally, I discovered that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently named 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' as his favourite poem. I'll leave you to decide how many levels of irony there are to that.....

Modernism and British Poetry Assignment

Today I set the assignment for this course. Some of you were absent, so for those who were, and for ease of reference for all of you, here are the details again:

For this assessment you are required to combine a short piece of ‘creative’ writing with a longer, more substantial piece of critical writing.

Part One

You should write a short pastiche of a ‘Modernist’ poem – that is, a piece of work that might pass for writing from the Modernist period (in the style, say, of W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, H.D., T.S. Eliot, or any other poet from this period).  This should be no longer than two sides of A4 (though one should be sufficient) and can be on any subject. You may write an original piece in the style of a Modernist writer, or you might like to re-write a poem from an earlier period (you may find a short Romantic poem a good starting point)

.

(The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms describes a pastiche as ‘a literary work composed from elements borrowed either from various other writers or from a particular earlier author. The term can be used in a derogatory sense to indicate a lack of originality, or more neutrally to refer to works that involve a deliberate and playfully imitative tribute to other writers.’)

Part Two

For the second part of the assessment you should then write a short commentary (of approximately 750 words) on your pastiche in the form of a close critical analysis. This is the most important part of the assignment: you will be marked not on the quality of your pastiche but on the quality of the critical comments you make about it.

In this critical commentary you should explain what is being attempted in the creative piece; the ways in which its form is related to its content; and you should show by the use of detailed examples why you think it is characteristic of the Modernist experimental style.

Please note that the normal scholarly standards of essay-writing and presentation apply to this part of the assessment. Your pastiche can be as experimental in form as you like. Your commentary should be a well-structured, short essay.

You need not refer extensively to secondary reading but evidence of an engagement with Modernist practice and theory will be rewarded. In showing how your text is ‘Modernist’ you can (and should!) make comparisons with Modernist texts you have studied on the course.

This assignment will be worth 30% of your final mark.

DEADLINE: Completed assignments should be returned to the course tutor by 1pm on Thursday 23^rd December 2010.

DRAFTS: Feedback will be provided on any drafts submitted by Friday 17^th December. No feedback will be given on drafts submitted after that date. Drafts can be sent as Word attachments with an accompanying email to p.hart@iku.edu.tr. 

More Milton resources

Here on google books is a good introduction to Milton. Have a look! Again, don't worry if some of it is difficult. You are not expected to read this for the exam. 

So, no more suggestions that I've forgotten about you!

'L'Allegro' and other Milton poems

I'm not sure if I've posted this link here before, but it's probably worth posting it again if I have. This is a site dedicated to John Milton. I think it will be very useful for those of you taking the 'Readings in Milton' course. The link I've posted here goes to the 'L'Allegro' page (someone emailed me asking for more material on 'L'Allegro'), but all of Milton's major poems are here.

Anti-Fraternal Literature

 You should be prepared to give a very brief definition of anti-fraternal literature in your midterm exam. Someone emailed me to say they are not sure about it.  I hope this will help...

Anti-fraternal literature was written from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It was written against the friars, monks and other "religious" men and women who were supposed to be living lives of purity and holiness, but in reality were often living lives of  luxury at the expense of the poor. Often anti-fraternal literature would make fun of these hypocrites. Sometimes it would attack them directly.

The Pardoner



Interestingly, friars (like Grendel, hundreds of years before!) were often described as 'sons of Cain'. Chaucer, Gower, Langland and John Wyclif (who we discussed briefly in class) were all significant writers of anti-fraternal literature.  Remember, though - Chaucer could also present very positive images of religious men. For a contrast with the images of the Pardoner, the Summoner, and the Friar, look at the image of the 'holy-minded', honourable Parson in the 'General Prologue'.

You can find a review of a book on this subject here (appropriately for us, in a journal called 'COMITATUS'!) This review is short (one and a half pages) but quite difficult, especially at the start. Don't worry if you only understand a little. If you are really interested in this subject, you can have a look at this article on JSTOR, which you can access through the university library. Again, this is difficult, so don't worry if you have problems with it. You don't need to read it for the exam!

Beowulf, Heroic Culture and Christianity

I had an email from a student asking about the relationship between Germanic heroic culture and Christianity in Beowulf. I've copied my reply to him below - I hope this will be useful for some of you.  

The relationship between Germanic heroic culture and Christianity in the poem is a difficult subject. I don't expect you to have an answer to this problem in your midterms! You should know that the problem exists, however.

Much of the poem seems to be clearly Germanic, heroic, "pagan". For example, the values celebrated in the poem are those of the warrior, and of kinship, and of a life after death achieved through fame on earth for heroic deeds, rather than in a Christian heaven.  Yet the poem also contains allusions to the story of Cain and Abel and a great flood caused by God - both stories from the Bible. On the other hand, if it is a Christian poem, why is there no clear reference to Christ anywhere?

There are basically two theories. One is that the poem is fundamentally an old Germanic, heroic, "pagan" poem that a Christian scribe (probably a monk) tried to make "Christian"  as he wrote it down. People who support this theory usually argue that he didn't do a very good job! For them, Beowulf would be a better, more unified poem if the Christian elements had not been added.  This theory was first argued by German critics in the nineteenth century.

The other theory is that the poem is more deeply, truly Christian. According to this theory, the poem may have its origins in Germanic heroic culture, but it is full of Christian ideas and references. Christian elements are fundamental to its structure and meaning, and the Germanic, pagan setting is more 'decorative'. This theory was put forward by in the middle of the twentieth century.

Now, the most popular view of Beowulf tries to find a compromise between these two theories. The poem itself is seen as an attempt to bring together  and assimilate Christian and pagan views.

There is an interesting article on this question here. This is a DIFFICULT article, but you might find the first four paragraphs helpful. PLEASE DON'T WORRY if you don't understand it all, though. After the first four paragraphs the author gives his own answer to the question - this is even more complicated. I'd suggest you ignore that part!

As I said, I don't expect you to have an answer to this problem!  You should simply be aware of it and able to give a couple of examples of why it is difficult to answer.

Chesterton on Trabb's boy

"A Dickens character hits you first on the nose and then in the waistcoat, and then in the eye and then in the waistcoat again [...] The scene in which Trabb's boy continually overtakes Pip in order to reel and stagger as at a first encounter is a thing quite within the real competence of such a character [...] The point with Dickens is that there is a rush in the boy's rushings; the writer and the reader rush with him. They start with him, they stare with him, they stagger with him [...] Trabb's boy is among other things a boy; he has a physical rapture [joy] in hurling himself like a boomerang and in bouncing to the sky like a ball. [...] It is life; it is the joy of life felt by those who have nothing else but life. It is the thing that all aristocrats have always hated and dreaded in the people. And it is the thing which poor Pip really hates and dreads in Trabb's boy."

H.D. (again), Ezra Pound and Imagism

Here is a link to the full text of David Ayers' short chapter on 'H.D., Ezra Pound and Imagism', which appears in his book Modernism: An Introduction. I hope some of you might find it useful in preparing for the midterms.

Here too is (another) link to an online version of Some Imagist Poets of 1915. Go on, have a look at one or two new poems. I promise it won't kill you.

H.D.'s 'Sea Rose', & other Imagist poems

Here, gathered together in one place, are three short critical readings of 'Sea Rose', all taken from longer studies. This is a really useful resource, and STRONGLY RECOMMENDED! After yesterday's conversation about further reading, here is a really easy way to access some good secondary material.

And to help you in reading a little wider, here are a few more poems from Some Imagist Poets (1915). These are by Richard Aldington (H.D.'s husband).

A GIRL

You were that clear Sicilian fluting
That pains our thought even now.
You were the notes
Of cold fantastic grief
Some few found beautiful.

NEW LOVE

She has new leaves
After her dead flowers,
Like the little almond-tree
Which the frost hurt.


OCTOBER

The beech-leaves are silver
For lack of the tree's blood.

At your kiss my lips
Become like the autumn beech-leaves.

And here is another from the same colleection, this time by D. H. Lawrence (you may remember looking at one of Lawrence's poems, 'Hummingbird', at the start of the course):

GREEN

The sky was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.

The myth of Orpheus

Here is a link to a short summary of the myth as Milton would have known it. The main source for the myth is Book Ten of Ovid's Metamorphoses. You can find a prose translation into English here, with explanatory notes.

There are many, many representations and re-tellings of the myth of Orpheus in western art. One that might interest any of you with a passion for cinema is Jean Cocteau's film Orphée.  If you ever get the chance to see it, do! It was released in 1950, but a good case could be made for seeing it as fundamentally a 'modernist' work.

G. K. Chesterton, snobbery, modernism and Great Expectations

G. K. Chesterton was a novelist, poet, essayist and "prince of paradox" writing in the first decades of the twentieth century. He's a favourite writer of mine. He stands in a fascinating relationship to the Modernists. Here he is on modernism's obsession with 'making it new':

The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is especially up to date or particularly 'in the know'. [...] The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion (All Things Considered).
* * *
People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It is easy to be a madman; it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. (Orthodoxy).

Nevertheless, his own work, especially his fiction, is in some respects wonderfully experimental and strange. His ideas about heresy and orthodoxy are also very interesting to read alongside Milton's views on these subjects.

I've just read his essay on Great Expectations, which I'd recommend. You can view the whole text at Project Gutenberg, here. In the meantime, here is a little taste:

In this book for the first time the hero disappears. The hero had descended to Dickens by a long line which begins with the gods [...] but Great Expectations may be called [...] a novel without a hero. [...] I mean that it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic.

Chesterton goes on to accept that this "must appear of course to overstate the case"- Pip is delightful, charming. But nevertheless, for Chesterton:

Most of Pip's actions are meant to show that he is not heroic. [...] The study of Pip is meant to indicate that with all his virtues Pip was a snob. [...] When he deals with Pip he sets out not to show his strength like the strength of Hercules, but to show his weakness [...]
All his books might be called Great Expectations. But the only book to which he gave the name of Great Expectations was the only book in which the expectation was never realised.

I might post a little more from Chesterton at a later date. He is excellent on the significance of Trabb's boy.

'Lycidas'

Here's a link to an introductory guide to 'Lycidas' on Google Books. Unfortunately only a selection of the pages are available, but I think these should prove helpful. I'll post more links to Milton material shortly.

W. P. Frith's 'Derby Day'

I mentioned this painting as a fine example of Victorian realism, a subject you might want to revise for the midterms. I meant to put it here ages ago - here it finally is. Sorry for the delay. If you (double?)click on the image I think you should be able to enlarge it a little.

Great Expectations - revision/further reading

  I mentioned today in class the possibility of reading Orlick as (the textual manifestation of) Pip's unconscious - his 'Id', in Freudian terms. Here is a link to a short esssay that sets out this argument quite clearly and concisely ('Investigating Orlick as the Unconscious'). It then goes on to look at the different endings to Great Expectations, and to complicate the Freudian reading. Don't worry too much if you get lost in this part - if you haven't studied psychoanalytic theory, it's difficult to follow. The site also has some good links to other material on Dickens and the Victorian period, and on psychoanalytic literary theory.

You might also find this essay on 'Repressions in Great Exectations' interesting.

On the different endings to the novel, have a look at this site: it gives some of the arguments for and against the two versions. From here you can also reach other pages from CUNY (City University New York) on Great Expectations: these will give you a more useful, reliable guide to the novel than SparkNotes! There are pages here on Pip's sense of guilt, his 'great expectations', redemption and love, and Dickens and society (this last also includes an interesting discussion of Dickens's own position as not-quite-a-gentleman in Victorian society). These are not difficult to read, and will be useful for revision.

Great Expectations - Seminar questions

Here are the questions the last group put together for our seminar tomorrow. Sorry not to have managed to make these available before now. I've revised some of them slightly. Page numbers refer to the Penguin Popular Classics edition.

1.  How would you describe Pip’s feelings when he hears of  his sister’s death ?(255)
2. 
   How does Pip feel when he discovers the identity of his real benefactor ?(293)
3. 
   How would you interpret Magwitch’s description of Compeyson ? What does this description reveal about his notion of a gentleman ? (317)
4. 
   
   How does Estella react when Pip confesses his love to her ? And how would you describe Miss Havisham’s feelings regarding this confession of love  and Estella’s attitude toward Pip ?(330-331)
5. 
   ‘What I have done! what I have done !’She  wrung her hands ,and crushed her white hair and returned to this cry over and over again .‘What I have done! ’(367).Who do you think is speaking here? How would you describe the speaker’s feelings here ?
6. 
   As readers, are we made to feel  a degree of sympathy for Miss Havisham? If so, how? Does she justify her wrong-doings  (with regard to both Pip and Estella)?what is Pip’s reaction ?(364-365).

Try to think about some of these questions at least before tomorrow's class.

A Language of Concrete Things

 H.D.'s draft of 'Helios'

Following on from our discussions last week - you can find more on Hulme, Imagism, and the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Russell, Ogden) in the following, which you can access via EBRARY (which you can access at the university library webpage):

Thacker, Andrew (2006). "A Language of Concrete Things: Hulme, Imagism and Modernist Theories of Language" in T.E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism (Abingdon, Oxon: Ashgate), pp. 39-55

Thacker also discusses the influence of the French philosopher Henri Bergson on T.E. Hulme, and Georg Lukács' critique of commodification, published in 1922 (for those of you interested in the Frankfurt School).

I'd also recommend having a look at Project Gutenberg. You can read or download for free the Imagist anthologies there, including Some Imagist Poets (1915), which has a very short, very informative 'Preface' by the poets who contributed (They argue for a "poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite"). You can also find at least two of H. D.'s poetry collections, Hymen and Sea Garden, to read online or download for free. H.D.'s poems have the virtue of mostly being very short - in fact, this is true of virtually all Imagist poems.

I also found at Project Gutenberg T.S. Eliot's essay on Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry. This is a key text for understanding how Pound and the Imagists influenced Eliot.  Eliot writes there:

"Pound's verse is always definite and concrete, because he has always a definite emotion behind it [...] no word is ever chosen merely for the tinkle".

Great Expectations/More Wittgenstein

G for Gentleman

Here's a very useful resource: a collection of essays on Great Expectations that you can read online, or download (although I think you have to pay to do so).

There are a lot of other useful books and essays available on this website, including (for the Modernists - but also for anyone else interested) Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (also available on Project Gutenberg). This is - famously - one of the most difficult books of philosophy ever written, but have a look anyway. The introduction isn't (so) difficult, and the whole book is only 70 pages long. If nothing else, look at a collection of Wittgenstein quotes - not for study, just because. Take these for starters:

Wittgenstein: architect

One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. 

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. 

and this is a great rule to remember in seminar discussions -

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness. 

For all his rarefied intellect, Wittgenstein knew the serious, philosophical value of silliness.

Modernism and British Poetry - extra session

Just to remind you that next week we will catch up on the session we missed last week. So, on Wednesday 11 November our session will run from 11am - 2pm, rather than finishing at 1pm. Lots of time to talk about the Imagists, H.D., Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language!


"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
                                                            Wittgenstein

Love, Zizek and Great Expectations

Recently we looked at the different kinds of love in Great Expectations, and their consequences for those who experience them. It was a fascinating discussion (for me at least), especially as I found out more about Turkish ideas of (and words for) love.

Some of you also asked me my own views on love. I promised to put something on here. My own views probably aren't very interesting. Where they're most interesting, they are probably not my own, but second-hand. So here is a video of Slavoj Zizek on love - this seems pretty convincing to me.

Great Expectations - problems and queries

I know that Great Expectations is in many ways, and on many levels, a difficult text. Dickens's language (wonderful as it is) causes all sorts of problems for non-native and native speakers of English alike. So, to help you, and to help you help each other, I'd suggest that you post any problems you have in the 'Comments' section below. You can do this anonymously if you prefer. Other students and I can then offer help by adding a comment. We'll see if this works!

Vorticism

Those of you working on Blast might find this website useful. It focuses mostly on the visual arts side, but there are helpful descriptions of the movement, key figures, and key contexts, too.

Dickens Resources

I promised to post something here relating to Dickens and the Victorian novel. Here is a list of online resources that you might find useful and reliable. Most of all, though, I'd recommend this Stanford University website, which gives a guide to Great Expectations, in sections, that you can also print. I think you might find this a very useful resource as you read the remaining chapters. It also has pdf files of the original serialisation of the novel in the review that Dickens himself edited. There are also maps, to help you understand where the characters are going and the events unfolding. These won't load on my computer for some reason, but you might have better luck (or better computing skills).

More on Dickens and the Victorians soon, I promise!

Pip enjoying his Christmas dinner

Nazim Hikmet and Ezra Pound - update

My splendid friend Liz, who teaches at Edinburgh University, has sent me a copy of the article I mentioned (see previous post). I haven't read it yet, so I can't tell you if it is any good. If you want to see for yourselves, though, please send me an email, and I'll get a copy to you.

Gat-toothed was she...



The Wife of Bath

While talking today about the description of the Wife of Bath in the 'General Prologue' to The Canterbury Tales, we briefly discussed the gap between her two front teeth:

Gat-toothed was she, soothly for to saye.     ( l.470)

In Chaucer's time this was seen as a sign of an amorous character. I also mentioned that gap-toothed models, like Lara Stone and Georgia Jagger, are now becoming very fashionable - and that models are even paying dentists and surgeons to separate their teeth. Most of you looked at me as though I had gone mad. Well, here is the story.



Georgia Jagger - distant relative
of the Wife of Bath?

 Secondly, and more seriously, I’d recommend this website for working on your Chaucer assignments. Here you can find the descriptions of the individual pilgrims. Look on the left of the webpage, and click on your pilgrim. You then have the original Middle English, and a modern translation.

Finally, here's a link to an interesting website about the Wife of Bath hosted by the University of North Carolina. In particular, it looks at the 'good Wif' in relation to medieval ideas about virginity. As Jane Zatta observes there, 'by challenging the value of virginity, the Wife of Bath calls into question both secular and religious ideals of women.'

Nazim Hikmet and Ezra Pound

I saw today that there is an article out in the latest issue of the Journal of Modern Literature on Ezra Pound and Nazim Hikmet, looking at both as "quintessential modernist poets". Unfortunately I don't have access to the journal itself, but I'll try to get a copy - let me know if you're on the Modernism and English Poetry course and would be interested. Here's an abstract (a short summary):

Ezra Pound and Nazim Hikmet, quintessential modernist poets, share similarities as striking as their differences. Both poets were charged with treason and incarcerated for long periods because of their radical ideologies — fascism and communism, respectively. This essay focuses on modernist poetry at the intersections of formal revolutions in poetic techniques, radical politics, and state curtailment of the rights of free speech. I trace the complicated relationship between poetry and the state, and the effect of incarceration on the formal redirection of the two poets' work while they were in prison, where they produced what is generally considered to be their best work.

As I've said before, I think there's growing interest, in Britain and the USA at least, in figures like Hikmet, poets writing outside the established centres of European modernism, Paris, Berlin and London. This is related to increasing interest in poets like David Jones (Wales), Hugh MacDiarmid (Scotland) and Basil Bunting (Northumberland, in northern England). We'll look at all these poets, albeit briefly, on the course.

Secondary reading

I'm sure you are all familiar with this, but just in case, here is a link to the university library website. You can access a wide range of reading material here. In particular, I want to draw your attention to EBRARY. You can search here for articles and book chapters related to your study, read them online, and even print them. There are lots of interesting things here on Dickens and the nineteenth-century novel, John Milton, Modernist poetry, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales...and pretty much anything else you are likely to study.

Especially if you are in the third or fourth year, you should be accessing this kind of secondary material - reading not only the texts themselves but also what critics and scholars have written about them. I know you have a lot of reading to do already. Reading critical studies and articles, though, will give you new insights, and make reading the primary texts - the poems, plays and novels - much more rewarding.

The image, by the way, is from the Ellesmere manuscript. This manuscript is famous for containing an illuminated (or illustrated) version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Here you can see the knight, the first of Chaucer's pilgrims to tell his tale.

Apologies

Apologies for a shortage of posts over recent days - I currently have no internet access at home. Normal service will be resumed soon, I hope. In the meantime, if you have come across something you think might be of interest to fellow students, do forward me the link, and if it seems suitable I'll post it here (giving you the credit!).

It's also been drawn to my attention that the Dickensians have been neglected here (although I did post something on the Panopticon a while ago). I'll try to make sure I post something for the Nineteenth-Century Novel course soon.