Steve Ersinghaus

In the recent issue of Time magazine, Richard Corliss clumsily frames Bob Dylan as classic and mythical hero.
But it was his gift for synthesizing that sent him into the depths of the forest and allowed him to bring it all back home in teeming poetry set to ancient lays.

In BL we’re preping for Gawain with the Anglo-Norman Lanval and other things, and talk of the hero and the journey is in the air. At our last meeting we’d considered various criteria related to the hero and how these manifest in Marie de France’s work. In Lanval they are the encounter (which sets [...]

For the British Literature students. Here’s a like to an interesting hypertext of Beowulf. We’ve been tracking two multi-dimensional issues: audience and conflict and the nature of character, leadership, and reputation as disclosed by the text. All kinds of important issues arise from this approach.
We started with a question of the nature of Grendel. [...]

Professor Drout at Wormtalk and Slugspeak writes this
Does this mean that the book is so bad that no one can stand to read it?
Is it so bad that people are embarrassed and don’t want to tell me?
The book he’s referring to can be found via this link. I must admit to wanting a copy [...]

This is a british Literature test that wonders at the problem Hardy presents in The Darkling Thrush.

Jessica Lonergan asks in a comment on a prior post

If we have already completed our lives and are in heaven, does what we do NOW matter? Have our lives and fates been predetermined, already played out? Is the thought of us already being in heaven comforting or does it take away motivation? Or is that [...]

We’re at that point when authority becomes the stuff of every moment. Since the law is all over the news these days, and Shakespeare is on the reading list, what better topic to consider and keep reconsidering.
Who makes the law? Is it Pepin, as Christopher wonders, or Mathew Arnold by other means. Congress is now [...]

Christian reminds me in class that I’ve been a little light on British Literature. But I’m really wondering whether Monday night creative writing will ever meet again? I’m sure it will. However, it seems as if a while has passed since “nature” has presented us with a hole.
As to BL, the point was raised at [...]

We’ve jumped into discussions of nature in British Literature and talked a lot about the opposition of civilization and nature and connected this to certain associations of value. Isaiah’s response to Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell goes directly to this notion of value–the tossing off of “culture and sophistication” for a purer [...]

In this little hypertext essay I formulate a reading of Anna Barbauld’s poem A Summer Evening’s Mediation. It’s what I would call a “personal response” because the poem dramatizes something in my own experience about the notion of time. But it’s from the poem that an elongated reading develops on certain issues that can be [...]

What is the significance of the map in Heart of Darkness. Maps are interesting. Plots, paths, mazes, architectural plans, story boards, flow charts, maps of space, the topolologies of things, metaphoric space all, the mind’s conceptions on paper. They charm. Marlow says:
“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I [...]

With Conrad, Beowulf comes full circle. This is a big statement and one that won’t go fully supported in these next few posts on British Literature. But I think it’s fair to say that the reader can distinguish between the text of Beowulf and Conrad’s text in the way they approach a “sense” of [...]

Here’s an idea: I’d like one or more of the students who have had both brit lit courses, or anyone else who feels the impulse to untangle this problem, to write a paper (or weblog post) comparing/contrasting the Wanderer (Anglo Saxon) and Tennyson’s In Memorium. Both works deal with loss and images that engage [...]

Here’s an email sent by N.D., a student in BL. I asked her if I could share it here because I think she brings up some valuable points given our last discussion on April 1st and the issues we’re covering in the Victorian section. She agreed to this so here’s the email, with comments following:
This [...]

In Online Intro to Lit the issue of The Tempest as “experiment” or “test” concerning human nature has come up. Prospero takes choice people, breaks them into groups on an island, then waits for the true colors to show themselves: who’s honest, who’s not; who will betray, who will remain loyal. That’s the essence of [...]