Category Archives: English literature

British Literature and Links

We’ve headed into the Victorian Period in BL. We’ll be dealing with Mill and E.Browning. Links are key here. One of the fun things about teaching this side of literature study is identifying and talking about linked notions, things that appear to be constant among a set of writings and watching how ideas develop in other voices, in other times, and belong to neither. The cognitive elements have to do with identification, drawing relationships, differentiating voices, and evaluating styles.

We know that, simply speaking, certain writers (and cultures) display a bias in their conception of non-trivial direction: up is good, for example. Where is heaven? And where does Contemplation travel? The treatment of the concept of well-being, this platonic reconcepting of movement toward the good, of experience, being, and person hood–Mill’s idea of finding the “whole person” through a certain kind of action, freedom of thought, variety, and originality–has a lot to do with Blake’s devil speak in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Wollstonecraft’s arguments for progressive education and against nurtured restrictions. How much does this have to do with “literature” versus “thinking” about cool ideas versus literature as cool in and of itself? What do we do with Mill’s arguments against Calvinism? What does it matter that certain ideas form threads through the years to be embodied in the literary voice and in the objects we experience, such as toasters, Global Positioning Systems, squirrel traps, and book shelves?

As W.H. Auden wrote:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

This “stupor” is a special thing. So is the “affirming flame.” Mill writes:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery — by automatons in human form — it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

This series of Mill elements–the perfectability of people, the implications of a “good path” and human “tendency” for action which can be traced back to Barbauld’s “Contemplation,” who finds her way to Saturn and wonders at the unknown beyond it, the scorn for imitation and custom (later to be seen in Ms. Warren), the trouble with the figure of man as machine–is also “our” series, isn’t it? Filaments that form a pattern. Red pill or blue pill?

The Sublime

Carianne Mack has supplied me with documentation on a show she will be involved in soon that organizes it’s art around the sublime. This is very nice because in BL we’re currently involved in Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats. What would the sublime have to do with the idea of the spritual and the physical, as these two have come to influence us in the course (this is, of course, a question for the students and me to to think about) in terms of the real matter of Blake’s work?

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.

From Blake’s Marriage

The sublime, I would argue, runs counter to questions. The sublime happens; can it slowly wash over the eyes and into the mind? I’ve read a few poems this past year that deal with the notion of the size and mystery of the world and have struggled with the imagery myself in a few stories. I’d like to see more.

In the vision, the speaker survives the fires and already the imagery of history becomes a template for play.

More play, more play.

In an upper right circle, the eye wanders into Old Sage, circles slowly looking for something (maybe an anchor). There’s a knot there and several versions or variations on it. The painting is a verb and it doesn’t end.

Compass Achievements

I’ve nearly completed my British Literature I finals and have been looking at journals and revisions of earlier writing by students. I think the final, a series of short answer questions, pin-pointed pretty well what I want students to know at the end (after lots of writing and reading), given the expectations and requirements of this mode of demonstration. The students pretty much got the prosody elements, showed more confidence in their responses, and knew where cited support was necessary.

But I’m thinking about something else: the knowledge structure of our British Literature sequence in relation to the college as a whole. Ideally, a student will enter the intro surveys with background in Composition and an additional semester of writing work in Composition II or Literature and Composition. Ideally, a student will have a pretty good grasp of textual analysis and critique, the fundamentals of argumentation, documentation styles for academic work, essay organizational structures, and the modern library. Ideally, the student will have followed this course of north to south/south to north study semester to semester so that the knowledge and practice is fresh upon entering the survey.

But what other elements form an ideal if we see the entrance into the course as a circle rather than a line of knowledge. A student might enter the survey with some degree of knowledge of historical analysis and some coverage of western history. Other elements could be mathematics and quantitative anlysis, an understanding of the analysis of instructions in a social, human context, psychology frameworks.

Case in point. Students in Brit Lit may also be enjoying Professor Timmons’ film course. In that course John covers elements of the hero’s journey and does so through viewings and lots of written analyses. These objectives compliment the study of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; they also compliment a student’s practice with styles of writing. Likewise, the study of the journey elements in British Literature compliment the study of film. In both courses, the journey constitutes a study of morphology, narrative, genre, character, history, social dynamics, and human culture and cognition. Beyond specific courses and their objectives, students in both courses should come out with a good sense of the journey as a big idea across the spectrum of human experience and in doing so learn something about film and literature.

It takes a lot of practice amd much thinking about it just to grasp the connections and significance of similar morphological elements in Star Wars and Sir Gawain. Mucho time spanned between the synoptics and Milton, and time can be deceptive. Milton had no ‘lectricity, right. If we are different and distinct from those who came before, then what could the similarities possibly be? Other discipline connections help to bust down this powerful barrier to creativity.

Hobbes and the Order Requirement

It would seem that in the contemporary state of the States there can be a “legal reality,” where legislation may nullify certain other realities, such as the existence of negligence. Laws protecting against frivolity, for example, typically aren’t proposed for a class of people, but may be proposed for an industry class. Does such action promote order or disorder given that one consequence often neglects others, such as the need for figuring whether negligence happened in the first place? I wonder what Thomas Hobbes would say. Here’s a brief overview as a recast of a prior short essay.

In Hobbe’s Leviathan, especially in the Introduction, we have the writer/mathematician/philosopher grounding his work in the notion of the artificial and establishing an analogy between man and machine, which allows for a subtle distinction between human law and natural law that will come later. He writes:

For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body such as was intended by the artificer [“maker,” or, in Aristotelian terms, the “efficient cause”]. Art [making] goes yet further, imitating the rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Common-Wealth or State . . . which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended . . . . (1588)

He closes the analogy (but the idea really doesn’t go away) by noting the other parts of the State that are analogous to the body: the sovereign as the soul, state official, joints, and so forth.

In Leviathan, Hobbes is going to argue from the natural state of humans, what he will call the “natural condition” of mankind or the “state of nature,” to the justification for, in his case, a sovereign power (which really bugs the parliamentarians), or any other constitutional power as long as it maintains peoples’ security: in other words, what people fear most is anarchy, and if the State can solve or prevent anarchy then we can’t really complain about the state or dismiss it, which is what I was doing as I watched Tony Sanchez go down in Texas. In all this, Hobbes must be concerned, it seems to me, with how a “thing” is made, how an object works or functions, whether it’s the human sense mechanism or a telescope or a State. As far as the idea of materialism that’s being thrown around, we don’t want to obsess over the idea that materialism means that we’re concerned only with fabric or bricks, that is only with the material of an object, but more about the nature of existence or of a things nature, in Hobbes’ case following the standard materialist view that everything that exists is material or physical. In the language of Descartes, this means that everything that exists must be “spatially extended” or have some sort of quantity. We can’t just say, “Oh, my desk is made out of metal” and leave the inquiry there. I think we have to go further and ask–“but what about steel, why steal, why not paper?” This question asks us to distinguish between the properties, the nature of, steel and paper. At least this cluster of ideas is what seems to be pushing at me–at the moment. It’s important that Hobbes build his contentions from the ground up, block by block, let’s say and continually come back to the idea of nature, and perhaps we’ll even test Hobbes’ state of nature notions against Milton as he develops Lucifer and Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.

For Hobbes people are essentially equal, both in intelligence and strength, although he doesn’t qualify this all that much for us. But note where Hobbes takes us next: “From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends” (1590). Mankind has equal strength and intelligence but also an equal need or ability to strive hence relationships are a problem: ” . . . if two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless, they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies . . . [endeavoring] to destroy or subdue [wow!!!] one another.” Hobbes, given this “condition,” claims that there are three causes of this destroying or subduing: competition, diffidence, and glory (1591). Thus we have the hypothetical illustration by Hobbes that in the “state of nature” life is pretty nasty. Which is why we need agreements, covenants, and social structure, big sticks and the MLA. Without these, without, according to Hobbes, a power that “awes” mankind, “every man has the right to every thing; and consequently no action can be unjust” (1594). It would seem to me that we could hark back to Grendel and apply Hobbes’ scheme here. Grendel, a figure exiled from Hrothgar’s meade hall, and thus not subject to its conventions, attacks willie nillie. Edmund in King Lear, as a bastard, tends to conniving because he remains in a latent “state of nature” by virtue of cultural convention; he is not admitted and thus must force his way in. Nevertheless, with Hobbes I think we can begin to finally see how the theory of “nature” begins to take hold in the judgment of people as well as how it is applies to the Civitas. For Hobbes, we need George W. Bush. Why? Check it out: “And because the condition of man (as hath been declared in the precedent chapter) is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man” (1593).

How the Fool Teaches

Lear says: “Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.”

That’s how the fool teaches.

Kent senses that the fool may not be so much a fool. Then the fool says

No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if
I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t:
and ladies too, they will not let me have all fool
to myself; they’ll be snatching. Give me an egg,
nuncle, and I’ll give thee two crowns.

A few lines later, Lear’s questions begin

Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied–Ha! waking? ’tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?

The Fool responds

Lear’s shadow.

Wondrous.

Shakespeare and Links

From Shakespeare’s King Lear. Coming back to it, I remember how damned good it is. Here Gloucester addresses the air about Edmund, tricked into thinking his son is after his money and place:

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son
and father. This villain of mine comes under the
prediction; there’s son against father: the king
falls from bias of nature; there’s father against
child. We have seen the best of our time:
machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all
ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our
graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall
lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the
noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his
offence, honesty! ‘Tis strange.

Thus Shakespeare summarizes, generalizes, and extends. And then we have the liar utter the truth

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit
of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! My
father compounded with my mother under the
dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
major; so that it follows, I am rough and
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing. . . .

Course Goals and Evaluation

This semester I’m really leaning on specific articulations of where and how students meet course outcomes in evaluation and systematically expressing where a student needs to concentrate their pickups after an evaluation occurs. I will be doing a great deal of contact and in that contact specifying where a students needs to focus their energy.

For example, if I asked a student to identify a specific element of Old English prosody, a likely answer would be alliteration. The next step would be to identify in a well organized essay examples of alliteration in a few works, not just one. In this examination, multiple criteria are being assessed: an understanding of terminology, association between concept and example, term application, identification, reading and writing acumen. Analysis is a minimal issue here. At a more conceptual level, where analysis becomes key, a question could involve the idea of the journey and how Gawain expresses it. What are the criteria? What is the Christian journey (the consequence of temptation means different things here to Sir Gawain and Odysseus)? What was the context of the hero’s acceptance of the proposition (in Gawain it is intensely legalistic and ritualized); what are the tests? How do they reflect different psychological panoramas?

What do grades mean in this scenario? I’d love to do away with grades, but since I can’t, I must define them as symbolic representation of the degree to which a student demonstrates understanding of a standard. It’s easy to do, but the real work comes on the pickup, in challenging people to listen better and to take notes that can be searched, ordered, linked, and refined. Additionally, this calls for a better job on my part to be more assistive in lecture and discussion and to negotiate the texts with more skill. It’s a big problem. How do I teach prosody without revealing too much? Why should a student remark on metaphors I’ve already discussed in class?

The Medieval Hypertext

Since we have Chaucer on the brain these days, I am continually reminded of the conceptual links that should happen when a student of the literature (he or she could be anyone) struggles with the wife of Bath. The wife addresses not just the question of marriage in her own circumstance but also its in relation to the past and to its authorities, reading by literal and historical exegesis. She says

For thanne th’Apostle saith that I am free
To wedde, a Goddes half, where it liketh me.
He saide that to be wedded is no sinne:
Bet is to be wedded than to brinne.

She then “links” to “Lamech,” Abraham, and Jacob.

For more.

Questions of Labor

From the Ordinance of Laborers, 1349

The king to the sheriff of Kent, greeting. Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness, than by labor to get their living; we, considering the grievous incommodities, which of the lack especially of ploughmen and such laborers may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty with the prelates and the nobles, and learned men assisting us, of their mutual counsel ordained:

That every man and woman of our realm of England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper land, about whose tillage he may himself occupy, and not serving any other, if he in convenient service, his estate considered, be required to serve, he shall be bounden to serve him which so shall him require; and take only the wages, livery, meed, or salary, which were accustomed to be given in the places where he oweth to serve, the twentieth year of our reign of England, or five or six other commone years next before. Provided always, that the lords be preferred before other in their bondmen or their land tenants, so in their service to be retained; so that nevertheless the said lords shall retain no more than be necessary for them; and if any such man or woman, being so required to serve, will not the same do, that proved by two true men before the sheriff or the constables of the town where the same shall happen to be done, he shall anon be taken by them or any of them, and committed to the next gaol, there to remain under strait keeping, till he find surety to serve in the form aforesaid.

I was just going over this as a matter of course and thought the similarities interesting to current wage issues.