N.B. Text will be Christopher Ricks, ed. New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.

Syllabus outline, to be updated periodically:

Topics

This syllabus is done by topics.  In order to remain flexible I will update weekly with specific readings.  Right now the syllabus is aspirational, and will give you a general sense of the order of topics and the issues we’ll discuss.  But if, as is likely, we don’t get to everything, we’ll have to decide what to spend less time on.

Th        Aug 25             Introduction, etc.

                                    Handout, including:

 “b o d y” (James Merrill)

“Easter Wings” (George Herbert)

“The Comfort” (Alice Notely)

Excerpt from Don Juan (Lord Byron)

“My sweet old Etcetera” (Cummings)                                  

T          Aug 30             Rhyme

                                    Cole Porter: “You’re the top”

                                    Skelton: “Tunning of Eleanor Rumming” (excerpts)

                                                  “Lullay lullay like a child”

                                    Auden:  “Lullaby”

Th        Sept  1            

T          Sept  6            

Th        Sept  8

T          Sept 13

Th        Sept 15

T          Sept 20            Meter

Th        Sept 22           

T          Sept 27            NO CLASS    

Th        Sept 29            First Paper Due                    

T          Oct  4             

Th        Oct  6             

T          Oct 11             Interplay between rhyme and meter

Th        Oct 13             NO CLASS (“Brandeis Monday”)                

T          Oct 18             NO CLASS (“Brandeis Monday”)    

Th        Oct 20            

T          Oct 25                        

Th        Oct 27             Metaphor

T          Nov  1             Second Paper Due

Th        Nov  3             More forms

T          Nov  8            

Th        Nov  9            

T          Nov 15             Revisions                                           

Th        Nov 16           

T          Nov 22           

Th        Nov 24             NO CLASS                

T          Nov 29           

Th        Dec  1              Two extremes: free verse and hip hop

T          Dec  6              Third Paper Due

"I am so lated in the world that I..."

("Have lost my way forever.")

"Fall not a tear, I say."

This is where the play starts getting to be Shakespeare's greatest play.

Anyhow: we talked about being Mark Antony (cf. Being John Malkovich) and the odd phrase "an Antony."  Comparing that to the king's two bodies.  And we talked about time frames again: how Octavian is always the age he is at the beginning, and Antony and Cleopatra always the ages they are at the end.

Prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease:

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.

To the Fool

In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty,--

Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

Fool goes in

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? 

Macbeth interrupts himself to call for his last loyal servant; Lear to dismiss him.

The Soldiers, that were forc’d to fight,

If they surviv’d, got Honour by’t; [p. 22, l. 1]

[From Mandeville’s notes:] The Man of Manners picks not the best but rather takes the worst out of the Dish, and gets of every thing, unless it be forc’d upon him, always the most indifferent Share. By this Civility the Best remains for others, which being a Compliment to all that are present, every Body is pleas’d with it: The more they love themselves, the more they are forc’d to approve of his Behaviour, and Gratitude stepping in, they are oblig’d almost whether they will or not, to think favourably of him. After this manner it is that the well-bred Man insinuates himself in the esteem of all the Companies he comes in, and if he gets nothing else by it, the Pleasure he receives in reflecting on the Applause which he knows is secretly given him, is to a Proud Man more than an Equivalent for his former Self-denial, and over-pays to Self-love with Interest, the loss it sustain’d in his Complaisance to others.

If there are Seven or Eight Apples or Peaches among Six People of Ceremony, that are pretty near equal, he who is prevail’d upon to choose first, will take that, which, if there be any considerable difference, a Child would know to be the worst: this he does to insinuate, that he [72]looks upon those he is with to be of Superior Merit, and that there is not one whom he wishes not better to than he does to himself. ’Tis Custom and a general Practice that makes this Modish Deceit familiar to us, without being shock’d at the [79] Absurdity of it; for if People had been used to speak from the Sincerity of their Hearts, and act according to the natural Sentiments they felt within, ’till they were Three or Four and Twenty, it would be impossible for them to assist at this Comedy of Manners, without either loud Laughter or Indignation; and yet it is certain, that sucha Behaviour makes us more tolerable to one another than we could be otherwise.

It is very Advantageous to the Knowledge of our selves, to be able well to distinguish between good Qualities and Virtues. The Bond of Society exacts from every Member a certain Regard for others, which the Highest is not exempt from in the presence of the Meanest even in an Empire: but when we are by our selves, and so far remov’d from Company as to be beyond the Reach of their Senses, the Words Modesty and Impudence lose their meaning; a Person may be Wicked, but he cannot be Immodest while he is alone, and no Thought can be Impudent that never was communicated to another. A Man of Exalted Pride may so hide it, that no Body shall be able to discover that he has any; and yet receive greater Satisfaction [73]from that Passion than another, who indulges himself in the Declaration of it before all the World. Good Manners have nothing to do with Virtue or Religion; instead of extinguishing, they rather inflame the Passions. The Man of Sense and Education never exults more in his Pride than when he hides it with the greatest Dexterity;1 and in feasting on the Applause, which he is sure all good Judges will pay to his Behaviour, he enjoys a Pleasure altogether unknown to the Short-sighted, surly Alderman, that shews his Haughtiness glaringly in his Face, pulls off his Hat to no Body, and hardly deigns to speak to an Inferior.

NB: this coming week is vacation so no updates till the week of Feb 25.

NB: February vacation next week, so no new episodes till the week after.

NB that previous episode was mistitled as Monday's: It was actually Wednesday's....

[7]And when they went their way, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John: What went you out into the desert to see? a reed shaken with the wind? [8] But what went you out to see? a man clothed in soft garments? Behold they that are clothed in soft garments, are in the houses of kings. [9] But what went you out to see? a prophet? yea I tell you, and more than a prophet. [10] For this is he of whom it is written: Behold I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee. [11] Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist: yet he that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. [12] And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. [13] For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John: [14] And if you will receive it, he is Elias that is to come. [15] He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. [16] But whereunto shall I esteem this generation to be like? It is like to children sitting in the market place. [17] Who crying to their companions say: We have piped to you, and you have not danced: we have lamented, and you have not mourned. [18] For John came neither eating nor drinking; and they say: He hath a devil. [19] The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners. And wisdom is justified by her children. [20] Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein were done the most of his miracles, for that they had not done penance.

Matthew, 11: 7-20, in the Douay Rheims Bible

English 1a: Introduction to Literary Studies         

W        Jan 13              Introduction via a bunch of poems

Th       Jan 15              Introduction con’t; opening of Shakespeare’s King Lear

M        Jan 18:             NO CLASS

W        Jan 20              King Lear

Th       Jan 21              King Lear

M        Jan 25              King Lear, Aristotle: Poetics,

   Dr. Johnson, Freud: “The theme

   of the three caskets”

W        Jan 27              Milton: Paradise Lost           

Th       Jan 28              Milton: Paradise Lost

M        Feb 1               Milton: Paradise Lost

W        Feb 3               Milton: Paradise Lost

Th       Feb 4               Milton: Paradise Lost

M        Feb 8               Milton: Paradise Lost

W        Feb 10             Milton: Paradise Lost

Th       Feb 11             Milton: Paradise Lost                       

Feb 15-19:                   NO CLASS

M        Feb 22             Milton: Paradise Lost                                    First paper due

W        Feb 24             Pope: “Rape of the Lock”

Th       Feb 25             English Romanticism (Blake, Wordsworth,

                                      Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats);

                                      Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads

M        Feb 29             English Romanticism

W        Mar 2              English Romanticism 

Th       Mar 3              English Romanticism

M        Mar 7              English Romanticism 

W        Mar 9              Brontë: Jane Eyre

Th       Mar 10                        Brontë: Jane Eyre

M        Mar 14                        Brontë: Jane Eyre

W        Mar 16                        James: The Aspern Papers

Th       Mar 17                        James: The Aspern Papers

M        Mar 21                        Joyce: “The Dead” L

W        Mar 23                        Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway L

Th       Mar 24                        Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway

M        Mar 28                        NO CLASS

W        Mar 30                        American romanticism (Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson)                                                                                                                   Second paper due

Th       Mar 31                        American romanticism

M        Apr 4              Ellison: Invisible Man , DuBois: “On the Training of Black Men” L

W        Apr 6              Ellison: Invisible Man

Th       Apr 7              Ellison: Invisible Man

M        Apr 11                        Beckett: Waiting for Godot

W        Apr 13                        Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Th       Apr 14                        O’Connor: The Violent Bear it Away

M        Apr 18                        OConnor: The Violent Bear it Away

W        Apr 20                        Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance L

Th       Apr 21                        NO CLASS

Apr. 25-29                  NO CLASS

M        May 2             Soyinka: Death and The King’s Horseman    Final paper due

-------

[So beauty on the waters stood]

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

So beauty on the waters stood,

When love had sever’d earth from flood!

So when he parted air from fire,

He did with concord all inspire!

And them a motion he them taught,

That elder than himself was thought.

Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,

For Love is elder than his birth.

The Circus Animals’ Desertion

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,

I sought it daily for six weeks or so.

Maybe at last being but a broken man

I must be satisfied with my heart, although

Winter and summer till old age began

My circus animals were all on show,

Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,

Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes,

First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose

Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,

Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,

Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,

That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;

But what cared I that set him on to ride,

I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride.

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,

`The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it,

She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away

But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy

So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,

And this brought forth a dream and soon enough

This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;

Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said

It was the dream itself enchanted me:

Character isolated by a deed

To engross the present and dominate memory.

Players and painted stage took all my love

And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

[They flee from me]

By Sir Thomas Wyatt  (1503-1542)

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also, to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served

I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Complaint Of The Absence Of Her Lover
Being Upon The Sea

By Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17-1547)

O HAPPY dames that may embrace
The fruit of your delight ;
Help to bewail the woful case,
And eke the heavy plight,
Of me, that wonted to rejoice
The fortune of my pleasant choice :
Good ladies ! help to fill my mourning voice.

In ship freight with rememberance
Of thoughts and pleasures past,
He sails that hath in governance
My life while it will last ;
With scalding sighs, for lack of gale,
Furthering his hope, that is his sail,
Toward me, the sweet port of his avail.

Alas !  how oft in dreams I see
Those eyes that were my food ;
Which sometime so delighted me,
That yet they do me good :
Wherewith I wake with his return,
Whose absent flame did make me burn :
But when I find the lack, Lord !  how I mourn.

When other lovers in arms across,
Rejoice their chief delight ;
Drowned in tears, to mourn my loss,
I stand the bitter night
In my window, where I may see
Before the winds how the clouds flee :
Lo !  what a mariner love hath made me.

And in green waves when the salt flood
Doth rise by rage of wind ;
A thousand fancies in that mood
Assail my restless mind.
Alas ! now drencheth1 my sweet foe,
That with the spoil of my heart did go,
And left me ; but, alas !  why did he so ?

And when the seas wax calm again,
To chase from me annoy,
My doubtful hope doth cause me plain ;
So dread cuts off my joy.
Thus is my wealth mingled with woe :
And of each thought a doubt doth grow ;
Now he comes !  will he come ?  alas !  no, no!

The Burning Babe

By Robert Southwell, SJ  (c. 1561-1595)

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

      And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Love (III)

By George Herbert (1593–1633)

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                             From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                             If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                             Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                             I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                             Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                             Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                             My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

Casabianca

By Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835)

THE boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but him had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.

The flames rolled on -- he would not go

Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud -- "Say, father, say,

If yet my task is done?"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

"Speak, father!" once again he cried,

"If I may yet be gone!"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,

And in his waving hair,

And looked from that lone post of death

In still, yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,

"My father! must I stay?"

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,

The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendor wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And streamed above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound--

The boy -- oh! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea!--

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair

That well had borne their part--

But the noblest thing that perished there

Was that young, faithful heart.

Casabianca

By Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite "The boy stood on

the burning deck." Love's the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck. And love's the burning boy.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

         And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

         And I’ll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

         Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

         I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

         Not so much honouring thee

As giving it a hope, that there

         It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

         And sent’st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

         Not of itself, but thee.

What makes it a song? What makes it a story?  What's their relation?  A look at "So Beauty on the water stood," in this context:

So beauty on the waters stood, 

When love had sever’d earth from flood. 

So when he parted air from fire, 

He did with concord all inspire.

And then a motion he them taught, 

That elder than himself was thought, 

Which thought was yet the child of earth, 

For Love is elder than his birth.

And then a brief return to "On my first son":

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

O, could I lose all father now! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,

And if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.