Internals

NaM test on Wednesday (25 August):
We'll have to answer one question, but it will link two texts. So, either Persuasion and Villette or Pere Goriot and Villette.

Mac test on Friday (27 August):
Act I plus Stage History.

The good people at Google AdSense have deactivated my account and retained all income generated therein for reasons unknown but time will tell (quaquaqua &c.) - I hope the $10.13 helps egg on their merger potentiality - meanwhile what is to be of this blog?

Hm.

Not I - Beckett

Inscape/Instress and The Windhover

The Prince

E-text of Machiavelli's The Prince: required reading for the Shakespeare course. Now don't start getting ideas about taking over the world.

To help populate the worlds of Lucy Snowe and Anne Elliot, without being anachronistic. Or worse, square.

Chemise

 

Plus Corset.

Plus Under Petticoat. Upto 6 of these could be worn, depending on the time of year.

Hoop Petticoat.

Over Petticoat. Yes, these are still undergarments.

Dress! With Bonnet and Gloves.

 (All Images from Victoriana.com)

"The Windhover" and "Spring and Fall"

Things to think about:

"Spring and Fall"

• Once you've heard it read aloud, does it sound particularly apt as an address "to a young child"? Why or why not? And how so? (Metre, alliteration, rhythm?)
• What is the effect of using compound words like "wanwood" and "leafmeal" to describe the state of desolation that Margaret may witness at a later period of her life? (Think Old English "kennings")
• What is the role of "intuition" in this poem? By treating it as sublime, does Hopkins regard it perhaps, as superior to our intellectual or verbal abilities?
• The imagery in the poem ("blight of man"; "Sorrow's springs are the same") recalls the Christian idea of The Fall, does this in any way detract from or enhance the poem's musings on Nature?
• What is the nature of the poet's empathy for Margaret? Does it question the concept of empathy itself? ("as the heart grows older/ It will come to such sights colder")

 "The Windhover"

• Do you perceive a movement in the poem, from a tranquil beginning to a violent, riotous end? How does the choice of imagery and use of colour influence this?
• Drawing evidence from this poem, what aspect of "being Christ" does Hopkins seem to most passionately uphold? 
• What does the concept of inanimate things "selving" themselves remind you of? (Animism? E.E. Cummings, perhaps?)
• How does the "horse" image in the poem influence its general import? Does it evoke specific things to you? Do these detract from or enhance your experience of the poem
  Note: In the Book of Revelations, remember, Christ appears on a white horse to judge and unleash war on the world. This martial aspect of Christianity is intrinsic to the Jesuits. Their formula begins with the phrase: "Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God". Not to mention Ignatius Loyola's own military background, which made him convert in the first place.
• What do the multiple meanings of "buckle" do to the poem? Add a humbling touch to the kestrel's unrestrained flight? Or heighten its aggressive "mastery" (in the sense of buckling on armour)? Can multiple meanings be retained in its interpretation?
• What do you think the empirical observation of nature - the highly technical details of the bird's aerodynamics, in this case - lends the poem? Does it perhaps embolden the poem's more spiritual lessons that would have remained vague otherwise? Does the scientific, detached reading of his environment allow Hopkins to add gravity to his ultimate spiritual conclusions?

If you have opinions on any of the above, do leave them here. The point is to discuss ideas beyond the classroom: forget about sounding clever or being right. The poems are beautiful and uplifting and if you too have strong feelings about them (even to the contrary), make them known :)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Windhover:

(You'll have to click on the |> button till it gets to The Windhover. It'll have Hopkins' pic on it. If you can't get it to work, click here for the audio file)


The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

The Dude.

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.  

PS: Readers and unacknowledged lurkers - you are not doing what you're supposed to (am restricted by law from mentioning what, but you know). You don't want to offend The Blogger before the Modernism test, muhahahhaha. Get cracking.

This Week

• We're likely to begin with Bronte's Villette in Novel and Modernity. E-text here.
• In Modernism, AG is going to start with Hopkins.
• We're still on Aristophanes' Frogs in Comedy.
• And in Macbeth, we're still doing Macbeth. 

This isn't strictly on syllabus; but a post on why we I study English literature. I'm curious about what you guys think.

D