ENG 204

Some final notes: week 10, and week 7 redux

Someone posted that they had a probblem with Week 7 notes, so I'm reposting those here: 

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Here are a few notes for Week 10 on Milton, and the Civil Wars

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Milton and Monarchy

The Civil war and execution of Charles I in 1649 was one of those events that allowed no one to remain neutral, and certainly not poets, and most especially not someone like John Milton. Milton's anti-monarchial politics are plain enough in "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." But dig only slightly deeper, and it gets a little more complicated. I think his poetry—from his poem on Shakespeare, to the sonnet to Cromwell, to Paradise Lost—shows Milton's genius required an absolutist authority to animate it and provide some kind of locus of both rebellion and worship. In other words, without the King: where do we focus our rebellious, creative energies? Without God, no need for Satan, the most interesting epic hero in post-classical literature. And what is Cromwell, in Milton's eyes, but a monarch by another name?

Some highly recommended background reading (that covers much of Monday's conversation) on the background causes of the Civil Wars, and on the trial and execution of Charles I can be found at the NAEL website.  

There's also a good episode of the BBC4 radio series  In Our Time in on the trial and execution of Milton's least favourite person, Charles I. One of the panelists is Diane Purkiss (Oxford); I've read some of her very lively, accessible (and large) book on the English Civil War. (Look through the IOT archives, and there's stuff on Divine Right of Kings, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Hobbes (cf. Leviathan). I definitely recommend their podcast. 

Notes, vocab, study guide for final exam

Here are some notes from Weeks 8-9. These I hope will aid you as you prepare for the exam. 

REVISED:  Download Notes_W9ENG204

Speaking of which, here' s the study guide. Note the date and time at the top of the page. 

Download Final_Exam_StudyGuide_ENG204W11

Two discussion questions on Jonson's poetry

 

Select one of these questions and craft a short response here (under "Comments")

• How does Jonson imagine the role of the poet in his poems To John Donne (1429), and the poem to Shakespeare (1444-46), and To My Book (1427)? Are his poems to these writers works of praise, or are there other rhetorical purposes? 
• Discuss On My First Daughter (1428), and On My First Son (1430). Both express sorrow over the death of a child, but what differences do you detect between the two? How is the poem on the child Mary clearly the work of a Catholic poet? How do both accomplish the work of mourning? 

 

Be sure to keep up with our reading for next week: 

• "The Crisis of Authority": (1737-48); Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1749-51)

• Milton's poems (1826 ff) : How Soon Hath Time; When I Consider How my Light is Spent

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1592-1604) 

It would also be a very good idea to review NAEL B 1237-41, on "State and Church," and this NAEL webpage on "Civil Wars of Ideas"

 

For Wednesday: Short essay questions

Choose one of these questions and compose a brief answer for class on Wednesday. If you want to address one of these questions using different Donne poems, go ahead.

• How does Donne mix sex and religion in poems like "Holy Sonnet 14," (1297) "The Canonization," (1267) or "The Ecstasy" ? (1276)

•  How does Donne explore the merging of identities between two people in love in "The Undertaking"? (1265) How does it explore the difference between appearance and reality? 

• How does Donne's final sermon, delivered shortly before his death, imagine the soul's journey? What happens to us after we die: what problems concerning body and soul does Donne imagine?

 

Metempsychosis and Donne

The poem "The Ecstasy," as well as "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" both rely upon the ancient Greek notion of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, something Donne assuredly had known of beforehand (recall also Faustus' line as he wished his soul could pass into some animal, rather than go to hell).
I seemed to remember something about Donne writing a text called "Metempsychosis"—and lo, thanks to the magic of interwebs, you too may read it, if you like. Or there's a summary of it from an online literary encyclopedia.(I recommend trolling the Luminarium's Donne pages if you are interested in Donne's works, intellectual background, etc.)

Notes and vocabulary week 8

Check out notes and vocab for this week. Concetrate on John Donne's poetry for Monday. And give some final thought to Faustus: What does Faustus accomplish with his power? How is this a play about the power of the theater, and the imagination? 

Vocabulary: Privy Council, Jesuit, Counter-Reformation, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Southampton (Henry Wriothesley)

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• John Donne (poems): The Flea, The Undertaking, The Canonization, Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Ecstasy; The Relic; Holy Sonnets 13,14,19; Sermons: 1306-08

Recommended reading and listening re: Marlowe and Shakespeare's Sonnets

As NPR duly notes, we recently passed the  400th anniversary since the publication of Shakespeare's Sonnet sequence (some 148 of them). There had been many important sonnet collections published before this time; by 1609 the sonnet was kind of old hat. Most of the sonnets in Shakespeare's collection were likely written in a period of the 1590s, when the theatres were closed due to plague. So they must have been undertaken as paid work, written to and for a patron. Their publication some 15 years or so after their original writing has occasioned much speculation. The NPR story features some of the latest conjecture about the circumstances of their publication, the identity of the "fair youth" to whom most of them are written, and speculation about Shakespeare's sexuality. Keep the grains of salt handy.

Of equal or greater interest in the section in the Norton Anthology Website that provides some neat background to Marlowe's Faustus.

Notes and vocabulary for Week 7: Read for Week 8 . . .

For Monday: give a close read to the Shakespeare's sonnets listed on the syllabus, and Sidney's Defence. . .The Defence of Poesie is a complex piece of prose, and one of the first major works of literary theory in English, so set aside ample time to read it. 

Vocab for this week: see our notes appended here: 

Download Eng204W7

Notes and vocabulary for week 6

Exams are to be returned today (the average was about 88). 

The notes from week 6 include inforamation on More's Utopia, which, unfortunately, we are not reading. 

Vocabulary terms for this week: William Caxton, Reformation, Renaissance, Humanism

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