ENG 204

Comments Closed : Be Seeing You

Comments for all posts are now closed. But all posts and previous comments are available.
Questions? spollack@pdx.edu
Be Seeing You,
sean

In Our Time (BBC 4): The Trial of Charles I

This week's 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'm reading her very lively, accessible (and large) book on the English Civil War.

Suggestions: further reading

If you liked reading Chaucer and would like to see Chaucer classes offered here, let the English Dept. know. A scheduled class on Chaucer's Early Poems has been canceled:

CNCLD

ENG

548

001

TOP: CHAUCER II EARLY POEMS

4

TR

16:40-18:30

CAMPUS

STAFF

Write to eng@pdx.edu and ask why this class was canceled, and if the English department plans to offer any more Chaucer sections in the near future. (you might even cc: the dept. chair, Jennifer Ruth at ruthj@pdx.edu - but be nice!)

Here are some suggestions for further reading; there's so much stuff in both volumes of NAEL that we didn't cover but should have.

If you liked . . .         Then Read
Chaucer                    More Chaucer (House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde)
Wyatt, Surrey            Sidney, Astrophil; Ralegh, sonnets; Lady Mary Wroth
Marlowe                    more Marlowe;  Shakespeare, The Tempest
Donne                       George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick
More                         Margaret Cavendish, "Blazing World"
Milton                       Spenser, Faerie Queene

Milton: Lycidas (online)

I would like for us to have a talk about Milton's Lycidas tomorrow, before concluding business, etc.
There is a good online edition of the poem with notes, etc.

Notes and Vocab: week 9-10

• James I
• Charles I
• Oliver Cromwell
• absolutism
• Natural Law
• social contract
• metempsychosis
• Hermes Trismegistius
• Divine Right of Kings
• Puritan

Notes are attached here. These vocab terms are also on the Study Guide.
Download Milton
Download Week9

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?

Open Thread: Paper topics

Mor posted this comment on an earlier thread, but it's important enough to warrant its own thread; I'm sure many are pondering topics and could use a chance to discuss them with colleagues.

Fellow classmates,
I wasn't in class on Tuesday when you guys discussed about the possible essay topics. I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to recapp some for me, or even share some of their own ideas. I feel like this last section of the course mainly focuses on death and the question of a soul entering an afterlife. I don't know how to incorporate all of these religious ideas into an essay topic.
Thank you Much!

I would only add that there's a lot more on the table than religion since the midterm (though it seems inescapable as the C16-17 were a time of great religious upheaval). But, there's also love, court politics (More, Wyatt, Surrey), humanism (More, Marlowe, Sidney), the changing status of the English language, art and aesthetics, etc.

Revised Reading: Milton

For TUES:
Read "Crisis of Authority" 1737-51
MILTON:
On Shakespeare
L'Allegro
Il Penseroso
Lycidas
Sonnets (1826-29)

Metempsychosis and Donne

Hannah's great question about Donne's ideas about the soul; this I still cannot answer. 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.)

Metaphyisical

So I tried to define "metaphysical poetry" by sort of getting around the question, saying that it's not a commonly accepted critical definition these days (note that 'metaphysical conceit' is absent from the Norton's glossary). Samuel Johnson coined the term 'metaphysical conceit' when speaking of Donne's imitators and followers; saying they constructed images of heterogeneous elements 'yoked together by violence.' Johnson was not being complimentary. T.S. Eliot made a powerful reassessment of Donne and his contemporaries in an essay published in 1921. He found much to admire in Donne especially, seeing him and his contemporaries as 'natural' successors to Elizabethan dramatists. They are serious, intellectual poets; as serious as Dante, he argued, not mere 'wits.'