Posts Tagged ‘poetry’

Memento Mori Readings

by   |  10.26.09  |  221-Early Modern

    Up until the plague outbreaks of the seventeenth century, most communities had an unsettling habit of burying people in the church. Wealthy aristocrats and merchants would leave money for a monument or a plaque to be placed in the wall, in an aisle, or, in the days before Henry’s Reformation, in a side chapel where prayers would be said for their soul. One result of this practice was keeping death ever in the mind of the living.
    These memorials to the dead included not only the name and epitaph of the deceased but also a reminder to passersby to look to their own life or remember their end. Memento mori: “remember that you too must die.” This particular inscription, often appearing alongside a skull or hourglass, came to be associated with any work of art used to remind its audience of their mortality. Such monuments represented then a dual memorial, both of the individual’s life and of the universal end.
    In the 2001 film Wit, based on a play by Margaret Edson, Professor Vivian Bearing learns she has stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer. As she comments wryly, “There is no stage five.” The persistent irony of the film is that Dr. Bearing was a professor of seventeenth-century poetry all-too-familiar with the subject of death in literature but suddenly confronted by the reality in life.

    Memento Mori clip

    In memento mori poems like Donne’s famous Holy Sonnet 10, we also recognize a dual memorial, both of the reality of death and of the hope of future life. In contrast to the carpe diem poems which responded to death’s insistent approach by recommending pleasure of the moment, “The grave’s a fine and private place / But none I think do there embrace,” these poets turn to religious reflection.

    This week’s discussion will consider how English poets from the seventeenth century responded to the themes of time and death in light of their religious convictions. In poems that range from the intensely personal to the intently public, Donne, Herbert, and Milton confront the ultimate questions of Life, Death, Soul, God, Past, and Present.

Explication Exercise

    Before class, you will need to write another short explication of a poem by the poet you just reviewed (see the Writing an Explication assignment for more information). An explication is a close reading of the most important ideas or elements of a poem. The process of close reading asks you to focus on the parts of a poem and ask how they function in relation to the whole.

    In the 2001 film Wit, Professor Bearing described Donne’s holy sonnets as poetic puzzles, and there is something about the metaphysical wit of Donne and Herbert that seems almost playful in its use of concentrated metaphor, paradox, and language. As with the Carpe Diem assignment, these poems will reward close, attentive reading. How can you break your poem down into its component parts? Do these sections move logically from one to the next? Does the poet use basic poetic units like the couplet, quatrain, sestet, or octave (2, 4, 6, or 8 lines) to develop a single image or cluster of related images? Listen to the following close reading of Holy Sonnet 14 before moving on to complete your own short explication of one of the other assigned poems.

    Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 – read by Dr. Bill Walton, English professor

    Explication of Holy Sonnet 14 – Dr. Walton

    Anniina Jokinen has posted a “quick and rough” explication of Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10 at the link below. Though longer than what you’ve been asked to write, it may also illustrate the kinds of insights a close reading should generate.

    Sample Explication for Holy Sonnet 10

    As you begin your own explication, the steps below should help you get started:

    Step 1. Choose one of the assigned poems and read it once or twice aloud. Since lyric poetry shares a close relationship with music, reading your poem out loud will draw your attention to rhythms and sound effects the poet may be using to develop his ideas.

    Step 2. Next paraphrase the poem (or for longer poems a short section of it) in your reading notebook by translating its meaning into contemporary speech.

    Step 3. Looking at the poem as a drama, who are the characters? (What do you know about the speaker? Who is the auditor or audience?) What is the central conflict? What implied action(s) occurs before, during, or after the poem?

    Step 4. Looking at the poem as a meditation, what imagery is chosen to describe the individual believer? How does the poet describe his relationship with God? How does this relationship address questions of life, death, past, and present?

    Step 5. Now look at the structural and poetic elements of the poem. How does the poet divide the poem into logical parts? How does spacing or punctuation make these logical divisions clear? How does the poet use image patterns or conceits to develop a theme or address a question?

    Step 6. Look up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary. How does the poet employ difficult, unusual, or related types of words to develop an image or set the mood of the poem? Do they help set a tone that is personal, playful, academic, provocative, devotional, or something else?

    Step 7. Before you leave the poem, what questions does it raise regarding contemporary views of life, death, soul, and God? How does the poem challenge or confirm personal views of mortality or a personal relationship with God?

    Step 8. Once you have a clear idea of what the poet is trying to say, write a 1 to 2 paragraph explication of the poem, referencing key lines or phrases that illuminate that purpose for other readers.

Carpe Diem Readings

by   |  10.08.09  |  221-Early Modern

    If the protagonists in the carpe diem poem are always young, vital, and full of passion, their antagonist is always time. The enemy of love and lovers is the progression of time, an ever-present reality in Renaissance poetry that drives many of the poems we read this week. Consider Andrew Marvel’s “To His Coy Mistress” . As you follow along in your book or online, listen to the following reading and watch for the way the speaker balances desire and argument in his artful invitation to seize the moment.

    To His Coy Mistress – read by Dr. Chris Willerton, English professor and poet

    The three sections of Marvel’s poem lay out an implied argument as the speaker moves from the theoretical, if time were not a factor, to the hard reality of the carpe diem. The poem itself moves from moments of wit and playfulness to passages of somber melancholy before finally inviting the listener to choose life and pleasure.

    In this assignment, we’ve combined poems written over more than a half century by poets with radically different backgrounds and purposes. How does each of the poets approach carpe diem themes in an original way? How do they confront the movement of time or the insistent approach of death? In addition to the carpe diem, what other solutions do they offer their young audience? Is seizing the moment the only response to time, decay, and the approach of “endless night”?

Explication Exercise

    Before class, you will need to produce a short explication of an assigned poem. An explication is a close reading of the most important ideas or elements of a poem (see the Writing an Explication assignment for more information). The process of close reading asks you to focus on the parts of a poem and ask how they function in relation to the whole.

    Shakespeare’s sonnets often strike students as overly complex and difficult on first reading, but breaking them down into smaller parts can make the process of interpreting them easier. How can you break longer poems down into stanzas, verse paragraphs, or sentences? Do these sections move logically from one to the next? Does the poet use basic poetic units like the couplet, quatrain, sestet, or octave (2, 4, 6, or 8 lines) to develop a single image or cluster of related images? Listen to the following close reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12 before moving on to complete the explication exercise below.

    Shakespeare’s Sonnets – Dr. Kyle Dickson, English professor

    Sonnet 12 – read by Dr. Dana McMichael, English professor

    Explication of Sonnet 12 – Dr. Dickson

    As you begin your own explication, the steps below should help you get started:

    Step 1. Choose one of the assigned poems and read it once or twice aloud. Since lyric poetry shares a close relationship with music, reading your poem out loud will draw your attention to rhythms and sound effects the poet may be using to develop his ideas.

    Step 2. Next paraphrase the poem (or for longer poems a short section of it) in your reading notebook by translating its meaning into contemporary speech.

    Step 3. Looking at the poem as a drama, who are the characters? (What do you know about the speaker? Who is the audience or listener?) What is the central conflict? What implied action(s) occurs before, during, or after the poem?
    *Remember that the “I” of the poem is often a dramatic persona and not necessarily the poet himself.

    Step 4. Looking at the poem as an argument or debate, what is the speaker’s rhetorical purpose or goal? What arguments does he use to persuade his audience? What strategies does he use to make these more persuasive? How is the structure of the argument reflected in the structure of the poem?

    Step 5. Now look at the structural and poetic elements of the poem. How does the poet divide the poem into logical parts? How does spacing or punctuation make these logical divisions clear? How does the poet use image patterns or conceits to develop a theme or support an argument?

    Step 6. Look up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary. How does the poet employ difficult, unusual, or related types of words to develop an image or set the mood of the poem? Do they help set a tone that is personal, playful, academic, provocative, devotional, or something else?

    Step 7. Once you have a clear idea of what the poet is trying to say, organize your thoughts into an outline for a 5-minute audio explication. This doesn’t have to be a formal essay, but you should support main points by referencing key lines or phrases (by line number) that help listeners follow along in the poem.

    *See Student Example on Marvel’s “To His Coy Mistress” before you begin your outline.

    “To His Coy Mistress” – Student Example

The Televangelists Tale

by   |  09.09.09  |  221- Middle Ages

    At the end of the Pardoner's portrait in the “General Prologue,” Chaucer calls him a “noble ecclesiaste.” Whatever else readers think of him, most surely recognize the personality of an impressive churchman or preacher. The Pardoner's actual “Tale” ends like any good sermon with the rioters’ fate underscoring the main text: “the love of money is the root of all evil.” But neither the sermon nor the tale is over. Listen to the following reading of the Pardoner's final words and how it presents the clergy.

    Pardoner's Closing Invitation – read by Dr. Bill Rankin, English professor

    The Pardoner is a timeless character. In our day he would certainly have been a televangelist. Consider the following short profile from Wikipedia on a leading proponent of the “health and wealth” gospel and see if the pitch sounds familiar:

      Robert Tilton regularly taught that poverty was a result of sin. Tilton's ministry revolved around the practice of making “vows,” financial commitments to Tilton's ministry. When a person made a vow to Tilton (Tilton's preferred “vow,” stressed frequently during his broadcasts, was $1,000), Tilton preached that God would recognize the vow and reward the donor with vast material riches . . .

      One of Tilton's most frequent sermon topics was the Biblical story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17:8-16). In the story, Elijah comes to a widow who is almost out of food and asks her to prepare him a meal. She replies that she has only enough food for one last meal for herself and her son. Elijah asks her to prepare him a meal first and then promises that God will not let her food be exhausted. In faith she does so, and her food supply indeed does not run out. Tilton regularly used this story in the context of asking viewers to send money to his ministry.

    For more on the Pardoner's successful successors, consider the following sites, both biased and blessed:

    Benny Hinn on Wikipedia and in his own words

    Reverend Ike on Wikipedia and on his own website

    Robert Tilton on Wikipedia and in his own marketing

Medieval Hierarchies

by   |  09.03.09  |  221- Middle Ages

    The High Middle Ages was a period governed by hierarchies. Living in times of political instability, violent epidemics, and wars at home and abroad, medieval men and women sought certainty and order. Through hierarchies, medieval scholars were able to organize the “known world” into a comprehensible system where everyone or everything had its place. The most familiar of these hierarchies is known as the Great Chain of Being.

    In passages like Psalm 8, medieval readers found a divinely ordered universe:

      O Lord, our Lord,
      how majestic is your name in all the earth! . . .
      When I consider your heavens,
      the work of your fingers,
      the moon and the stars,
      which you have set in place,
      what is man that you are mindful of him,
      the son of man that you care for him?
      You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
      and crowned him with glory and honor.
      You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
      you put everything under his feet:
      all flocks and herds,
      and the beasts of the field,
      the birds of the air,
      and the fish of the sea,
      all that swim the paths of the seas.
      O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (NIV)

    This view of our “Middle Station,” placed “a little lower than the heavenly beings” and above the rest of creation suggested to the medieval mind a world with a place for everything and everything in its place. They took the Psalmist’s bare outline with similar systems found in Aristotle and elaborated them into a Great Chain of all life, connecting the earth firmly to the heavens. Each rank or level was represented by a link of that chain beginning with the Vegetable and then the Animal world and rising from the human orders to the Angels until you reached God.

    Great Chain of Being

    The desire for order systematized such a hierarchy further by distinguishing between noble animals like the eagle and brute beasts such as the ox. Some, like Pope Gregory I, went further to see hierarchy in heaven itself: “We know on the authority of Scripture that there are nine orders of angels, viz., Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominions, Throne, Cherubim, and Seraphim.” Therefore, hierarchies appeared to be a part of God’s nature, and since they were founded upon the authority of scripture and classical learning they were seen–like the metaphoric chain itself–to be fixed and immutable.

    Another familiar hierarchy divided medieval society into Three Estates. This social hierarchy also illustrates certain tensions already apparent in the Middle Ages. For an overview of the basic degrees, read the “Medieval Estates and Orders” article at Norton Topics Online. Since Chaucer uses the estates to order his “General Prologue,” you will want to be familiar with this framework.

    Medieval Estates and Orders

    In Chaucer’s “General Prologue,” we start to sense problems or tensions inherent in social models like the medieval estates. Has God placed secular authority (Kings, Princes, and Nobles) above or below sacred authority (Popes, Archbishops, and Bishops)? Are these positions truly fixed, or can they allow for movement between stations? Where do merchants who neither fight nor labor fit into the system? As we’ll see, by the end of the Middle Ages, familiar hierarchies and symbols of order began to give way to new ways of seeing the world.

    For an interesting glimpse of this tension, watch the opening 10 minutes of “The Monk,” one of a series of Monty-Pythonesque documentaries put together by ex-Python Terry Jones. In this episode of the BBC’s Medieval Lives, he describes some of the early excesses in the medieval church as well as early reforms by monks like St. Benedict.

    Terry Jones’ “The Monk”

Sutton Hoo Artifacts

by   |  08.27.09  |  221- Middle Ages

    Sixty years ago the faint outlines of a ship were found in a burial mound being excavated in southeast England. The mound was of the type described by Tacitus in his Germania:

      In their funerals there is no pomp; they simply observe the custom of burning the bodies of illustrious men with certain kinds of wood. They do not heap garments or spices on the funeral pile. The armor and weapons of the dead man and in some cases his horse are consigned to the fire. A turf mound forms the tomb. Monuments with their lofty elaborate splendor they reject as oppressive to the dead. It is thought becoming for women to bewail, for men to remember the dead. (Germania)

    Archeologists called the site Sutton Hoo and dated the mound to around the seventh century, but the most startling discovery in these excavations was a treasure hoard now housed in the British Museum. Before class, spend some time looking at the Sutton Hoo hoard online, and then speculate on what these artifacts tell us about the person buried here and the culture these objects represent.

     

Sutton Hoo Exercise

    For this exercise you will go to the British Museum website and search for “Sutton Hoo.” Choose 4 or 5 of the objects recovered from these excavations (and on display in the British Museum) to examine in more detail. Before reading about these artifacts, study the larger image of each and speculate on the following questions:

      – What was this object?
      – What kind of person did it belong to?
      – What function did it serve?
      – What social or symbolic value might it have contributed to its owner?


    British Museum database

    Next choose 1 object and write a three paragraph summary of your findings. In the first paragraph you should provide a physical description of the artifact. The second should then speculate on its uses or importance. In the third paragraph you should review the catalog article on your object and compare your ideas with the conclusions other researchers have come to. (*See the sample student post below before you begin writing.)

    Sutton Hoo Scepter – Student Example

    Bring your summary class to begin our discussion of the Anglo Saxons.