In British Literature II we did in fact receive our first test/quiz back. I was dreading this. There was 20 identification terms and I answered all but one, My Hearts Up. I knew it was lines from a poem by Wordsworth but couldn't think of the poem's name ("When I beheld a rainbow in the sky."). There were two lists of discussion questions of which w had to choose one from each list to answer. My first choice was discuss "The World is Too Much With Us."
This poem is representative of Wordsworth's view of nature. While the daffodils dance the waves of the lake are depicted as moving in coordination with them. Wordsworth further shows the unity by comparing himself to another aspect of nature, a cloud. At the same time he speaks of how, while this image of nature before him is powerfully moving, his ability to remember the scene and pull it forth in the future when he sits on his sofa at home causes this scene to be even better. Based on Dorothy Wordsworth's notebooks we know that William Wordsworth altered the scene as he presented it in a poetic form. First, he removed Dorothy from experiencing this scene with him. From his desire to depict the event as one only involving himself w see the importance of communing with nature on an individual level. In 'Tintern Abbey' Wordsworth shares the stage, so to speak, with Dorothy. Hoewver, her appearance there is to depict William Wordworth's first reaction to the abbey. Wordsworth similarly removed Dorothy from the encounter with the leech gatherer in "Resolution and Independence." The other thing we learn if we check Dorothy's notebook is how wordsworth redraws the landscape, neglecting the isolated clumps of daffodils that were there. This revision of events is also seen in "Resolution and Independence" where the old man is depicted as still being a leech gathere as a means of expressing endurance under hardship. In reality, however, the man was a leech gatherer no more. This revision of events seems at odds with Wordsworth's professed view of writing as spontaneous as wel as his statements that the poet is the most truthfull of all philospohers.
My other discussion was question was what is the significance of the albatross in Rime of the Ancient mariner?
The albatross in Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' can be viewed at several levels. The poem and gloss depict that it is by killing the albatross that the Mariner is cursed. While the fellow sailors, at first angered by the murder, are by their eventual seeing this murder as just when the mist is lifted are doomed. Albatrosses were seen as symbols of good luck by sailors. Perhaps this was due to their relation to pelicans, which had long been seen as Christ symbols due to the superstition that they fed their young on their own blood. So , while it is the action of the mariner killing the albatross that dooms him to a wandering life, it is another animal, water snakes, which allow him a salvation. When he is able to bless these sea-serpents his fate begins to change and he gains some redemption (though forced to wander the lands and tell his tale). Perhaps this is suggestive, as are the last few stanzas, that all of nature, not just man, is important to God.
I received a Check Plus and the comment "thoughtfull answer" on the first discussion question and a Check and the comment "Excellent discussions" on the second. There are some checks and underlines, as there were on my paper, and I am not sure what these mean. Maybe good points. I'll add in the underlines next Monday, time permitting. Also about Monday, our syllabus calls for us to turn in the revision of our first paper then. However, when asked about this in class he said he would talk about what he wants in the revisions Monday and we will turn them in Tuesday. (Next Thursday is my test in World Civ.)
10.03.2002
Also, nilotic is an awesome word.
(Of interest-
Nile :dark; blue, not found in Scripture, but frequently referred to in the Old Testament under the name of Sihor, i.e., "the black stream" (Isa. 23:3; Jer. 2:18) or simply "the river" (Gen. 41:1; Ex. 1:22, etc.) and the "flood of Egypt" (Amos 8:8). It consists of two rivers, the White Nile, which takes its rise in the Victoria Nyanza, and the Blue Nile, which rises in the Abyssinian Mountains. These unite at the town of Khartoum, whence it pursues its course for 1,800 miles, and falls into the Mediterranean through its two branches, into which it is divided a few miles north of Cairo, the Rosetta and the Damietta branch.
Dog days - (1538), from L. dies caniculares, from Gk. (the star was also known as kyon seirios) are around the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star, noted as the hottest and most unwholesome time of the year; usually July 3 to Aug. 11, but variously calculated, depending on latitude and on whether the greater Dog-star (Sirius) or the lesser one (Procyon) is reckoned. The heliacal rising of Sirius has shifted down the calendar with the procession of the equinoxes; in ancient Egypt c.3000 B.C.E. it coincided with the summer solstice, which was also the new year and the beginning of the inundation of the Nile. The "dog" association apparently began here (the star's heiroglyph was a dog), but the reasons for it are obscure. )
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It turns out my previous roommate knows my Spanish instructor. He happened to be in town and we discussed her some when we saw here at the local bookstore.
10.02.2002
To the Grasshoppper and the Cricket
Both poems: 30th December, 1816.
Green little vaulter in the summer grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard admist the lazy noon,
When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass; --
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
Wth those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;--
Oh, sweet and tiny cousins, that belong
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song --
In doors and out, --summer and winter, --Mirth.
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in the cooling trees, a coice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's --he takes the lead
In summer luxury, --he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the first
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
Highlight here to read the correct answer: On the Grasshopper and the Cricket
10.01.2002
Mrs Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it -- it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgement the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son. (TT, p. 106)1
1Henry Nelson Coleridge, the editor of his uncle's Table Talk (1835), first reported this anecdote a year earlier in the Quarterly Review, 52 (Aug. 1834) 28: "Mrs. Barbauld, meaning to be complimentary, told our poet, that she thought the 'Ancient Mariner' very beautiful, but that it had the fault of containing no moral. 'Nay, madam,' replied the poet, 'if I may be permitted to say so, the only fault in the poem is that there is too much! In a work of such pure imagination I ought not to have stopped to give reasons for things, or inculcate humanity to beasts. The Arabian Nights might have taught me better.' They might -- the tale of the merchant's son who puts out the eyes of a genie by flinging his date-shells down a well, and is therefore ordered to prepare for death -- might have taught this law of imagination . . ." -- quoted in T.M. Raysor, "Coleridge's Comment on the Moral of The Ancient Mariner", PQ, 31 (1952) 88. *
9.30.2002
But, above all, the taking fish in spawning-time may be said to be against nature: it is like taking the dam on the nest when she hatches her young, a sin so against nature, that Almighty God hath in the Levitical law made a law against it.
(http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext96/tcang10.txt)
And, arriving early at school, I went to speak with my British Lit professor. He and I discussed the symbolism of the albatross. I brought up some of the issues from Warren Penn AHarding, Lowles' "The Road to Xanadu" and several other books I have perused. My current feeling is that the poem is too vast for a 'unified theory' of imagery and that claiming the albatross as a Christ figure is an injustice. Easily the albatross could be replaced by the sea-serpents as the targetof the Mariner's unreasoned aggression. No, rather than placing the emphasis on the albatross, which is conventient since it is a concrete thing within the poem, I think the impetus for the actions of the poem from the point of the slaying of the albatross is the action itself. Employing occam's razor I think it is easiest to relate the albatross to a fellow human- he responds to their hallos, he eats with the sailors, and even partakes of prayers (vespers nine) with them. It is the mariner's attack on the albatross, wholely without reason, that is the significant thing. Quite easily this unthinking crime could have been committed against the sea-serpents. If the alabtross is a christ figure to what end does it die, as Christ did, and where does the redemption, partial or whole, that the albatross offers, as Christ does?
Anyways, my instructor seemed to concur that there is too much imagery for their to be a symbolic interpretation that takes all the fantastic imagery into consideration.As talked some more he stated that he felt my first paper for class displayed a keen insight into literature that is often employeed by literary critics. He inquired what my major was and when I told him English he was delighted. I stated that my hope was to be a university professor. He expressed that he felt the profession was, undoubtably, soon to open up as the previous generation of English professors reached the age of retirement. He also, gratiously, offered to assist me in pursuit of my major.
Then before class started he told me of a movie that was playing locally, Possession, that he thought I might enjoy. It's a sleuth mystery about an American student of English studying in England. The scene cuts back and forth between the modenr day and the Victorian era where the text the persent day characters are investigating takes place. The professor stated it was based on the book of the same name by A.S. Byatt.
9.29.2002
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