English 3150

My Last Blog(No, really!!)

2005-04-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else feel like if they hear or think of the word "study"anymore they will burst? I have an exam today and I'm on here because I have been studying all morning and if I do so anymore I am seriously going to go T.S.Eliot and start screaming at my cat, "Iil fit you!" or "you hypocrite lecteur!" or something!

I feel silly because I keep saying "this is my last blog/post" and then I come back with another one but well I was rifling through my English Literature Course Kit and I came across Aristotle's Five Divisions of Rhetoric, which can be found in The Waste Land so I figured I'd put them up. Here they are:

1.Invention, the finding ot the theme "April is the cruellest month..."(ambiguidy, the escape from personality)

2. Disposition, the arranging of the theme: "Nothing again nothing." "Hurry up Please, its time" (a bar scene yet also apocolyptic, the blending of myth and the present.)

3. Elocution, memorable examples

THE river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

4. Memory, a recollection of the theme
"DA"

5. Delivery, a rounding out of the theme.

"Shantih Shantih Shantih Shantih"

And with that, I really do say goodbye to English 3150! Have a great summer everyone!

2005-04-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

For this, my last blog(for real this time) I thought I would post a bunch of websites I found on all the things we studied this year. It wasn't easy, but I can't say I didn't learn a few things about all the people we've studied! Hope everyone has a great summer. Here are the links:

http://www.english-literature.org/essays/arnold.html
(an short, informative Arnold site.)

http://www.artsmia.org/modernism/
(A nice site about Modernism and Modern Art)

http://killdevilhill.com/tseliotchat/read.php?f=75&i=570&t=564
(A site about Eliot where people adore and worship him and it has an actual message board. This is an interesting Essay on Eliot)

http://www.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/dryden/life2.htm
(Samuel Johnson's Preface to the Work's of John Dryden.

Now that we're on the subject of Dryden, I could never understand why he always had to explain and defend what it was he was doing. Particularly when he wrote All For Love. Why didn't he let the work just speak for itself? was he, a critic himself, afraid of criticism? Like when he says:

I have therefore steered the middle course; and have drawn the character of Antony as favourably as Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius would give me leave; the like I have observed in Cleopatra. That which is wanting to work up the pity to a greater height, was not afforded me by the story; for the crimes of love, which they both committed, were not occasioned by any necessity, or fatal ignorance, but were wholly voluntary; since our passions are, or ought to be, within our power. The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it; and the unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed, than perhaps the English theatre requires.

Why did he feel he had to explain all that? Eliot has taught me that if one has to explain everything, than the poem or work looses a bit of its magic. I loved the play, don't get me wrong, but I just am puttign the question out there: Why the Preface?

The Tradition of Patronage

2005-04-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

Well, here is another blog since we have to keep them up until April 15. Today I thought I would focus on something which I was reading about last night and which I realized I could relate back to Sidney and the Elizabeatheans: Patronage. (Even though it's the end of the year I hope it's alright if I talk about Sidney, since I figured no one wants to read three more posts about Eliot).

The patronage of poets, artists, and other makers of beautiful things, was a large part of the tradition of the antique world in which Sidney lived in. Professor Kuin always talks about how Sidney and his contemporaries turned their minds to the classical past, their memory and ruins, as a place to find the blueprint for forming their civilization. The princes and nobles of the 16th and 17th centuries took on the role of patron, accepting their obligations, just as the poets were trying to imitate their ancient models. The influences of Virgil and Horace, Andre Buxton asserts in her book Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance, "combined to make men realize in their patron the princely ideal that they should follow" (2). Sidney as a patron, I think, is important to look at because of the influence he must have had on those near him, just like the ancients. Patrons are rare "not, as vulgarly supposed, because only a few can afford the luxuries of fine poetry or painting, but because only a few have the wit to demand them" (Buxton 2). It is clear then, that Sidney did have the wit. He was a man who loved poetry above all, and I think he loves it in the way that Wordsworth loved nature, almost reverantly. A question rises in my mind: How did this kind of man influence those poets that lived in his time?Buxton answers this when she writes:

The poets who acclaimed Sidney, with Spencer cheif among them, were not soft-bodied parasites, clinging to him for a living. His critical encouragement, his example, his knowledge of the Renaissance in Europe, above all his taste and good judgement, were the things they valued" (3).

Obviously, others must have recognized the brilliance in Sidney, despite not being a wealthy man, and they gathered in his house in Leicester at Penshurst to "Write poetry, argue poetry, talks poetry" (Buxton 4). Furthermore, Buxton mentions in her book that were it not for Sidney and his sister Mary, "the Elizabethan poets never doubted that their work would be negligible"(4). I wonder what would have become of them, without Sidney as a patron? The romantic revolution of course brought an end to patronage and Buxton mentions how we often do not remember Sidney so much for his work as for who he was in relation to the court. Nowadays, I think, anyone can call themselves a patron. The name and meaning has been devalued. I could be a patron of the arts if I buy a picture painted it the Victorian era and present it to the museum. But for the Elizabethans, it was so much more.

Works Cited
Buxton, Andrea. Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance. London, Macmillan: 1984

My Thoughts on Ash Wednesday

2005-03-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Well folks, here it is. My last blog of the year! I have to say this blog has grown on me and I’m going to be a bit sad when I see it go off into blog obscurity. Well, who knows? Maybe I’ll keep it up next year and complain bout how hard fourth year is! Well anyways, today I wanted to write about Ash Wednesday. I really loved this poem; something about it just struck me as very story-like and “charming” to use one of Dr.J’s words. I loved the rhythm, the repetition of “At” gave it an almost musical air, and it reminded me of Dante’s Inferno. I am talking especially about the third poem, in which Derek Traversi, in his book T.S. Eliot: the Longer Poems states that Eliot, or the protagonist, goes through a “struggle against various forms of personal temptation” (30). When reading the poem, I also got the feeling as though the protagonist was climbing up through various forms of evil, towards a forgiveness and repentance. We begin with a scene that struck me as similar to The Waste Land, with “fetid air” and when Eliot says, “I left them, twisting, turning below” I was immediately reminded of the famous opening lines from Burial of the Dead: “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land/ Mixing memory and desire.” The protagonist is rising up from this dead land, and the reader rises with him as he struggles to climb higher, even though it is so easy to cling to, “the deceitful face of hope and despair.” Traversi makes a good point in his book about this passage, asserting that this scene:

May perhaps be identified with what Eliot in a study of Pascal called “the demon of doubt” which is inseparable from the spirit of belief and which stands in the same relation to faith as self-absorption to the abandonment of selfish and self-centred motivation (30)

The Eliot from this poem then, is indeed a different Eliot from the one who wrote the Waste Land and who states, “Shall I at least set my lands in order?” Here is an Eliot who wants to rise up, rise up from the dark images “at the second turning of the second stair” that remind me a lot of Gerotonin. He provides us images of self-disgust and vain old age and in the end, realizes that to continue climbing the stairway, to defeat the distractions, one must look beyond the self so that “this part of the sequence ends appropriately on a recognition of unworthiness and dependence” (Traversi 73):

Lord I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
But speak the word only.

I just love the power of those lines! Well, that’s all I’m writing for now. Good luck on the test everyone!!

Works Cited
Traversi, Derek. T.S.Eliot: The Longer Poems London: Bodley, 1976

The Waste Land: An Anti-Poem?

2005-03-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

Is The Waste Land an anti-poem? A poem, at all? This is the question I want to deal with today in my Blog. As an English major, in this class and others, I have been constantly taught about lyric, epic, ode, personae, rhyme, metre, ballad, and so forth, when studying poetry. Therefore, The Waste Land is an enigma to me because, as Ruth Nevo says in The Wasteland: Ur-Text of Deconstruction, “like dreams this text has no beginning or end. It could begin anywhere and end anywhere. It has no inception and no centre and no closure” (77). There is, “no one point of view, no single style, idiom, register, no linking linguistic device which could define a subject” ( Nevo 97). Furthermore, there is no time or place :

but a constant, bewildering, shifting and disarray of times and places; there is no unifying central character either speaking or spoken about, no protagonist or antagonist, no drama, no epic, no lyric(Nevo 97).

Isn’t The Waste Land then, everything opposite to a poem? To me, it would make more sense if looked at a ascript from a radio program. My Professor from another class had all the T.A.’s read the different “voices” and languages as if someone was flicking through different radio channels, and then it seemed to make so much more sense to me than as a poem.

A poem must have an ending. Does Shantih Shantih Shantih sound like an ending? Or is it just another part of, “these fragments I have shored against my ruins”? And the poem seems to be to not have any real order. It even oversteps its frame with lines from Baudelaire:“You hypocrite lecteur-mon semblable-mon frere" where the author is transformed into audience "or vice versa, or both into eachother's double" (97).Though it begins with Spring, and there are hints of it being autumn in Part III, The Fire Sermon:“the river’s tent is broken, the last fingers of leaf/clutch and sink into the wet bank” ,the other seasons do not make any appearances. Death By Water, besides being a Shakespearean allusion to Ophelia, may signify winter, but this does not help the reader find out what the poem, as opposed to the thunder, says.

Works Cited
Nevo, Ruth. "The Wasteland: Ur-Text of Deconstruction" Modern Critical Views: T.S.Eliot. Ed. Harold Bloom New York: Chelsea, 1985.

Some thoughts on Modernists

2005-03-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

Gertrude Stein described Ezra Pound and his fellow writers as a “lost generation.” This is the exact description that comes into my mind when I read the Modernists poets like T.S.Eliot. In all of the previous works by authors we have studied in this course, there seems to be a sense of shared community, shared language, a common tradition. Sidney, Dryden, Arnold, all of them shared a consensus within their works, with other writers of their time. They speak on the behalf of Elizabethans, Victorians, and so forth. However, with the modern poets we find a breakdown of this commonality. Who are you? Where are you going? Where do you come from? None of these questions are answered in Eliot’s poems. In Prufrock who is the “You” Eliot speaks of? The poet seems alienated from their reader, plagued by confusion and dislocation; and in turn so is the reader. Not only are the poets alienated from the reader, but from eachother as well. For example, here is Ezra Pound’s In the Station of a Metro :

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .

And here is William Carlos Williams' The Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the white chickens.

There is nothing similair, no connection between them. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the Modernists, but I think that this problem of dislocation and the threatened idea of the common tradition is a concern deeply felt by Eliot in The Waste land and in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” he asserts that, “the poet must develop the consciousness of the past and… he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.” Yet this consciousness is broken in the early twentieth century, broken by two world wars. Because of this, there is an underlying sense of despair and I would even say fear, just as the protagonist in Prufrock is afraid to take chances and cautiously measures his life with coffee spoons.

A time of Doubt

2005-02-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

Given my last post on how it is important to look at a poet's life when enterpreting his/her work, I think it's interesting to note that Matthew Arnold was writing during a time of great change in how people looked at the world. In the same book I mentioned in my previous blog, Sherman makes the point that Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) made a revolutionary impact on the way people looked at the world and religion, and there was a movement towards the mind; democratic, scientific, critical, and realistic(55) which Sherman states, was "directed toward the extension of the sway of reason over all things" (55). Arnold's poetry, I think, reflects this movement very well, and this might be one reason why Wordsworth is so much more optimistic than Arnold, he still felt strongly about his beliefs in religion, or at least that there was something beyond facts and reason. Arnold, on the contrary, was living in a time, "flushed still with the excitement of the French Revolution, temporarily checked, thwarted in some quarters, but steadily besieging and undermining the position held by tradition, prescription, and the deep inarticulate powers of feeling" (Sherman 53). I think it is because of all these revolutionary changes going on around him that Arnold's poetry can be called depressing, and because of the forward pressure of reason, there is a general dissillusionment about God, and as we see in his Marguerite poems, about love and human relationships.

One can sense Arnold's sense of loss in lines like the following from Dover Beach:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar...

and in To Marguerite Continued, we feel his despair at love, which reason isolated us from:

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel we were
Parts of a single continent!

It is because of reason and the break from faith that "we mortal millions live alone." Well, that's all I can manage to write for now, hope everyone has a good break!!

Is Poetry Self-Contained?

2005-02-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

I have to say I enjoyed our last class and I really love Arnold! I especially liked him because in his essay Arnold mentioned that a reader can learn so much more through the process of reading, re-reading and thinking than by a critic's words. I agree with him 100%.

Well, I just wanted to side-track for a second and mention a little dilemna I have been having when it comes to poetry. Here it is: I have been wondering latley if a poem should be looked at as a detached piece of work, with no bearings to the actual poet or his life, or if one should view a poet's life as an essential part of enterpretation when looking at a poem? I thought about this in regards to Arnold and after doing some reading in the library (if anybody is wondering where I actually get the time to go there, I have a reallllllly long break on Tuesday) I came to the conclusion, especially when reading Self-Dependence or Rugby Chapel, that the latter is crucial to understanding and learning a poem, at least from a student's perspective. I don't think you can really look at a poem in a purely aesthetic way. Could Astrophil and Stella be as enjoyable if we didn't know anything about Sidney's life and times? Can one even understand Rugby Chapel as a purely self-contained work? I doubt it.

Stuart P. Sherman asserts in his book, Matthew Arnold: How to Know Him that:

poetry is most valuable and and loved when it is made to seem most human and vital; and the human and vital interest of poetry can be most surely brought home to the reader by the biographical method of interpretation(5).

I think this is almost a fact. Anyone who struggles with poetry, like me, will know that to have background information is a tool to explaining metaphors, symbols, images, and that a poet's work always has, even if it's only a little , a part of him/herself just waiting to be analyzed.

Works Cited
Sherman, Stuart P. Matthew Arnold: How to Know Him Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merril, 1917.

Two Views of Childhood

2005-01-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

Before I move on to Matthew Arnold, I wanted to write one more blog about Wordsworth. Taking Professor Kuin's subtle hints about going to the library, I went there and looked for some books on Wordsworth, and I found alot of critical essays on the Prelude but not that many on Tintern Abbey or the Immortality Ode. Those are my favorite poems of Wordsworth so after some hunting I finally found an interesting essay dealing with Wordsworth's feelings for childhood as a state of grace, which is best expressed in the Immortality Ode, and his unique and visionary concept of two kinds of childhood.

The Immortality Ode presents us with two visions of Childhood, the one that we lived through as children and that we see other children living through presently, and what Alec King, in his book Wordsworth and the Artist's Vision describes as, "the childhood which we carry within us like a memory, and which while grounded in our earliest years stays with us into adult life, for good or evil" (104). These two visions of childhood are described in King's book as the "Visible Childhood and the Invisible Childhood" (104). I found this concept very interesting and there are definitley some examples in Wordsworth's Ode that assert this view. Wordsworth distinguishes between the different childhood's by the languages he uses. The VII th stanza of the Ode presents us with a visible child, one that "lived openly and busily for us in the factual language and the imitable play of the little actor" ( King 105). Indeed, there is an emphasis in vision and the senses in this stanza with lines like "six year's Darling of a pigmy size", and the word "see" being repeated by Wordsworth:

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Here it is clear Wordsworth wants us to look upon this living child. However , we see a direct change in the next Stanza of the Ode where the invisible child comes along. This stanza contains more elevated language and he describes a child as "Thou best philosopher", " thou eye among the blind." This is the invisible childhood, the one that we carry within us, which King states that, "is referred to as it must be, in terms of metaphor and myth" (105). I found these two concepts very interesting, and I think it shows how Wordsworth was as much philosopher as poet. To Wordsworth, children contained close ties with grace and innocence, that was lost with the onset of adulthood. I think we all feel sometimes that we wish we could keep some of what we lost in childhood, because there is that prevailing sense that we have lost something, yet we also retain an inner child, and the fact that Wordsworth's philosophy is still very relevant today and does hit home in a sense, makes him very fascinating.

Works Cited

King, Alec. Wordsworth and the Artist's Vision London; Athlone, 1966.

Wordsworth and Blake

2005-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it's back to blogging(hope everyone had great holidays!) and for this entry I wanted to focus on two of my favorite poets; Wordsworth and Blake. I find a huge similarity between these two, especially when it comes to their strong focus on the childhood and innocence. In my Children's Literature course my Prof. Equated the modern emphasis on the child with innocence and purity in particular to two famous works by the English poets: Ode to immortality and Songs of Innocence/Experience. When you look at the poems you find a deep melancholy for the states of youth and purity, yet they are divided in that I think Wordsworth is more optimistic than Blake, who sees adulthood as tainted, corrupt, and completely void of anything really good.

In Ode to Immortality's tenth stanza Wordsworth, like Blake, mentions lambs, and the innocence of nature and youth, and tying these things together, talks about loosing their state of purity in lines such as the following:

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now ever taken from my sight
Though nothing can bring back that hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower"

Though similar to Blake's The Lamb in Songs of Innocence, in Wordsworth's Ode the reader is also told that something remains, that we can be comforted,"In the soothing thoughts that spring/ Out of human suffering." Here, one gets a sense of optimism, that we should be glad that we had a chance to experience what we did, that we take comfort in what is left behind. In Tinturn Abbey we see this optimism and renewal when Wordsworth gets enjoyment from watching his sister Dorothy enjoy nature for the first time, just as Michael did with his son, Luke in Michael. Blake, however, is a different story.

William Blake's Songs of Innocence/ Experience always stike me when I read them. There is something about his poetry that reminds me of the sublime-- one almost gets a sense of awe, or you find yoursel f thinking, "How did this guy WRITE this stuff?"If you haven't read them, I suggest you do. It's parallel poems that illustrate the same things, one in the point of view of an innocent child, another relating to adulthood and corruption in London. They are very.. strange, and there is a deep sense of longing for something that has past. Blake talks about innocence as soft, like a lamb. This can be seen in The Lamb when Blake writes:

Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost though know who made thee?
Gave the clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly bright.

The imagery is that of softness, and comforting. Yet there is no hope or optimism, Blake instead only talks about religion and God and how we are all children of God. In Songs of Experience, Blake gives us a parallel poem called The Tyger in which he questions the evil, symmetrical reasoning of adults--there is none of that renewed happiness or taking comfort in what was that makes Wordsworth so enjoyable.

From Milton to Wordsworth

2004-12-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

In my English literature course we talked a lot about the move from the mythic and epic poets to Wordsworh. I think it is an extremely important move, as was stressed by Kenneth Clark in the video we saw. With Wordsworth a new epic was born. We saw a move from the public epic of Milton to what Keats called, “the egotistical sublime”, or a private epic of the self where the individual became the subject. My Professor talked about how within these new epics there exists a language charged with meaning to the most possible degree. It is emotion, but emotion shaped. We see this definition when Wordsworth mentions in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that poetry is, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” but also, “emotion recollected in tranquility. This may seem like an oxymoron, but I believe Wordsworth is trying to say that poetry must have strong feeling but it must also be a feeling that is structured and formed so it can be communicated. I’m taking American Literature and currently reading some of the avant-garde poet Gertrude Stein, and it would be very interesting to compare the works, since the modernists and experimentalists of the early-mid twentieth century broke away from this and concentrated only on the stream of their feelings, without any real rules or structures. But, I’ve digressed….

In Paradise Lost, Milton takes on a public narrative that belongs to us all; the story of the fall of Satan is available to all of us. My Professor mentioned that Milton exists in a historical trajectory, in which you can trace Milton by starting to Homer and working down to himself. He uses the same conventions, such as the invoking of a Muse to aid him or the heroic, powerful characters like that of Satan. With Wordsworth and the romantics however, we get a complete SHIFT from this. The focus becomes the private epic, and this was revolutionary. The focus becomes I. Furthermore, Wordsworth is the first to take the epic literary tradition and shift it to that of the ordinary. He concentrates not on the Classical heroes or gods, but on his own feelings as he can be seen in “Tinturn Abbey” when he writes the following lines:

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps
As have no slight or trivial influence…

Here, one can see how Wordsworth is giving specific reference to feelings. This is, in simple terms, the definition of what poetry is today, and it is all because of Wordsworth’s revolutionary move

The Famous Cat-Fight

2004-11-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

Before I move on to Wordsworth, I decided to take one last look at All for Love, I was especially interested in the scene between Octavia and Cleopatra, mainly because it was arguably the most entertaining in the play and more importantly, because it is a scene that establishes a good comparison between the two kinds of love in the work(symbolized by the different regions, as we saw in class)-dutiful and passionate. My question is, Who wins?

The sharp contrast between the two women themselves is important ; one is Roman, a dignified matron, the other a passionate, sensuous, grand queen. These differences establish Octavia as Antony's other choice. Whether she is the right or wrong choice is left to the audience, though I believe Cleopatra seems much more human and appealing. Eugene M. Waith, in his article The Herculean Hero asserts this when he states:

Even Ventidius, who represents Roman values, though qualified by his admiration for Antony, relies on Octavia to make the Roman idea compelling. Thus, though the issue remains Antony's choice of love or his responsibilities in the world...the choice at the centre of the play becomes one between love and marriage" (80).

The scene becomes like a battleground, Egypt versus Rome, passionate love versus dutiful love. Octavia's weapons are her children and her unrequited love as well as Vestidius's help, while Cleopatra only has her consuming, transcendental, "extravagant love, which has made her give up her good name in order to become his mistress" (Waith 80). Here, Waith asserts how Cleopatra has chosen love over pride, while Octavia's dignitiy never leaves her for a moment. Furthermore, the scene in the fourth Act with Dolabella tests the truth of this passion for both Antony and his queen. Octavia's love in the same act becomes overwhelmed by her (completley justifiable) anger at Antony's jealousy and accusations, and Waith asserts that when she leaves, "{her love} is reduced to duty, its basic component all along" (80). Octavia and Ventidius' efforts to use duty and reason to control Antony and redirect him are unsuccesful, and Cleopatra ultimatley I think, wins the cat-fight.

Works Cited

Wraith, Eugene M. "The Herculean Hero". Twentieth Century Enterpretations of All for Love Bruce King, ed. New York: Prentice, 1968.

Shakespeare vs Dryden

2004-11-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I bit the bullet, sat down tonight and read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and compared it with All for Love. I have to say, despite the fact I am a big Shakespeare admirer, that I actually liked Dryden’s version better, to my surprise! It would be interesting to compare Dryden's All for Love with Phedre, which it reminded me of. I wonder, are all tragedies of a certain period alike?

I took out a book which gives a very good analysis of All for Love titled Dryden and Shakespeare written by John Bailey. I think that its very important to look at the title of Dryden’s play and that of Shakespeare; in it we find a good clue as one difference between the works. In A & C there are many characters and rivalries and political intrigues that do not appear in Dryden'’ version. He has only ten characters whereas Shakespeare has thirty-four. Indeed, Dryden’s play is really just what the name says it is, the action and characters revolves around the love between Antony and Cleopatra and nothing else. Antony moves back and forth, like a pendulum, between his friends, his family, his duty, and then love, but the action of the play never strays, As Bailey writes, “Here, we have no Pompey or Lepidus…no superfluous or semi-superflous scenes like some half-dozen of Shakespeare’s play; here the circumference never forgets its center” (17). We do not lose sight of the immoral passion at the center of Dryden’s play and I find this is not so in A & C. This can go back to the unities of the French Renaissance, which seem stronger in Dryden than Shakespeare. As Bailey asserts, “Shakespeare’s action occupies twelve years, and takes place in about twelve different scenes; Dryden’s All for Love takes place at Alexandria, and in a few hours”(17). I believe that the fact that Dryden’s play is more confined than Shakespeare’s is one of the reasons it is part of the canon of literature today.

Also, I got a sense that Cleopatra really loves Antony by the end of All for Love. She provides him with a letter refusing Caeser’s offer and even though she deserts him at Actium, Bailey writes that “there is no reason to doubt her own statement that her flight was due to simple fear” (51). In contrast, the Cleopatra of Shakespeare seems to be more power-hungry and even playing a stake’s game, especially in the scene with Octavius’ messenger Thidias. That’s all I have for now!

Works Cited

Bailey, John. Dryden and Shakespeare. New York: Garland, 1982.

Theatre of the French Renaissance

2004-11-15T18:42:00.000-08:00

Ah! I've been getting really behind on my blogs! I went ot the library today and was about to take out all these books on Dryden to post something for tonight when I got to the checkout and realized that my library card was at home! Well, I will come up with three or four interesting posts by next week but until then...I was digging through my old notes the other day and I found a paper that a Professor at Seneca College gave me for my World Literature Course. I read both Tartuffe by Moliere and Phedre by Jean Racine in that course and found them really enjoyable, especially the former. I recieved alot of information on French Theatre and since Dryden mentions it in his Essay, I thought I would include it as an extra entry. The following is some interesting facts on the theatre of the French Renaissance from a handout I recieved in that course:

When was the French renaissance?
1630 to 1700

What was the French Academy?
An organization, chartered in 1637, patterened after the Italian academies, and limited to "forty men of letters"The guiding force behind the Academy was Cardinal Richeliue (1568-1642)

Why was it formed? What was its function?
It was foremd to study, and codify the French language and literary, including dramatic, style.

What are the five neo-classical rules of dramatic structure?
The five neoclassical rules were established by the French Academy. They were (1) anything which happens on stage must be able to happen in real life, (2) every drama must preach a moral lesson by showing that good will by rewarded and evil will be punished, (3) there could be no mixing of dramatic styles--a play was either a comedy or a tragedy, but not a tragicomedy(4) a play must observe the three unities of time place and action (5) a drama must be divided into five acts.

Why were soliloquies not allowed in neo-classical French drama?
Because in a realistic presentation a soliloquy is a character talking to himself, something which is not very "real"

What types of characters were permitted in a neo-classical tragedy?
A tragedy must draw its charachters from the nobility. The plot must deal with the affairs of a state (who will be the next king), the ending must be tragic (everyone dies) and the dialogue poetic.

Comedy?
A comedy should draw its characters from the middle and lower classes. The plot should deal with domestic affairs (a love story), the ending should be happy (everyone gets married) and the dialogue should be written in prose.

What is the purpose, or function, of drama?
To preach a moral lesson. To show that good is rewarded and evil punished.

What are the three unities?
The unity of (1) time (the action of a play must take place within twenty four hours, (2) place (the action of a drama must take place in one location, or setting) and (3)action (there shall be no sub-plots)

Well, that's it. In reading this, one can see what the Professor means by "a time when people liked to have rules."Furthermore, one understands how in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy Neandre, who is arguable Dryden himself, disagrees with many of these rules. They leave no room for imagination and can become repetitive. Well, I will have my next post up soon, and it will be researched. I already have my library card in my bookbag!

Wit and Dryden and Sidney?

2004-11-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

When I was reading Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy I found it interesting how many times I came across the use of that little, but powerful word "wit." One quick example is in the section "The Wit of the Ancients, the Universal" where Dryden writes about Plautus and states, "his wit is nothing." This raised a few questions in my mind: What was wit to Dryden? Why was wit so important?

Well, after contemplating the above and finding no real answer I digged up a dictionary to get the literary translation and here it is:

My Webster's New Dictionary defines wit as: "sense, intellect; ingenuity in connecting seemingly incongrous ideas; persons gifted with this power" (405).

"Wit" was very important in the Eighteenth Century and you can see it no matter where you look in Restoration literature. Heroines in plays, such as The Rover by Aphra Behn, which I read for another course in the summer, had to have wit for them to be worthy of love from the hero. Wit was what attracted people to eachother, it was sought after, true wit was the driving force behind satire(and the best satire was produced during the Restoration), the number one prerequisite to being a good writer in Dryde's time. It is a word that is not used so often nowadays. In our contemporary world I think it's safe to say that we tend to say "witty" more than "wit. " Like, you might hear, "that was a "witty remark", or a "witty film." and wit is not the most important factor behind our popular literature. Sidney was definitley a wit, and I think you can even see some of his work shine through in Dryden. For Example, in "Shakespeare and Ben Jonson Compared" of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy Dryden writes, "{Shakespeare} was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacle of books to read Nature, he looked inwards, and found her there..."

This passage can be compared with the beginning of Astrophil and Stella when Sidney writes in his first sonnet:

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite--
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write

Here, I found that Sidney's Astrophil is much like how Dryden describes Shakespeare. Someone who looks inside themselves to find their true art. The passage about Jonson and Shakespeare also displays Dryden's wit in the form of his writing. He goes on to say, "{Shakespeare} is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can ever say he had a fit subject for his wit and then raise himself as high above the rest of poets." I found it interesting how the two lines are paralleled together, one criticizing, one praising Shakespeare. This creates a sense of balance in Dryden's writing.

I am definitley going to start going to the library and researching Dryden so I can come up with better arguments. That's all for now!

"Farewell, the worthiest knight that lived."

2004-10-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

Since we are moving on from Sidney to other critics/poets/writers, and I wasn't exactly sure what we were supposed to read and write about this week, I decided to take one more look at Astrophil and Stella as a goodbye to Sidney. I am glad that we started the course off with Sidney because he seems to have laid the stepping stones for all the critics ahead,(all work is an imitation of another after all) whether English or British or whatever, and also because in an age where novels are so easy and "light" and fun to read, he has given me a further understanding of how satisfying it can be to read something that is a challenge. Ok, its late and I am tired so I am not sure if that made sense but basically I am trying to say that we must appreciate works that are difficult, even frustrating, because they allow us to grow as intellectuals and as people. Also, I can walk away from Sidney's AS with a slightly better understanding of the people and customs of the Elizabethan age than when I came into the class.

I don't know about anyone else, but one of the things I really like to look at when I analyze any work of fiction is the use of color and the images that color evokes. However, as I looked at AS I found that at least in the first part of the work (I have two essays and an exam coming up so I couldn't read all the work again!) there is little mention of color except for two primary ones: the image of white or the "light" and black. Everywhere you read, black black black. Stella's eyes, "the blackest face of woe", even the mention of ink, which of course is black. This struck me as interesting because we usually associate black with drearyness, dread, depression, and so on, yet this is not to be found in the poem at all. (Perhaps the ending can be argued to seem depressing, but I see it more as as incomplete... I never felt depressed when reading AS.) Instead, it is a poem fused with passion and love and desire, things we usually associate with the color red. Yet there is hardly any mention of the color red in the poem. Interesting...

Was the color black commonly used in Elizabethean poetry? Could the use of white and black symbolize the conflicting emotions in Astrophil?

That's really all the comments I can think of for now. Hopefully I will come up with something a bit more interesting in further works! Personally, I can't wait for Elliot.

Astrophil and Stella Continued

2004-10-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

After our last lecture, I must say that I have a different view of Astrophil and Stella than I did when I wrote my last post. Because the language in AS was a barrier, I found that I was concentrating so hard on words Sidney used and the placement of them that I missed much of what he was saying. When the Professor read through and explained some of the sonnets in class I began to see Sidney's genius shine through the poem. I was interested, and attempted to read it again. In doing so, I realized that in a way, I think one understands and enjoys Sidney's poetry the way Astrophil fell in love with Stella: gradually. Furthermore, I began to see the poem more as one poem then different little poems, though I still have to admit that the length turned me off a bit.

Also, I find it is indeed very important to read the notes at the back of Astrophil and Stella; it makes the problem of language less significant. Without the notes one feels very, very lost in a see of Elizabeathean diction. It is tedious but crucial to understanding the text. It is very interesting how different the meanings of words were in Sidney's time. I found a link online that has the first stanza of AS in it's original language and found it very different:

http://www.botticellisvision.com/st%20francis%20web%20site/astrophil_and_stella.htm

One thing that I found strange when reading AS was that there seems to be so much work put into the poem and yet in sonnet 28 I felt like Sidney was saying to his readers that his words were intended to be simple and came purely from his heart:

"But know that I, in pure simplicity/ Breath out the flames which burn within my heard" (164).

There are so many allusions and inventions in this poem and it is so perfectly written that it shocked me to read the above lines. Astrophil and Stella is a beautiful, passionate poem but to call it simple seems wrong. Because of all the wit packed into it, can Astrophil really say that he is writing purely what is in his heart? When the poem itself is so intelligent? Sidney must have put much thought into it. The poem is witty and meant to be contemplated many times, it doesn't strike me as simple at all. Am I interpreting this wrong?

Did sonnet 54 remind anyone else of King Lear? I found myself comparing Astrophil to Cordelia, who cannot tell her father how much she loves him, she can only love him.

That's all for now. Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving!!

Just some Random Thoughts on The Defence of Poesy

2004-10-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy seems to me to be a masterpiece of rhetoric. After reading the work, I was fully convinced that the "Poet" is the master teacher of moral truth, above all other professions of Sidney's time. I believe that the author was following in Castiglione Baldassare's footsteps by trying to correct a bad reputation that poets had collected during the time of the renaissance. Just as Baldassare's The Defense of the Courtier had defended the courtiers (who, up to the point in which it was written, had a bad name), so The Defense works to convince the reader of Sidney's time that poets are the bringers of real images, knowledge, and truth.

Sidney uses literary references, such as the early Greek poet Homer, to back up his point that the earliest literary works known to man were not books on astronomy, or philosophy, but poetry. One example of this can be seen when he states that, "Let learned Greece in any of his manifold sciences show me one book Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets" (213). The fact that he is referring to actual people makes his point all the more valid, and there is truth in his words which ring true throughout the Poesy.

One thing I found amusing was that Sidney seems to believe that Philosopher's are boring. A good example of this can be seen when Sidney writes that he seems to see them, "...coming towards me with a sullen gravity, as though they could not abide vice by daylight..."(220). However, Aristotle, perhaps the most famous philosopher, seems to be very much at route in Sidney's own work and philosophy.This is evident when he writes:

Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis-that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth--to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture-with this end, to teach and delight(217)

One other thing I found interesting was that the Defense of Poesy was very gender bias. Everyone that Sidney refers to or talks about are men. Is he defending only poetry written by men? Does he consider the relationship between the person who is reading the poem and the poet?

Astrophil and Stella

2004-09-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Professor Kuin mentioned in class that a blog is not an essay, but more like a journal, therefore, I suppose my entry for Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella" will simply consist of my, sorry to say, slightly poor opinion of the work.

I found that he language one encounters when reading the sonnets of "Astrophil and Stella" makes the work much better suited to three kinds of people: Actors, those with a deep passion for poetry, and those with at least an undergraduate degree in 16th century literature. Maybe I am exaggerating; it's certainly not as bad or hard to take in as Purgatory in The Divine Comedy. However, personally, when I got halfway through the poem I had to put the book I was reading from down because my head was hurting!

This is not to say that it is not a beautifully written piece of poetry. When the Proffessor read the work aloud this was all the more evident and I enjoyed it. The language is lovely. Sidney was very skilled and, true to his "Defense of Poesy," the author does teach you a simpler lesson through his work than a philosopher would: in this case, that love can be confusing,takes time to grow in a man's heart, falls under a hierarchy, can be a torment, etc,etc! And he achieves this through lines such as, "Some lovers speak, when their muses entertain/Of hopes begot by fear, of wot not what desires."

But the length is what really turned me off of the sonnets. For some reason, when I think of poetry, I think of something relatively short. I guess Homer fans would have my head for writing that, but there was something in the length of "Astrophil and Stella" that made it seem too repetitive. As I was reading the sonnet, in my head I couldn't help think, "How many times can Stella's beauty be described?"

The Professor was talking about porportion and Sidney achieves it well in "Astrophil and Stella." I really enjoyed he fact that every sonnet had a definite beginning, slightly apart from the previous sonnet, and end. I like the Petrarchal format, which reminds me of the satiric poems of the eighteenth century (the works of Alexander Pope, for example). This gave the poem a sense of fluidity and movement. I especially enjoyed the seemingly hurried pace of the Tenth Song. One of my favorite parts of the sonnet is the wonderful beginning, with Astrophil telling how he met Stella, "Not at first sight, nor with a dribbled shot/Love gave the wound which while I breath will bleed/...I loved, but straight did not what love decreed."
These lines in the second sonnet of the first song almost hold a realist, modernistic view that is rare in the renaissance and that I believe doesn't fully emerge until the 19th to 20th centuries. Astrophil falls for Stella in a very unconventional way, which I really liked!

Unfortunatley, I feel that for several sonnets afterwards, Sidney writes what seem to me like musings for several pages and that is where I lost interest.

Overall, I am not saying that Sidney was not very talented. Again, the language is very beautiful and drips with a romance and feeling that I would say even rivals Shakespeare. ( For example, all of the seventh sonnet in the first song). But, I have to admit that Sidney is not on my list of favorite authors, though perhaps that will change with time and patience....

My First Post

2004-09-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

I finally have my blog up! This is really great. I am looking forward to updating it and to the class.