El Paso Community College Syllabus Part I Instructor's Course

El Paso Community College Syllabus Part I Instructor’s Course Requirements Spring 2011

Literature 2341, Section 05, CRN#20834

Welcome to Introduction to Literature 2341.05! My name is Adam Webb and I will be your instructor for this semester!

Please make sure that you are in the correct classroom! Double-check your schedules!

Personal Contact Information Instructor: Adam Webb Meeting time: 8:00-10:40 Sunday Classroom: B100 (this will probably change) Office: B242 Phone: Best way to reach me is through email Email: [email protected]

My office hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:00 am – 12:50 pm, Sunday 11:00 am-12:00 pm, by email, or by appointment

Texts & Materials:

Flash/Travel drive (optional, to save your work on) Access to the Internet either at home or in school (for PBWorks) (if you have a laptop, you might want to bring it to class) NO TEXTBOOK (this syllabus is your textbook)

Research and Writing website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Course description and introduction: This is a survey course, meaning that we will read, discuss, and write about many various authors throughout important eras and ages, starting in the 14th century and working our way up to the postmodern age. This course is designed to help students grasp the important literature and the age or era in which it was written. In lieu of the era/ages, and literature will be reading and discussing in class, we will also cover some of the major literary theories that can be applied to analyzing them.

Purpose: The purpose of this course is to engage students in various writings throughout multiple periods, as well as the various literary theories that can be applied to them.

Goals: Students will develop and try to answer questions about the readings we cover in class 2

Students will engage in reading various authors from various periods Students will engage in classroom discussions over those readings Students will engage in writing and researching the readings we cover in class Students will engage in applying literary theory to their writing and researching assignments

Objectives: Students will read, write about, and discuss the readings we cover in class Students will actively participate in literature circles Students will write and research about the readings we cover in class

Writing Formats and Standards: All essays should be typed! Please follow these standard requirements: Follow MLA guidelines. Use 1 inch margins all around (when appropriate) Double spaced (when appropriate) Use 12 point font in Times New Roman (when appropriate)

General policies

Attendance—Drops: A critical element of learning in this course is the interaction between the students and the instructor. Being absent means that neither I nor your classmates can help you with understanding an assignment or any other questions you have about writing. If you feel that you cannot attend because of outside reasons such as schedule conflicts, it is up to you to withdraw from the course. The instructor assumes no responsibility for student withdrawal from the course.

Electronic Devices: Please do not use your cell phones during class time. If you need to take a call or make a call, please step outside of the classroom to do so. No texting in class. No phone or iPod music in class. If you have a laptop, please bring it to class!

Late Work: No late work will be accepted. A zero will be assigned all missing assignments, including writing assignments and quizzes. Definitely NO chewing gum in class!

Students with Disabilities: The Center for Students with Disabilities on Valle Verde‘s campus is located in room C-112. Please visit their website located on the home page of EPCC‘s website: http://dnn.epcc.edu/default.aspx?alias=dnn.epcc.edu/csd.

Plagiarism & Cheating: Students will be reported to the Academic Dean and Vice President for Student Services. A grade of zero will be given for the assignment. Consequences may also include suspension and a written report on your academic record. Cheating consists of submitting someone else‘s work under your name (plagiarism), obtaining information from someone other than the instructor during an exam, making copies of disks, etc. Please adhere to the student code of conduct for the college in matters of academic honesty.

Course Grade: The course grade will be determined by the instructor‘s evaluation and judgment of several elements: 1) writing projects, including papers, will be weighted and accounted for 60% of the course grade; 2) PBWorks wiki pages, readings, and in-class discussions will be weighted and accounted for 40% of the course grade. The grading scale on the official course description will be used for this class.

Purpose of Writing Assignments: The writing projects will be connected. Students are encouraged to research and write about things we read and discuss in class. Students are encouraged to use their time wisely doing these research projects. Instead of hard copies, students will be turning their work in online, using PBWorks. PBWorks is a free online program where you can your own personal space for putting pictures, uploading MS Word documents, and adding hyperlinks. We will discuss more about PBWorks in class. PBWorks = https://plans.pbworks.com/signup/basic20 (PBWorks is free). As part of the writing assignments listed below, there will be readings covering them.

Structure of the course

Literature circles - students will all read the selections and then get into groups of 3-4 and discuss the readings amongst themselves as well as answer any questions about the readings. Groups will then share their findings with the class. This sharing will take the form of informal presentations and discussions.

Readings - readings will consist of various selections from various authors from five major eras: the renaissance, the enlightenment, the romantic, the modern, and the postmodern eras, as well as major literary theories.

Theories - the five major theories we will be covering in this class are New Historicism, Deconstruction, Marxism, New Criticism, and Psychoanalysis.

Technology - we will be a paper free class, which means that all major writing and research assignments will be submitted electronically through a web-based wiki space called PBWorks. All students will be required to create their own PBWorks wiki page this semester. It is free.

Writing and research assignments - there will be two major research and writing assignments. The first research and writing assignment will consist of doing a close reading and analysis of one of the poems or short stories we cover in class. The second research and writing assignment will consist of choosing one of the major theories we cover during the course of the semester and applying it to one of the readings we cover in class.

Grade Breakdown

Class participation 20 points out of a 100 PBWorks wiki page 20 points out of a 100 First writing and research assignment 30 points out of a 100 Due on Feb. 27 Second writing and research assignment 30 points out of a 100 Due on April 24 Total Points 100

NOTE: All era/ages covered are roughly based off a Western perspective, which essentially means that it is the perspective(s) of Anglo/Europeans. We will be reading European and North American authors. We will read these authors chronologically. 4

How To Set Up And Use A PBWorks Account For Free

1. You will need Internet access, once you are on the Internet, type in this URL Address: http://pbworks.com/ 2. Click Sign up at the right-hand corner on the website 3. You should come to this webpage that displays this URL Address: https://plans.pbworks.com/ 4. Scroll down and select the ―Free Basic‖ service 5. You should come to a webpage that displays this URL Address: https://plans.pbworks.com/signup/basic20 6. You will need to name your future PBWorks‘ page something unique (i.e. compositionawebb, janethamiltonwriting09) because a more simple name (i.e. joselongoria, beckypena) might already be taken on the server 7. You may select ―For Education‖ for your workspace 8. Company Type is ―Higher-ed classroom‖ 9. Workspace purpose is ―Collaborative classroom‖ 10. Type your first name 11. Type in your email address (you may your university email address or your personal email address if you want to) 12. Create a unique password, them retype it (PLEASE write down your username and your password so that you do not forget it) 13. Click ―Next‖ at the right hand bottom corner 14. Open a new TAB and check your email account for a verification email 15. When you check your email, you should receive a message that has this paragraph in it: ―We won't finish actually making your workspace until you log in, so please do that now. To finish creating your workspace, click below:‖ Please click on the blue link below this paragraph 16. Once you click on the link, you will be taken to a new screen that reads: ―Choose your workspace's security settings‖ 17. For Who can view this workspace? PLEASE select ―Anyone‖ 18. For Who can edit this workspace? PLEASE select ―Only people I invite or approve‖ 19. For ―Accept PBWorks Terms of Service‖ PLEASE check the box that reads: ―I agree to PBWorks terms of service‖ 20. Then click on ―Take Me To My Workspace‖ 21. You should come to a webpage that reads your workspace name and says ―FrontPage‖ 22. Click ―Edit‖ at the top, left-hand corner and select and delete all of the writing in the edit box that reads: Welcome to PBworks 2.0 This is a real workspace! Please edit this page, create new pages, and invite others to use the workspace with you. Get Great Ideas! Learn what makes a good collaboration project and see how other PBworks customers are using their workspaces. Check out our PBworks educator community (not a support forum). Need Help? We're here for you: The PBworks Manual and 30-second training videos can help show you how to edit, add videos and invite users. The best way to get your support questions answered is to click the help link at the top of this page. Our support gurus will get back to you asap. 23. Type ―About Your Name (i.e. About Joanna)‖ and then select highlight what you typed, go to ―Add Link,‖ and you should get a box that reads – ―Insert Link.‖ Click on ―Browse Pages & Files,‖ then click on ―Insert Link‖ and a new link will be formed. Click ―Save.‖ 24. Click on ―About Your Name‖ and will come to a webpage that reads: ―Name Your 5

Page‖ 25. Click ―Create page‖ 26. You will come to another ―edit‖ box, in this edit box I would like you to type something about yourself, answering these questions below: What is your name and where are you from? What is your favorite subject? Why are you interested in this major? What are some things you like to do in your free time? What hobbies do you have? 27. Then click ―Save‖ 28. Go to the top, right-hand corner where it reads ―FrontPage‖ and click on that link 29. Once you are on your FrontPage, click ―edit‖ 30. Cast your eyes to the right-hand of the webpage that reads: ―Insert Links‖ and click on ―Images and files,‖ then click on ―Upload files‖ (NOTE: If you do not have any images of yourself saved on a drive or on a MySpace/Facebook page, take a few seconds to find an image that you would like to put on your PBWorks‘ page). 31. If you do have an image, make sure that you put the cursor where you want the image to be on your page and then click ―Upload files,‖ a box will open and you can choose the image that you want on your page 32. Once it is done downloading the image, click on the image file name, drag and drop it onto the page (NOTE: You can select the image and reposition it using the left, center, and right alignment options on your toolbar; you can also resize the image once it is on the page) (NOTE: To delete an image once on the page, simply select that image and scroll up to the toolbar right beneath the URL Address bar, click on ―edit‖ and then click ―cut‖) (NOTE: Once you have uploaded an image to your page under a certain file name and you want to use that same file but edited, you will need to re-name it and upload that edited file) 33. To upload a MS Word document to your page, click on ―edit‖ and type what you want the file to be called on your page (i.e. Joanna‘s essay) 34. Next, go over to the ―Images and files‖ and select ―Upload files,‖ choose the MS Word document that you want to upload and select ―open‖ 35. Next, highlight the text in your box (i.e. Joanna‘s Resume) and then click on the recently upload MS Word document (it should automatically link that file with the text you have in your edit box), click ―Save‖ 36. To upload a YouTube or personal video, click ―edit‖ and place the cursor in your edit box where you want the video to appear 37. Click ―Insert Plugin‖ and select the section that reads: ―Video & Photo,‖ choose the type of video it is that you are trying to upload to your page, then once the video appears on your page, click ―Ok‖ at the bottom of that video‘s screen (NOTE: The video might look a little funky in edit mode, but it will come out normal once you click save) 38. My suggestions: Keep playing around with organizing the documents, pictures, and images on your page until you are content with the way they look, play around with the font sizes and colors, look over the toolbar and see what else you can do (i.e. such as making tables) 39. Please send me the URL Address link (i.e. http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com) to your PBworks wiki page so that I can link my PBworks wiki page to yours. Send me your URL link to this email: [email protected]

Another helpful handout on using PBWorks: http://compositionawebb.pbworks.com/f/pbworks_larc.pdf

Literature Circles

We will be utilizing literature circles this semester. We will be using them because they will help us fully and thoroughly discuss important key elements in the literature we read.

For all of the readings we cover in class, I will provide a series of questions to ask. However, you may also ask your own questions.

Each literature circle will contain 3-4 individuals.

All students will expected to participate in their literature circles by engaging in discussions, asking questions about the readings, and answering those questions.

Some important factors to make your literature work for you: Read the literature Annotate your readings (keep notes) Jot down questions Highlight certain passages that you think are important or that you have a questions about Keep an open mind during group discussions about the readings Define or research key terms or concepts that are mentioned in the readings

First Writing & Research Assignment (30% out of 100% of your overall grade)

Assignment Description: Choose a poem or one of the readings we cover in class and do a close reading of it. You will be expected to provide direct quotes and or paraphrased information from the poem/reading you choose.

Basic Writing Requirements: Consistency in font, spacing, grammar, spelling, and style Direct and paraphrased quotations from the text (i.e. poem or reading) you choose to do a close reading of Detailed analysis and critique of the chosen text

Optional Writing Requirements: Secondary sources that support your close reading (i.e. articles that discuss topics/elements in your text) Use of literary theory we cover in class (i.e. Deconstructionism, New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, etc.)

Grading of the Paper: The paper will be graded on the elements mentioned above in the basic writing requirements Grammar, spelling, punctuation Use, develop, exploration, and advancement of concepts, ideas, and definitions Effective use of visuals/images (optional)

The importance of doing a ―close reading,‖ that means reading the article really close to your face, not really, it means reading and re-reading an article very carefully, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and sometimes word by word. We do a close reading in order to understand the message(s) the writing is trying to convey to the reader, interpretating and analyzing the content in the writing. Sometimes this even means looking up a word or concept that you do not understand.

Doing a close reading sometimes means doing a re-reading of the article. So, you must have patience when reading, and if you are a ―speed reader,‖ it might mean slowing down a little bit, or you might miss important points or passages. If you are a ―slow reader,‖ it might mean getting started a little earlier in order to allow yourself enough time to read and then write s paper on it.

Some helpful websites for close reading strategies: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html http://www.criticalthinking.org/articles/sts-ct-art-close-reading-p3.cfm And our famous Wikipedia entry on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_reading

These are invaluable websites for building your works cited pages: The Bedford Bibliographer - http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/bbibliographer/bbib_frameset.htm Easy Bib - http://www.easybib.com/ Son of Citation Machine - http://citationmachine.net/ Citation Creation - http://www.citationcreation.com/

Second Writing & Research Assignment (30% out of 100% of your overall grade)

Assignment Description: Choose one of the major literary theories (Deconstructionism, New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, New Historicism, or Marxism) and then apply it to one of the pieces of literature we covered in class (you may use multiple pieces of literature if you desire, however, you may only choose one major literary theory). Once again, you will be expected to do a close reading of the piece of literature. You will be expected to provide direct quotes and or paraphrased information from the poem/reading you choose, as well as applying the literary theory to the close reading this time.

Basic Writing Requirements: Consistency in font, spacing, grammar, spelling, and style Direct and paraphrased quotations from the text(s) (i.e. poem or reading) you choose to do a close reading of Detailed analysis and critique of the chosen text(s) Application of the literary theory to the chosen text(s) (i.e. Deconstructionism, New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, New Historicism, or Marxism) Secondary sources that support your close reading (i.e. articles that discuss topics/elements in your text)

Reader Reviewing

This activity will require you to collaborate with a peer in class and read over one another‘s papers. While reading over your peer‘s paper, please consider these elements:

How does the writing address a thesis sentence or a research question? How effective is the organization of the information in the writing? How effectively does the writing present complex concepts and definitions of terms? How effectively does the writing analyze the text(s)? How effectively does the writing apply research (i.e. secondary sources)? How are direct quotations and/or paraphrases used/applied in the writing? How are other features, such as style, word choice, sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar effectively used in the writing?

Questions to ask of the writer:

What more could be added to the writing? What sections of the writing need to be developed? Explain how the thesis sentence or research question is addressed or answered in the writing. Explain how the sources (i.e. direct quotations or paraphrases) address the thesis sentence or research question.

Questions to ask of the reader:

What is the purpose of the writing? How thorough is the analysis of the text(s)? How does the research and use of secondary sources support or further explain the thesis sentence and/or research question? Does there seem to be anything missing from the analysis or in the writing in general? Explain.

Class Plans & Readings (subject change)

Key Words that will be important all semester long:

Ambiguity - Doubtfulness or uncertainty as regards interpretation.

Analogy - Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.

Humanism - A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth. (Philosophy) the denial of any power or moral value superior to that of humanity; the rejection of religion in favor of a belief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts.

Imitate - To use or follow as a model. To copy exactly; reproduce. To appear like; resemble.

Interpretation - An explanation or conceptualization by a critic of a work of literature, painting, music, or other art form; an exegesis. the act or process of interpreting or explaining; elucidation

Paradigm - One that serves as a pattern or model. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Rationalism - Reliance on reason rather than intuition to justify one's beliefs or actions. (Philosophy) Philosophy a. the doctrine that knowledge about reality can be obtained by reason alone without recourse to experience b. the doctrine that human knowledge can all be encompassed within a single, usually deductive, system c. the school of philosophy initiated by René Descartes, the French philosopher and mathematician (1596- 1650), which held both the above doctrines. The belief that knowledge and truth are ascertained by rational thought and not by divine or supernatural revelation

Realism - An inclination toward literal truth and pragmatism. The representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form. (Philosophy) a. The scholastic doctrine, opposed to nominalism, that universals exist independently of their being thought. b. The modern philosophical doctrine, opposed to idealism, that physical objects exist independently of their being. perceived.

Rebirth - A second or new birth; reincarnation. A renaissance; a revival.

Representation - The act of representing or the state of being represented. Something that represents, as: a. An image or likeness of something. b. An account or statement, as of facts, allegations, or arguments. c. An expostulation; a protest. d. A presentation or production, as of a play.

Scholasticism - The dominant western Christian theological and philosophical school of the Middle Ages, based on the authority of the Latin Fathers and of Aristotle and his commentators. Close adherence to the methods, traditions, and teachings of a sect or school. Scholarly conservatism or pedantry.

Secularism - Religious skepticism or indifference. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education. All definitions are from www.freedictionary.com, 2011. 11

Interpretation Handout & Discussion

Interpretation –Explaining how we understand and perceive something, such as an event, person, experience, etc.; explicating (explaining) what we observe; analysis, critique. Interpretation is a process of describing and explaining.

―All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.‖ ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher, author, 1844-1900)

―There are no moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of phenomena.‖ ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher, author, 1844-1900)

―All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.‖ ~ George Eliot (English Victorian Novelist. Pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880)

―I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in „We, the people.‘‖ ~ Barbra Jordan (attorney, 1936- )

―Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.‖ ~ Albert Einstein, (German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)

What or how we interpret? 1. Do not take anything at face value (because it depends on the situation, the context); statements are sometimes only conjecture, or guesses 2. Perception – A lens or lenses in which we view something (how we make meaning of something … how we make something important to our lives) 3. Ideologies – A set of values or beliefs that are political, economic, social, or cultural (biases) that influence our thinking and perceptions of things around us; we all have them 4. Artifact – The subject material (human made) we are actually interpreting, material we are actually interpreting; an artifact can be an event, object, person, experience, etc. 5. Product – The actual interpretation of the artifact(s) (your total creation, the analysis you provide about an actual artifact) 6. Analysis – In the product, we are offering some form or some level of analysis or critique

Some important questions to consider when doing an interpretation: 1. What has been said about the event, object, person, etc. (artifact) you are interpreting? 2. Who has said it? 3. How did the individual(s) interpret the event, object, person, etc.? 4. When did the individual(s) interpret the event, object, person, etc.? 5. Where did the individual(s) interpret the event, object, person, etc.? 6. Why did the individual(s) interpret the event, object, person, etc.?

Also, consider Kenneth Burke‘s Pentad (five steps from 1969) when interpreting: 1. Act: What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts? 2. Scene: Where is the act happening? What is the background situation? 3. Agent: Who is involved in the action? What are their roles? 4. Agency: How do the agents act? By what means do they act? 5. Purpose: Why do the agents act? What do they want?

Burke‘s Pentad retrieved from: http://rhetorica.net/burke.htm, 2011. 12

First Three Weeks

Renaissance Era (14-17 century) lecture and presentation

The Renaissance era encompasses Western music history from 1400 to the beginning of the 1600‘s. This period in time marked the rebirth of humanism, and the revival of cultural achievements for their own sake in all forms of art, including music. The word "Renaissance" in itself is defined as a "rebirth ―or a "reconstruction."

During this time, artists and musicians produced works that displayed more artistic freedom and individualism. This creativity allowed artists to abandon the stricter ways of the Medieval Era. Their art forms rediscovered the ancient Greek ideals. The great masters of the Renaissance were revered in their own lifetimes (rather than after their deaths), which was different from most of their Medieval predecessors. With the new printing techniques, music and musical ideas were able to be preserved and distributed to the people.

The distinctive musical sounds of the Renaissance era were comprised of a smooth, imitative, polyphonic style, as seen in the music of Byrd, Palestrina, and Lassus. While sacred music remained of great importance, secular music was starting to become increasingly common. Therefore, the polyphonic style was not only used in sacred music, but also in secular madrigals.

The repertoire of instrumental music also began to grow considerably. New instruments were invented, including two keyboard instruments called the clavichord and virginal. In addition, many existing instruments were enhanced. The lute became the favored instrument of the time period, and it was established as the standard instrument for family music making during the 16th century.

Masses and motets were the primary forms for sacred vocal polyphony. These were accompanied by the lute or a small instrumental ensemble or consort. Secular vocal forms included motets, madrigals and songs, while instrumental pieces were usually short polyphonic works or music for dancing.

Renaissance polyphony was harmonious when compared with the Medieval style. Imitation was a method that composers used to make elaborate music more coherent and to give the listener a sense of arrangement. Imitation, where one melodic line shares, or "imitates," the same musical theme as a previous melodic line became an important polyphonic technique. Imitative polyphony can be easily heard in the music of Byrd, Gibbons, and Gabrieli. Additionally, the masses and motets of composers such as Josquin also displayed the imitative polyphonic style. Imitative polyphony was so important that it continued into the Baroque period, especially in sacred music for the church.

Retrieved from: http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-ren.htm, 2011.

Discussion over this period: Name at least two important events during this time (even the ones listed and we discuss them a little more detail). .Name at least two important people during this time (even the ones listed and we discuss them a little more detail).

Readings: John Donne – ―The Flea,‖ ―The Apparition‖

―The Flea‖ by John Donne

MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

―The Apparition‖ by John Donne

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead, And that thou thinkst thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see : Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink : And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou 14

Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie, A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee ; and since my love is spent, I'd rather thou shouldst painfully repent, Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.

Anne Bradstreet – ―Verses upon the Burning of our House,‖ ―The Flesh and the Spirit‖

―Verses upon the Burning of our House,‖ By Anne Bradstreet

In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I waken'd was with thund'ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of "fire" and "fire," Let no man know is my Desire. I starting up, the light did spy, And to my God my heart did cry To straighten me in my Distress And not to leave me succourless. Then coming out, behold a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest his grace that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just. It was his own; it was not mine. Far be it that I should repine, He might of all justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the Ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best, My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under the roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee. In silence ever shalt thou lie. Adieu, Adieu, All's Vanity. Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide: And did thy wealth on earth abide, Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust, The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may fly. Thou hast a house on high erect Fram'd by that mighty Architect, 16

With glory richly furnished Stands permanent, though this be fled. It's purchased and paid for too By him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown, Yet by his gift is made thine own. There's wealth enough; I need no more. Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love; My hope and Treasure lies above.

―The Flesh and the Spirit‖ By Anne Bradstreet

In secret place where once I stood Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come. One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere. "Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation? Doth Contemplation feed thee so Regardlessly to let earth go? Can Speculation satisfy Notion without Reality? Dost dream of things beyond the Moon And dost thou hope to dwell there soon? Hast treasures there laid up in store That all in th' world thou count'st but poor? Art fancy-sick or turn'd a Sot To catch at shadows which are not? Come, come. I'll show unto thy sense, Industry hath its recompence. What canst desire, but thou maist see True substance in variety? Dost honour like? Acquire the same, As some to their immortal fame; And trophies to thy name erect Which wearing time shall ne'er deject. For riches dost thou long full sore? Behold enough of precious store. Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold Than eyes can see or hands can hold. Affects thou pleasure? Take thy fill. Earth hath enough of what you will. Then let not go what thou maist find For things unknown only in mind." 17

Spirit.

"Be still, thou unregenerate part, Disturb no more my settled heart, For I have vow'd (and so will do) Thee as a foe still to pursue, And combat with thee will and must Until I see thee laid in th' dust. Sister we are, yea twins we be, Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me, For from one father are we not. Thou by old Adam wast begot, But my arise is from above, Whence my dear father I do love. Thou speak'st me fair but hat'st me sore. Thy flatt'ring shews I'll trust no more. How oft thy slave hast thou me made When I believ'd what thou hast said And never had more cause of woe Than when I did what thou bad'st do. I'll stop mine ears at these thy charms And count them for my deadly harms. Thy sinful pleasures I do hate, Thy riches are to me no bait. Thine honours do, nor will I love, For my ambition lies above. My greatest honour it shall be When I am victor over thee, And Triumph shall, with laurel head, When thou my Captive shalt be led. How I do live, thou need'st not scoff, For I have meat thou know'st not of. The hidden MAnnea I do eat; The word of life, it is my meat. My thoughts do yield me more content Than can thy hours in pleasure spent. Nor are they shadows which I catch, Nor fancies vain at which I snatch But reach at things that are so high, Beyond thy dull Capacity. Eternal substance I do see With which inriched I would be. Mine eye doth pierce the heav'ns and see What is Invisible to thee. My garments are not silk nor gold, Nor such like trash which Earth doth hold, But Royal Robes I shall have on, More glorious than the glist'ring Sun. My Crown not Diamonds, Pearls, and gold, But such as Angels' heads infold. 18

The City where I hope to dwell, There's none on Earth can parallel. The stately Walls both high and trong Are made of precious Jasper stone, The Gates of Pearl, both rich and clear, And Angels are for Porters there. The Streets thereof transparent gold Such as no Eye did e're behold. A Crystal River there doth run Which doth proceed from the Lamb's Throne. Of Life, there are the waters sure Which shall remain forever pure. Nor Sun nor Moon they have no need For glory doth from God proceed. No Candle there, nor yet Torch light, For there shall be no darksome night. From sickness and infirmity Forevermore they shall be free. Nor withering age shall e're come there, But beauty shall be bright and clear. This City pure is not for thee, For things unclean there shall not be. If I of Heav'n may have my fill, Take thou the world, and all that will."

William Shakespeare – ―A Lover‘s Complaint,‖ ―The Phoenix and the Turtle‖

―A Lover‘s Complaint‖ By William Shakespeare

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded A plaintful story from a sist'ring vale, My spirits t'attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale, Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, Tearing of papers, breaking rings atwain, Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. Upon her head a platted hive of straw, Which fortified her visage from the sun, Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw The carcase of a beauty spent and done. Time had not scythed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven's fell rage Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, Which on it had conceited characters, Laund'ring the silken figures in the brine That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears, And often reading what contents it bears; As often shrieking undistinguished woe In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride As they did batt'ry to the spheres intend; Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied To th'orbed earth; sometimes they do extend Their view right on; anon their gazes lend To every place at once, and nowhere fixed, The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plait, Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride; For some, untucked, descended her sheaved hat, Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside; Some in her threaden fillet still did bide, And, true to bondage, would not break from thence, Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet, Which one by one she in a river threw, Upon whose weeping margent she was set; Like usury applying wet to wet, Or monarch's hands that lets not bounty fall 20

Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one, Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood; Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone, Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud; Found yet moe letters sadly penned in blood, With sleided silk feat and affectedly Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, And often kissed, and often 'gan to tear; Cried "O false blood, thou register of lies, What unapproved witness dost thou bear! Ink would have seemed more black and damned here!" This said, in top of rage the lines she rents, Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh, Sometime a blusterer that the ruffle knew Of court, of city, and had let go by The swiftest hours observed as they flew, Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew, And, privileged by age, desires to know In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat, And comely distant sits he by her side, When he again desires her, being sat, Her grievance with his hearing to divide. If that from him there may be aught applied Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage, 'Tis promised in the charity of age.

"Father," she says "though in me you behold The injury of many a blasting hour, Let it not tell your judgement I am old: Not age, but sorrow over me hath power. I might as yet have been a spreading flower, Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied Love to myself, and to no love beside.

"But, woe is me! too early I attended A youthful suit -it was to gain my grace - O, one by nature's outwards so commended That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face. Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place; And when in his fair parts she did abide She was new-lodged and newly deified.

"His browny locks did hang in crooked curls, And every light occasion of the wind Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls. What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find: Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind, For on his visage was in little drawn What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.

"Small show of man was yet upon his chin; His phoenix down began but to appear, Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin, Whose bare outbragged the web it seemed to wear; Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear, And nice affections wavering stood in doubt If best were as it was, or best without.

"His qualities were beauteous as his form, For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free; Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm As oft twixt May and April is to see, When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be. His rudeness so with his authorized youth Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

"Well could he ride, and often men would say `That horse his mettle from his rider takes: Proud of subjection, noble by the sway, What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!' And controversy hence a question takes, Whether the horse by him became his deed, Or he his manage by th' well-doing steed.

"But quickly on this side the verdict went: His real habitude gave life and grace To appertainings and to ornament, Accomplished in himself, not in his case. All aids, themselves made fairer by their place, Came for additions; yet their purposed trim Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

"So on the tip of his subduing tongue All kind of arguments and question deep, All replication prompt, and reason strong, For his advantage still did wake and sleep. To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, He had the dialect and different skill, Catching all passions in his craft of will,

"That he did in the general bosom reign Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted, 22

To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain In personal duty, following where he haunted. Consents bewitched, ere he desire, have granted, And dialogued for him what he would say, Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.

"Many there were that did his picture get To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind; Like fools that in th'imagination set The goodly objects which abroad they find Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned, And labour in moe pleasures to bestow them Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.

"So many have, that never touched his hand, Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart. My woeful self, that did in freedom stand, And was my own fee-simple, not in part, What with his art in youth, and youth in art, Threw my affections in his charmed power, Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

"Yet did I not, as some my equals did, Demand of him, nor being desired yielded; Finding myself in honour so forbid, With safest distance I mine honour shielded. Experience for me many bulwarks builded Of proofs new-bleeding, which remained the foil Of this false jewel and his amorous spoil.

"But ah, who ever shunned by precedent The destined ill she must herself assay? Or forced examples 'gainst her own content To put the by-past perils in her way? Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay, For when we rage, advice is often seen By blunting us to make our wills more keen.

"Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood That we must curb it upon others' proof, To be forbod the sweets that seems so good For fear of harms that preach in our behoof. O appetite, from judgement stand aloof! The one a palate hath that needs will taste, Though reason weep, and cry `It is thy last'.

"For further I could say this man's untrue, And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling; Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew; Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling; 23

Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling; Thought characters and words merely but art, And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

"And long upon these terms I held my city, Till thus he 'gan besiege me: `Gentle maid, Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity, And be not of my holy vows afraid. That's to ye sworn to none was ever said; For feasts of love I have been called unto, Till now did ne'er invite nor never woo.

" `All my offences that abroad you see Are errors of the blood, none of the mind; Love made them not; with acture they may be, Where neither party is nor true nor kind. They sought their shame that so their shame did find; And so much less of shame in me remains By how much of me their reproach contains.

" `Among the many that mine eyes have seen, Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed, Or my affection put to th' smallest teen, Or any of my leisures ever charmed. Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was harmed; Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free, And reigned commanding in his monarchy.

" `Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me Of pallid pearls and rubies red as blood, Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me Of grief and blushes, aptly understood In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood - Effects of terror and dear modesty, Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

" `And lo, behold these talents of their hair, With twisted metal amorously impleached, I have received from many a several fair, Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched, With the annexions of fair gems enriched, And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify Each stone's dear nature, worth, and quality.

" `The diamond? -why, 'twas beautiful and hard, Whereto his invised properties did tend; The deep-green em'rald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend; The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend With objects manifold: each several stone, 24

With wit well blazoned, smiled or made some moan. " `Lo, all these trophies of affections hot, Of pensived and subdued desires the tender, Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not, But yield them up where I myself must render - That is to you, my origin and ender; For these, of force, must your oblations be, Since I their altar, you enpatron me.

" `O then advance of yours that phraseless hand, Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise. Take all these similes to your own command, Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise. What me your minister, for you obeys, Works under you, and to your audit comes Their distract parcels in combined sums.

" `Lo, this device was sent me from a nun, A sister sanctified, of holiest note, Which late her noble suit in court did shun, Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote; For she was sought by spirits of richest coat, But kept cold distance, and did thence remove To spend her living in eternal love.

" `But, O my sweet, what labour is't to leave The thing we have not, mast'ring what not strives, Planing the place which did no form receive, Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves! She that her fame so to herself contrives, The scars of battle scapeth by the flight, And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

" `O pardon me, in that my boast is true! The accident which brought me to her eye Upon the moment did her force subdue, And now she would the caged cloister fly: Religious love put out religion's eye. Not to be tempted, would she be immured, And now to tempt, all liberty procured.

" `How mighty then you are, O hear me tell! The broken bosoms that to me belong Have emptied all their fountains in my well, And mine I pour your ocean all among. I strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong, Must for your victory us all congest, As compound love to physic your cold breast.

" `My parts had power to charm a sacred nun, 25

Who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace, Believed her eyes when they t'assail begun, All vows and consecrations giving place. O most potential love! -vow, bond, nor space, In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine, For thou art all, and all things else are thine.

" `When thou impressest, what are precepts worth Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame, How coldly those impediments stand forth, Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame! Love's arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense, 'gainst shame; And sweetens, in the suff'ring pangs it bears, The aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears.

" `Now all these hearts that do on mine depend, Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine, And supplicant their sighs to you extend, To leave the batt'ry that you make 'gainst mine, Lending soft audience to my sweet design, And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath That shall prefer and undertake my troth.'

"This said, his wat'ry eyes he did dismount, whose sights till then were levelled on my face; Each cheek a river running from a fount With brinish current downward flowed apace. O how the channel to the stream gave grace! Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses That flame through water which their hue encloses.

"O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies In the small orb of one particular tear! But with the inundation of the eyes What rocky heart to water will not wear? What breast so cold that is not warmed here? O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath, Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

"For lo, his passion, but an art of craft, Even there resolved my reason into tears; There my white stole of chastity I daffed, Shook off my sober guards and civil fears; Appear to him as he to me appears, All melting; though our drops this diff'rence bore: His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.

"In him a plenitude of subtle matter, Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives, Of burning blushes or of weeping water, 26

Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves, In either's aptness, as it best deceives, To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows,

"That not a heart which in his level came Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim, Showing fair nature is both kind and tame; And, veiled in them, did win whom he would maim. Against the thing he sought he would exclaim; When he most burned in heart-wished luxury He preached pure maid and praised cold chastity.

"Thus merely with the garment of a grace The naked and concealed fiend he covered, That th'unexperient gave the tempter place, Which like a cherubin above them hovered. Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered? Ay me, I fell; and yet do question make What I should do again for such a sake.

"O, that infected moisture of his eye, O, that false fire which in his cheek so glowed, O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly, O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed, O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed, Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed, And new pervert a reconciled maid."

―The Phoenix and the Turtle‖ By William Shakespeare

The Phoenix and the Turtle Let the bird of loudest lay On the sole Arabian tree, Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever's end, To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing Save the eagle, feather'd king: Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white That defunctive music can, 27

Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:— Love and constancy is dead; Phoenix and the turtle fled In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved, as love in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distincts, division none; Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance, and no space was seen 'Twixt the turtle and his queen: But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right Flaming in the phoenix' sight; Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appall'd, That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded, Saw division grow together; To themselves yet either neither; Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried, 'How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, reason none If what parts can so remain.'

Whereupon it made this threne To the phoenix and the dove, Co-supremes and stars of love, As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS

BEAUTY, truth, and rarity, Grace in all simplicity, Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest; And the turtle's loyal breast To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity: 'Twas not their infirmity, It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but 'tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair That are either true or fair; For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

All literature retrieved from: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.php http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/apparition.php http://www.annebradstreet.com/the_flesh_and_the_spirit.htm http://www.annebradstreet.com/verses_upon_the_burning_of_our_house.htm http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-poem-the-lovers-complaint.htm http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-poem-the-phoenix-and-the-turtle.htm

Questions and Discussion over the readings: What was significant in the readings? Ideas? Expressions? Is there anything that connects the authors‘ writing? Explain. Each group pick one of the readings and analyze it in detail. What do we need to know about the authors in this selection of readings?

Major Theory: New Criticism

New Criticism is a form of literary criticism that triumphed as the predominant critical form in the 1940s through the 1960s. John Crowe Ransom is responsible for naming New Criticism in his book of the same name, published in 1941. New Criticism quickly became ―the‖ way to read literature and poetry, and was taught in both college and high schools.

Literary criticism prior to New Criticism had dwelt on several ways to interpret literature, with no consensus as to the best method. Some critics evaluated literature in terms of the author‘s history, showing how works were representative or differed from the time periods in which they were written. Others evaluated works in terms of the author‘s life and background.

New Criticism differed greatly from previous forms as it dismissed authorial intent, and particularly ignored biographical and historical information about an author. Instead, literature was to be interpreted based solely on 29 the cohesiveness of the work. To a New Critic, whatever the author intended was invalid, as the form of the work always transformed intent, producing new meanings.

The critic‘s position, according to New Criticism, was to evaluate various aspect of a text that produce ambiguity. Critics analyzed metaphor, simile, and other rhetorical tropes that resulted in stress and counterstress, reconciling them to find the harmony in a work. Through analysis, the critic could then tell readers how to interpret a text and what value was to be gained from reading a text. In other words, the critic became the interpreter through which literature could be understood.

Additionally, in New Criticism, the text had to be considered as an object of literature, complete within itself. If the reader began to extrapolate to his or her interpretation outside of the text, he or she had strayed from New Criticism. The critic should be free from his or her own feelings or emotional response when reading the text. Only criticism that stuck to the text was of value. Later theorists argued that there can be no freedom from the self in textual analysis, and that this desire to analyze text as if one were a blank slate is quite impossible. However, in their new elevated status as interpreter granted by New Criticism, critics legitimized their own profession. Publication of books and articles that clarified the meanings of poetry and other writings were cousins to literature, because they provided the layperson with a method for understanding what one read. Though much of New Criticism has been soundly refuted, this new status of the lofty critic remains.

New Criticism influenced the literary canon, the materials considered to be art, because critics could point to those works that achieved harmony through ambiguity. As such, certain works were considered more valuable than others, greatly influencing which works were assigned as reading material. Students writing about such material often had their interpretations scrapped because they had failed to find the ―correct‖ interpretation of a text.

While New Criticism remains a useful tool for teaching students about the basic elements in poetry, most of New Criticism has been refuted and replaced. Newer forms of literary criticism, which posit that texts can produce multiple meanings that are directly opposed, have triumphed over New Criticism. Newer critical theories have reintroduced the consideration of the author‘s intent from a psychological or historical point of view. Other critical schools, such as structuralism, evaluate the specific language of the text to derive multiple meanings.

The best refutations of New Criticism have led to inclusion of more works in the canon. New Critics tended to value Western work over any other forms of literature, and moreover, placed a higher value on works written by men. Feminist and New Historical Critics have restored many works to the canon that had been ousted by New Critics.

Retrieved from: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-new-criticism.htm, 2011.

Questions & Discussion over New Criticism: How could you use this theory to interpret and analyze a piece of literature? What is ―scholasticism?‖ Use the Internet to find examples of a paper applying or explaining New Criticism

Second Three Weeks

Enlightenment Age (18 century) lecture and presentation

The Age of Enlightenment, sometimes called the Age of Reason, refers to the time of the guiding intellectual movement, called The Enlightenment. It covers about a century and a half in Europe, beginning with the publication of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620) and ending with Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781). From the perspective of socio-political phenomena, the period is considered to have begun with the close of the Thirty Years' War (1648) and ended with the French Revolution (1789).

The Enlightenment advocated reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and even religion, which would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the whole of reality. Emboldened by the revolution in physics commenced by Newtonian kinematics, Enlightenment thinkers argued that reason could free humankind from superstition and religious authoritarianism that had brought suffering and death to millions in religious wars. Also, the wide availability of knowledge was made possible through the production of encyclopedias, serving the Enlightenment cause of educating the human race.

The intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition and ecclesiastical tyranny, which had resulted in the bloody Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Civil War (1642-1651). This dogmatism took three forms:

1. Protestant scholasticism by Lutheran and Calvinist divines,[1] 2. "Jesuit scholasticism" (sometimes called the "second scholasticism") by the Counter-Reformation, and 3. the theory of the divine right of kings in the Church of England.

(A later, religious reaction against the church's dogmatic outlook was the Pietist movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.)

Enlightenment thinkers reduced religion to those essentials which could only be "rationally" defended, i.e., certain basic moral principles and a few universally held beliefs about God. Aside from these universal principles and beliefs, religions in their particularity were largely banished from the public square. Taken to its logical extreme, the Enlightenment resulted in atheism.

The age of Enlightenment is considered to have ended with the French Revolution, which had a violent aspect that discredited it in the eyes of many. Also, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who referred to Sapere aude! (Dare to know!) as the motto of the Enlightenment, ended up criticizing the Enlightenment confidence on the power of reason. Romanticism, with its emphasis upon imagination, spontaneity, and passion, emerged also as a reaction against the dry intellectualism of rationalists. Criticism of the Enlightenment has expressed itself in a variety of forms, such as religious conservatism, postmodernism, and feminism.

The legacy of the Enlightenment has been of enormous consequence for the modern world. The general decline of the church, the growth of secular humanism and political and economic liberalism, the belief in progress, and the development of science are among its fruits. Its political thought developed by Thomas Hobbes (1588- 1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Voltaire (1694-1778) and Rousseau (1712-1788) created the modern world. It helped create the intellectual framework not only for the American Revolutionary War and liberalism, democracy and capitalism but also the French Revolution, racism, nationalism, secularism, fascism and communism

Retrieved from: 31

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Age_of_Enlightenment More reading: http://history-world.org/age_of_enlightenment.htm

Readings: Lord Bryon – ―Prometheus,‖ ―Sonnet to Chillon‖

―Prometheus‖ By Lord Byron

Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The ruling principle of Hate, Which for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate, Refus'd thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift Eternity Was thine--and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell; And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, 32

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself--and equal to all woes, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory.

―Sonnet to Chillon‖ By Lord Byron

Eternal spirit of the chainless mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart, The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consigned To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.

William Blake – ―The Lamb,‖ ―The Tiger‖

―The Lamb‖ By William Blake

Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I'll tell thee, Little lamb, I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild; He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!

―The Tiger‖ By William Blake

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – ―The Country Schoolmaster‖

―The Country Schoolmaster‖ By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A MASTER of a country school Jump‘d up one day from off his stool, Inspired with firm resolve to try To gain the best society; So to the nearest baths he walk‘d, And into the saloon he stalk‘d. He felt quite. startled at the door, Ne‘er having seen the like before. To the first stranger made he now A very low and graceful bow, But quite forgot to bear in mind That people also stood behind; His left-hand neighbor‘s paunch he struck A grievous blow, by great ill luck; Pardon for this he first entreated, And then in haste his bow repeated. His right hand neighbor next he hit, And begg‘d him, too, to pardon it; But on his granting his petition, Another was in like condition; These compliments he paid to all, Behind, before, across the hall; At length one who could stand no more, Show‘d him impatiently the door.

May many, pond‘ring on their crimes, A moral draw from this betimes!

II.

As he proceeded on his way He thought, ―I was too weak to-day; To bow I‘ll ne‘er again be seen; For goats will swallow what is green.‖ Across the fields he now must speed, Not over stumps and stones, indeed, But over meads and cornfields sweet, Trampling down all with clumsy feet. A farmer met him by-and-by, And didn‘t ask him: how? or why? But with his fist saluted him.

―I feel new life in every limb!‖ 36

Our traveller cried in ecstasy. ―Who art thou who thus gladden‘st me? May Heaven such blessings ever send! Ne‘er may I want a jovial friend!‖

All literature retrieved from: http://www.poemofquotes.com/lordbyron/prometheus.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/lordbyron/sonnet-to-chillon.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/williamblake/thelamb.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/williamblake/thetiger.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/johannwolfganggoethe/the-country-schoolmaster.php

Major Theory: Marxism

Marxism is an economic and social system based upon the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. While it would take veritably volumes to explain the full implications and ramifications of the Marxist social and economic ideology, Marxism is summed up in the Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.” Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism which is defined by Encarta as “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit.” Marxism is the system of socialism of which the dominant feature is public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or ―the people,‖ own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold.

An increasing immiseration of the proletariat occurs as the result of economic recessions; these recessions result because the working class is unable to buy the full product of their labors and the ruling capitalists do not consume all of the surplus value. A proletariat or socialist revolution must occur, according to Marx, where the state (the means by which the ruling class forcibly maintains rule over the other classes) is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism evolves from socialism out of this progression: the socialist slogan is ―From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.‖ The communist slogan varies thusly: ―From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.‖

What were the Marxist views of religion? Because the worker under the capitalist regimes was miserable and alienated, religious beliefs were sustained. Religion, according to Marx was the response to the pain of being alive, the response to earthly suffering. In Towards a Critique of Hegel‟s Philosophy of Right (1844), Marx 37 wrote, ―Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances.‖ Marx indicated in this writing that the working class, the proletariat was a true revolutionary class, universal in character and acquainted with universal suffering. This provided the need for religion.

Retrieved from: http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm, 2011. More reading: http://www.marxists.org/, 2011.

Questions & Discussion over Marxism: How could you use this theory to interpret and analyze a piece of literature? What is ―socialism?‖ Use the Internet to find examples of a paper applying or explaining Marxism

Third Three Weeks

Romantic Era (1850-1920) lecture and presentation

The Romantic era was a period of great change and emancipation. While the Classical era had strict laws of balance and restraint, the Romantic era moved away from that by allowing artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. The music of this time period was very expressive, and melody became the dominant feature. Composers even used this expressive means to display nationalism . This became a driving force in the late Romantic period, as composers used elements of folk music to express their cultural identity.

As in any time of change, new musical techniques came about to fit in with the current trends. Composers began to experiment with length of compositions, new harmonies, and tonal relationships. Additionally, there was the increased use of dissonance and extended use of chromaticism . Another important feature of Romantic music was the use of color. While new instruments were constantly being added to the orchestra, composers also tried to get new or different sounds out of the instruments already in use.

One of the new forms was the symphonic poem , which was an orchestral work that portrayed a story or had some kind of literary or artistic background to it. Another was the art song , which was a vocal musical work with tremendous emphasis placed on the text or the symbolical meanings of words within the text. Likewise, opera became increasingly popular, as it continued to musically tell a story and to express the issues of the day. Some of the themes that composers wrote about were the escape from political oppression, the fates of national or religious groups, and the events which were taking place in far off settings or exotic climates. This allowed an element of fantasy to be used by composers.

During the Romantic period, the virtuoso began to be focused. Exceptionally gifted performers - pianists, violinists, and singers -- became enormously popular. Liszt, the great Hungarian pianist/composer, reportedly played with such passion and intensity that women in the audience would faint. Most composers were also virtuoso performers; it was inevitable that the music they wrote would be extremely challenging to play.

Retrieved from: http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-rom.htm, 2011. More reading: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html, 2011.

Readings: Percy Bysshe Shelley – ―Ode to the West Wind,‖ ―Ozymandias,‖ ―To a Skylark‖

―Ode to the West Wind‖ By Percy Bysshe Shelley

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave,until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

―Ozymandias‖ By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

―To a Skylark‖ By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert— That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, 42

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflower'd, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers— All that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt— A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, 44

Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know; Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

John Keats – ―When I have Fears,‖ Bright Star‖

―When I Have Fears‖ By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Bright Star By John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

William Wordsworth – ―An Evening Walk‖

―An Evening Walk‖ By William Wordsworth

Far from my dearest Friend, 'tis mine to rove Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove; Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore; Where peace to Grasmere's lonely island leads, To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads; Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds, Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds; Where, undisturbed by winds, Winander sleeps 'Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled steeps; Where twilight glens endear my Esthwaite's shore, And memory of departed pleasures, more.

Fair scenes, erewhile, I taught, a happy child, The echoes of your rocks my carols wild: The spirit sought not then, in cherished sadness, A cloudy substitute for failing gladness. In youth's keen eye the livelong day was bright, The sun at morning, and the stars at night, Alike, when first the bittern's hollow bill Was heard, or woodcocks roamed the moonlight hill.

In thoughtless gaiety I coursed the plain, And hope itself was all I knew of pain; For then, the inexperienced heart would beat At times, while young Content forsook her seat, And wild Impatience, pointing upward, showed, Through passes yet unreached, a brighter road. Alas! the idle tale of man is found Depicted in the dial's moral round; Hope with reflection blends her social rays To gild the total tablet of his days; Yet still, the sport of some malignant power, He knows but from its shade the present hour.

But why, ungrateful, dwell on idle pain? To show what pleasures yet to me remain, Say, will my Friend, with unreluctant ear, The history of a poet's evening hear?

When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still, Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill, And shades of deep-embattled clouds were seen, Spotting the northern cliffs with lights between; When crowding cattle, checked by rails that make 47

A fence far stretched into the shallow lake, Lashed the cool water with their restless tails, Or from high points of rock looked out for fanning gales; When school-boys stretched their length upon the green; And round the broad-spread oak, a glimmering scene, In the rough fern-clad park, the herded deer Shook the still-twinkling tail and glancing ear; When horses in the sunburnt intake stood, And vainly eyed below the tempting flood, Or tracked the passenger, in mute distress, With forward neck the closing gate to press— Then, while I wandered where the huddling rill Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll As by enchantment, an obscure retreat Opened at once, and stayed my devious feet. While thick above the rill the branches close, In rocky basin its wild waves repose, Inverted shrubs, and moss of gloomy green, Cling from the rocks, with pale wood-weeds between; And its own twilight softens the whole scene, Save where aloft the subtle sunbeams shine On withered briars that o'er the crags recline; Save where, with sparkling foam, a small cascade, Illumines, from within, the leafy shade; Beyond, along the vista of the brook, Where antique roots its bustling course o'erlook, The eye reposes on a secret bridge Half grey, half shagged with ivy to its ridge; There, bending o'er the stream, the listless swain Lingers behind his disappearing wain. —Did Sabine grace adorn my living line, Blandusia's praise, wild stream, should yield to thine! Never shall ruthless minister of death 'Mid thy soft glooms the glittering steel unsheath; No goblets shall, for thee, be crowned with flowers, No kid with piteous outcry thrill thy bowers; The mystic shapes that by thy margin rove A more benignant sacrifice approve— A mind, that, in a calm angelic mood Of happy wisdom, meditating good, Beholds, of all from her high powers required, Much done, and much designed, and more desired,— Harmonious thoughts, a soul by truth refined, Entire affection for all human kind.

Dear Brook, farewell! To-morrow's noon again Shall hide me, wooing long thy wildwood strain; But now the sun has gained his western road, And eve's mild hour invites my steps abroad.

While, near the midway cliff, the silvered kite In many a whistling circle wheels her flight; Slant watery lights, from parting clouds, apace Travel along the precipice's base; Cheering its naked waste of scattered stone, By lichens grey, and scanty moss, o'ergrown; Where scarce the foxglove peeps, or thistle's beard; And restless stone-chat, all day long, is heard.

How pleasant, as the sun declines, to view The spacious landscape change in form and hue! Here, vanish, as in mist, before a flood Of bright obscurity, hill, lawn, and wood; There, objects, by the searching beams betrayed, Come forth, and here retire in purple shade; Even the white stems of birch, the cottage white, Soften their glare before the mellow light; The skiffs, at anchor where with umbrage wide Yon chestnuts half the latticed boat-house hide, Shed from their sides, that face the sun's slant beam, Strong flakes of radiance on the tremulous stream: Raised by yon travelling flock, a dusty cloud Mounts from the road, and spreads its moving shroud; The shepherd, all involved in wreaths of fire, Now shows a shadowy speck, and now is lost entire.

Into a gradual calm the breezes sink, A blue rim borders all the lake's still brink; There doth the twinkling aspen's foliage sleep, And insects clothe, like dust, the glassy deep: And now, on every side, the surface breaks Into blue spots, and slowly lengthening streaks; Here, plots of sparkling water tremble bright With thousand thousand twinkling points of light; There, waves that, hardly weltering, die away, Tip their smooth ridges with a softer ray; And now the whole wide lake in deep repose Is hushed, and like a burnished mirror glows, Save where, along the shady western marge, Coasts, with industrious oar, the charcoal barge.

Their panniered train a group of potters goad, Winding from side to side up the steep road; The peasant, from yon cliff of fearful edge Shot, down the headlong path darts with his sledge; Bright beams the lonely mountain-horse illume Feeding 'mid purple heath, "green rings," and broom; While the sharp slope the slackened team confounds, Downward the ponderous timber-wain resounds; In foamy breaks the rill, with merry song, 49

Dashed o'er the rough rock, lightly leaps along; From lonesome chapel at the mountain's feet, Three humble bells their rustic chime repeat; Sounds from the water-side the hammered boat; And 'blasted' quarry thunders, heard remote!

Even here, amid the sweep of endless woods, Blue pomp of lakes, high cliffs and falling floods, Not undelightful are the simplest charms, Found by the grassy door of mountain-farms.

Sweetly ferocious, round his native walks, Pride of his sister-wives, the monarch stalks; Spur-clad his nervous feet, and firm his tread; A crest of purple tops the warrior's head. Bright sparks his black and rolling eye-ball hurls Afar, his tail he closes and unfurls; On tiptoe reared, he strains his clarion throat, Threatened by faintly-answering farms remote: Again with his shrill voice the mountain rings, While, flapped with conscious pride, resound his wings!

Where, mixed with graceful birch, the sombrous pine And yew-tree o'er the silver rocks recline; I love to mark the quarry's moving trains, Dwarf panniered steeds, and men, and numerous wains: How busy all the enormous hive within, While Echo dallies with its various din! Some (hear you not their chisels' clinking sound?) Toil, small as pigmies in the gulf profound; Some, dim between the lofty cliffs descried, O'erwalk the slender plank from side to side; These, by the pale-blue rocks that ceaseless ring, In airy baskets hanging, work and sing.

Just where a cloud above the mountain rears An edge all flame, the broadening sun appears; A long blue bar its ægis orb divides, And breaks the spreading of its golden tides; And now that orb has touched the purple steep Whose softened image penetrates the deep.

'Cross the calm lake's blue shades the cliffs aspire, With towers and woods, a "prospect all on fire"; While coves and secret hollows, through a ray Of fainter gold, a purple gleam betray. Each slip of lawn the broken rocks between Shines in the light with more than earthly green: Deep yellow beams the scattered stems illume, Far in the level forest's central gloom: 50

Waving his hat, the shepherd, from the vale, Directs his winding dog the cliffs to scale,— The dog, loud barking, 'mid the glittering rocks, Hunts, where his master points, the intercepted flocks. Where oaks o'erhang the road the radiance shoots On tawny earth, wild weeds, and twisted roots; The druid-stones a brightened ring unfold; And all the babbling brooks are liquid gold; Sunk to a curve, the day-star lessens still, Gives one bright glance, and drops behind the hill.

In these secluded vales, if village fame, Confirmed by hoary hairs, belief may claim; When up the hills, as now, retired the light, Strange apparitions mocked the shepherd's sight.

The form appears of one that spurs his steed Midway along the hill with desperate speed; Unhurt pursues his lengthened flight, while all Attend, at every stretch, his headlong fall. Anon, appears a brave, a gorgeous show Of horsemen-shadows moving to and fro; At intervals imperial banners stream, And now the van reflects the solar beam; The rear through iron brown betrays a sullen gleam. While silent stands the admiring crowd below, Silent the visionary warriors go, Winding in ordered pomp their upward way Till the last banner of their long array Has disappeared, and every trace is fled Of splendour—save the beacon's spiry head Tipt with eve's latest gleam of burning red.

Now, while the solemn evening shadows sail, On slowly-waving pinions, down the vale; And, fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines Its darkening boughs and leaves, in stronger lines; 'Tis pleasant near the tranquil lake to stray Where, winding on along some secret bay, The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings: The eye that marks the gliding creature sees How graceful, pride can be, and how majestic, ease.

While tender cares and mild domestic loves With furtive watch pursue her as she moves, The female with a meeker charm succeeds, And her brown little-ones around her leads, Nibbling the water lilies as they pass, Or playing wanton with the floating grass. 51

She, in a mother's care, her beauty's pride Forgetting, calls the wearied to her side; Alternately they mount her back, and rest Close by her mantling wings' embraces prest.

Long may they float upon this flood serene; Theirs be these holms untrodden, still, and green, Where leafy shades fence off the blustering gale, And breathes in peace the lily of the vale! Yon isle, which feels not even the milk-maid's feet, Yet hears her song, "by distance made more sweet," Yon isle conceals their home, their hut-like bower; Green water-rushes overspread the floor; Long grass and willows form the woven wall, And swings above the roof the poplar tall. Thence issuing often with unwieldy stalk, They crush with broad black feet their flowery walk; Or, from the neighbouring water, hear at morn The hound, the horse's tread, and mellow horn; Involve their serpent-necks in changeful rings, Rolled wantonly between their slippery wings, Or, starting up with noise and rude delight, Force half upon the wave their cumbrous flight.

Fair Swan! by all a mother's joys caressed, Haply some wretch has eyed, and called thee blessed; When with her infants, from some shady seat By the lake's edge, she rose—to face the noontide heat; Or taught their limbs along the dusty road A few short steps to totter with their load.

I see her now, denied to lay her head, On cold blue nights, in hut or straw-built shed, Turn to a silent smile their sleepy cry, By pointing to the gliding moon on high.

—When low-hung clouds each star of summer hide, And fireless are the valleys far and wide, Where the brook brawls along the public road Dark with bat-haunted ashes stretching broad, Oft has she taught them on her lap to lay The shining glow-worm; or, in heedless play, Toss it from hand to hand, disquieted; While others, not unseen, are free to shed Green unmolested light upon their mossy bed.

Oh! when the sleety showers her path assail, And like a torrent roars the headstrong gale; No more her breath can thaw their fingers cold, Their frozen arms her neck no more can fold; 52

Weak roof a cowering form two babes to shield, And faint the fire a dying heart can yield! Press the sad kiss, fond mother! vainly fears Thy flooded cheek to wet them with its tears; No tears can chill them, and no bosom warms, Thy breast their death-bed, coffined in thine arms!

Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star, Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge, And feeding pike starts from the water's edge, Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill Wetting, that drip upon the water still; And heron, as resounds the trodden shore, Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.

Now, with religious awe, the farewell light Blends with the solemn colouring of night; 'Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow, And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw, Like Una shining on her gloomy way, The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray; Shedding, through paly loop-holes mild and small, Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall; Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale Tracking the motions of the fitful gale. With restless interchange at once the bright Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light. No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze On lovelier spectacle in faery days; When gentle Spirits urged a sportive chase, Brushing with lucid wands the water's face; While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps, Charmed the tall circle of the enchanted steeps. —The lights are vanished from the watery plains: No wreck of all the pageantry remains. Unheeded night has overcome the vales: On the dark earth the wearied vision fails; The latest lingerer of the forest train, The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain; Last evening sight, the cottage smoke, no more, Lost in the thickened darkness, glimmers hoar; And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere, Like a black wall, the mountain-steeps appear. —Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel A sympathetic twilight slowly steal, And ever, as we fondly muse, we find The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind. Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay! Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away: 53

Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains; Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.

The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread Silent the hedge or steamy rivulet's bed, From his grey re-appearing tower shall soon Salute with gladsome note the rising moon, While with a hoary light she frosts the ground, And pours a deeper blue to Æther's bound; Pleased, as she moves, her pomp of clouds to fold In robes of azure, fleecy-white, and gold.

Above yon eastern hill, where darkness broods O'er all its vanished dells, and lawns, and woods; Where but a mass of shade the sight can trace, Even now she shows, half-veiled, her lovely face: Across the gloomy valley flings her light, Far to the western slopes with hamlets white; And gives, where woods the chequered upland strew, To the green corn of summer, autumn's hue.

Thus Hope, first pouring from her blessed horn Her dawn, far lovelier than the moon's own morn, 'Till higher mounted, strives in vain to cheer The weary hills, impervious, blackening near; Yet does she still, undaunted, throw the while On darling spots remote her tempting smile.

Even now she decks for me a distant scene, (For dark and broad the gulf of time between) Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray, (Sole bourn, sole wish, sole object of my way; How fair its lawns and sheltering woods appear! How sweet its streamlet murmurs in mine ear!) Where we, my Friend, to happy days shall rise, 'Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs (For sighs will ever trouble human breath) Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of death.

But now the clear bright Moon her zenith gains, And, rimy without speck, extend the plains: The deepest cleft the mountain's front displays Scarce hides a shadow from her searching rays; From the dark-blue faint silvery threads divide The hills, while gleams below the azure tide; Time softly treads; throughout the landscape breathes A peace enlivened, not disturbed, by wreaths Of charcoal-smoke, that o'er the fallen wood, Steal down the hill, and spread along the flood.

The song of mountain-streams, unheard by day, Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way. Air listens, like the sleeping water, still, To catch the spiritual music of the hill, Broke only by the slow clock tolling deep, Or shout that wakes the ferry-man from sleep, The echoed hoof nearing the distant shore, The boat's first motion—made with dashing oar; Sound of closed gate, across the water borne, Hurrying the timid hare through rustling corn; The sportive outcry of the mocking owl; And at long intervals the mill-dog's howl; The distant forge's swinging thump profound; Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.

All literature retrieved from: http://www.poemofquotes.com/percybyssheshelley/ode-to-the-west-wind.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/percybyssheshelley/ozymandias.php http://www.poemofquotes.com/percybyssheshelley/to-a-skylark.php http://www.sonnets.org/keats.htm#600 http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/an_evening_walk.html

Major Theory: Deconstruction

Deconstruction (or deconstructionism) is an approach, introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded - showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, literary analysis, or other fields.

Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an aporia in the text, and terms deconstructive reading "aporetic." J. Hillis Miller has described deconstruction this way: ―Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air.‖

In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida introduces the term deconstruction to describe the manner that understanding language as ―writing‖ (in general) renders infeasible a straightforward semantic theory. In first using the term deconstruction, he ―wished to translate and adapt to [his] own ends the Heideggerian word Destruktion or Abbau‖. Martin Heidegger‘s philosophy developed in relation to Edmund Husserl‘s, and 55

Derrida‘s use of the term deconstruction is closely linked to his own (Derrida‘s) appropriation of the latter‘s understanding of the problems of structural description.

Deconstruction emerged from the influence upon Derrida of several thinkers, including:

Edmund Husserl. The greatest focus of Derrida's early work was on Husserl, from his dissertation (eventually published as The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy), to his "Introduction" to Husserl's "Essay on the Origin of Geometry," to his first published paper, "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" (in Writing and Difference), and lastly to his important early work, Speech and Phenomena. Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's thought was a crucial influence on Derrida, and he conducted numerous readings of Heidegger, including the important early essay, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time" (in Margins of Philosophy), to his study of Heidegger and Nazism entitled Of Spirit, to a series of papers entitled "Geschlecht." Sigmund Freud. Derrida has written extensively on Freud, beginning with the paper, "Freud and the Scene of Writing" (in Writing and Difference), and a long reading of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle in his book, The Post Card. Jacques Lacan has also been read by Derrida, although the two writers to some extent avoided commenting on each others' work. Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's singular philosophical approach was an important forerunner of deconstruction, and Derrida devoted attention to his texts in Spurs: Nietzsche‟s Styles and The Ear of the Other. André Leroi-Gourhan. Of Grammatology makes clear the importance of Leroi-Gourhan for the formulation of deconstruction and especially of the concept of différance, relating this to the history of the evolution of systems for coding difference, from DNA to electronic data storage. Ferdinand de Saussure. Derrida's deconstruction in Of Grammatology of Saussure's structural linguistics was critical to his formulation of deconstruction, and his insertion of linguistic concerns into the heart of philosophy.

Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly be called "phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was a problematic and misleading avenue of interrogation, and the "depth" and originality of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in 1959 Derrida asks the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured in order to be the genesis of something? In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis. At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality. It is this thought of originary complexity, rather than original purity, which destabilises the thought of both genesis and structure, that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which derive all of its terms, including deconstruction. Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating all the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.

Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction," on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterise his work generally. Nevertheless, he 56 eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.

Différance Crucial to Derrida's work is the concept of différance, a complex term which refers to the process of the production of difference and deferral. According to Derrida, all difference and all presence arise from the operation of différance. He states that:

To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think – in the most faithful, interior way – the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine – from a certain exterior [...] – what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence.[9]

To deconstruct philosophy is therefore to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Deconstruction questions the appeal to presence by arguing that there is always an irreducible aspect of non-presence in operation. Derrida terms this aspect of non-presence différance. Différance is therefore the key theoretical basis of deconstruction. Deconstruction questions the basic operation of all philosophy through the appeal to presence and différance therefore pervades all philosophy. Derrida argues that différance pervades all philosophy because "What defers presence [...] is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in what represents it, its sign, its trace". Différance therefore pervades all philosophy because all philosophy is constructed as a system through language. Différance is essential to language because it produces "what metaphysics calls the sign (signified/signifier)".

In one sense, a sign must point to something beyond itself that is its meaning so the sign is never fully present in itself but a deferral to something else, to something different. In another sense the structural relationship between the signified and signifier, as two related but separate aspects of the sign, is produced through differentiation. Derrida states that différance "is the economical concept", meaning that it is the concept of all systems and structures, because "there is no economy without différance [...] the movement of différance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language [...] différance is also the production [...] of these differences." Différance is therefore the condition of possibility for all complex systems and hence all philosophy.

Operating through différance, deconstruction is the description of how non-presence problematises the operation of the appeal to presence within a particular philosophical system. Différance is an a-priori condition of possibility that is always already in effect but a deconstruction must be a careful description of how this différance is actually in effect in a given text. Deconstruction therefore describes problems in the text rather than creating them (which would be trivial). Derrida considers the illustration of aporia in this way to be productive because it shows the failure of earlier philosophical systems and the necessity of continuing to philosophise through them with deconstruction.

Of Grammatology Derrida first employs the term deconstruction in Of Grammatology in 1967 when discussing the implications of understanding language as writing rather than speech. Derrida states that:

[w]riting thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos. Further, it inaugurates the destruction, not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the de-construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos.

In this quotation Derrida states that deconstruction is what happens to meaning when language is understood as writing. For Derrida, when language is understood as writing it is realised that meaning does not originate in the logos or thought of the language user. Instead individual language users are understood to be using an external system of signs, a system that exists separately to them because these signs are written down. The meaning of language does not originate in the thoughts of the individual language user because those thoughts are already taking place in a language that does not originate with them. Individual language users operate within a system of meaning that is given to them from outside. Meaning is therefore not fully under the control of the individual language user. The meaning of a text is not neatly determined by authorial intention and cannot be unproblematically recreated by a reader. Meaning necessarily involves some degree of interpretation, negotiation, or translation. This necessity for the active interpretation of meaning by readers when language is understood as writing is why deconstruction takes place.

To understand this more fully, consider the difference for Derrida between understanding language as speech and as writing. Derrida argues that people have historically understood speech as the primary mode of language and understood writing as an inferior derivative of speech. Derrida argues that speech is historically equated with logos, meaning thought, and associated with the presence of the speaker to the listener. It is as if the speaker thinks out loud and the listener hears what the speaker is thinking and if there is any confusion then the speaker's presence allows them to qualify the meaning of a previous statement. Derrida argues that by understanding speech as thought language "effaces itself." Language itself is forgotten. The signified meaning of speech is so immediately understood that it is easy to forget that there are linguistic signifiers involved - but these signifiers are the spoken sounds (phonemes) and written marks (graphemes) that actually comprise language. Derrida therefore associates speech with a very straightforward and unproblematic theory of meaning and with the forgetting of the signifier and hence language itself.

Derrida contrasts the understanding of language as speech with an understanding of language as writing. Unlike a speaker a writer is usually absent (even dead) and the reader cannot rely on the writer to clarify any problems that there might be with the meaning of the text. The consideration of language as writing leads inescapably to the insight that language is a system of signs. As a system of signs the signifiers are present but the signification can only be inferred. There is effectively an act of translation involved in extracting a significaton from the signifiers of language. This act of translation is so habitual to language users that they must step back from their experience of using language in order to fully realise its operation. The significance of understanding language as writing rather than speech is that signifiers are present in language but significations are absent. To decide what words mean is therefore an act of interpretation. The insight that language is a system of signs, most obvious in the consideration of language as writing, leads Derrida to state that "everything [...] gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to [...] the name of writing." This means that there is no room for the naive theory of meaning and forgetting of the signifier that previously existed when language was understood as speech.

Much later in his career Derrida retrospectively confirms the importance of this distinction between speech and writing in the development of deconstruction when he states that:

[F]rom about 1963 to 1968, I tried to work out - in particular in the three works published in 1967 - what was in no way meant to be a system but rather a sort of strategic device, opening its own abyss, an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of rules for reading, interpretation and writing. This type of device may have enabled me to detect not only in the history of philosophy and in the related socio-historical totality, but also in what are alleged to be sciences and in so-called post-philosophical discourses that figure among the most modern (in linguistics, in anthropology, in psychoanalysis), to detect in these an evaluation of writing, or, to tell the truth, rather a devaluation of writing whose insistent, repetitive, even obscurely compulsive, character was the sign of a whole set of long-standing constraints. These constraints were practised at the price of contradictions, of denials, of dogmatic decrees" 58

Here Derrida states that deconstruction exposes historical constraints within the whole history of philosophy that have been practiced at the price of contradictions, denials, and dogmatic decrees. The description of how contradictions, denials, and dogmatic decrees are at work in a given text is closely associated with deconstruction. The careful illustration of how such problems are inescapable in a given text can lead someone to describe that text as deconstructed.

Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction, 2011.

How could you use this theory to interpret and analyze a piece of literature? What is ―différance?‖ Why is it important? Explain. Use the Internet to find examples of a paper applying or explaining Deconstructionism.

Fourth Three Weeks

Modern era (1900-1950) lecture and presentation

Toward the end of the 19th century, Romanticism reached its limits of expression, which is evident in Wagner's operas. As a result, diverse and experimental music forms began to emerge, breaking away from the mainstream of Romanticism. These forms included the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel and the surrealism of Satie. The emphasis on irregular rhythms within Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused its first audience, in 1913, to riot. Then followed the experimentation in scales and rhythms of Bartók. But possibly the most significant in terms of lasting influence was the atonal and serial approach of Schoenberg and his followers, Berg and Webern.

A key form of music to emerge at the beginning of the 20th century was atonalism (not having any definite key). Schoenberg defined atonalism as the twelve-tone system and developed it into serial music. The twelve- tone system treated all twelve notes of the chromatic scale with equal importance, and no note could be repeated until the series had run its course. The whole series could be moved up or down, inverted or run backward. Serialism went a step further and formalized the use of rhythm and harmony as well as pitch.

Retrieved from: http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=c&p=i&a=l&ID=8, 2011.

Discussion over this period: Name at least two important events during this time (even the ones listed and we discuss them a little more detail). Name at least two important people during this time (even the ones listed and we discuss them a little more detail).

Readings: T. S. Eliot – ―The Waste Land‖

Author: T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). ―The Waste Land.‖ 1922.

Poem Title: ―The Waste Land‖

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering 5 Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10 And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15 Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20 You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, 25 (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30 Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu. Mein Irisch Kind, 61

Wo weilest du? 'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 35 'They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45 With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. 50 Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 55 I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, 60 Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. 65 Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson! 'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70 'That corpse you planted last year in your garden, 'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? 'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? 'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, 'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again! 75 'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'

II. A GAME OF CHESS

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, 62

Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 80 (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; 85 In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended 90 In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, 95 In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100 Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, 'Jug Jug' to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms 105 Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 110

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley 115 Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?' The wind under the door. 'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?' Nothing again nothing. 120 'Do 'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember 'Nothing?' I remember 63

Those are pearls that were his eyes. 125 'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?' But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It's so elegant So intelligent 130 'What shall I do now? What shall I do?' 'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street 'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow? 'What shall we ever do?' The hot water at ten. 135 And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said— I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, 140 HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, 145 He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 150 Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. 155 You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face, It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 160 The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don't want children? HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME 165 Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170 Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

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. 175 Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180 Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept... Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear 185 The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. 195 But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter 200 They wash their feet in soda water Et, O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd. 205 Tereu

Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210 C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back 215 65

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, 225 On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest. 230 He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 235 The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240 His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 245 And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows on final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250 Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.' When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, 255 And puts a record on the gramophone.

'This music crept by me upon the waters' And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260 The pleasant whining of a mandolin And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls 66

Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. 265

The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach 275 Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars 280 The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores 285 Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia 290 Wallala leialala

'Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.' 295 'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised "a new start". I made no comment. What should I resent?' 'On Margate Sands. 300 I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing.' 305 la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning 67

O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest 310

Burning

IV. DEATH BY WATER

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea 315 Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320 Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

AFTER the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying 325 Prison and place and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience 330

Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink 335 Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340 There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses 345 If there were water And no rock If there were rock 68

And also water And water A spring 350 A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock 355 Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together 360 But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you? 365

What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only 370 What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London 375 Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings 380 And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains 385 In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. 390 Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust 69

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves 395 Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder D A 400 Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed 405 Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms D A 410 Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours 415 Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus D A Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded 420 Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? 425

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430 Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

NOTES Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognize in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel 2:7.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.

31. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5–8.

42. Id. iii, verse 24.

46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the 'crowds of people', and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire: Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves, Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.

63. Cf. Inferno, iii. 55–7: si lunga tratta di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta.

64. Cf. Inferno, iv. 25–27: Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma' che di sospiri, che l'aura eterna facevan tremare.

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

II. A GAME OF CHESS

77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726: dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.

99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

118. Cf. Webster: 'Is the wind in that door still?'

126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton's Women beware Women.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.

196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

197. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees: When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear, A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring Actaeon to Diana in the spring, Where all shall see her naked skin...

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. The currants were quoted at a price 'carriage and insurance free to London'; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest: ...Cum Iunone iocos et 'maior vestra profecto est Quam, quae contingit maribus', dixisse, 'voluptas.' Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota. 72

Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem Vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae', Dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, Nunc quoque vos feriam!' percussis anguibus isdem Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte, At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in mind the 'longshore' or 'dory' fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257. V. The Tempest, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdammerung, III. i: The Rhine-daughters.

279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain: In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.

293. Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133: 'Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma.'

307. V. St. Augustine's Confessions: 'to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears'.

308. The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

309. From St. Augustine's Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID 73

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston's book), and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) 'it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.... Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.' Its 'water-dripping song' is justly celebrated.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

367–77. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.

401. 'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka--Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: ...they'll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.

411. Cf. Inferno, xxxiii. 46: ed io sentii chiavar l'uscio di sotto all'orribile torre. Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346: My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148. 'Ara vos prec per aquella valor 'que vos guida al som de l'escalina, 'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.' Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado. 74

431. V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word.

Wallace Stevens – ―Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird‖

―Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird‖ By Wallace Stevens

I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.

II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.

III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.

V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.

VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?

VIII I know noble accents 76

And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.

X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.

XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.

XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Charles Baudelaire – ―At One O‘ Clock in the Morning‖

―At One O‘ Clock in the Morning‖ By Charles Baudelarie

Alone, at last! Not a sound to be heard but the rumbling of some belated and decrepit cabs. For a few hours we shall have silence, if not repose. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and I myself shall be the only cause of my sufferings.

At last, then, I am allowed to refresh myself in a bath of darkness! First of all, a double turn of the lock. It seems to me that this twist of the key will increase my solitude and fortify the barricades which at this instant separate me from the world.

Horrible life! Horrible town! Let us recapitulate the day: seen several men of letters, one of whom asked me whether one could go to Russia by a land route (no doubt he took Russia to be an island); disputed generously with the editor of a review, who, to each of my objections, replied: 'We represent the cause of decent people,' which implies that all the other newspapers are edited by scoundrels; greeted some twenty persons, with fifteen of whom I am not acquainted; distributed handshakes in the same proportion, and this without having taken the precaution of buying gloves; to kill time, during a shower, went to see an acrobat, who asked me to design for her the costume of a

Venustra; paid court to the director of a theatre, who, while dismissing me, said to me: 'Perhaps you would do well to apply to Z------; he is the clumsiest, the stupidest and the most celebrated of my authors; together with him, perhaps, you would get somewhere. Go to see him, and after that we'll see;' boasted (why?) of several vile actions which I have never committed, and faint-heartedly denied some other misdeeds which I accomplished with joy, an error of bravado, an offence against human respect; refused a friend an easy service, and gave a written recommendation to a perfect clown; oh, isn't that enough?

Discontented with everyone and discontented with myself, I would gladly redeem myself and elate myself a little in the silence and solitude of night. Souls of those I have loved, souls of those I have sung, strengthen me, support me, rid me of lies and the corrupting vapours of the world; and you, O Lord God, grant me the grace to produce a few good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to those whom I despise.

All literature retrieved from: http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-one-o-clock-in-the-morning/

Questions and Discussion over the readings: 78

What was significant in the readings? Ideas? Expressions? Is there anything that connects the authors‘ writing? Explain. Each group pick one of the readings and analyze it in detail. What do we need to know about the authors in this selection of readings?

Major Theory: New Historicism

―The New Historicism in Literary Study‖ (essay)

by D. G. Myers Originally published in Academic Questions 2 (Winter 1988-89): 27-36.

The eighties witnessed the emergence of a new movement in Anglo-American literary scholarship which, in methodological sophistication, theoretical all-inclusiveness, and classroom appeal, bid fair to rival anything from Germany and France. The moment was ripe for such a homegrown movement to appear. For several years, many scholars in English and American universities—ranging from Frederick Crews, George Watson, and E. D. Hirsch, Jr., on one end of the scale to Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, and Frank Lentricchia on the other— had been raising a clamor for a return to historical scholarship in the academic study of literature. The historical nature of literary works, it was said, had been badly neglected over the past half century of Anglo-American criticism. The time had come to move beyond the narrowly "formalistic" or "text-centered" approach to literature. A new historical approach was needed and, in the course of events, a new movement arose to meet the demand.

The "New Historicism," as by general agreement the movement has come to be called, is unified by its disdain for literary formalism. Specifically, leaders of the movement describe themselves as unhappy with the exclusion of social and political circumstances (commonly known as the "context") from the interpretation of literary works; they are impatient with the settled view that a poem is a self-contained object, a verbal icon, a logical core surrounded by a texture of irrelevance. In this they are setting their jaws against the New Criticism, albeit rather late in the day. But their hostility can never (to use one of their own favored terms) be unmediated. The French nouvelle critique and German philosophical hermeneutics have intervened, at least in the history of fashions within the university; and the new movement has arisen at least as much in response to these later developments as to a critical establishment which has made a formalistic view of literary works its official doctrine. Thus the New Historicism in literary study has emerged in this decade not so much in the spirit of a counter-insurgency as after the manner of a corporate reorganization. It has been a response not to literature but to literary studies. It has been called forth not by the subject matter under study—not by actual poems, novels, plays—but by the institutional situation in which young scholars now find themselves.

The situation in English as the century entered its final two decades was one that placed a greater premium on method than ideas. In addition, there was a rising sense that literary study had reached something of an impasse. On one side were the students of the New Critics, still doing readings of long-accepted texts; on the other, the deconstructionists, showing how texts undo themselves. Both seemed remote from the true interests of the new professoriat, which had cut its teeth on the political slogans of the sixties. As Jean E. Howard frankly says in a defense of the new movement, by the early eighties professors had grown weary of teaching literary texts as "ethereal entities" floating above the strife of history.1 For a spell, perhaps, feminism seemed close to solving the dilemma; it appeared to hold out the hope of transforming literary criticism into an agent for social change. But gradually many within the discipline began to awaken to the fact that feminism had no distinctive method of its own; the feminist critic knew what she wanted to say about a text, but she had to adopt other interpretive 79

"strategies," as the saying went, to make her themes appear. This began more and more to be the case. Younger critics were having to resort to a tandem operation, using deconstruction or some other variant of poststructuralist method to clear the ground on which an assortment of radical political notions were carted in to raise a new interpretation. But such a procedure left critics anxious lest their interpretations fail to go beyond the already familiar readings of the text. It was in this situation that the New Historicism emerged. It appeared to offer a distinctive approach, a rigorous method, along "with the opportunity to salvage one‘s political commitments. Indeed, at times the New Historicism seemed almost designed to methodize the political interpretation of literature.

The movement has gained rapid acceptance in English departments. It already has its classical texts (e.g., Stephen Greenblatt‘s Renaissance Self-Fashioning,2 Louis Adrian Montrose‘s uncollected essays on Shakespeare, especially the one entitled "Shaping Fantasies"3); it has its own journal (Representations, published by the University of California Press). Its special methods of interpretation are practiced by a large number of critics in England and America Jonathan Dollimore, Jane Tompkins, Don E. Wayne, Walter Benn Michaels, Catherine Gallagher, Arthur F. Marotti, Jean E. Howard, Stephen Orgel, Annabel Patterson, and Peter Stallybrass, to name only a few). It has set off an enthusiasm of historical research. Younger critics have begun to comb through parliamentary reports, religious tracts, labor statistics, and dusty stacks of ephemera published by contemporaries of the great English and American writers. Slightly older critics have begun, as it were, to retool themselves—to "rehistoricize" their scholarship for the new market conditions. Last year the English Institute devoted a large share of its program to the new approach. Graduate students have begun to catch on, and they had better. The year before, Wesleyan University‘s English department became the first in the country to advertise a job opening for a New Historicist.

There have been other "new historicisms" before this. Fredric Jameson‘s style of neo-Marxist historicism as practiced in The Political Unconscious (Cornell University Press, 1981) has been described as "new," but Jameson locates the grounds of his argument not in historical research but in recent theory; he is "historicist" only in respecting the past as past while seeking to make it serve the present. Similarly, Wesley Morris‘s Toward a New Historicism (Princeton University Press, 1972) is unrelated to the movement which has usurped that name. A student of Roy Harvey Pearce, Morris sought an approach that would somehow balance the recognition that a literary work belongs to its own time with the confidence that literary works can nevertheless transcend their time. Perhaps needless to say, Morris‘ effort was not followed up by younger critics. The winds of doctrine in university English departments in the last quarter of this century have not been favorable to anyone who suggested the possibility of transcendence.

But the movement that now goes by the name of New Historicism differs from both of these. Perhaps the central statement of its themes is the introduction to Stephen Greenblatt‘s Renaissance Self-Fashioning.4 Even the title suggests the main focus of the movement. Within the ranks of the New Historicism, literature is considered to be one of the social forces that contributes to the making of individuals; it acts as a form of social control. Although most New Historicists are scrupulous to distinguish themselves from Marxist critics, the fact remains that the central task of the New Historicism is the same as that of Marxist criticism: first to call into question the traditional view of literature as an autonomous realm of discourse with its own problems, forms, principles, activities, and then to dissolve the literary text into the social and political context from which it issued. In fact, the New Historicism tries explicitly to solve the theoretical difficulty in Marxist criticism of relating the cultural superstructure to the material base. Its claim to newness might be put in terms of its claim to having solved that problem.

What are the principles—or what Greenblatt calls the "enabling presumptions"—behind the New Historicist method? The movement establishes itself upon four main contentions. (l) Literature is historical, which means (in this exhibition) that a literary work is not primarily the record of one mind‘s attempt to solve certain formal problems and the need to find something to say; it is a social and cultural construct shaped by more than one 80 consciousness. The proper way to understand it, therefore, is through the culture and society that produced it. (2) Literature, then, is not a distinct category of human activity. It must be assimilated to history, which means a particular vision of history. (3) Like works of literature, man himself is a social construct, the sloppy composition of social and political forces—there is no such thing as a human nature that transcends history. Renaissance man belongs inescapably and irretrievably to the Renaissance. There is no continuity between him and us; history is a series of "ruptures" between ages and men. (4) As a consequence, the historian/ critic is trapped in his own "historicity." No one can rise above his own social formations, his own ideological upbringing, in order to understand the past on its terms. A modern reader can never experience a text as its contemporaries experienced it. Given this fact, the best a modern historicist approach to literature can hope to accomplish, according to Catherine Belsey, is "to use the text as a basis for the reconstruction of an ideology."5 Such an approach stands traditional historical scholarship on its head. The first principle of traditional scholarship—its generally agreed-upon point of departure—was that the recovery of the original meaning of a literary text is the whole aim of critical interpretation. But the New Historicism premises that recovery of meaning is impossible, to attempt it naive. What practitioners of the new method are concerned with, by contrast, is the recovery of the original ideology which gave birth to the text, and which the text in turn helped to disseminate throughout a culture. This dimension of critical interpretation has been neglected by traditional scholars not merely because the required concept, the "enabling presumption" of ideology, was unavailable to them until recently; in the New Historicist view, it had never been widely attempted because literary texts themselves suppress the means by which they construct ideology. A traditional formalistic approach, treating the text as self-contained, can never locate these ideological operations, also known as "representations." Only a historicist approach, treating the text as one element in the ideology of an age, can hope to lay them bare. Although the movement represents itself, then, as being more faithful to the true, hitherto-neglected nature of literature, in reality its key assumptions are derived from the institutional milieu in which it arose. Its concepts and categories are simply those which, over the last few years, have conditioned a large part of the literary thought within the university. Thus, the New Historicism is critical of the ‗‗enabling presumptions" of its more distant, but not of its more immediate, predecessors. For instance, the movement follows poststructuralism in its assurance that literary works mean any number of things to any number of readers (the doctrine of the plurality of meaning), freeing New Historicists to find the warrant for their interpretations not in the author‘s intentions for his work but in the ideology of his age. Similarly, the New Historicist effort to assimilate the literary text to history is guaranteed by the poststructuralist doctrine of textuality, which states that the text is not aloof from the surrounding context, that there is a contiguity, an ebb and flow, between text and whatever might once have been seen as "outside" it. Yet these ideas are obtained secondhand. They are not established by original inquiry or argument. They are simply the precipitate of an academic climate in which a plurality of meanings is recognized as offering the greatest good for the greatest number of literary scholars, and in which the reassimilation of text to context is the goal of practically everybody.

The other sources of the movement will be equally familiar to observers of the academic scene. The doctrine of historicity is a Heideggerian motif that came to the movement via the writings of German hermeneutical philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. The New Historicist conception of ideology is not that of Marx, but rather that of the French structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser— though, in plain fact, the New Historicists seem more directly influenced by expositors of Marxist doctrine like Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton than by Althusser. Finally, in its general orientation toward scholarship and historical research the New Historicism dances attendance on the figure of the late Michel Foucault. Again, though, the influence of Foucault is a generalized and secondhand one: it permeates the New Historicist conception of history as a succession of épistémes or structures of thought that shape everyone and everything within a culture. But this is no more than to say that Foucault has provided New Historicists with their own épistéme. Their work cannot really be said to extend or elaborate upon Foucault‘s. Nor is it critical of Foucault‘s concept of the épistéme. It merely embraces the concept as a given.

What do these assumptions lead New Historicists to argue? The initial effort is to relocate the literary text among the other, traditionally nonliterary "discursive practices" of an age. The representation of character in the nineteenth-century novel, for instance, is said to be bound up with contemporary debates over parliamentary representation; or, Iago‘s plot against Othello is described as typical of Elizabethan attempts to deny the otherness of subject peoples.6 But the larger purpose of New Historicist inquiry is the reconstruction of the actual (as opposed to the "represented") relations in which people lived during a particular time. For example, in one of the most widely read essays by a New Historicist, Louis Adrian Montrose interprets A Midsummer Night‟s Dream as an ideological attempt to comprehend the power of Queen Elizabeth—to make sense of it and place it safely within bounds—while simultaneously upholding the authority of males within Elizabethan culture.7 By citing a variety of contemporary writing (in order to reinstate the "discursive practices" of the age), Montrose demonstrates the Elizabethans‘ ambivalence toward their queen: abiding respect mixed with a dark desire to master her sexually. In this context, A Midsummer Night‟s Dream. is reread as a fable of the restoration of male governance. Mothers are significantly excluded from the dramatis personae of the play, just as the danger of matriarchy (with which the Elizabethans flirted in their fascination with the myth of the Amazons) was quietly suppressed by the celebration of Elizabeth‘s virginity. The very real possibility that power might actually be passed from mother to daughter was concealed from women of the age by such cultural productions as Shakespeare‘s play, in which Elizabeth was a willing collaborator as much by her decision to remain unwed and barren as by her "cultural presence" within the play.

It is in this sense that works of literature such as A Midsummer Night‟s Dream are "representations" of the culture from which they emerge. They are the emanations, the active agents, of the culture‘s circumambient ideology. Literary works are both what a culture produces as well as what reproduces the ideology. The term "representations" is misleading insofar as it suggests a mimetic theory of literature. Nothing could be further from New Historicist truths. In fact, the New Historicism presumes that artistic fiction does not imitate human action; it mediates it. That is, fiction is defined as the lens through which a certain portrait of the human experience is brought into focus. And as mediation rather than as imitation of social practices, it can be thus be said to shape rather than to reflect an age‘s understanding of human experience and potentiality.

In New Historicist interpretation, as a consequence, history is not viewed as the cause or the source of a work. Instead, the relationship between history and the work is seen as a dialectic: the literary text is interpreted as both product and producer, end and source, of history. One undeniable side benefit of such a view is that history is no longer conceived, as in some vulgar historical scholarship, as a thing wholly prior, a process which completes itself at the appearance of the work. At the same time, though, it must not be thought that the New Historicism dispenses with the cognitive category of priority. For the New Historicist it is ideology, not history, which is prior. The literary text is said to be a constituent part of a culture‘s ideology by virtue of passing it on; but the ideology nevertheless exists‘ intact‘ intelligible, in a form separate from (and therefore prior to) the work. If it didn‘t, the critic could not discern a relationship between work and ideology; and if the ideology were not prior to the work, it wouldn‘t be a historical relationship.

But the apriorism of ideology in New Historicist thought raises large questions. The principal one is this: How does the critic know that the ideology located in the work of literature under discussion genuinely belongs to the past? How can he be sure that the ideology is not simply his own political sympathy which has been injected into the work and then ‗‗located" there by means of an ingenious selection of the evidence? These questions occur spontaneously to anyone who reads very widely in New Historicist writing, so much of which expresses a politically au courant sympathy for exploited peoples, powerless women, workers, slaves, peasants. A critic like Stephen Greenblatt is too intelligent not to acknowledge that his own sympathy for such peoples is a priori. In the essay that launched the New Historicist journal Representations, Greenblatt interprets a Dürer sketch in The Painter‟s Manual (1525) for a monument commemorating a victory over rebellious peasants—a somewhat ludicrous design topped off by a peasant stabbed in the back—as ironic and subversive.8 Greenblatt goes on to admit, though, that ‗‗[t]he bitter irony we initially perceived [in Dürer‘s sketch] was constituted less by concrete 82 evidence of Dürer‘s subversiveness than by our own sympathy for the peasants, sympathy conditioned by our century‘s ideology, by recent historical scholarship, and no doubt above all, by our safe distance from the fear and loathing of 1525." He does not stop there, however. This admission, he continues, "though necessary, seems inadequate, for our solidarity with early sixteenth-century German peasants is of interest only insofar as it seems to have been called forth by Dürer‟s monument and not simply read into it" (emphasis added). Yet how can the critic be certain that the work studied has not simply provided him with an occasion for a renewed outbreak of familiar feeling, like a pop song from our adolescence that reminds us of a girl we once ached for? Greenblatt passes silently over such a question. The real question for him "is how Dürer could have created a brilliant, detailed, and coherent design that could lend itself to a strong interpretation so much at odds with his own probable intentions"? But this isn‘t a scholarly question so much as it is a dilemma for a certain kind of scholar. For such a scholar (i.e., one for whom the intentions of the artist are not normative), almost any work, no matter how brilliant, detailed, and coherent, can be made to lend itself to almost any interpretation at all. For Greenblatt, the aim of scholarship is to square the artist‘s intentions with the scholar‘s own sympathy. He simply assumes that Dürer‘s design is "at odds" with the sympathy any sensitive modern would feel. The sympathy is treated as a fact of equal importance (and comparable ontological status) with the design. No effort is made to ascertain whether the design really is at odds with anything; it is simply treated as a donnée of interpretation that it must be. The critic knows because of the way he feels.

The error of the New Historicism lies not in its political allegiances, however, but in the logic of its method. That method might be described as a way of salvaging initially favored hypotheses (or "strong interpretations") in the face of a lack of concrete evidence. Two main objections to such a procedure come to mind. First, we may simply disagree with the conviction that has inspired the argument in the first place. We may not happen to agree that it is a prima facie likelihood that all of the men within any given culture have sought to oppress the women or that those who express contempt for peasants are expressing the ambivalence of a wish-fulfillment fantasy. And if we disagree, no amount of evidence about the "discursive practices" of the age will persuade us otherwise. The very choice of what to quote in corroboration of this view (and what to withhold) will be made on the basis of the conviction that it is true—a conviction that is held long in advance of a search for evidence. But secondly, even if for the sake of argument we grant this assumption, we are not bound to any conclusion reached by its means. We can yield the point that Elizabethan culture u as patriarchal, or that those who serve ruling minorities desire secretly to see them toppled, and still go on to deny that A Midsummer Night‟s Dream or Dürer‘s sketch contain these meanings. If it is not self-contradictory for us to do this—if we can simultaneously grant an assumption and reject its interpretive significance—it follows that any interpretation grounded upon an unproven assumption about a work‘s historical context is trifling, if not untenable. Only if a reader of a New Historicist argument is prepared to accept its a priori assumptions can its conclusions be accepted as true to history. The essential categories of New Historicist thought make the necessary facts appear.

"The whole point" of the New Historicist enterprise, Jean E. Howard says, "is to grasp the terms of the discourse which made it possible [for contemporaries] to see the ‗facts‘ [of their own time] in a particular way—indeed, made it possible to see certain phenomena as facts at all."9 At first glance, this objective appears to be little different from that of traditional historical interpretation: the discourse of the past is grasped in its own terms. But what has been subtly introduced is a comparison. The New Historicist sees facts that the people of the time did not, and this special insight is what enables him to grasp the "discursive practices" that "produced" the facts that the people did see. But there remains a question: How can the New Historicist be certain that this second set of "facts"—those so painfully clear to a modern reader—are not merely produced by the discursive practices of his own time? Surely the terms in which he explains the past—"representations," "subversiveness," "cultural presence," etc.—belong to no age so much as his own. They are to be numbered among the discursive practices of the recent academic past. How then does the New Historicist know that the facts which show up so clearly in his interpretive framework can also be found in the distant past? There is no provision for them in his own theory of historical knowledge. If he can never escape his own historicity, how can the New Historicist know for certain that those "facts" exist at all? 83

Despite its theoretical sheen, the New Historicism is strikingly unphilosophical about these and other problems of knowledge raised by its methods of interpretation. Movement writers never explain how it is that, though we are unable to recover the original meaning of a literary text, we are nevertheless able to reconstruct its original ideology. Nor do they account for why, though we cannot experience a text from an earlier age as its original readers would have experienced it, this problem disappears when we are faced by a text from the more recent past—say, a critical essay by a New Historicist. Indeed, it is clear that the New Historicism‘s categories of history are the standard academic ones. Although the movement is publicly contemptuous of the "periodization" of academic history, the uses to which New Historicists put the Foucauldian notion of the épistéme amount to very little more than the same practice under a new, improved label. A historical age is conceived of as a structure of thought held together by the same discursive practices. But the extent and duration of an épistéme is never fixed, and how one can be distinguished from another is never explained, except by the use of such labels as "Renaissance" or "Victorian England." Problems like these are not confronted, because academic categories in which New Historicist thinking occurs act something like ear-stoppers against unwelcome sounds.

None of these doubts is likely to dampen the enthusiasm within English departments for the new movement. The vindication is simply too persuasive. "If we don‘t do it this way we can‘t justify interpreting literary works any longer," movement regulars seem to be saying, "or what‘s worse, we‘ll have to go back to our old ways." Hence the distinctive terminology: "discursive practices," "representations," "mediations," "contradictions," "ruptures," "subversion." What the New Historicism offers to students of literature is the joy of new explanations, new paradigms. It does not designate an unexplored area of scholarly investigation. It does not raise new problems, new questions. If its attempts to "historicize" literary study were merely an inducement to look into new kinds of documents, to ask about the relation of literature to social history in a new way, the movement would perform a service for scholarship. But it does not. The New Historicism cannot be considered a new subspecialty within the discipline of English in the same sense as the older subspecialties of textual criticism or Renaissance studies. It is instead an academic specialty in the same sense that feminism is—a school of interpretation predisposed to find the same themes in every work it reads and to explain them always in the same terms. The specialization, in other words, is not a disciplinary but a bureaucratic one. It seeks to establish a new jurisdiction in a reorganized university. At such a juncture, the question of method becomes a matter of group loyalty. New Historicists like to picture themselves as challenging "the institution of criticism"— breaking loose from what Jane Tompkins describes as "the extremely narrow confines of literary study as it is now practiced within the academy."10 In reality, however, the movement is another step toward the reconfinement of literary study. As jobs are created for New Historicists and space in the critical journals is set aside for their essays—as academic decisions are increasingly made on the basis not of scholarly competence but of methodological affiliation— the pressure on younger scholars and graduate students to enlist in the movement becomes enormous: that way employment, advancement, and prestige lie. It seems to worry no one that this might take away from individual scholars the determination of what sort of research to pursue and put it in the hands of hiring committees and editorial boards. Yet such a state of affairs can only end by narrowing the possibilities for fruitful scholarship and abridging the academic freedom of those who would go their own way.

The philosopher Michael Oakeshott has pointed out that a student of the past cannot learn the history of something without first discovering what kind of thing it is. In this respect, the New Historicism is not a genuine historical inquiry; it does not inquire into the true nature of literary works, because it is confident it already knows what they are. They are agents of ideology. Contrary to appearances, the movement is not an effort to discover what it means for a literary work to be historical; it is really little more than an attempt to get literary works to conform to a particular vision of history. For the university as a whole the movement represents a further stage in literary scholarship‘s progressive abandonment of literature.

Notes 84

1. Jean E. Howard, "The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies," English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986), p. 15. 2. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From .More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 3. Louis Adrian Montrose, "Shaping Fantasies: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture," Representations 2 (1983): 61-94. Other important essays by Montrose include: "Celebration and Insinuation: Sir Philip Sidney and the Motives of Elizabethan Courtship," Renaissance Drama, n.s. 8 (1977): 3-35: "'Eliza, Queen of shepheardes,' and the Pastoral of Power," English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 153-82; "Gifts and Reasons: The Contexts of Peele's Araygnment of Paris," English Literary Renaissance 47 (1980): 433-61; "'The Place of a Brother' in As You Like It: Social Process and Comic Form," Shakespeare Quarterly 32 (1981): 28- 54; "Of Gentlemen and Shepherds: The Politics of Elizabethan Pastoral Form," English Literary Renaissance 50 (1983): 415-59; "The Elizabethan Subjects and the Spenserian Text," in Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, eds. Patricia Parker and David Quint (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 303-40; and "Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History," English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 5-12. 4. See also Greenblatt's Introduction to the special issue of Genre 15 (1982) entitled The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms in the Renaissance, pp. 3-6. 5. Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London: Methuen, 1980), p. 144. 6. See Catherine Gallagher, The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and Narrative Form, 1832-1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 219-67; and Greenblatt, Renaissance, pp. 222-54. 7. Montrose, "Shaping Fantasies." 8. Stephen Greenblatt, "Murdering Peasants: Status, Genre, and the Representation of Rebellion," Representations 1 (1983): 1-29; the quoted passages are from p. 9. 9. Howard, p. 27. 10. Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural W0rk of American Fiction, 179o-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. xiv.

Retrieved from: http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/historicism.html, 2011.

How could you use this theory to interpret and analyze a piece of literature? What is ―historicism?‖ Why is it important? Explain. Use the Internet to find examples of a paper applying or explaining New Historicism.

Fifth Three Weeks

Postmodern Era (time era?) lecture and presentation

Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the problematization of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Rather, it holds realities to be plural and relative, and dependant on who the interested parties are and what their interests consist in. It attempts to problematise modernist overconfidence, by drawing into sharp contrast the difference between how confident a speaker is of their position versus how confident they need to be to serve their supposed purposes. Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields, including literary criticism, sociology, linguistics, architecture, visual arts, and music.

Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from modernist approaches that had previously been dominant. The term "postmodernism" comes from its critique of the "modernist" scientific mentality of objectivity and progress associated with the Enlightenment.

These movements, modernism and postmodernism, are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives. "Postmodernism" is used in critical theory to refer to a point of departure for works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, journalism, and design, as well as in marketing and business and in the interpretation of law, culture, and religion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Indeed, postmodernism, particularly as an academic movement, can be understood as a reaction to modernism in the Humanities. Whereas modernism was primarily concerned with principles such as identity, unity, authority, and certainty, postmodernism is often associated with difference, plurality, textuality, and skepticism.

Literary critic Fredric Jameson describes postmodernism as the "dominant cultural logic of late capitalism." "Late capitalism" refers to the phase of capitalism after World War II, as described by economist Ernest Mandel; the term refers to the same period sometimes described by "globalization", "multinational capitalism", or "consumer capitalism". Jameson's work studies the postmodern in contexts of aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and economics.

Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism, 2011.

Readings: Sylvia Plath – ―Above the Oxbow‖

―Above the Oxbow‖ By Sylvia Plath

Here in this valley of discrete academies We have not mountains, but mounts, truncated hillocks To the Adirondacks, to northern Monadnock, Themselves mere rocky hillocks to an Everest. Still, they're out best mustering of height: by Comparison with the sunken silver-grizzled Back of the Connecticut, the river-level Flats of Hadley farms, they're lofty enough Elevations to be called something more than hills. Green, wholly green, they stand their knobby spine Against our sky: they are what we look southward to Up Pleasant Street at Main. Poising their shapes Between the snuff and red tar-paper apartments, They mound a summer coolness in our view.

To people who live in the bottom of valleys A rise in the landscape, hummock or hogback, looks To be meant for climbing. A peculiar logic In going up for the coming down if the post We start at's the same post we finish by, But it's the clear conversion at the top can hold Us to the oblique road, in spite of a fitful Wish for even ground, and it's the last cliff Ledge will dislodge out cramped concept of space, unwall Horizons beyond vision, spill vision After the horizons, stretching the narrowed eye To full capacity. We climb to hopes Of such seeing up the leaf-shuttered escarpments, Blindered by green, under a green-grained sky

Into the blue. Tops define themselves as places Where nothing higher's to be looked to. Downward looks Follow the black arrow-backs of swifts on their track Of the air eddies' loop and arc though air's at rest To us, since we see no leaf edge stir high Here on a mount overlaid with leaves. The paint-peeled Hundred-year-old hotel sustains its ramshackle Four-way veranda, view-keeping above The fallen timbers of its once remarkable Funicular railway, witness to gone Time, and to graces gone with the time. A state view- Keeper collects half-dollars for the slopes Of state scenery, sells soda, shows off viewpoints. A ruffy skylight oaints the gray oxbow 87

And paints the river's pale circumfluent stillness. As roses broach their carmine in a mirror. Flux Of the desultory currents --- all that unique Stripple of shifting wave-tips is ironed out, lost In the simplified orderings of sky- Lorded perspectives. Maplike, the far fields are ruled By correct green lines and no seedy free-for-all Of asparagus heads. Cars run their suave Colored beads on the strung roads, and the people stroll Straightforwardly across the springing green. All's peace and discipline down there. Till lately we Lived under the shadow of hot rooftops And never saw how coolly we might move. For once A high hush quietens the crickets' cry.

Allen Ginsberg – ―Howl‖

―Howl‖ By Allen Ginsberg

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 89

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 90

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 91

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

92 who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland

where you're madder than I am

I'm with you in Rockland

where you must feel strange

I'm with you in Rockland

where you imitate the shade of my mother

I'm with you in Rockland 94

where you've murdered your twelve secretaries

I'm with you in Rockland

where you laugh at this invisible humour

I'm with you in Rockland

where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I'm with you in Rockland

where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I'm with you in Rockland

where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I'm with you in Rockland

where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I'm with you in Rockland

where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I'm with you in Rockland

where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyss

I'm with you in Rockland

where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I'm with you in Rockland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I'm with you in Rockland

where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I'm with you in Rockland

where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb 95

I'm with you in Rockland

where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I'm with you in Rockland

where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep

I'm with you in Rockland

where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free

I'm with you in Rockland

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Richard Brautigan – ―Your Catfish Friend‖

―Your Catfish Friend‖ By Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life in catfish forms in scaffolds of skin and whiskers at the bottom of a pond and you were to come by one evening when the moon was shining down into my dark home and stand there at the edge of my affection and think, "It's beautiful here by this pond. I wish somebody loved me," I'd love you and be your catfish friend and drive such lonely thoughts from your mind and suddenly you would be at peace, and ask yourself, "I wonder if there are any catfish in this pond? It seems like a perfect place for them."

All literature retrieved from: http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/oxbow.html http://www.wussu.com/poems/agh.htm http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/your-catfish-friend/

Major Theory: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic theory refers to the definition and dynamics of personality development which underlie and guide psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy. First laid out by Sigmund Frued, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work (see psychoanalysis). Psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence as a critical force in the last third of the twentieth century as part of 'the flow of critical discourse after the 1960s', and in association above all with the name of Jacques Lacan.

The Influence of Lacan 97

Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan are often treated as canonical thinkers by Lacanian psychoanalysts, although there are considerable objections to their authority, particularly from other psychoanalytical schools and feminism in particular.

The Multi-Voiced Legacy

Perhaps as a result of its 'unending dependence on an idol, a logic, or a language', it has been suggested that 'the Lacanian movement...was doomed to dissidence, and its whole history has been punctuated by recurrent schisms'. The result has been however a fertile and disparate flowering of psychoanalytic thought within the French context.

Major thinkers within psychoanalytic theory in France include Andre Green, Maud Mannoni, Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok, Claude Nachin, Serge Leclaire, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Derrida, 'Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis [who] write...their own characteristically lucid account', René Major, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques-Alain Miller. Their work however is anything but unitary. Derrida, for example, has remarked that virtually the entirety of Freud's metapsychology, while possessing some strategic value previously necessary to the elaboration of psychoanalysis, ought to be discarded at this point. Miller by contrast is sometimes taken as heir apparent to Lacan because of his editorship of Lacan's seminars, although his interest in analysis is more philosophical than clinical; whereas Major has questioned the complicity of clinical psychoanalysis with various forms of totalitarian government. Some of the theoretical orientation of psychoanalysis in both German and French and, later, American contexts results in part from its separation from psychiatry and institutionalisation closer to departments of philosophy and literature (or American cultural studies programs). Psychoanalytic theory heavily influenced the work of Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Louis Althusser, and Cathy Caruth, among others. The implications for the work of these thinkers are varied; Fanon's interests were in racial and colonial identity, whereas Marcuse and Althusser represent distinct Marxist positions that, among other things, attempt to use psychoanalysis in the study of ideology, and Caruth, coming from a background in de Manian deconstruction and working in comparative literature, has articulated notions of trauma through literary studies informed by philosophy, psychology, neurology, and Freudian and Lacanian theory. Theory can be so expansive a container as to include the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who believed psychoanalysis ultimately radically reductionist and strongly opposed the psychiatric institutions of their time.

Psychoanalytic theory sometimes heavily informs gender studies and queer theory. Psychoanalytic theory proposes that every individual personality is the result of childhood conflict.

Criticism of Psychoanalytic Theory

The danger implicit in Lacan's 'grafting of an ambitious philosophy of "the human" on to an argument purporting to be a technical contribution to the study of specific mental disorders' has always been that 'the speculative welter of his own theoretical speech can easily drown out the undistinguished locutions in which ordinary human suffering finds voice'. In his later years, indeed, 'Lacan seemed more interested in psychoanalytic theory than in clinical practice', particularly through his association with 'a circle of philosophers and mathematicians around his son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller'. The result has been that a kind of 'militant intellectualism runs through the entire French psychoanalytic community...the problem of the philosopher manque'.

At its most recondite - 'The One of meaning is not to be confused with what makes the One of the signifier...The Other is thus a dual entry matrix' - Lacanianism could be considerd as 'in constant danger of degenerating into intellectual games'. At its most succinct - Lacan's "mathemes" - as 'Serge Leclaire, who is one 98 of the most respected and distinguished of all French analysts, remarked...they were basically no more than "graffiti"'.

At the least, however, as Lacan himself put it in the first of his Seminars to be published, 'through all the misadventures that my discourse encounters...one can say that this discourse provides an obstacle to the experience of analysis being served up to you in a completely cretinous way'.

Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalytic_theory, 2011.

How could you use this theory to interpret and analyze a piece of literature? What is ―psychoanalysis?‖ Why is it important? Explain. Use the Internet to find examples of a paper applying or explaining psychoanalysis.

We will also be watching the film They Live! (1988) By John Carpenter

We will watch it in class, but if you miss that day, the film is also on YouTube, so you can watch it at your own convenience: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYJIIPs-5rQ Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkkitMmStmA&feature=related Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99ItfGwfCTo&feature=related Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqsKq2T3dE&feature=related Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1vj2TAaH5c&feature=related Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVOKMeiBf7s&feature=related Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvcjkJ8TGM&feature=related Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTcWJZP2BZY&feature=related Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cmdr1X86Ac&feature=related

Questions & Discussion over the film: What is/are the message(s) in the film? Is the film making an argument? What kind? What are some of the important or key elements in the film? What is the philosophy in the film? What did you agree or disagree with in the film? What did you think of the characters? The scenes? The plot? The premise? What is the rhetoric of the film? How important is the dialogue?