San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks San José Studies, 1980s San José Studies Spring 4-1-1983 San José Studies, Spring 1983 San José State University Foundation Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sanjosestudies_80s Recommended Citation San José State University Foundation, "San José Studies, Spring 1983" (1983). San José Studies, 1980s. 11. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sanjosestudies_80s/11 This Journal is brought to you for free and open access by the San José Studies at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in San José Studies, 1980s by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. s~Ian~s ~sor Nvs SAN JOSE Volume IX, Number 2 ARTICLES Ted Hughes as a Writer of Children's Books David Rees . 6 The Celebration of the Ordinary in Barbara Pym's Novels Edith S. Larson .............................................. 17 Germany Wohin Charles Burdick .............................................. 3 2 A View from the Rialto: Two Psychologies in The Merchant of Venice Harvey Birenbaum ........................................... 68 Rhetorical Stance: The Epideictic Mode as a Principle of Decorum in the English Renaissance Lyric J. R. Brink and L. M. Pailet ................................... 83 Root and Branch: Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse Kate Adams ................................................. 93 STUDIES Spring 1983 POETRY David Citino Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures the Eighth Grade Boys and Girls on the Nature of Symmetry ..................... 23 Sister Mary Appassionata's Lecture to the Eighth Grade Girls and Boys: The Song of Bathsheba ................... 24 Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures the Pre-Med Class ...... 2 6 Mother Ann Lee Preaches to the Shakers from her Death Bed, Niskeyuna, New York, 1784 ......................... 27 Emily Keller The Funnel Cloud .......................................... 29 Falling Off Thruway 1-190 .................................. 30 Mter the Marriage ......................................... 31 FICTION Sign Kirby Wilkins . 4 4 The Green Marble Pedestal Jean Fausett Atthowe ........................................ 49 Lapses Patricia Lynn Hunt ........................................... 60 SAN JOSE STUDIES Volume IX, Number 2 Spring 1983 EDITOR Selma R. Burkom, Enplish and American Studies, San Jose State University ASSOCIATE EDITORS Billie B. Jensen, HistOT)', San Jose State University Ellen C. Weaver, Biolou.v. San Jose State University Margaret H. Williams, Humanities, San Jose State University EDITORIAL BOARD Garland E. Allen, Biolou.v. Washinpton Universi(Y John A. Brennan, Histor.v. University of Colorado, Boulder Celeste Brody, Secondary Education, San Jose State University Harold J. Debey, Chemistry, San Jose State University Lee Edwards, Enplish, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Richard Flanagan, Creative Writing, Babson College Richard Ingraham, Biolopy, San Jose State University Richard E. Keady, Religious Studies, San Jose State University Jack Kurzweil, Electrical Enuineering, San Jose State University Edward Laurie, Marketing and Quantitative Studies, San Jose State University Mary M. Lepper, Public Administration, Syracuse University Jackson T. Main, History, State University of New York, Stony Brook Fauneil Rinn, Political Science, San Jose State University Richard A. Scott, Business, University of Arizona Jules Seigel, Enulish, University of Rhode Island Robert G. Shedd, Enulish and Humanities, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Robert Spaulding, Elemental)' Education, San Jose State University Dwight Van de Vate, Jr., Philosophy, The University of Tennessee COMMITTEE OF TRUSTEES Jean Beard Arlene Okerlund Marshall J. Burak Rose Tseng Hobert W. Burns Gerald Wheeler John Galm O.C. Williams, Chairman Elsie Leach Robert H. Woodward, Secretary BUSINESS ASSISTANT Emi Nobuhiro GRAPHIC CONSULTANTS AI Beechick Phyllis Canty ©San Jose State University Foundation, 1983 ISSN: 0097-8051 S~'IJI~HV Ted Hughes as a Writer of Children's Books David Rees ED Hughes is generally recognized in the English-speaking world T as one of the most important poets of the second half of the twentieth century, but his achievements as a writer for children are not so widely known. In his writing for young people he shows himself to be a jack-of-all-trades-! would not add a master of none: he has produced volumes of poetry specifically for children, the text of a picture book, short stories, the unclassifiable The Iron Giant (a modern morality-cum­ myth), one major critical essay, four plays, and a book on creative writing. A full-length novel is the only form he has eschewed so far. He has an immense concern for the young, for their vulnerability in a dangerous, industrialized world; he seems in this to be as much a teacher as a crea­ tive artist: the driving forces behind his writing are the need to stimulate creativity and imagination in children and to encourage the right kind of education to counteract the evils-as he sees it-of a blind faith in scientific progress. In this he resembles nineteenth century children's authors more than those of our own time; though never overtly didactic. he is certainly a moralist (and on occasion a stern moralist)-someone who feels that the young are not best left to their own devices, but need to be guided and taught. This may sound unfashionable, indeed to some reprehensible, but it has never impeded his creative powers. He does not believe, as a Victorian author might, that books should frighten the young reader into being good or should offer soft, sentimental solu­ tions, but he does believe that children's fiction should not turn its back-as it sometimes does-on modern technology and wallow nostalgically in a cozy, rural past. He feels with some passion that children's literature is more important now than it has ever been, parti- 6 cularly as a corrective to scientific discovery and so-called advance. The poetry need not detain us long, though six of his ten books for children are collections of verse. They are, curiously, much less success­ ful than the plays and the stories. Or maybe it is not so curious: his energies as a poet have chiefly gone into the succession of volumes from The Hawk in the Rain to Moortotcn, major works for the adult reader. In writing verse for children he often seems to be floundering. The irony and grim humor is missing (though it is there in the prose) and is replaced by a childlike dottiness that is in effect childish: "They are taking me to the Queen," thinks Nessie. "And the Duke of Edinburgh will say 'There's a Bonnie Lassie!' "Then I shall be all right, I shall have class, "And everybody will say 'Oh everybody knows Nessie. she's a grand lass.' "And all these good people are bringing this to pass." Nessie the Mannerless Monster The themes are often similar to those of the adult poetry-landscape. usually bleak and without the presence of man, and animals. The volume called Season Songs is almost entirely about landscape and weather, and though it contains some remarkable lines and images, some startling and original perceptions- There came this day and he was autumn. His mouth was wide And red as a sunset. His tail was an icicle. There Came a Day or The first sorrow of autumn Is the slow goodbye Of the garden who stands so long in the evening­ A brown poppy head, The stalk of a lily, And still cannot go. The Seven Sorrou•s There is an unsureness, particularly when he uses rhyme: But the cod is in the tide-rip Like a key in a purse. 7 The deer are on the bare-blown hill Like smiles on a nurse. The Warm and the Cold In his adult poetry Ted Hughes rarely, if ever, uses rhyme: perhaps he feels it adds little to the structure of a stanza. It is odd that in writing for children he frequently uses rhyme, and rarely with success; it is an obstacle with which he seems to collide, gracelessly. Ted Hughes's finest poems are about animals: perhaps no one has ever written so much on this subject and so well. Animals, real and invented, abound in the verse for children. In Under the North Star there are memorable phrases and descriptions-the black bear's comment about himself, "I am God's clown;" clams in winter "gasped with blue cold;" the woodpecker is "rubber-necked;" the goofy Moose is "the walking house-frame;" the wolf "licks the world clean as a plate/ And leaves his own bones." But often these poems sound like simplifications of the animal poems in the adult books, or footnotes to them, not completely new ideas. There is also uncertainty in the nonsense verse of Meet My Folks! The imagination behind these poems is splendid -a sister who is actually a crow pretending to be a human, a father whose job is inspecting holes, a grandmother who knits clothes for wasps and goldfish, an aunt who grows man-eating thistles-but the use of rhyme is a hit-and-miss affair: The very thought makes me iller and iller Bert's brought home a gigantic Gorilla! My Brother Bert works well; it's outrageous and funny, but Not to forget the Bandicoot Who would certainly peer from his battered old boot My Brother Bert does not work: not only does the second line contain too many words, but a boot-as opposed to anything else-is the bandicoot's home only because the poet needs a rhyme. Ted Hughes has not yet found a proper voice for himself as a poet for children, excellent though some individual poems may be. He probably needs to move away completely from the themes of his adult poetry and forge an entirely different instrument for what he wants to say. Poetry in the Making is the printed version of a series of talks he gave on BBC Radio for the schools program, Listening and Writing. In the introduction to the book, he says that nothing, except for the odd word, has been changed; and indeed the prose throughout has the sound of 8 someone speaking.