Ha Ha Ha

I really enjoyed our discussion today. Boland is really great, and she is certainly one of modern Ireland's most important female voices. Today's discussion about gender and beauty was really important, and I appreciate those of you who made the effort to be prepared with the reading and come to class. For some reason over half the class was missing today. Might that have had anything to do with the fact that a progress report was due? I am still expecting a progress report from the rest of you, in one form or another, sometime this evening.

For Monday, you will need to have read the first 100 or so pages of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Let's read up through the line "I didn't tell him about his underpants" on page 103. Doyle does something in this novel that other writers have tried to do but very few have pulled off authentically: he writes in the voice of a child. This is a perspective we've talked about a lot this semester but have not encountered in the literature. Paddy Clarke, age 10, is one of the most intriguing narrators in contemporary Irish fiction. Doyle won the Booker prize for this novel (which is more or less the U.K./Ireland equivalent of the Pulitzer), and I think you will quickly see why. It's a gem.

Friday's Reading List

I've really enjoyed our discussions this week about Boland's work. As usual, I wish we had more time to discuss more poems. A week just isn't enough time. Three weeks on Yeats was not nearly enough time. We're always hearing time's winged chariot.

Here is the list of poems for Friday. This is your last chance to talk about poetry in class this semester (with the exception of our review sessions of course), so bring your A-game.

Friday
"A Ballad of Beauty and Time" (122)
"The Serpent in the Garden" (125)
"The Woman Turns Herself Into a Fish" (131)
"The Muse Mother" (134)
"In the Garden" (136)

From Domestic Interior:
"Night Feeding" (139)
"Hymn" (144)
"Endings" (147)
"After a Childhood away from Ireland" (149)
"Domestic Interior" (151)

Don't forget about your progress report, and if you have the time, get started on Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Reading for Wednesday

Wednesday
"Nights of Childhood" (55)
"Spring at the Edge of the Sonnet" (59)
"Distances" (69)

"The Oral Tradition" (75)
"Miss Eire" (78)
"Self-Portrait on a Summer Evening" (80)
"The Women" (84)
"Fever" (87)
"Envoi" (97)
"Suburban Woman: A Detail" (98)
"An Irish Childhood in England: 1951" (106)
"The Emigrant Irish" (108)
"Listen. This is the Noise of Myth" (113)

Eavan Boland Reading List

I've started your reading list for Eavan Boland. I'll finish it tomorrow, but you have your reading for Monday now. Please be aware that you are not going to be able to find most of these poems online, so if you haven't bought the book, you need to. It's a book I think you will want to keep.

Monday
"The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me" (19)
"The Rooms of Other Women Poets" (20)
"Brush-cut Irish Silver" (29)

"A False Spring" (37)
"The Making of an Irish Goddess" (38)
"White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland" (40)
"An Old Steel Engraving" (45)
"In Exile" (46)
"We Are Always Too Late" (47)
"What We Lost" (48)
"Outside History" (50)

You really should read the entire sequence from Outside History since it is, after all, a sequence. But make sure you at least read the sections I've listed. And don't forget to write about "The Haw Lantern" on the blog.

"The Haw Lantern"

Just a reminder: I would like a progress report from you by Friday (April 3), detailing how you are getting along with your term paper.

Yesterday in class we briefly discussed “The Haw Lantern,” but none of us (and we should all be embarrassed about this) had looked up the story of Diogenes, so I asked that by Monday, all of us look further into the poem and write something on the blog about it. I came home and re-read the poem several times, then looked up the reference to Diogenes, then read the poem a few more times. I won’t talk about the entire poem because I want to leave some ground for you to furrow, but I’ll get us started:

Diogenes was an Athenian beggar who championed self-sufficiency and rejected all the comforts of so-called civilization (a house, utensils, prepared food, etc.). He is most famous for walking through the streets of Athens carrying a lamp, looking for an honest man among the masses.

As I re-read “The Haw Lantern,” it became clear that the lantern in the poem is a metaphor; the “haw” is a hawthorn bush, and the “lantern” is the large red berry, or fruit, that grows on it (see pictures). The lantern-berries, the size of crab apples (“crab of the thorn”), are shining, but they are doing so in winter, bearing fruit “out of season":

The wintry haw is burning out of season,

crab of the thorn, a small light for small people

An organic process, the seasonal cycle, has become corrupted. On a literal level, this could mean that bushes don’t normally fruit in winter, so seeing them do so is atypical. But of course it is more than this. This is Ireland’s winter, its bleak season (The poem was written during the Troubles), and any lantern that shines in that season, particularly the lantern of Diogenes, looking for a “just man,” is not going to give off much light. In fact, it can’t, or doesn’t want to, give off too much light…just enough to “keep the wick of self-respect from dying out.”

But even this proves difficult. Indeed, at the end of the poem, the metaphorical Diogenes (appearing in the poem as the berry on each branch) “moves on,” signifying that no just man can be found (not even the reader). Both the light, and the people it is supposed to illuminate, are “small.” This is more than a reference to Northern Ireland being a relatively-small country in terms of its size. The implication is that its people can also be narrow-minded, near-sighted, petty, etc.

The Haw Lantern was published in 1987, during a time when Sinn Fein was actively seeking to negotiate an end to the Northern Ireland conflicts, but those conflicts were still bloody and ongoing, if less frequent than they had been in the 70s. Thus, there is definitely a political undercurrent to the poem that we can’t ignore. But like so many of Heaney’s poems, the politics are not addressed head-on; that is, he is not going to take a determined political stance here. Indeed, the fact that there is no honest man to be found is a denunciation of everyone involved. Heaney's stance is that no one is blameless (think of the story we discussed from his Nobel Lecture). He is more concerned with the wrong-ness of a climate that creates and allows bloodshed, taking Ireland "out of season." In fact, if the hawthorn, like Yeats’s laurel tree, or his rose, can be seen as a symbol of Ireland, then the reference to a “blood-prick” is much more than a haw-thorn pricking you. It may also be the realization, as you look at its blood-red fruit, that the fruit of wrong-seasoned, present-day Northern Ireland is bloody. This should indeed prick us. The prick is a blood test (whenever I’ve had my blood checked, it requires a pricking of the finger), a test that stands in for Diogenes with his lantern, asking you if you are honest, if you are just, if you are honest enough to allow yourself, your conscience, to be pricked. You want that prick to "clear you," much like a clean blood test can tell you you don't have an infection, or a disease. But you are found wanting. You are not cleared. Heaney’s use of the second person is telling:

But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes

This has several implications, one of which is that the test, the introspective look, comes from within us. If we let ourselves be pricked, we will be honest enough to admit that we are by no means blameless.

I’ve said enough to get us going. Calling all critics…

Seamus Heaney "Punishment" on YouTube/South Park episode about "The Lottery"

Here is the link to the animated version of "Punishment" that we discussed in class today.

Here is a link to the South Park episode about it; it's incredibly insightful. Fair warning: it's pretty offensive (which should come as no surprise), but the point of the episode is profoundly moral and, despite the initial sensationalism in the first few minutes, there's a compassion to that cannot be overlooked.

Northern Ireland - Belfast- Jeph

These are just a handful of photo's I took from Belfast when I was there. I have a lot more but I don't think everyone wants to see all of them. I think this gives you a good idea of what it looks like there. Forgive me if things are out of order or messed up. I'm not exactly keen on how blogger works.

Also, I have some other pretty interesting photos from Derry, where Bloody Sunday occurred, if anyone is interested. It gives another perspective of the politics of Northern Ireland.

This is a large "H" (obviously) in remembrance of the H-block prison hunger strikers that died in the early 80's.
The H-Block prison is a very fascinating and tragic story. Basically these men died because they refused to be referred to as criminals. They wanted to be called "Prisoners of War" and thus given basic rights of a P.O.W. because to them, they were fighting what they considered an illegally occupying government.
Margaret Thatcher let ten of them die of hunger strikes (the two in the middle died in the h-blocks at an earlier time but I'm not sure of what but they weren't hunger strikers).

Another mural dedicated to the ten who died of hunger strikes.
At the top..."SAOIRSE"...Irish for "Freedom"

A mural condemning the H-Block prison. The wanted poster shows portrait of Margaret Thatcher.
The following sign says "Welcome to Falls Road" in Irish Gaelic.
It must be noted that painting murals is illegal in Belfast. There are far less murals in the Catholic neighborhoods than in the Protestant Neighborhoods and that could be due to the fact that until recent times, the police and the government was over 90% protestant.
Notice the high steel fence.

I thought this was interesting. There were a lot of murals on Falls Road that had nothing to do with the politics of Belfast but this one, I thought, was very interesting.

This is the most famous mural on the side of the Sinn Fein building. It is a quote from Bobby Sands, the first of the ten hunger strike victims to die. He was elected to office while he was in prison and while he was on his hunger strike, which showed the political power of this movement.


Sinn Fein headquarters on Falls Road. I wasn't lucky enough to go inside because they just closed. I am definitely a supporter of Sinn Fein, which is Irish Gaelic for "Ourselves." Thus, denoting that they wished to be separate and independent from Great Britain.
Sinn Fein Headquarters. Notice the Irish Flag. It's illegal to fly the Irish flag in Northern Ireland but they get away with it here.

These are some of the Shankill Road Murals, a Protestant Neighborhood. Note the emphasis on hooded paramilitary. We so often see the IRA as hooded terrorist by the media and we don't often see the other side. People don't realize that there is another side. This is that other side.




UVF - Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF would be the Protestant equivalent of the IRA.
Here are some up close views of the steel walls and fences that separate the neighborhoods.


Some graffiti. Taigs = durogatory term for Catholic.
"Up the pope smokers"
This is me standing in front of the steel gate that kept us from getting to our car. Our car was just on the other side of this gate. We had to walk five miles to find a way out of the Shankill road area and back to Falls Road.

I thought this was a little sad and ironic. A Registered Day Nursery surrounded by the steel walls and metal fences. I'm not sure I would want my child staying there.

This is the other side of the gate where our car was parked. The gate was open when we left.

The Tollund Man

I thought you might enjoy seeing some images of the Tollund Man. He dates from the 4th Century BC and was discovered in Denmark in 1950. I think seeing these images might add to your reading of Heaney's poem. And, if you want to see some truly AMAZING photography of bog-preserved bodies (and who wouldn't, right?), go to http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/09/bog-bodies/clark-photography. The first photo, which is of the Tollund Man, is arresting. So are many others.

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

Seamus Heaney Reading List

Monday
“Digging” (3)
“Death of a Naturalist” (5)
“Blackberry-Picking” (7)
“Requiem for the Croppies” (23)
“The Wife’s Tale” (25)
“Bogland” (41)
“The Other Side” (59)
“The Tollund Man” (62)
“Limbo” (72)

Wednesday
“Punishment” (112)
“Summer, 1969” (132)
“The Toome Road” (143)
“The Strand at Lough Beg” (145)
“The Singer’s House” (153)
“The Otter” (167)
“The Skunk” (168)
“The Harvest Bow” (175)
“In Memorium Francis Ledwidge” (176)

Friday
“Changes” (211)
“The Railway Children” (216)
“The Haw Lantern” (275)
“The Pitchfork” (320)
“Two Lorries” (378)
“A Call” (403)
“Postscript” (411)
“Crediting Poetry” (413-430)*

*“Crediting Poetry” is Heaney’s 1995 Nobel Lecture

Elizabeth Bowen and Anglo-Irishness

In one of my volumes on Modern Irish writers (Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, ed. Alexander Gonzalez), the entry on Elizabeth Bowen, written by Barbara Suess (that's Dr. Suess, not Dr. Seuss), begins this way:

"Although she was revered more for her 'Anglo' works than her 'Irish' works, Elizabeth Bowen's Anglo-Irish upbringing in the early twentieth century provided her a unique position from which to view--and write about--Ireland. Bowen's Irish works, the large body of short stories, novels, reviews, and essays devoted to Irish subjects, characters, and settings, are an impressive literary legacy that need no apology."

This entry is a great way to begin a discussion about Bowen and, by extension, to continue our discussions about "Anglo-Irish" literature. There are several assumptions running beneath Suess's paragraph. First, she assumes that one can distinguish between Bowen's "Anglo" works and her "Irish" works. If Bowen's "subjects, characters, and settings" are "Irish," then so is the work in question. But this can be problemetic since defining what is "Irish" about a character or subject is not a simple task, as we discussed early on (we decided, for example, that Wilde and Yeats are both problematic in this way). Suess writes that Bowen's "Irish" works need no apology, and by this she presumably means they do not need to justify their "Irish-ness." Well, why would they? One answer is that Bowen grew up in a manor house in Cork, in a well-off Protestant family with English ties, and this put her at odds with writers who were more "authentically" (that is, Catholically and Dublinally) "Irish." She also spent much of her time in England, and many of her works (including Death of the Heart) are set in England. These works are what Suess calls Bowen's "Anglo" works, and one wonders whether she means to imply that these do need an apology of some kind for being set in England and containing English characters. Or maybe it is the fact that Bowen hung around the likes of T. S. Eliot (see the above photograph from the National Portrait Gallery), Virginia Woolf, and other very non-Irish modernists. But no matter the reason, the very suggestion, however slight it may be, that Bowen has to justify, or somehow apologize for, her any work because it is not "Irish" enough tells us something about how Anglo-Irish literature is often perceived and discussed.

So we are back to this question again: Is Irish-ness simply a matter of geography? Must Irish literature be set in Ireland? What makes a work of literature Irish, the author or the subject matter? Some combination of these? Is C. S. Lewis, who was born in Belfast to a father of Welsh blood, an Irish writer? He is not commonly included in the Irish "canon." I intentionally included The Death of the Heart on the syllabus because I wanted to raise these questions. I might have included The Last September, which is typically categorized as one of Bowen's "Irish" works, but it is not as good of a novel. Should I have put it on anyway because it is partially set in Ireland? Are you reading this book and thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with Ireland?" (It's okay if you are, by the way.)

One other thing: If you read Suess's paragraph again, you will detect the suggestion, though it is not a stated claim, that Bowen writes about Ireland from the perspective of an outsider. I think this is true, but I hasten to add that Bowen, like many of the so-called "Anglo-Irish," experienced a kind of identity crisis brought on by a cultural rootlessness. They were not simply Englishmen and Englishwomen looking at Ireland. They were, in many cases, deracinated Irishmen and Irishwomen who felt just as out of place in England as they did in Ireland. If we look at Portia as a type of this character, a type that appears in many of Bowen's works, we can start to appreciate the psychology of the outsider, the estranged, and this is a character that is extremely important to Modern Irish literature, at least in my view. In other words, all of Bowen's work is written from the perspective of an outsider, not just her "Irish" works (I obviously don't separate her "Anglo" works from her "Irish" works because I think these can be used too easily and categorically, and at times falsely).

I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this.

"O come all ye youthful poets and try to be more human."

Prompts for next time:

1. One could argue (many critics have) that Kavanagh is the first poet of the new, independent Irish State. If this is true, what are your impressions of that State based on your reading of his poetry?

2. The shadow of Yeats is long, falling over not just modern Irish poetry, but all modern poetry written in English. However, Kavanagh stands in stark contrast to his predecessor. We talked about some of those differences in class today, but I would like for you to explore this further. And, what is perhaps more difficult, discuss any similarities you see in their work. (You might pair an answer to this question with an answer to #5 below.)

3. How is the poem "Advent" a celebration of the immediate, and perhaps most especially a celebration of the vernacular? Where and how do you see this kind of celebration reflected in Kavanagh's other poems?

4. In "Peace," do you think the speaker feels more of an affinity with the "country fellows" mentioned early in the poem, or with the "fools" who try to transcend the local setting and "fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time"? Our instinct is to place Kavanagh among the turnips, potatoes, and turf banks, but isn't the relationship expressed in the poem a bit more complex than that? Thoughts?

5. After reading "Irish Poets Open Your Eyes," go back and read Yeats's "Under Ben Bulben." What are some of the most striking differences between the two poems?

6. Do you see anything in Kavanagh that reminds you of Joyce? If so, what? Also, after reading the poem of the same name, you might consider answering Kavanagh's question: "Who Killed James Joyce?"

7. If "Spring Day" is an artist's manifesto (I'm not saying it is, but for the sake of an interesting question...), what are the principles of that manifesto?

8. One thing that always strikes me when I read The Great Hunger is how many different styles Kavanagh uses. There are sections in rhyme and meter, sections of long-line free verse, sections of short couplets, etc. Why do you think Kavanagh varies the form of the poem so much? How might that be related to the content?

9. Talk about sexuality in these poems. How is used differently than in Wilde, or Yeats, or Joyce? Why, for example, might Kavanagh use sexual imagery and language to describe farming (and, for that matter, farmers)? Quinn calls the Ireland of The Great Hunger a "famine-stricken, psycho-sexual wasteland." Do you agree? Can comparisons be made to that pillar of modern poetry, The Wasteland?

Patrick Kavanagh Reading List

Here I am, rushing back from Ohio, with a Patrick Kavanagh reading list in-hand. If you haven't been able to track down the Penguin Selected Poems, or if it hasn't arrived yet, you should be able to find many (but probably not all) of these poems online. I definitely want you to read Quinn's "Poetry and Independence" piece at the beginning, so I will be bringing a few copies of that to class for those of you who don't have it yet. It's very good, if slightly repetitive in places; and for those of you who find yourselves drawn to Kavanagh's work, or who want some supplemental material for your term paper, Quinn has also written an excellent biography on him.

I like to think of Kavanagh as the counterweight to Yeats. That's overly simplistic for sure, but it's accurate in many ways, which we will discuss. I will start a Kavanagh thread tomorrow, but for now, feel free to compare his work to Yeats's, or to Joyce's for that matter. He was a big fan of Joyce.

Here is your reading list. I'll be excited to see what you make of Kavanagh.

For Monday
"Inniskeen Road: July Evening"
"Shancoduff"
"Memory of My Father"
"Spraying the Potatoes"
"Stony Grey Soil"

For Wednesday
The Great Hunger
"Advent"
"Peace"
"Threshing Morning"
"Pegasus"
"In Memory of My Mother"
"Spring Day"
"Irish Poets Open Your Eyes"
"To be Dead"
"Who Killed James Joyce?"

For Friday
"Innocence"
"Epic"
"If You ever Go To Dublin Town"
"Irish Stew"
"The Hospital"
"Come Dance With Kitty Stobling"
"Canal Bank Walk"
"Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin"
"An Insult"

Most of these poems are fairly short, but The Great Hunger, Kavanagh's magnum opus, is quite long, so you might want to read ahead if you have time.

See you tomorrow.

Patrick Kavanagh monument on Dublin's Grand Canal.

Dubliners

Let's start a Dubliners thread. I liked what you had to say in class yesterday very much and would welcome any further discussion of open-ended narrative, atypical or fragmented plot structures, authenticating details, or comparisons to/tie-ins with Yeats and Wilde or anything else (yes, including comic books, Andy). Here are a few things I wouldn't mind reading about:

1. Some critics argue that the main character in Dubliners is the city of Dublin itself. How do you feel about this? Can any place transcend "setting" and function as a character?

2. Do you feel as though you gain something from reading the stories together, as a collection, as opposed to reading only a few of them? I realize it may be impossible to know how you would react to a story on its own, separated from the others, but it isn't impossible to see what is gained from reading them as parts of a whole (perhaps wholeness isn't the best adjective to use when discussing Joyce, but you know what I mean). For example, what common motifs, images, situations, themes, landmarks, etc. run through the stories, and what effect does this have on you as a reader?

3. Joyce was skeptical of the Celtic Revival, famously saying, "I distrust all enthusiams." However, as important to Ireland's identity as revivalist texts were/are, could it not be argued that Joyce's depictions of Dublin's political climate, religious tensions, family life, sexuality, stagnation, etc. are ultimately some of the most substantive texts when it comes to modern Ireland's identity?

4. Could Joyce's stories be called, in Yeatsian terms, "the fascination of what's difficult"?

5. Joyce once wrote in a letter that "Two Gallants" is "one of the most important stories in the book," and he said he would "rather sacrifice five other stories" than lose that one. Why do you think this is?

Yeats Exhibit - National Library of Ireland

There is a really cool interactive exhibit on Yeats at the National Library of Ireland, and it's online. Check it out: http://www.nli.ie/yeats/

The Poet, The Scarecrow, the Dying Animal

I mentioned in class that I would post a reading/assignment/test schedule to Blackboard. It's up now. Once you have finished the selections from Yeats, you'll want to get started on Dubliners as soon as you can.

This week I would like to talk about Yeats's image/perception of himself as he ages, his feelings about Ireland as it does the same, and how he views the role of the poet, and the importance of art, in the Ireland of the future.

Remember what we discussed on Friday about gyres and cyclical journeys (including Nietzsche's idea of "eternal recurrence"). The later Yeats is a man who is aware that he is aging (you might want to look up "Steinach operation" to see the lengths Yeats went to in order to keep/restore his virility) but is also continually questioning his past and his future. He believes in reincarnation as well, and this is not something to be glossed over. Furthermore, as a very "public man" (as he refers to himself in "Among School Children"), Yeats believes that his life and his art, indeed the work of all artists, constitutes the soul of a nation.

Any comments that address these concerns directly or indirectly (or that don't address them at all, if you'd rather talk about something else) will be welcome.

"Terrible Beauty"

The Easter 1916 rising was the result of a chain of events, but in a nutshell, it occured largely because the English refused to give Home Rule to Ireland. A bill had been passed in the House of Commons in 1912, giving Ireland home rule, but the House of Lords refused to ratify it. This actually happened twice, and then the bill was shelved when WWI began.

The uprising, passionate as it was, was futile in some ways. Home Rule was not given (or taken), and many who were involved lost theie lives, both in the fighting and in subsequent executions. But it was also because of the executions that the Easter Rising became a symbolic event, an important rallying point, for the Irish liberation movement. Republicans won the majority of the seats in the next parlimentary election, and Ireland declared independence in 1919, resulting in the Irish War of Independence.

Yeats, we should note, was uninterested in the onset of WWI. It didn't hit close enough to home. But when the Easter rising broke out soon after, Yeats was "changed, changed utterly." He knew the men that marched on the General Post Office, some of whom he mentions in "Easter 1916": MacDonagh and MacBride, Connolly and Pearse. Yeats did not necessarily agree with what these men did. "Was it needless death after all?" he asks in the poem (Yeats, incidentally, almost never answers the questions he asks. The poets role is to ask them.) He also writes that "Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart" - a line that nationalists like Maud Gonne did not like because they believed one could not sacrifice too much. But whether or not Yeats agreed with the actions of these men, the experience changed him a great deal. He began to see people in a new way (the poem, in fact, is largely about this altered perception of people). For example, Yeats disliked Maud Gonne's husband, Major John MacBride, "A drunken, vanglorious lout" as the poem has it. But MacBride, too, is numbered in Yeats's song, "changed" along with the others.

We will talk about this poem, and these events, in greater detail, but what I would like for you to do now is focus on the birth of "terrible beauty" in this poem and others. Yeats's earlier work is beautiful, certainly, but it is not "terrible." As we discussed in class today, there is much in these middle-period poems that talks about the price that life exacts, whether in love, or art, or politics. That price became very real to Yeats in 1916. I would like to have a discussion about the awareness of "terrible beauty" that is evident in these poems.

I would also like to talk about the idea of passion, or rather the act of being passionate, in these poems. In particular, look at "The Fisherman," "The Wilde Swans at Coole," "September 1913," and "Ego Dominus Tuus." Talk about passion.

I would like for everyone to respond to one of these ideas before class on Wednesday.
-D

Walking Naked

This week, in lieu of writing responses before each class, I would like to have an ongoing discussion here. I will post some questions every day for you to think about and respond to. You don't need to feel obligated to respond to all of them; just pick the ones that strike you and respond to those.

You will have noticed while reading "middle" Yeats that there are definite developments in the poetry. It seems like every time I begin reading these poems, I begin to say (sometimes out loud), "Where is Fergus? Where are the faeries?" and what I quickly realize is that Yeats is dealing with his feelings more directly and honestly, as opposed to burying them in a refashioned mythology. I don't know if I would go so far as to call it "Yeats Unplugged," but it is definitely Yeats stripped-down. In fact, stripping is a good metaphor because it's one Yeats uses himself:

A Coat

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

It's perhaps no coincidence that this poem comes from Responsibilities (1914), a volume whose title reflects Yeats's growing sense of, well, responsibility as a public figure and national poet. In fact, one of the volume's two epigraphs is "In dreams begin responsibility" (feel free to discuss what you think this might mean in the context of the poems we are reading).

I would like to begin with a discussion of the changes you are noticing in the poetry. What themes seem to arise and recur in these poems? What is different about the poetry in terms of form and content? What features and themes remain from the early work? try to draw some conclusions about how Yeats is evolving as an artist.

You are going to notice a lot of references to love, especially to spurned and/or unrequited romance. As we briefly discussed in class on Friday, many of Yeats's poems are devoted, at least in part, to his feelings for the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne. Indeed, it is difficult to read Yeats without at least some of this biographical background. But try, at least for a few days. People read Gonne into practically every line Yeats penned, and they often do so at the expense of the poems. (You will have noticed by now that I try to work against the cult of personality, and the popular practice of reading literature in order to "get to know" a writer. The artist is important, of course, and biography can illuminate the art, but it is the art itself that makes us care about the artist at all.) So let's start by getting into the poems themselves, which is where we really belong anyway.

See you Monday,
-D

Early Yeats - Writing Prompts

1. As we discussed today at some length, Yeats formed--and projected in his work--an idea of Ireland while he was living in England, trying to make a name for himself as a writer. He created an idealized, imagined Ireland that was both an escape from industrialized, secular England and a return to the magical land of his childhood (as we discussed, Yeats was quite Romantic in this way). Declan Kiberd writes that for Yeats, Ireland "would be [. . .] the sort of place endlessly invented by exiles who fear that, if they do not give it a local habitation in words, it may entirely disappear." If your only idea of Ireland came from early Yeats, what would that place--that "habitation in words"--look like? Use examples.

2. Yeats immediately follows "The Song of the Happy Shepherd" with "The Sad Shepherd." These are the first two poems in Crossways. What is it that makes the first shepherd happy, the second sad? If the poems are meant to be read in succession (and they surely are; Yeats was a creator of books, and the order of poems is very important to the story of each book), then how does the second poem resonate with/expand upon/contradict/or illuminate the first (and vice versa)?

3. If "Down by the Sally Gardens" and "When You are Old" were part of the same story, what would the plot be?

4. In "The Two Trees," Yeats writes of "The ravens of unresting thought." In the context of the poem, where do these "ravens" come from? What might they symbolize? (Why not doves, or pigeons, for example?) And, by extension, are there other moments of "unrest" in these early poems? Where?

5. In "To Ireland in the Coming Times," Yeats writes, "While still I may, I write for you / The love I lived, the dream I knew." Talk about the idea of writing, and the importance of words, in this poem and others from the early work. How does Yeats view the act of writing? There are a lot of possible answers here, but please make specific reference to the poems.

6. In our discussion of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," we talked about the sound and rhythm of the poem, and how Yeats uses both to mimic what he describes ("bee-loud glade," "peace comes dropping slow," "cricket sings," "lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore," etc. Plato and Aristotle called this "mimesis," or art representing nature. Point to other places in the early poems where the rhythm and sound "mime" the content of the poem. (Note: I don't expect you to be an expert on this, but it would be really cool if someone were to try this one.)

Thanks, and I'll see you on Friday. In the meantime, I'm off to drive with Fergus...

Poetic Terminology

Don't worry about writing a response for tomorrow's class, but since we will be discussing poetry for the first time, I would like for you to be familiar with the following terms when you arrive. If you don't know their meanings, please look them up prior to class. There will be other terms you will need to know, but these will suffice for the time being. Thanks. I'm really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and discussing the early Yeats.

• Accentual verse
• Syllabic verse
• Accentual-syllabic verse
• Iamb
• Trochee
• Spondee
• Pyrrhic
• Anapest
• Dactyl
• Trimeter
• Metrical substitution
• Enjambment
• End-stopped line
• Stanza
• Rhyme scheme
• Stichic poem
• Strophic poem
• Tetrameter
• Pentameter
• Caesura

A Few of Oscar Wilde's Aphorisms

• The one duty we have to history is to rewrite it.
• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
• Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But invariably they want it back in such very small change.
• It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But...it is better to be good than to be ugly.
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
• I can resist everything except temptation.
• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
• The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
• To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
• Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it.
• A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
• A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.

Oscar Wilde FiIm / Reading Assignment

There is a trend among some critics to focus on artists instead of, and at the expense of, art itself. For this reason I rarely introduce a work of literature with an author bio, instead preferring to use biography to supplement the works we read. I am not anti-biography, of course. As we have discussed at length, there is no denying that Oscar Wilde's life illuminates his work.

So as we wind down our discussion of Wilde, I wanted to let you know, in case you don't know already, that there is a movie/biopic based on Wilde's life. It is simply called WILDE, and it stars Stephen Fry as Wilde. Jude Law plays Alfred Douglas, and Jennifer Ehle plays Wilde's wife. (If you've ever seen the 6-part BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, Ehle plays Elizabeth Bennett). The film doesn't shy away from Wilde's sexuality, which is admirable (I hardly think you could have a biopic on Wilde without exploring this). It is, in fact, largely about his relationship with Douglas. Thus, it is very much a film about him, not his work. Some of Wilde's more famous lines do pop up from time to time, however. And the acting is superb.

For Friday, please read the article that I uploaded to Blackboard: "Satiric Strategy in The Importance of Being Earnest," by Otto Reinert. It's short, it's lucid, and it makes some very good observations about the play. It also references An Ideal Husband, which we talked about in class today. And having just read the Craft article, I think you'll find Reinert refreshing. Let's forego the 1-page reading response for Friday and talk about Reinert's piece on the blog instead.

-D

Prompt #2

The second writing prompt is now up on Blackboard. This is just a reminder that with few exceptions, the prompts are posted there, not here.

Many thanks,
-D

Oscar Wilde and U.S. Copyright Law

I mentioned in class today that a photograph of Oscar Wilde played a role in U.S. copyright law. The photograph, taken by Napoleon Sarony in New York, was used without permission by a department store that wanted to promote its line of hats (nevermind that there is no hat in the photograph). Sarony sued, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that photographs are not mere reproductions of life, made by machines, but works of art, owned by the artists who produce them. This was an extremely important case for photographers, but also for artists in general because the scope of copyright law was not narrowed. There was an article about this case several years ago in Smithsonian Magazine, and you can still read it online at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/indelible-may-2004.html. It's an entertaining read. My favorite bit is where Wilde, on his U.S. tour, extols blue and white porcelain as a tasteful choice for homes of the American frontier. It reminds me of one of Wilde's famous lines: "I am finding it harder and harder to live up to my blue china."

I thought you might also like to see a few of the images of Wilde that appeared in Punch (a popular satire/humor magazine) since the article briefly mentions that magazine, and since Wilde was a favorite target of its cartoonists.

This first cartoon, The Six-Mark Tea-Pot," does not mention Wilde by name, but it clearly aludes to the abovementioned "blue china" quote. The "Aesthetic Bridegroom" says, "It is quite consummate, is it not?" and his bride responds, "It is indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!" The name of Algernon is (obviously) a reference to The Importance of Being Earnest.

The second cartoon (Fancy Portrait No. 37) mocks the practice--and it was a common practice of the period, especially among aesthetes--of wearing a flower in one's lapel. Along these lines, you might also recall this exchange from the Second Act of Earnest (pp. 28-29):

Cecily: How thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals. Won't you come in?

Algernon: Thank you. Might I have a buttonhole first? I never have any appetite unless I have a buttonhole first.

Cecily: A Marechal Niel? (Picks up scissors.)

Algernon. No, I'd sooner have a pink rose.

Cecily: Why? (Cuts a flower.)

Algernon: Because you are like a pink rose, Cousin Cecily.

In case you can't read it, the quatrain at the bottom of the portrait reads as follows:

Aesthete of Aesthetes!
What's in a name?
The poet is Wilde,
But his poetry's tame.

Writing Prompts for "Earnest"

Normally I will be posting the writing prompts to Blackboard only, but there have been some problems with Blackboard this week (I am unable to upload anything tonight, for example), so I am posting this first set of prompts here.

Please write a one-page response to The Importance of Being Earnest based on one of the following prompts. As I mentioned in class today, when you respond to a prompt, you don’t have to answer it exactly. It is meant to spur your thought process, not dictate your response. You certainly don’t need to quote the prompt or use its exact language.

1. In class today, I asked you to consider what it is that makes Earnest a great play (that is, if it is great; you might argue that it is not). Certainly the characters are flat, or "stock," and the plot is contrived with very unbelievable turns. Earnest has justifiably been called a "farce," which is a comedy with improbable events, mistaken identities, slapstick and physical humor, thinly-veiled sexual references and, more often than not, a god-from-the-machine ending where mistaken identities are worked out, someone inherits a great deal of money, etc. The form of the play, then, does not make it great, nor do its characters. I want you to convince me that The Importance of Being Earnest is, or is not, a great play. This will obviously require you to define "greatness" and then show how the play does, or does not, meet the requirements you set forth.

2. In his preface to our edition, Michael Gillespie argues that the play offers us "considerable insights on the human condition." Do you agree? If so, point to places where you think Wilde is particularly insightful. Your response might also apply these insights to contemporary events/circumstances (although this is not mandatory). I have in mind what Jeff said in class today, namely that in some ways the play seems very contemporary. I would be happy to read a response that focuses on this aspect.

3. Analyze the play's title beyond the obvious earnest/Ernest pun. Is it a well-chosen title? Does it work beyond the wordplay? Alternatively, you might consider Wilde's subtitle for the play, "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." Meaning?

4. How and where does Wilde deal with sexuality in the play? What do these instances reveal about the nature of sexuality in Victorian society?

5. Wilde was a prominent figure in the aesthetic movement. In brief, he believed that art was its own justification and did not bear the responsibility of moral instructiveness. Does The Importance of Being Earnest live up to his credo of "art for art's sake"? Or does it have a "moral" of some kind?

6. In what way is the scene where Cecily and Gwendolen have tea a microcosm of the entire play? In what way does Wilde (hilariously, it must be said) use his stage directions to enhance the scene?

Whatever you write, DON'T be clever. I'm sick to death of cleverness. But do be earnest. See you on Monday. Until then, I'm off to see dear Bunbury...

-D

Ha!

Consider this blog defiled.

(Your words, not mine)