amimetobios

Blake's view of Wordsworth, as reported by Henry Crabb Robinson in a letter to Dorothy Wordsworth and in his reminiscences.  Robinson on Wordsworth's technical death in 1814: his indifference to tyranny after the fall of Napoleon.  Return to the Intimations Ode and the subtle new start manifested in stanza 5.

This ended up being a class on common knowledge -- that is on games (and puzzles) with complete information.

We start with the Intimations Ode, which means we really start with "My Heart Leaps Up" -- and after the fourth stanza, which is where Wordsworth broke it off, we go to the glad preamble of The Prelude.  Some attention to echoes between Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Since no one had read The Gambler, this class was a kind of summing up of thinking from Mandeville to Kant under the rubric of Mauss -- how credit, gratitude, obligation bring in other minds and differentiate our credit with them from the way money is a bookkeeping measure.

Basically a class where we rush through "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," with a little reference to a couple of Shakespeare sonnets Wordsworth was probably thinking of -- 73 and 104.

In which we go over the answers to the midterm -- you don't need to read it, since I read the questions out.  A little discussion Merchant of Venice: paying with all my heart, and of Ulysses: Leopold Bloom's joke advertising jingle, "Tell me where is fancy bread? At Burke's the Baker's, it is said."

Using the game show Golden Balls, we look at some Prisoner's Dilemma situations, and discuss Golden Balls as a more classic PD than it might seem at first (it's certainly at the least a modified PD).  Episodes for watching are available here (an anthology) and here ("Weirdest split or steal every").  Different ways of valuing, different ways of strategizing.

Wordsworth on Gray in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.  Like Blake he channels Milton's view that poetry is something other than artifice, and like Blake he corrects the Miltonic example.  Home at Grasmere vs. Paradise Lost.

Adam Smith on utility and beauty -- revealed preference as a tautology -- utilitarianism -- Smith on how preference isn't a tautology -- different from Mandeville.  Smith on utility here.  This will lead to Smith on self-command.

Mostly Wordsworth and the mysterious power of the absurdly great "We Are Seven," as well as a consideration of "Lines Written in Early Spring" and "Two April Mornings."