amimetobios

A couple of poems by Patmore, a somewhat tedious excursus into propositional attitudes and game theory, then the rest of "Goblin Market."

We conclude our discussion of D.G. Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel," paying particular attention to the passages in parentheses and the subtlety of what they suggest about the speaker's sense of the Blessed Damozel's perception of him.  We then move on to begin reading "Goblin Market," trying not so subtle account of its subtle sexuality -- or maybe it would be better to say a subtle account of its not so subtle sexuality 

A brief introduction to Pre-Raphaelite poetry and painting: the perceptual psychology that it brings us to notice.  A close reading of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's amazing "Woodspurge."  A little bit on his "Blessed Damozel," followed, via a Mr. Magoo-inflected reading of Lewis Carroll's "Mad Gardener's Song," by a more general consideration of rhyme and in Victorian poetry and the question of its prominence or lack thereof: important as well to "The Blessed Damozel," but we ran out of time and may not get to discuss this next class, when we will certainly do Christina Rossetti.

What amours de voyage are.  What it means to idealize what Keats calls "The fair creature of an hour," as Claude does.  How such idealizations derive from "Juxtapositions."  What it means to see through one's own idealization, by understanding its biochemical substrate.  What's wrong with seeing through that idealization.  With examples from Proust (and his differences from Freud).  All relevant tangents, or so I think.  With some interesting information about Andrea Aguyor.

Mainly Clough, mainly a kind of intro to Amours de Voyage, with some historical (Mazzini, Garibaldi) and biographical context as well as context in narrative theory, especially of the epistolatory novel.  Clough the atheist and port-Darwinian, and his views of nature.  Then a quick and fun reading of "The New Decalogue," and a plan to return to Amours de Voyage next class.

Most of the class is on Edward Lear, and what his kind of nonsense poetry (very different from Carroll's) tells us about how poetry works in general.  Then a return to Clare, to complete "The Winters Spring."

We begin talking about Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" and what makes comic poetry what it is -- making the arbitrary tight (the way OuLiPo does, so this is this semester's excursus on OuLiPo).  Then a little about the plot that some of the students may have missed.  Following which, an introduction to John Clare, and the first stanza of his poem "The Winters Spring," which we'll continue with next class.

Having considered the title in the last class, we do the whole of R. Browning's " ' Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' " today, looking at how he (Browning/ Roland) undoes the difference between success and failure: "Just to fail as they seemed best, / And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?"

We start with a few lines from much later in EBB's Aurora Leigh (and their near explicit critique of Tennyson), then finish discussing "Development" (and its relation to modernity), then look at Pope's translation of the Thamyris passage in Book II of The Iliad, and the surviving fragments of Sophocles's play about him, and then spend the class on "Thamuris Marching," which has Aristophanes describing Sophocles's play in terza rima, and we end with the title of "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'" the poem to which we'll return next class.

Feminism and poetry for EBB.  Poetry as a counter to an industrialized world and the constraints its analysts try to put on poetry.  We begin discussing Robert Browning's moving late poem "Development," which shows an attitude similar to EBB's.