[Renaissance Poetry] Nashe's litany, brightness falls from the air.  Excursus on the poetic purity of the out-of-context: Browning; Kenneth Koch's "Songs from the Plays."  Daniel's La Corona anticipations, and his graceful bow to Sidney and Spenser in "Musophilus" [3/6/12]

[closer reading] Mont Blanc in earnest: the two possible meanings or subjects of the first stanza (adverting mind, commanding mountain): the struggle between the mountain and the mind to determine which will be the metaphor for which. (3/7/12)

[renaissance poetry] More on Astrophel and Stella, especially the fourth song; also some attention to Shakespearean sonnets.

[close reading class] How Wordsworth used Milton (with reminders about Harold Bloom): comparisons with Book 3 of Paradise Lost; "Methought I saw my late espoused saint" and "Surprised by Joy"; the first lines of Shelley's Mont Blanc.

[Close reading 3/1/12] Against all odds, we finish the Intimations Ode.   On to Mont Blanc!

[Close reading, 2/29/12]  We continue onwards with the Intimations Ode, and the consideration of the child as the best philosopher but also at strife with its own blessedness.  Whence the joy that Wordsworth declares?

[Renaissance poetery 2/29/12] Sidney's sophistication.  The sestina form.  More of the events of Astrophel and Stella.  To be concluded next week.

The plot of Astrophel and Stella: what is its back story, and what can we infer?

[Close reading class] A general discussion of how Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge each became a Tory at / last, and on freedom of the soul in general.  Return to the Intimations Ode at the end of class.

[Note: a minute or two at the beginning and end are just crowd walla: couldn't get GarageBand to cut those snippets off.] A talk at UCLA during the February vacation.  Mainly on Milton and the relation of justice and the justice of the fact that we can judge what is just to narrative and vindication in Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, with some more general remarks on Kant and others.