amimetobios

The Contrapasso in Inferno vs. corrective punishment in Purgatorio.  The proud bent down, the envious blinded.  Sapia's guess that Dante can see: but she's not envious of him for it.  Virgil's exposition of love at the very center of the Divine Comedy in Purgatorio 17.  T.S. Eliot's Dantesque imitation in Little Gidding.

Proto-Romanticism: Thomson compared to Wordsworth.  The idea of landscape in Thomson; the adverting mind in Wordsworth, which you don't quite begin to find in Thomson, who wishes a Newtonian view from nowhere (hence the verses in memory of Newton).  Collins is far more about the experience of the experience of being a poet.  The Ode to Fear.

More on the Inferno, and on Ulysses and Ugolina; Dante's attitude towards the damned compared with God's and with Virgil's.  The naming of Ugolino's sons in his song.  The relation of the seven increasing sins in Inferno and their reverse-order decrease in Purgatorio.  The likewise increasing uncertainty of Virgil in Purgatorio.  Ulysses on the short vigil of the senses.  Merwin and Heaney as translators of Dante into a genuinely poetic vernacular.

Our one class on Johnson -- Johnson as a proto-Romantic, that is to say the first poet we're doing who really describes (in his poetry and in his essays) the experience of human subjectivity tout court, without (as opposed to Dryden or Pope or Swift) referring to particularities of time, place, religion, politics, etc.  Rather he is the most transparent of the writers we have read so far, and is doing the kind of writing that will be associated with Romanticism.

His signal accomplishments: the Dictionary and thus the alphabetical poem to Mrs. Thrale; his letter to Chesterfield ("Is not a patron, my lord..."); his definition of net; the dangerous prevalence of the imagination; the grimmest part of "The Vanity of Human Wishes."

The last class on Pope (except there'll be a makeup on the Essay on Man in December).  The Dunciad and the reign of Dullness.  Theobald as "hero" of first Dunciad, Cibber as hero of second.  "Aristarchus" (i.e.: Pope) on the mock epic and its relation to the serious epic: how the parodic versions of wisdom, bravery, and love come to be vanity, impudence, and debauchery.  Pope's debauchery in an anecdote in Cibber's letter to Pope: Cibber saves him from peril atop a large prostitute.  Pope's cuttingness.  (The rhyme of "K *" and "sing".)  The fact that depth of soul goes with bitterness and despair, in both the Dunciad and in the amazing psychological acuity of Eloisa to Aberlard.

Some more on the Inferno: a descent into the world not only of history and of personal animus but also of the religious and most of all literary knowledge and background that form Dante.  Eternal justice and its relation to God.  The Euthyphro question in Dante and Milton: is something just because God says so, or is God just because in his goodness he will unwaveringly do what is just.  What does Milton mean when he says that he intends to "justify the ways of God to men"?  Dante has an easier way than Milton to solve the problem: he can make love the principle of the whole universe ("the love that moves the sun and other stars"), so that those in Hell are there by their own desire.  They get what they want.  Plato on love and desire and its mistaken objects.  Complexity of desire and its relation to its consequences (propositional attitudes), but still all in hell are where they desired to be, even if they hadn't thought those consequences through.

Pope's style, speed, and compression.  His dialogues with a friend in the Imitations of Horace.  The psychological subtlety and beauty of his "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"

Introductory class on Dante -- the poet is the one who goes to the underworld this time, not only the hero.  Sybil:Aeneas::Virgil:Dante.  Terza rima and the advent of rhyme.  Modernism: epic in a modern language that aims at the power and prestige of ancient epic.  The topography of hell.  Dante as science fiction writer.

Our last class on Virgil -- how he reimagines Homer.  The wrath of Turnus compared to that of Achilles.  Aeneas is as merciless as Achilles will become (though we didn't really discuss this).  The tension between public and private virtue in Virgil, Dante, and Milton: no such tension in Homer (no difference between them, or almost none) and as for Ovid, the private is what matters.  (Plato a harder case.)  Love in VIrgil, and other Platonic subjects.  Gates of ivory and horn: Penelope's dream and Aeneas's compared to Adam's and Milton's.  Exposition of Milton's Sonnet 23. Dr. Johnson's strictures on Virgil's imitation of Homer in the Rambler, and his preference for Ajax's silence to Dido's.

Pope's topicality, and its origins as recounted in the Horatian Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.  How poets become enmeshed in the world.  Pope writing within the form of that enmeshment.  His travails with Theobald.  Excursus on Bentley and Theobald.  Return to the Rape of the Lock and the brilliance of the reported speech.