Introduction to Literary Studies - 1: Carroll, Jonson, Yeats

This is a course on a lot of different topics, genres, periods, and authors in English Language Literature, and on a few theoretical or critical texts that are relevant.  Like all introductory courses, we attempt to dive deep very, very quickly.  This is the first time I'm teaching it, which I hope will be a plus as well.  Some of the works we'll cover I've done in other podcasts (King Lear, Paradise Lost, but those are always different in different contexts and classes.  And context, or the suppression of context, turns out from the first class to be partly what the course is about.  In this first class you get to hear me recite "Jabberwocky" from memory, which I wasn't expecting to do, and then we discuss a wonderful song of Ben Jonson's and Yeats's "Circus Animal's Desertion."

Here is the syllabus, plus the "bunch of poems" that we are starting out with:

                                                                                                       

 

English 1a: Introduction to Literary Studies         

 

W        Jan 13              Introduction via a bunch of poems

Th       Jan 15              Introduction con’t; opening of Shakespeare’s King Lear

 

M        Jan 18:             NO CLASS

W        Jan 20              King Lear

Th       Jan 21              King Lear

 

M        Jan 25              King Lear, Aristotle: Poetics,

   Dr. Johnson, Freud: “The theme

   of the three caskets”

W        Jan 27              Milton: Paradise Lost           

Th       Jan 28              Milton: Paradise Lost

 

M        Feb 1               Milton: Paradise Lost

W        Feb 3               Milton: Paradise Lost

Th       Feb 4               Milton: Paradise Lost

 

M        Feb 8               Milton: Paradise Lost

W        Feb 10             Milton: Paradise Lost

Th       Feb 11             Milton: Paradise Lost                       

 

Feb 15-19:                   NO CLASS

 

M        Feb 22             Milton: Paradise Lost                                    First paper due

W        Feb 24             Pope: “Rape of the Lock”

Th       Feb 25             English Romanticism (Blake, Wordsworth,

                                      Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats);

                                      Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads

 

M        Feb 29             English Romanticism

W        Mar 2              English Romanticism 

Th       Mar 3              English Romanticism

 

M        Mar 7              English Romanticism 

W        Mar 9              Brontë: Jane Eyre

Th       Mar 10                        Brontë: Jane Eyre

 

M        Mar 14                        Brontë: Jane Eyre

W        Mar 16                        James: The Aspern Papers

Th       Mar 17                        James: The Aspern Papers

 

M        Mar 21                        Joyce: “The Dead” L

W        Mar 23                        Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway L

Th       Mar 24                        Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway

 

M        Mar 28                        NO CLASS

W        Mar 30                        American romanticism (Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson)                                                                                                                   Second paper due

Th       Mar 31                        American romanticism

 

M        Apr 4              Ellison: Invisible Man , DuBois: “On the Training of Black Men” L

W        Apr 6              Ellison: Invisible Man

Th       Apr 7              Ellison: Invisible Man

 

M        Apr 11                        Beckett: Waiting for Godot

W        Apr 13                        Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Th       Apr 14                        O’Connor: The Violent Bear it Away

 

M        Apr 18                        OConnor: The Violent Bear it Away

W        Apr 20                        Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance L

Th       Apr 21                        NO CLASS

 

Apr. 25-29                  NO CLASS

 

M        May 2             Soyinka: Death and The King’s Horseman    Final paper due

 

-------

 

[So beauty on the waters stood]

 

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

 

So beauty on the waters stood,

When love had sever’d earth from flood!

So when he parted air from fire,

He did with concord all inspire!

And them a motion he them taught,

That elder than himself was thought.

Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,

For Love is elder than his birth.

 

The Circus Animals’ Desertion

 

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

 

I

 

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,

I sought it daily for six weeks or so.

Maybe at last being but a broken man

I must be satisfied with my heart, although

Winter and summer till old age began

My circus animals were all on show,

Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,

Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

 

II

 

What can I but enumerate old themes,

First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose

Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,

Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,

Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,

That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;

But what cared I that set him on to ride,

I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride.

 

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,

`The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it,

She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away

But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy

So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,

And this brought forth a dream and soon enough

This dream itself had all my thought and love.

 

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;

Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said

It was the dream itself enchanted me:

Character isolated by a deed

To engross the present and dominate memory.

Players and painted stage took all my love

And not those things that they were emblems of.

 

III

 

Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

 

[They flee from me]

 

By Sir Thomas Wyatt  (1503-1542)

 

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

 

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

 

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also, to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served

I would fain know what she hath deserved.

 

Complaint Of The Absence Of Her Lover
Being Upon The Sea

By Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17-1547)

O HAPPY dames that may embrace The fruit of your delight ; Help to bewail the woful case, And eke the heavy plight, Of me, that wonted to rejoice The fortune of my pleasant choice : Good ladies ! help to fill my mourning voice. In ship freight with rememberance Of thoughts and pleasures past, He sails that hath in governance My life while it will last ; With scalding sighs, for lack of gale, Furthering his hope, that is his sail, Toward me, the sweet port of his avail. Alas !  how oft in dreams I see Those eyes that were my food ; Which sometime so delighted me, That yet they do me good : Wherewith I wake with his return, Whose absent flame did make me burn : But when I find the lack, Lord !  how I mourn. When other lovers in arms across, Rejoice their chief delight ; Drowned in tears, to mourn my loss, I stand the bitter night In my window, where I may see Before the winds how the clouds flee : Lo !  what a mariner love hath made me. And in green waves when the salt flood Doth rise by rage of wind ; A thousand fancies in that mood Assail my restless mind. Alas ! now drencheth1 my sweet foe, That with the spoil of my heart did go, And left me ; but, alas !  why did he so ? And when the seas wax calm again, To chase from me annoy, My doubtful hope doth cause me plain ; So dread cuts off my joy. Thus is my wealth mingled with woe : And of each thought a doubt doth grow ; Now he comes !  will he come ?  alas !  no, no!

The Burning Babe

 

By Robert Southwell, SJ  (c. 1561-1595)

 

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

      And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

 

Love (III)

 

By George Herbert (1593–1633)

 

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                             From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                             If I lacked any thing.

 

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                             Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                             I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                             Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                             Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                             My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

 

Casabianca

 

By Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835)

 

THE boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but him had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

 

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.

 

The flames rolled on -- he would not go

Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

 

He called aloud -- "Say, father, say,

If yet my task is done?"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

 

"Speak, father!" once again he cried,

"If I may yet be gone!"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames rolled on.

 

Upon his brow he felt their breath,

And in his waving hair,

And looked from that lone post of death

In still, yet brave despair.

 

And shouted but once more aloud,

"My father! must I stay?"

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,

The wreathing fires made way.

 

They wrapt the ship in splendor wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And streamed above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

 

There came a burst of thunder sound--

The boy -- oh! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea!--

 

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair

That well had borne their part--

But the noblest thing that perished there

Was that young, faithful heart.

 

 

Casabianca

 

By Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

 

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite "The boy stood on

the burning deck." Love's the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.

 

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck. And love's the burning boy.