EH 305 Assignments

EH 305

Course Exercise 1: Poetic Scansion

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For this short exercise, use the knowledge you have gained from your readings in Klarer and Vendler to scan the following poem.

This assignment asks you to “scan” Thomas Wyatt's poem “My Galley” from the Edgerton MS (ca. 1520s-30s)

My galley charged with forgetfulness

Thorough sharp seas, in winter nights doth pass

‘Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,

That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;

And every oar a thought in readiness,

As though that death were light in such a case.

An endless wind doth tear the sail apace

Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.

A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,

Hath done the wearied cords great hinderance;

Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.

The stars be hid that led me to this pain.

Drowned is reason that should me consort,

And I remain despairing of the port.

1) Mark the caesura (medial pause) of each line using a double bar, as follows:

Thanked be fortune || it hath been otherwise

If you are unsure where the caesura falls, read the line aloud and see which words and phrases seem to go with each other. This pause will not necessarily be marked by punctuation.

2) Mark the rhyme scheme of the poem (unit of lines, using the letters a, b, c, etc; when a new rhyme appears use a new letter).

Piping down || the valleys wild a

Piping songs || of pleasant glee b

On a cloud || I saw a child a

And he laughing || said to me, b

What form does the poem take based on this scheme?

3) Mark any lines that enjamb or “run on” with an arrow. Enjambment occurs when the syntax of a poetic line (in the form of a sentence) carries over into the next line.

Ye living lamps, || by whose dear light a

The nightingale || does sit so late, b

And studying all the summer night a

Her matchless songs does mediate, b

4) Mark the stressed and unstressed beats in the poem as you hear them. You may use a slash [/] for a stressed beat and a “x” [x] for an unstressed beat. BE aware of the poem’s form, which you may have perceived before arriving at this step. But don’t let it determine your stress marks before you’ve even “listened” to the poem (i.e. listened to yourself reading the poem).

Death, be not proud, || though some have called thee a

/ x x / x / x / x

Mighty and dreadful, || for thou art not so; b

/ x x / x x / x x /

5) Mark out the poem’s “feet.” This will prove easier once you have established a consistent meter and an understanding of your interpretation of stresses in the poem. Use slash lines to separate feet.

We wear / the mask / || that grins / and lies, a

x / x / x / x /

It hides / our cheeks / || and shades / our eyes— a

x / x / x / x /

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Essay 1

Each of your essays will involve your analysis of a specific literary text. For this first essay, you will choose a poem we have discussed in class to close-read. You will, then, construct a focused argument on your chosen poem. You may choose to analyze any part of a poem, any aspect that we have discussed or otherwise. Remember that your aim here is to provide a focused analysis of a specific aspect or related aspects of the poem. Consider the various points for analysis we have already discussed based on our readings of Vendler and Lennard: meter, form, parts of speech, attention to a specific vocabulary, etc. In addition to these formal and mechanical aspects of a poem, you may also examine a poem’s use of imagery, specifically gender, nature, religion. You do not have to, nor should you in a focused essay, try to touch on all of these points.

You may also compare two related poems by a single author (for instance the poems of George Herbert we examined) or two authors (for example, the Robert Lowell’s poem “Skunk Hour” and the poem it pays homage to, Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Armadillo”). Some possible suggestions to start your analytic engines include:

* In what ways does animal imagery (specifically the skunks) and representation in Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” reflect/ contrast that of Bishop’s “The Armadillo”? How does Lowell’s poem, then, respond to/ speak to Bishop’s poem?

* In Jonson’s “To Penshurst,” how do the organic/living spaces (nature and man) relate to or intersect with the lifeless yet essential materials of the physical building of Penshurst Palace (“thy walls of…country stone”, “the hearth,” “the table”)? How does the world of man encroach upon/ fashion/ conjoin with the natural? How do verbs of construction and making (“built,” “cut,” “bends,” “crown,” “reared”) serve the poem’s illustration of the space of Penshurst?

* How does the presence or absence of the dash/pauses affect lines in Emily Dickinson’s “I Heard a Fly Buzz”? How do these local effects translate to larger interpretations of the poem?

* What is the role of the first person pronoun “I” in Stevens “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”? What is the role of the second person “you,” or the third person “he” and “it”?

* How does Jorie Graham’s “Of Forced Sightes and Trusty Ferefulness” allude to or converse with Wyatt’s “My galley charged with forgetfulness” (link here: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/ galley.htm) the poem from which it draws its title? Choose one or two lines of Graham’s poem with which to direct your analysis of its correlations to Wyatt’s.

Your essay should be three full pages or around 1200 words. Again, the short length of this essay requires you to focus quickly and remain focused and specific throughout. You should submit your essay electronically through e-mail to me by midnight on Monday February 10. Be sure to include your name in the document filename (J-Taylor_Essay_1.doc) and in the document itself.

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Reading Response 1

As you read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, keep a note sheet of interesting matter you find in the text. What interesting conversations/soliloquies, odd actions, or specific vocabulary garner your attention? Which characters prove most interesting and why? Which characters carry symbolism beyond their overt representation in the play (Fleance as Banquo’s son but also the future throne of Scotland)? When you have completed your first reading of the play, then look over your note sheet and write a 600 word (roughly) response to your reading. Choose one or two points you noted as you read on which to respond. In your response, you may consider in what ways the particular character, theme, word, scene, conversation, etc. you chose bears on your overall interpretation of the play. This assignment aims to garner your initial reading of the play into written form in hopes that it will be the catalyst for your formal essay on Macbeth.

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Essay 2

For Essay 2, you will offer an argument of around 1500 words on Shakespeare’s Macbeth driven by your close-reading or analysis of the play. For this paper, however, you may inform your reading with historical/contextual materials--such as the many excerpts of texts we read alongside the play--and literary criticism on the play. As always, you should attempt to focus your argument around a particular character, object, scene, or theme or some other point of focus or peculiarity within the play. You should continue to build on and with the tools we have learned thus far in the class such as the analysis of formal aspects of the text such as word choice/vocabulary, parts of speech, syntax and diction. Consider the play’s frame as a tragedy and the expectations for this genre between author and audience. Does the play meet or veer from these expectations? Your close analysis of these elements should then lend itself to larger claims about the play as a whole.

For this paper, I want you to use two scholarly articles that contribute to your essay. Please see me if you would like to discuss the role and relevance of any articles you find and deem useful to your essay as you write.

Some suggestions:

-You might consider some of the following themes we’ve discussed: nature/man’s nature, animal imagery, sickness and madness. How does one or more of these themes “play out” over the course of the drama? How do they inform the implicit or explicit argument you see the play assert? How do they contribute to the play’s larger preoccupation with kingship, regicide, and resistance?

-You might consider, as well, the early modern discourses on sovereignty we’ve read as part of our examination of the play (King James’ speeches and texts on sovereignty and witchcraft, the resistance literature of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century that aims to abolish the notion of a divine right of kings, etc.). How do these debates, ongoing in Shakespeare’s England and which the playwright was likely aware, resonate in the play? How does this literature speak to explicit themes in the play, including political naturalism (“man is a political animal”), blood and hereditary kingship, sovereignty and tyranny, etc.

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Essay 3

For Essay 3, you will offer an argument of around 1800 words on either Joyce's The Dead or Hitchcock's Vertigo driven by your close-reading or analysis of the text and also informed by secondary criticism. As always, you should attempt to focus your argument around a particular character, object, scene, or theme or some other point of focus or peculiarity within the play. You should continue to build on and with the tools we have learned thus far in the class such as the analysis of formal aspects of the text such as word choice/vocabulary, parts of speech, syntax and diction. But you might also engage a particular criticam methodology such as the ones we've discussed recently (Psychoanalysis, New Historicism, Feminism, Marxism, etc.). As always, consider the text’s generic frame and the expectations for this genre between author and audience.

For this paper, I want you to use six scholarly articles that contribute to your essay. Please see me if you would like to discuss the role and relevance of any articles you find and deem useful to your essay as you write.