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FOR THE OLDER LECTURES GO TO AMIMETOBIOS.PODBEAN.COM [There are a total of 200 and counting there] || Selected courses in literature (Shakespeare; Homer to Milton; Dryden to Wordsworth; Spenser and Milton; Skelton to Marvell; Close Reading; Thinking about Infinity) Spring 2013: The Later Romantics

Amimetobios


    • May 4, 2023 LATEST EPISODE
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    Victorian Poetry 26: Last class: Housman after a touch of Yeats and a little Michael Field

    Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2023 65:42


    We look at Yeats a little more, then "Michael Field," and then Housman's poem about Wilde and other poems about his own sexuality, and about the intense, Horatian ephemerality of life.  A class in part about why I hope poetry, or some poems, will matter to the students throughout their lives.

    class touch wilde yeats housman michael field victorian poetry little michael
    Victorian Poetry 25: Jeff Nunokawa visits to discuss Wilde's ”Ballad of Reading Gaol”

    Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2023 79:25


    Wilde in prison, or in Dante's hell, and the differences and similarities between the grimness of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and the charming, dazzling self-delight of his earlier self-presentations, in a class guest-taught by Princeton's Professor Jeff Nunokawa.

    visits ballad wilde reading gaol victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 24: The Rhymers' Club: Fin de siècle poetry, towards Wilde and Yeats

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2023 80:23


    Another Kipling poem -- "Danny Deaver" and the horror of hanging (in partial anticipation of Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol"), and some discussion of Arnold, Pater, and Wilde as context for Lionel Johnson's "Dark Angel."  Then two versions of Yeats's "Cradle Song."

    club ballad wilde yeats pater dark angel reading gaol cradle song victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 24: Amy Levy, Robert Bridges and... Kipling

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2023 78:22


    We discuss one poem of Amy Levy in the context of her short and painful life, then look at Robert Bridges's version of sprung rhythm -- how it differs from his friend Hopkins's and then after a brief and fractional defense of Kipling from the worst that could be said about him, we consider his poem "In the Neolithic Age."

    hopkins levy kipling robert bridges victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 22: A bit more Stevenson, George R. Sims, and the amazing Alice Meynell

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2023 76:09


    The way metaphor works in one of Stevenson's songs of travel, a little attention to George R. Sim's punning in one of his "lunatic laureate" poems, and then close reading of the amazing Alice Meynell, in particular "Renouncement," "A Cradle Song," "The Modern Mother," and "Parentage," with some attention to the experience of Catholic guilt.

    catholic sims stevenson george r parentage cradle song victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 21: Later Victorian Forms: Stevenson, Guggenberger, MacDonald

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2023 74:24


    We look at an interesting poem by Louisa S. Guggenberger, a very short poem by George MacDonald, and a couple of formal experiments by Stevenson, which mean the explanation of pantoum-like poems and triolets or rondeaux more generally -- examples of triolets from Hopkins and Chesterton.  Then the sublime original envoy to A Child's Garden of Verses.

    Victorian Poetry 20: George Eliot, Hardy, Hopkins

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2023 80:01


    A lot of greats to do in a single day, and not wanting to miss Eliot we begin with a little contextualization of three of the sonnets from "Brother and Sister," then move on to a few grim Hardy poems, and then to Hopkins: "As kingfishers catch fire" compared with one of the "terrible sonnets," "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day."

    Victorian Poetry 19: Swinburne and Hopkins

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2023 77:53


    We discuss "The Garden of Proserpine" and the ways that it anticipates or instantiates Freud's idea of the death drive: all the repetitions in the poem. Then we turn to the poet most opposite in attitude: Hopkins, and talk briefly of "Pied Beauty" and "That Nature is a Heralcitean Fire." Discussion in Instress and the Duns-Scotian term haecicity that makes it possible, as opposed to Thomas Aquainas' universality. We'll finish considering Hopkins next class.

    gardens freud hopkins swinburne victorian poetry that nature
    Victorian Poetry 18: A touch of Fitzgerald and Hopkins; more on Meredith and Swinburne

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2023 79:29


    We have to abandon Fitzgerald because time is short, so mainly on to Modern Love, with some context, then Hopkins's "Binsey Poplars," Swinburne (and Buck Mulligan quoting The Triumph of Time in Ulysses), and an intro to "The Garden of Proserpine," via Spenser's "Garden of Adonis" in The Faerie Queene (which I discussed a little while ago here), and Milton's account of how Eden is even greater than the fair field of Enna where Persephone gathering flowers by gloomy Dis was gathered. 

    Victorian Poetry 17: Some Meredith, then we begin The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2023 80:40


    We talk about George Meredith for a while -- "Lucifer in Starlight" (and the 1882 transit of Venus) and his relation to his wife, Mary Ellen Nicolls, and the relationship of both of them to Henry Wallis who'd painted Meredith as Chatterton.  We plan to return to Modern Love, but first we begin reading through Fitzgerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, after quoting him on its form and its moral: "Drink--for the Moon will often come round to look for us in this Garden and find us not."

    Victorian Poetry 16: A little Patmore, then the rest of Goblin Market

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2023 85:18


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

    goblin market patmore victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 15: D.G. and C. Rossetti

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2023 78:49


    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 

    rossetti goblin market victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 14: D.G. Rossetti and pre-Raphealitism

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2023 79:31


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 13: Concluding class on Clough's ”Amours de Voyage”

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2023 81:58


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 12: Mainly Clough plus some narrative theory

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2023 75:24


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 11: ”Long ago he was one of the singers” (Edward Lear) plus a little Clare

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2023 63:11


    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."

    Victorian Poetry 10: ”The Hunting of the Snark” and some Clare

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2023 75:52


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 9: ” 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' ”

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2023 81:18


    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?"

    browning dark tower victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 8: More on R. Browning's ”Development” and then mainly his”Thamuris Marching”

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2023 83:56


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 7: more on Aurora Leigh and then some Robert Browning

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2023 79:14


    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.

    Victorian Poetry 6: mainly Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2023 75:46


    A couple of great student modernizations of Barnes' "The Turnstile" (worth listening to!  Don't fast forward) and then some discussion of the subtleties of Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, and its relation to the rise of the 19th century novel (Jane Eyre), with some attention to just a few lines of  Book 1 of the poem.

    Victorian Poetry 5: E. Brontë, dialect, the amazing William Barnes

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2023 83:15


    Poetry and nature as the surrounding world is industrialized; dialect and the local; experienced attitudes towards prior innocence; what "tomorrow" means in Brontë; dialect spelling; and then the amazing and heartbreakingly moving William Barnes, especially his poem "The Turnstile."

    poetry dialect turnstile bront william barnes victorian poetry
    Victorian Poetry 4: Some filiations (Barnes, Hardy, Tennyson, Fitzgerald, &c.); then ”TITHONUS”

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2023 80:06


    First some process shot accounts of 19th c. affiliations between a lot of the figures we're doing.  Dialectic poetry.  Rubaiyat stanzas.  Then Tennyson's great "Tithonus" with some attention to its similarities and differences from "Ulysses"

    Victorian Poetry 3: Tennyson's technique, Tennyson's despair

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2023 81:33


    A consideration of the opening of "The Lotos Eaters" and the amazing way Tennyson handles sound.  Repetition.  How he does something similar in some despairing stanzas from "In Memoriam."  

    Victorian Poetry 2: The weirdness of Tennyson

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 23, 2023 77:55


    One of Tennyson's epigraphs: "Astronomy and geology: terrible muses."  The importance of Arthur Henry Hallam's death to Tennyson, especially because of his religious skepticism.  Gibbon on St. Simeon Stylites.  Dramatic Monologues.  "Ulysses," in Carey's translation of Dante and then Tennyson's poem.  The great Achilles = Hallam, but we know the ending from Dante -- he won't see him again.  

    Victorian Poetry 1 -- Intro with poems by R. Browning, Beddoes, Patmore, Meynell, C. Rossetti

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2023 70:03


    First class on Victorian Poetry.  The best and largest corpus of really good poetry in English -- really good because the novel is the bid for greatness now.  But really good is really good.  Victorians relationship to some modernists (just a little) and to the Romantics, especially Shelley and Wordsworth, illustrated in poems by Robert Browning, Beddoes, Patmore, Meynell, and Christina Rossetti.   N.B. Text will be Christopher Ricks, ed. New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.

    Poetry Episode 24: Last class, mainly on finishing Elisa Gonzalez's ”Notes Toward an Elegy”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2022 74:56


    After some last class paper topic business we spend most of the time finishing our discussion of Elisa Gonzalez's amazing "Notes Toward an Elegy", and its relation to Bishop in particular (not only "Casabianca" but also "Love Lies Sleeping"; cf. Gonzalez's "And now I lie awake pretending / everyone in the world lies still the way the living are still," which is a kind of summary of Bishop's poem).  And so farewell to the class!

    Poetry course 23: kind of whacky but more on Bishop and then Elisa Gonzalez

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2022 75:41


    People pretty punchy in penultimate palaver, especially when we have some discussion of Edward Gorey, whom almost no one had heard of! But we finish talking about Bishop, amidst lots of whackiness and then start Elisa Gonzales's great poem "Notes Towards an Elegy" from 2021 (published just before the murder of her brother) -- we are treating this poem (as will I hope become clearer next week in the last class) as the third in the line from Hemans through Bishop.  

    Poetry: A Basic Course 22: Tennyson, Rich, Agha Shahid Ali, Hemans, Bishop

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2022 78:51


    More on forms: in particular the ghazal, and the way poems quote, as in Shahid Ali's relineated quotations from Adrienne Rich, and Bishop's quotation from Hemans' "Casabianca."  To be continued.

    Poetry A Basic Course episode 21: Beauty and truth in Dickinson and Keats

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2022 77:42


    Understanding things (poems, songs, etc.) more deeply than their creators as an incentive for rewriting.  How poets rewrite their precursors.  Example: Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Dickinson's "I died for Beauty."

    beauty poetry ode dickinson keats grecian urn basic course
    Poetry Episode 20: Chiefly ”The Emperor of Ice Cream”

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2022 77:42


    A bit about forms and what they're metaphors for, and then mainly Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream," with other Stevens ("The Snow Man," "Auroras of Autumn") mentioned briefly.

    Poetry a basic course episode 19: Some villanelles, mainly

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2022 77:35


    Discussion of Ruskin's pathetic fallacy; the metaphor of the villanelle in Rowan Ricardo Phillips; some villanelles, by AE Stallings, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop; Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream."

    Poetry Episode 18 Mont Blanc Concluded

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2022 66:06


    A quiz (not recorded) based on the set of poems the students could write about, and some discussion of the answers.  Then the conclusion of Shelley's "Mont Blanc," with some discussion of the pathetic fallacy, to be continued.

    Poetry Class Episode 17: Mont Blanc part 2

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2022 79:09


    Some reminders about metaphor, and then more about the contest between mind and mountain in P.B. Shelley's "Mont Blanc."  So far the mountain is like the Astros, leading the mind 3 games to 2, more or less.  (This comparison is not going to have staying power, but there you go.)

    Poetry episode 16: More on metaphor, especially Shelley's Mont Blanc: part 1 of a discussion of that poem

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2022 76:30


    Assignments for a paper on metaphor.  Salty discussion of metaphors, of plagiarism, of past and future assassinations.  Then (most of the class) a beginning of a discussion of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" and the contest to see what is metaphor and what is reality.

    Class 15: More sonnets, and more on the relation of sonnet to metaphor

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2022 79:27


    Metaphor: Ezra Pound (and Wordsworth). Some more consideration of sonnets and their relation to metaphor and simile: Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Bishop.  Waley's translation of Tao Yuan-Ming and its similarity to Shakespeare's sonnet 73.   

    Episode 14 -- some sonnets

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2022 79:01


    Sonnets and metaphor: Wyatt and Surrey's translations of Petrarch, and then Some Shakespeare (with remarks about Starbuck)

    Poetry A Basic Course Episode 13 More Pope, Milton, Wyatt

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2022 76:02


    Some more on Pope and how the sound seems to be an echo to the sense; another line of Milton's -- "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen" -- and how it divides; Wyatt's "They Fle From Me."

    Episode 12: Some Paradise Lost, some Pope, some more on meter, prime numbers

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2022 78:53


    More on iambic pentameter.  Examples from Milton and Pope.  A bit on sonnets.  Why poetry tends to flirt with prime numbers -- five feet per line, seven pairs of rhymes in sonnets, etc.  Examples from Shakespeare.

    More on the theology of Paradise Lost (Episode 11)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2022 77:12


    More on the theology of Paradise Lost; I keep wanting to get back to the formal surface but we talked a lot about content and context.  Also: The thirteen men effect!

    A day that turned out to be an intro to Paradise Lost (Episode 10)

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2022 79:47


    Not what I meant to be doing to day, but it turned out we talked about the opening of Paradise Lost, and certain theological issues about free will, temptation, judgment of God, and justification of his ways.

    Different sorts of stresses (Episode 9)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2022 78:23


    Different sorts of stresses and their superposition.  A lot on one line in Paradise Lost: "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime...?"  And a bit on one line in Yeats: "Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose."  And then the opening line of Paradise Lost: the stress in the word "first," the countervailing stress on the word "disobedience."

    What all poems are always about; ”We are Seven” (Episode 8)

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2022 75:30


    What every poem is about: its own form.  Garden path sentences (e.g. "The old man the boat.") as showing how form is almost always announced.  Speaker vs. poet.   Dialogue that turns into one speaker taking charge. Wordsworth's "We Are Seven."

    More on lines

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2022 80:06


    Ashbery's "Wrong Kind of Insurance" -- and how to read Ashbery.  Dactylic ending of that poem (or, yes, anapestic; it can be a matter of choice how you time it): "Each night / Is trifoliate, strange to the touch."  Then two Cummings poems. Hearing vs. seeing.  Reading vs. seeing (how the intelligence agencies dope out people who claim they don't understand a language). (NOTE TO JEFF: I learned this from Goffman's Strategic Interaction.  Text me as soon as you see this.) Brooks' "We Real Cool," and its line endings.    

    What makes a line?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2022 77:45


    What is the most important criterion for a text's having a claim to being a poem?  What if it's not a text? what if it's oral poetry, like Homer? What authorizes us to say that there are five feet in a pentameter line, or six in a hexameter, when Milton and Homer recite their verses orally, or Shakespearean actors utter blank verse soliloquies on stage?  Are lines (unrhymed lines, anyhow) just artifacts of printing?  Hint: no.  Are they ever artifacts of printing? Hint: yes.

    Rhyme. And dialogue -- alternation and conflict in ballads

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2022 69:33


    Tennyson's "The Skipping Rope."  Dialogue: dramatic conflict and rhyme.  Ballad meter and alternation.  A note on Lyrical Ballads.

    Rhyme: Making the Arbitrary Make Sense

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2022 73:53


    Cole Porter's "You're the Top."  Eighteenth Century bouts-rimés.  The poetic task of making arbitrary rhymes make sense. Jakobson on the poetic function of language.

    More on rhyme and meter

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2022 71:04


    How trochaic words overlap iambic feet.  Loose onsets, strict endings.  "Brought death inTO the world"?  Or "Brought death INto the world"?  Or both? "After great pain a formal feeling comes."

    some more on ”b o d y” and then on Alice Notley's ”The Comfort”

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2022 73:37


    We talk about Merrill's "b o d y" and its relation to Macbeth and then the words et cetera = etc. et cetera, especially in Alice Notely's wonderful four line poem "The Comfort," with some attention to enjambment and end stop.

    comfort macbeth alice notley
    First episode of Poetry: A Basic Course:James Merrill's

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2022 65:41


    This is actually the second class, since we had an introductory class last week.  This is a course in the close reading of poetry.   Today's class largely on James Merrill's poem b o d y, on the limits of close reading (if any), and on "Roses are red..."   Syllabus outline, to be updated periodically:   Topics   This syllabus is done by topics.  In order to remain flexible I will update weekly with specific readings.  Right now the syllabus is aspirational, and will give you a general sense of the order of topics and the issues we'll discuss.  But if, as is likely, we don't get to everything, we'll have to decide what to spend less time on.   Th        Aug 25             Introduction, etc.                                     Handout, including:  “b o d y” (James Merrill) “Easter Wings” (George Herbert) “The Comfort” (Alice Notely) Excerpt from Don Juan (Lord Byron) “My sweet old Etcetera” (Cummings)                                     T          Aug 30             Rhyme                                     Cole Porter: “You're the top”                                     Skelton: “Tunning of Eleanor Rumming” (excerpts)                                                   “Lullay lullay like a child”                                     Auden:  “Lullaby”                                                                                        Th        Sept  1               T          Sept  6             Th        Sept  8   T          Sept 13 Th        Sept 15                                     T          Sept 20            Meter Th        Sept 22              T          Sept 27            NO CLASS     Th        Sept 29            First Paper Due                                                         T          Oct  4              Th        Oct  6                T          Oct 11             Interplay between rhyme and meter Th        Oct 13             NO CLASS (“Brandeis Monday”)                   T          Oct 18             NO CLASS (“Brandeis Monday”)     Th        Oct 20               T          Oct 25                         Th        Oct 27             Metaphor   T          Nov  1             Second Paper Due Th        Nov  3             More forms                                     T          Nov  8             Th        Nov  9                                     T          Nov 15             Revisions                                            Th        Nov 16                                                                                    T          Nov 22            Th        Nov 24             NO CLASS                   T          Nov 29            Th        Dec  1              Two extremes: free verse and hip hop   T          Dec  6              Third Paper Due

    Advanced Shakespeare 28, Friday May 1 2020--LAST CLASS. Dolabella and Cleopatra's dream

    Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2020 88:41


    The last class this semester. Cleopatra and her dreams of Antony.  Her death.  Ass unpolicied vs. lass unparalleled.

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