Room 272

Feel free to comment on any or all of these.  This time, try to choose particular passages that strike you as interesting or strange, and we will discuss them in class.  Allow yourself time to give Chaucer’s General Prologue a careful, slow reading.  Get the sound and the texture of his language into your head.

Our discussion about the close association in Malory between the violent and the erotic becomes more urgent as we move to the Tristram. Bring up in your comments any particular moments or characters that might help us read these fraught issues.

Please post any further comments on this week’s reading here.  Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, and Hákonarmál are all open for discussion.  Remember, the latter two readings are available through electronic course reserve here.

As I mentioned in class on Monday, the word-study assignment is due 2 February.  Choose a word in Malory and write a paper that considers the word in its various contexts.  I recommend looking up your word in the Oxford English Dictionary, available through our library here.  The OED will give the word’s etymology, history, and various definitions.  After doing this detailed analysis, you may be able to make some claims about larger implications.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Please post any further comments on our reading for the week here.

Well, my friends, if you are able to sum up Waswo’s sweeping, audacious argument in a couple of short paragraphs, then I congratulate you. You are certainly ready for our bibliographical project.

My plan was that we read this essay as we moved between romance-derived and chronicle-derived portions of Malory. Do Waswo’s loaded dichotomies between cultivation and nomadism, between city and forest, and between the displacers (conquerors) and the displaced help us with any of the binaries that we have been struggling with thus far: prowess/enchantment (not sure if this is really a binary), courteous/discourteous behavior, chronicle/romance, aristocracy/peasantry, constructions of masculine/feminine? Does Waswo help us to make sense of Arthur’s Roman adventure?

It is quite possible that the short answer to most of these questions may be “no.” But let’s struggle with the ideas anyway. How does the persistence of the Arthurian legend fit within Waswo’s Virgilian trajectory?

Feel free to post initial thoughts here.  In any case, please jot down your ideas and bring them to class for discussion.

Please post your discussion topics here.  Topics are still open for the Elegies and for Beowulf.

Something to consider: note that Beowulf essentially begins with a funeral.  What implications does this beginning carry for the rest of the poem?  Make as many observations as you can about the details of the funeral.  We will use this passage in class as practice for the close reading assignment.  (See below for specifics about this assignment.)

The Waswo article is now linked through our course reserve site at the library. We will not get to this in class until Friday.

Our readings for this week will likely spill over to next week. For Wednesday, try to get through the “Arthur and Lucius” section. You will note, by the way, that the language and tone of this section is quite different from what we have been reading. On Wednesday we will discuss some reasons for this and the effects on the reader (i. e. you).

Consider this post your open thread for discussion topics this week.

Happy MLK Day!

According to the syllabus, this assignment is due on 24 January. You should choose a passage of no more than about twenty lines from one of our Old English poems (one of the elegies or Beowulf) and write an essay that analyzes the passage closely. This is what we call a “close reading.” This is how I suggest going about it:

1. Choose a passage that is particularly interesting, strange, or dense with meaning or imagery.

2. Read it carefully, pencil in hand. Look up any words that you don’t know in the Oxford English Dictionary (available from our library here). At this point you should be developing particular ideas about the passage, or perhaps even an arguable thesis.

3. Make notes on all aspects of the passage: how the imagery works, metaphor, diction, the structure of the verse, position of the speaker, etc. (See “Reading Poetry” in the back of your book for more ideas about this.)

4. Write an essay that makes a specific argument about your passage. Use your specific observations from #2 and #3 to support your argument. You may refer to other parts of the poem, but your primary emphasis should be on your chosen passage.

5. Your essay should be about four pages, typed and double-spaced. You should type the entire quoted passage at the beginning of the paper so that your reader will have it as a reference.

Please read #1, 2, and 3 in the post immediately below on “Malory Discussion Topics.” These instructions apply to you as well.

Feel free to post topics here for Bede and/or the Exeter Elegies. I will get us started with a topic of my own, as follows:

Look carefully at the words of Edwin’s advisor on page 9 about the flight of the sparrow through the hall. Consider what this suggests about mortality, and also consider the ways in which this metaphor might interact with our reading of the elegies, including The Ruin.

One of you pointed out that my guidelines for posting topics were not specific. So here are some details:

1. You may post topics prior to any class meeting; just add them to the comments on the “topics” post for that week. For example, you may add comments for Wednesday or Friday on this post. I should receive comments by the morning of the day we meet.

2. As I write this, it says “no comments” above this text. If you would like to leave a comment, simply click on that. After someone comments, it will change from “no comments” to “1 comment,” and so on. Please leave your comments under a name that I will recognize: first name and last initial should work fine.

3. Post as often as you like. Twelve is simply a minimum. The more you post, the more the blogging gods will smile upon you.

I will get us started with a topic of my own. At the end of the preface, Caxton writes: “But all is written for our doctrine, and to beware that we may fall not to vice nor sin, but to exercise and follow virtue . . .” My former Chaucer students may recognize the first clause as a reference to the same verse from Romans chapter 15 that Chaucer paraphrases in his Retraction. We might discuss what this kind of aesthetic implies and whether it is sustainable in reference to such a text. We also might consider how this accords with Caxton’s other stated aims and arguments.