I'm just going to type blindly for a bit to see where this goes. I don't want to work on my other idea just now, and I feel like I should get this done, just to do it. I haven't been reading, of course, so I'm not feeling productive--it's real clear that I need to do some reading every day if I'm going to be able to write. Recently I've been exhausted, so it's hard, but I've got a manageable pile of wonderful books.
Maybe putting women, cannibals, and divorce--or whatever it's called away will help. it's very old new historicism and i'm not convinced I need that right now.
should i switch back to reading about Deloney? I think I might--it'd be nice to get that sort of break from my own thoughts.
i'm worried about my other project because i tried saying it to sarah and she didn't sound interested. that's a silly thing to be motivating this, but there it is. I'm not sure whether I'm worried that th eproject is therefore boring or whether I 'm worried because I cannot explain my ideas such that I get that click of recognition that I'm looking for.
I need click-ideas, psychologically right now. I think it's just a side-effect of how I learned to sell things as a student council person, but that's the kind of thing I'm looking for--an idea that makes people say, "Gee--that's interesting." I have to keep an eye out as a I read for the sorts of things that do that to me, so that I can figure out what it is that works for that purpose in scholarly, as opposed to non-scholarly writing.
i feel a lot better having typed all of this out. it helps me to diagnose my weird mixture of academic-fraud syndrome with i'm-the-best disease.
anyway--i can feel myself about to pile on. books. one entirely worthwhile project for me over the next two days is to come up with a list of the central poets of the periods 1600-1610, 1610-1620, and 1620-1630, and just start reading them. i want to figure out how much i can argue about them, and the best way to do that is to start doing. so i need poet dates, pronto. okay.
in the meantime, i have lots of scanning to do, some sonnet-reading-about to do, and some classic-books to read. so why don't i back away from this idea--it's written down after all, and start on all of that?
i can actually keep a list of writers/books in this space, so I have access to them all the time. it'll help me to build my set of writers. and i can gradually go forward and backwards in time...
OH I have a partial reading list somewhere that I started making! this is a recurrence of earlier feelings of having not read enough. now i can generate a plan, though, and work through everything systematically. And poetry is bite-sized, so I don't have to feel bad about not having much time to read right now.
i'm so glad I did this writing exercise right now--it's actually really helpful. I do worry that I'm training myself to write bad sentences. But, actually, that's not a training I'd mind having--it may make it easier for me to get things on paper so that I can edit them into things that are worthwhile.
I'm just excited that I have this energy to go--do research, and read. I hope that'll help me keep doing the work that I need to do as I move forward. After all, there's a lot of time left, and I need to make meself into an academic.
i started watching the clock, though, so that's no good. i need to start expanding the amount of time, but not such that it begins to feel like a punishment rather than a pleasure.
I'm going to try switching to 11 minutes. I've been doing this for a month, I should be able to write for 11 minutes whenever I want. Next week, I'll think about switching to 12, if I've been able to do enough reading that that feels worthwhile, rather than just an attempt to get myself to keep typing.
Soon, I am going to try to switch my tone to a 3rd person, rather than 1st, though. perhaps. if it gets me rolling...
tomorrow, i want ot talk about my experience reading 10 poems.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
6/29/08
Missing Shepherds, Dead Shepherds, Unreciprocating Shepherds
In my last entry, I started outlining a set of issues that need to be worked through in order to think about Vergil's Eclogue 2 as a model for the relationship between poets. I was arguing that there's a difference between the shepherd who won't return your affection and the predeccessor whose works you're able to respond to but who can't (by virtue of his precedence) return yours.
I think that's right, but I want to think a little about similarities, to see if I can make the case. (I'd like to know more about the 17th century adaptations of the eclogue, in order to really make the case, but that's fine.) What's interesting about pastoral is its closed economy--gifts are given to someone, who passed them on to someone else, who doesn't respond to them. The shepherd poet is a medial figure, misusing another person's gifts to an unresponsive audience--that's not all that far off the self-representation of poets in the 1580's, is it? At the same time, pastoral beauty is always a metaphor for the beauty of the pastoral song itself--the song is its own promise.
I reread it--no real revelations. I guess what I'm particularly interested in is returning the element of desire to the friend argument.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
6/28/08
So, yesterday I was just writing down an overview of the potential paper/article ideas I had been generating through this weekly writing, and I combined two ideas in a way I found really interesting.
The homoeroticism of lyric starts to change dramatically under James I, because homosexuality now has a deep political valence. (It always had some political implications, of course, but now talking about it attracts attention.) Moreover, as Hammond shows, the work of the poets from (made-up date) 1620 on, carefully attempts to straighten out (ahem) friendship and homosexuality. Marvell is an interesting case, of course--I suppose all the cases are interesting. What I'm interested in is whether the construction of the canon that happens at around the same time is related. That is, if the peer relation charged with desire made available in the homo-eroticism of lyric has to go away, one's models for a relationship with an older male poet are friendship and succession. It's real clear that of those two options, succession ultimately wins--one can't be a friend to Virgil in the equals-of-the-same-age model; one can be Corydon to his Alexis (or is it the other way around).
What I'm interested in now is how to demonstrate this kind of argument. I'm thinking that Barnfield's Affectionate Shepherd & his defense of it are a good first step--the Barnfield--Blount relationship is something of a model for the Barnfield--Sidney relationship. From there, I need to go into Vergil & E/n pastoral's recognition of the fact that there are always other shepherds (Hobbinol, E.K., etc etc)--into Sean Keilen/The Light In Troy. What I'm weak on is the poetry of the very early 1600's. I need to be able to show a change in pastoral, a change in poetics, and the burgeoning of the canon.
In pastoral, of course, there are always other shepherds.
There's a confusion I'm making here, though, between the absent beloved, the nonreciprocating beloved, and the dead beloved.
The homoeroticism of lyric starts to change dramatically under James I, because homosexuality now has a deep political valence. (It always had some political implications, of course, but now talking about it attracts attention.) Moreover, as Hammond shows, the work of the poets from (made-up date) 1620 on, carefully attempts to straighten out (ahem) friendship and homosexuality. Marvell is an interesting case, of course--I suppose all the cases are interesting. What I'm interested in is whether the construction of the canon that happens at around the same time is related. That is, if the peer relation charged with desire made available in the homo-eroticism of lyric has to go away, one's models for a relationship with an older male poet are friendship and succession. It's real clear that of those two options, succession ultimately wins--one can't be a friend to Virgil in the equals-of-the-same-age model; one can be Corydon to his Alexis (or is it the other way around).
What I'm interested in now is how to demonstrate this kind of argument. I'm thinking that Barnfield's Affectionate Shepherd & his defense of it are a good first step--the Barnfield--Blount relationship is something of a model for the Barnfield--Sidney relationship. From there, I need to go into Vergil & E/n pastoral's recognition of the fact that there are always other shepherds (Hobbinol, E.K., etc etc)--into Sean Keilen/The Light In Troy. What I'm weak on is the poetry of the very early 1600's. I need to be able to show a change in pastoral, a change in poetics, and the burgeoning of the canon.
In pastoral, of course, there are always other shepherds.
There's a confusion I'm making here, though, between the absent beloved, the nonreciprocating beloved, and the dead beloved.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
6/25/08
Oops. I just inadvertently broke my rules. I'm waiting for the Bank of America to tell me what's up with my checking account.
Anyway, for the last few days I've been writing in my notebook, in order to reuse time during German class. As it is, though, I need to figure out how to write more here, because I think I'm more productive here. And it means I can really dedicate my attention. For the last few days, I've been working on Barnfield, and the Shepherd's Confession and "Nut-Brown Wenche" that has been attributed to him.
Hammond's chapter on Shakespeare was fairly good, and I'm into his chapter on "political sodomy" now--descriptions of homoerotic relationships between rulers and their subjects. James II of course comes up for much discussion. What I'm curious about is how exactly the depiction of homoerotic themes changed in the reign of James I. Drayton made his poem straighter; Shakespeare thought he could release his sonnets (according to Hammond). I mean, presumably, it was yet another process of calibration for each individual to adjust his desires to the new regime, and presumably that process of calibration went in many directions at once. I'm not happy with that answer, however. What do we know about Jonson and desire? Marston and desire?
Donne became a minister. Also--he doesn't have many poems with male-male desire as a theme, although I believe he has one projected lesbian poem. Hall keeps writing for a long time. I don't know what happens to Daniel. Sidney and Spenser are dead. It occurs to me that the Cavalier lyric, evolving out the more lyric moments of Jonson and Donne, because of its investment in a particular sort of inwardness therefore needs to have its desires more clearly laid out than early poems. "Come live with me and be my love" could be voiced by a male shepherd to a male or female shepherd--it's not that we don't know what the answer is; it's that the poem works either way. Once people are writing poems that imagine a particular embodied situation, though, that changes.
"Come live with me and be my love" is a lovely poem about pastoral desire, a fantasy of natural abundance that keys in on the overflow of affection in love. 'Raleigh's' response makes it instead about the falsity of sexual persuasion; a more specific concern, to be sure, but still general.
"A sweet disorder in her dress" however, is really caught up in the desire of a particular lyric speaker. It could be that that doesn't appeal to you at all. It could be that you agree with Herrick. Who knows.
I need to return to this--the lyric definitely changes in between 1590 and, say, 1620-1630, and I think it has something to do w/ the specificity of the imagined speaker. but then so many Elizabethan poems imagine speakers--Tottel is not a pre-Cavalier....
Anyway, for the last few days I've been writing in my notebook, in order to reuse time during German class. As it is, though, I need to figure out how to write more here, because I think I'm more productive here. And it means I can really dedicate my attention. For the last few days, I've been working on Barnfield, and the Shepherd's Confession and "Nut-Brown Wenche" that has been attributed to him.
Hammond's chapter on Shakespeare was fairly good, and I'm into his chapter on "political sodomy" now--descriptions of homoerotic relationships between rulers and their subjects. James II of course comes up for much discussion. What I'm curious about is how exactly the depiction of homoerotic themes changed in the reign of James I. Drayton made his poem straighter; Shakespeare thought he could release his sonnets (according to Hammond). I mean, presumably, it was yet another process of calibration for each individual to adjust his desires to the new regime, and presumably that process of calibration went in many directions at once. I'm not happy with that answer, however. What do we know about Jonson and desire? Marston and desire?
Donne became a minister. Also--he doesn't have many poems with male-male desire as a theme, although I believe he has one projected lesbian poem. Hall keeps writing for a long time. I don't know what happens to Daniel. Sidney and Spenser are dead. It occurs to me that the Cavalier lyric, evolving out the more lyric moments of Jonson and Donne, because of its investment in a particular sort of inwardness therefore needs to have its desires more clearly laid out than early poems. "Come live with me and be my love" could be voiced by a male shepherd to a male or female shepherd--it's not that we don't know what the answer is; it's that the poem works either way. Once people are writing poems that imagine a particular embodied situation, though, that changes.
"Come live with me and be my love" is a lovely poem about pastoral desire, a fantasy of natural abundance that keys in on the overflow of affection in love. 'Raleigh's' response makes it instead about the falsity of sexual persuasion; a more specific concern, to be sure, but still general.
"A sweet disorder in her dress" however, is really caught up in the desire of a particular lyric speaker. It could be that that doesn't appeal to you at all. It could be that you agree with Herrick. Who knows.
I need to return to this--the lyric definitely changes in between 1590 and, say, 1620-1630, and I think it has something to do w/ the specificity of the imagined speaker. but then so many Elizabethan poems imagine speakers--Tottel is not a pre-Cavalier....
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
06/18/08
I am wearing out. Mostly, I think, from the computer screen. I love having this big screen, but man does it put out a lot of light.
I'm getting back into Juvenal. Or at least, getting back into getting through Juvenal. At least reading him in English makes me realize how much better I like the Marston--I'll have to see how I feel once I've read it all and turn back to it, but at least in this translation, I say eh.
But I see what people were responding to--I wonder if I'd like the Johnson better if I went back to that again. It's a pretty decent rendition I think and it does rhyme, which may well be what I appreciate in the Marston.
I'm trying the red book now, in keeping with my two books per genre theory. It's requiring me to know the Romans, though, so it's kinda a pain. But that's all right, I guess--if I'm going to work on satire, I need to know the Romans anyway--even if neo-classical satire wasn't big until later, it's still important.
Actually, now that I mention it, I'm surprised we didn't get much neo-classical satire in Love's book. I guess that's a field that's pretty thoroughly covered, and so he hasn't felt the need to do so, but I'm curious how Dryden's Juvenal relates to his other satires. I actually think I'm gonna run to Firestone this morning and grab Dryden's Juvenal if I can find it and find that bawdy version of To His Coy Mistress. I need to look up the textual history in the Love to be able to find it--it was in the Haward MS. I can handle that.
And reading Juvenal off a screen won't be bad for me either.
This is the sort of post that's useless to me later, but it's helping me at least to get the words to come out smoothly. In her opening chapter she shows people as having done approximately this for six or seven months and an idea gradually developing. I think that's what I'm gonna try--if I do this for six months and it doesn't help me, I'll stop.
Of course, in a lot of ways, it is already helping me, because it's forcing me to put what I read into an ongoing context. I think figuring out a system for reading can only help that--it'll keep me from getting into those books that don't really relate to my topic but that I refuse to relate to on their own terms.
I'm looking forward to working through the Fineman. I know it's going ot be a huge amount of work, but I think I can handle it. And if not, I can always go read web introductions to Lacanian thought.
That's one of the main things I'm picking up here--a work ethic and the belief that I can go learn anything given a couple weeks of free time. Which is cool. Now I just have to prove it true over and over again over the next five years.
(Tangent:I keep wondering how much of the difficulty of learning German is the oddity of English. This is a topic for another day.)
I'm getting back into Juvenal. Or at least, getting back into getting through Juvenal. At least reading him in English makes me realize how much better I like the Marston--I'll have to see how I feel once I've read it all and turn back to it, but at least in this translation, I say eh.
But I see what people were responding to--I wonder if I'd like the Johnson better if I went back to that again. It's a pretty decent rendition I think and it does rhyme, which may well be what I appreciate in the Marston.
I'm trying the red book now, in keeping with my two books per genre theory. It's requiring me to know the Romans, though, so it's kinda a pain. But that's all right, I guess--if I'm going to work on satire, I need to know the Romans anyway--even if neo-classical satire wasn't big until later, it's still important.
Actually, now that I mention it, I'm surprised we didn't get much neo-classical satire in Love's book. I guess that's a field that's pretty thoroughly covered, and so he hasn't felt the need to do so, but I'm curious how Dryden's Juvenal relates to his other satires. I actually think I'm gonna run to Firestone this morning and grab Dryden's Juvenal if I can find it and find that bawdy version of To His Coy Mistress. I need to look up the textual history in the Love to be able to find it--it was in the Haward MS. I can handle that.
And reading Juvenal off a screen won't be bad for me either.
This is the sort of post that's useless to me later, but it's helping me at least to get the words to come out smoothly. In her opening chapter she shows people as having done approximately this for six or seven months and an idea gradually developing. I think that's what I'm gonna try--if I do this for six months and it doesn't help me, I'll stop.
Of course, in a lot of ways, it is already helping me, because it's forcing me to put what I read into an ongoing context. I think figuring out a system for reading can only help that--it'll keep me from getting into those books that don't really relate to my topic but that I refuse to relate to on their own terms.
I'm looking forward to working through the Fineman. I know it's going ot be a huge amount of work, but I think I can handle it. And if not, I can always go read web introductions to Lacanian thought.
That's one of the main things I'm picking up here--a work ethic and the belief that I can go learn anything given a couple weeks of free time. Which is cool. Now I just have to prove it true over and over again over the next five years.
(Tangent:I keep wondering how much of the difficulty of learning German is the oddity of English. This is a topic for another day.)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
6/17/08
So June is going quickly. I guess I knew that would happen, but still--I actually really hadn't expected it. It's because of all the work I'm doing--two and a half hours of class and then six hours of homework just takes up most of a day. I keep saying I'm looking forward to being able to read for myself again.
I think I need to stop worrying the problem of genre for a bit, until I've read more--it's an interesting question, and Rosalie Colie is really helpful on it, but it's not something I'm going to resolve by poking at it with a very long stick. I need to develop a very particular question and then chase that down through individual texts. Love has an interesting passage in which he presents the various ways that satire could be studied and says they all would be useful but he's not going to do them. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, but I didn't get the sense that any of them would be all that revelatory. (That's a nonsense sentence--we don't know the results of the investigations; I can't claim that they're not interesting. I certainly don't know enough about the period to project results onto people I don't know and their exploration of a body of work I don't know. Anyway.)
I should read the poems of Marvell's disciples. Just to see what they're like. (That would be a good dissertation topic: the Sons of the Sons of Ben. Or better yet: the Daughters of the Sons of Ben, on mid-17th century female writers. I bet it's been done.)
Popular versions of my book:
Yeah Really? Sarcastic Literature Since Whenever
Anyway. At least the words keep coming out--that's the real benefit of this exercise. I'm becoming much more willing to type what I think. I think.
Jim Shapiro's class may have improved my writing, but it made me neurotic about it, as I tried to write in one-draft what should have taken three or four, at the least. A goal for future writing should be to be able to edit passages that are substantially fine in order to make them significantly better. I feel like that's a crucial test of something. Not quite sure what, but that's okay. I'll figure that out.
Also: I have to resist the urge to append a verdict to the end of these things, especially once I've started watching the clock in order to see how much time is remaining. I may decide that I need to start adding a random number of minutes in order to (a) stop my running out the clock and (b) get more writing done.
I'd worry about that a lot more if the 10 minutes worth of stuff I was producing weren't already lagging at the end often.
I think I need to stop worrying the problem of genre for a bit, until I've read more--it's an interesting question, and Rosalie Colie is really helpful on it, but it's not something I'm going to resolve by poking at it with a very long stick. I need to develop a very particular question and then chase that down through individual texts. Love has an interesting passage in which he presents the various ways that satire could be studied and says they all would be useful but he's not going to do them. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, but I didn't get the sense that any of them would be all that revelatory. (That's a nonsense sentence--we don't know the results of the investigations; I can't claim that they're not interesting. I certainly don't know enough about the period to project results onto people I don't know and their exploration of a body of work I don't know. Anyway.)
I should read the poems of Marvell's disciples. Just to see what they're like. (That would be a good dissertation topic: the Sons of the Sons of Ben. Or better yet: the Daughters of the Sons of Ben, on mid-17th century female writers. I bet it's been done.)
Popular versions of my book:
Yeah Really? Sarcastic Literature Since Whenever
Anyway. At least the words keep coming out--that's the real benefit of this exercise. I'm becoming much more willing to type what I think. I think.
Jim Shapiro's class may have improved my writing, but it made me neurotic about it, as I tried to write in one-draft what should have taken three or four, at the least. A goal for future writing should be to be able to edit passages that are substantially fine in order to make them significantly better. I feel like that's a crucial test of something. Not quite sure what, but that's okay. I'll figure that out.
Also: I have to resist the urge to append a verdict to the end of these things, especially once I've started watching the clock in order to see how much time is remaining. I may decide that I need to start adding a random number of minutes in order to (a) stop my running out the clock and (b) get more writing done.
I'd worry about that a lot more if the 10 minutes worth of stuff I was producing weren't already lagging at the end often.
Monday, June 16, 2008
6/16/08
I owe Sean a response to his email. As I remember his feedback, and it would behoove me to check that again, he mentioned that he was entertained, complimented some of the points, and posed the question of value.
What do I want my response to accomplish? I want to thank him; I want him to chuckle; and I do want to observe that I differ with him a little on the problem of value. It's not that I don't think, say, Lear is better than A King and No King--it's that I recognize 1) a vast number of people preferred the latter to the former, particularly on the stage and 2) evaluation itself is a phony enterprise and I don't want to be a part of it.
That second bit's the big bit for me--I fundamentally don't think Godzilla is all that great, but I don't want to evaluate it. I want to write about what I want to write about. I have the same problem with Renaissance texts.
Sean's point is that the literary critical texts I was relying upon base themselves on an immense amount of close thought about high literary texts. I simply have no evidence that their methodology or results hold up when applied to a set of texts that even I would agree is systematically different. And I don't try to justify that it might work.
If I were to take on the problem of value, it would be to praise the Godzilla's so that they could merit discussion in the same article as the Shakespeares. Which is a silly enterprise and one that might tack too close to earnestness.
If I'm interested, though, in how words work--how images make meaning or how plot turns into reaction--I get to study all words, don't I? If not necessarily on the exalted level of interpretation. Do I have to go towards psychology? Is it possible for me to go towards psychology?
I can't be that interested in the stuff--I've never read a non-pop psych book. But, then, I'd never read a book of criticism, either.
What interests me, I suppose, is how meanings develop out of conventions, and how conventions relate to economic and social situations. What /happens/ when you have the best playwrights in the world competing to produce plays for you? What happens when your sonneteers all turn into satirists?
What do I want my response to accomplish? I want to thank him; I want him to chuckle; and I do want to observe that I differ with him a little on the problem of value. It's not that I don't think, say, Lear is better than A King and No King--it's that I recognize 1) a vast number of people preferred the latter to the former, particularly on the stage and 2) evaluation itself is a phony enterprise and I don't want to be a part of it.
That second bit's the big bit for me--I fundamentally don't think Godzilla is all that great, but I don't want to evaluate it. I want to write about what I want to write about. I have the same problem with Renaissance texts.
Sean's point is that the literary critical texts I was relying upon base themselves on an immense amount of close thought about high literary texts. I simply have no evidence that their methodology or results hold up when applied to a set of texts that even I would agree is systematically different. And I don't try to justify that it might work.
If I were to take on the problem of value, it would be to praise the Godzilla's so that they could merit discussion in the same article as the Shakespeares. Which is a silly enterprise and one that might tack too close to earnestness.
If I'm interested, though, in how words work--how images make meaning or how plot turns into reaction--I get to study all words, don't I? If not necessarily on the exalted level of interpretation. Do I have to go towards psychology? Is it possible for me to go towards psychology?
I can't be that interested in the stuff--I've never read a non-pop psych book. But, then, I'd never read a book of criticism, either.
What interests me, I suppose, is how meanings develop out of conventions, and how conventions relate to economic and social situations. What /happens/ when you have the best playwrights in the world competing to produce plays for you? What happens when your sonneteers all turn into satirists?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
6/15/08
It's father's day--I need to call my Dad again. I tried, but got the machine. I guess they're still--out to lunch or something.
I ended my last post by posing the question of how it was that genre was both a transhistorical phenomenon and a generational one--that is, there seems to be something balladlike in all ballads, and sonnetlike in all sonnets, and so on, but which genres are popular at any given time seems, if I believe Helgerson and (kinda) Love, has to do with what earlier poetry was trying to accomplish. Helgerson notes the pendulum swings back and forth between poetry invested in interiority and poetry that aims towards the social--the sonnet--satire--tribe of Ben sequence and the Cavalier lyric--Rochester satire progression both suggest this. One way of answering this dilemma is to point out that the sonnet at any given moment has a lot to do with the tradition, and each generation changes the tradition somewhat. That is, people return to old forms precisely because they want to do the work that they think (they think being key) the old form did, or better yet, some of the work old forms did.
If we wanted to follow up on that, we'd read how a given generation was interpreting old forms a s a guide ot how they thought about the versions of those forms they were producing. I suspect this works well for the Romantics, who thought very intensely about old forms. Does it work for periods that aren't as absorbed by their own relation to tradition, or who thought differently about that relationship?
What does it mean that Marston and Hall weren't influential? What sorts of formal features might one look to in order to determine that? What's at stake in influence? Is it just that satire moved away from the rhyming pentameter couplet? Is there a side-current of Juvenalian-translation that we might consider indebted to them? Has someone studied this?
Sorry--that's just a pet peeve of mine. I need to stop writing rhetorical questions, though--I don't think they help me figure out anything, except when they're about specific things I could look up, like the economic model of balladry. I should study the epigram, too--I wonder if what I'm interested in is the history of epigram impugning upon other forms, as it enters the sonnet and the satire at approximately the same time. Well, Shakespeare's sonnets. Or maybe I want to know the history of rhymed couplets as applied to externally focused writing.
I'm less interested in the middle chapters of the Love book, if only because I don't know who these people are and don't really care what it is they say about each other. Surely it'll get better again if I just keep at it. But I'm reading to start reading lots again--this German and work together are wearing me out.
I must reply to the Mosaic folks today or tomorrow--and keep track of how much I need to bill--I worked 4 hrs, 20 mins on Thursday, 7 hrs on Friday. And no time this weekend yet.
I ended my last post by posing the question of how it was that genre was both a transhistorical phenomenon and a generational one--that is, there seems to be something balladlike in all ballads, and sonnetlike in all sonnets, and so on, but which genres are popular at any given time seems, if I believe Helgerson and (kinda) Love, has to do with what earlier poetry was trying to accomplish. Helgerson notes the pendulum swings back and forth between poetry invested in interiority and poetry that aims towards the social--the sonnet--satire--tribe of Ben sequence and the Cavalier lyric--Rochester satire progression both suggest this. One way of answering this dilemma is to point out that the sonnet at any given moment has a lot to do with the tradition, and each generation changes the tradition somewhat. That is, people return to old forms precisely because they want to do the work that they think (they think being key) the old form did, or better yet, some of the work old forms did.
If we wanted to follow up on that, we'd read how a given generation was interpreting old forms a s a guide ot how they thought about the versions of those forms they were producing. I suspect this works well for the Romantics, who thought very intensely about old forms. Does it work for periods that aren't as absorbed by their own relation to tradition, or who thought differently about that relationship?
What does it mean that Marston and Hall weren't influential? What sorts of formal features might one look to in order to determine that? What's at stake in influence? Is it just that satire moved away from the rhyming pentameter couplet? Is there a side-current of Juvenalian-translation that we might consider indebted to them? Has someone studied this?
Sorry--that's just a pet peeve of mine. I need to stop writing rhetorical questions, though--I don't think they help me figure out anything, except when they're about specific things I could look up, like the economic model of balladry. I should study the epigram, too--I wonder if what I'm interested in is the history of epigram impugning upon other forms, as it enters the sonnet and the satire at approximately the same time. Well, Shakespeare's sonnets. Or maybe I want to know the history of rhymed couplets as applied to externally focused writing.
I'm less interested in the middle chapters of the Love book, if only because I don't know who these people are and don't really care what it is they say about each other. Surely it'll get better again if I just keep at it. But I'm reading to start reading lots again--this German and work together are wearing me out.
I must reply to the Mosaic folks today or tomorrow--and keep track of how much I need to bill--I worked 4 hrs, 20 mins on Thursday, 7 hrs on Friday. And no time this weekend yet.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
6/14/08
Still reading the Lowe. A couple of points stood out in my reading today. The first, is his discussion of how satire was the way a changing set of values was negotiated in the town. (Negotiated? Maybe created--satire marked a certain set of activities as off-limits or beyond the pale, informed others, described people's activities as motivated in a particular way, and so on.)
I want to think about how this relates to Marston, who is similarly denoting a range of activities that are acceptable--are values up for grabs in this period, too. I get that there's an economic crunch, as the Universities turn out too many people who are not in position to have court positions, but I'm not sure I buy the malecontented stance quite as much as I might should. But, then, I guess it is only writers, rather than other people who are writing satires--still the effort to get other people to write in the way you think is appropriate is interesting.
The figure of Ben Jonson in the satire might be something worth thinking about--and in the satirical play, of course. Another type of satire, Love attributes to arising out of the Elizabethan drama--the satire in which you attribute extreme villainy to a rival of some sort and then narrate his instructions he ties to some lines stolen out of Selimus and attributed to (I believe) Sir Walter Raleigh. The locus classicus, he claims, is the speech of the ghost of Sulla in /Sejanus/--I'll have to look at that passage again. I don't really believe that it's as original as all that. Although, I guess, if the /writers/ are going back to Jonson in particular, it doesn't really matter who Jonson had gone back to. But curiosity makes me wonder.
Over and over again I realize how much I don't know that I need to know before I can do credible scholarship. There's just an /immense/ amount of background that I need to read through--not only on the Civil War, but also even on Elizabeth's reign I'm not nearly familiar enough with either the historiography or the day-to-day changes. I know a few facts about the 1590's, but I don't have a really strong sense of what it is that happens. I don't need to, yet, but it'd still be useful. Particularly if I want to write on "minor" poems. Ahistorical Shakespeare analysis is one thing--frowned upon by some, but allowed. Ahistorical Barnfield scholarship just can't get away with quite as much, if just because fewer people care about Barnfield outside of his role as someone around during the time of Shakespeare.
New Historicists: people who care about Shakespeare in his role as someone around during the lifetime of Shakespeare.
I forgot to look at the clock, so I'm probably writing for too many minutes, but that's probably a good thing. As long as I can keep sentences coming out when I need them.
At some point, I need to develop a reading plan. Switching back and forth among sonnet, satire, and ballad risks leaving me knowing nothing, I'm afraid. Which is fine short-term, but not a great strategy long-term. Maybe I should commit myself to two book clusters--I'll read two books about satire before switching genres and so on. Except, of course, when I'm digging for particular information--like the cost of a ballad.
One more thought--I'm beginning to think of genre in a couple of different ways--each genre arises at a certain moment in time (and changes in time)--1590's sonnets are different from 1580's and 1600's sonnets; sonnets give way to satire, mostly, in the mid-1590's--and transhistorical--what does satire ALWAYS do.
This is worth continuing to think about.
I want to think about how this relates to Marston, who is similarly denoting a range of activities that are acceptable--are values up for grabs in this period, too. I get that there's an economic crunch, as the Universities turn out too many people who are not in position to have court positions, but I'm not sure I buy the malecontented stance quite as much as I might should. But, then, I guess it is only writers, rather than other people who are writing satires--still the effort to get other people to write in the way you think is appropriate is interesting.
The figure of Ben Jonson in the satire might be something worth thinking about--and in the satirical play, of course. Another type of satire, Love attributes to arising out of the Elizabethan drama--the satire in which you attribute extreme villainy to a rival of some sort and then narrate his instructions he ties to some lines stolen out of Selimus and attributed to (I believe) Sir Walter Raleigh. The locus classicus, he claims, is the speech of the ghost of Sulla in /Sejanus/--I'll have to look at that passage again. I don't really believe that it's as original as all that. Although, I guess, if the /writers/ are going back to Jonson in particular, it doesn't really matter who Jonson had gone back to. But curiosity makes me wonder.
Over and over again I realize how much I don't know that I need to know before I can do credible scholarship. There's just an /immense/ amount of background that I need to read through--not only on the Civil War, but also even on Elizabeth's reign I'm not nearly familiar enough with either the historiography or the day-to-day changes. I know a few facts about the 1590's, but I don't have a really strong sense of what it is that happens. I don't need to, yet, but it'd still be useful. Particularly if I want to write on "minor" poems. Ahistorical Shakespeare analysis is one thing--frowned upon by some, but allowed. Ahistorical Barnfield scholarship just can't get away with quite as much, if just because fewer people care about Barnfield outside of his role as someone around during the time of Shakespeare.
New Historicists: people who care about Shakespeare in his role as someone around during the lifetime of Shakespeare.
I forgot to look at the clock, so I'm probably writing for too many minutes, but that's probably a good thing. As long as I can keep sentences coming out when I need them.
At some point, I need to develop a reading plan. Switching back and forth among sonnet, satire, and ballad risks leaving me knowing nothing, I'm afraid. Which is fine short-term, but not a great strategy long-term. Maybe I should commit myself to two book clusters--I'll read two books about satire before switching genres and so on. Except, of course, when I'm digging for particular information--like the cost of a ballad.
One more thought--I'm beginning to think of genre in a couple of different ways--each genre arises at a certain moment in time (and changes in time)--1590's sonnets are different from 1580's and 1600's sonnets; sonnets give way to satire, mostly, in the mid-1590's--and transhistorical--what does satire ALWAYS do.
This is worth continuing to think about.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
06/12/08
Jeff's article reminded me of the "carpenter" moment in the Spenser-Harvey letters. Spenser wants to let the meter distort the pronunciation of the word, while Harvey won't let him. It's another, albeit slightly more conventional, case of what Gascoigne claims about words that fit into the mter and it's a case where we actually have two people from the period arguing about it. I find that fascinating.
Not sure whether it helps or hurts my thesis--what I really need is another middle case, rather than another linguistic case--something closer to Puttenham, than Gascoigne (Rather my Puttenham example.)
Goose giblets wrapped in waste paper doesn't quite get me there, I don't think. I feel like I'm making no progress, but then, I 'm not reading anything that should get me there. Mostly I'm learning German.
I saw a book that looked good on Sex Between Men--oh, in the Love book--I should maybe read it before Leonard's class. But then, Leonard's class may do that, in which case I shouldn't. I wish I had a syllabus.
This type of writing really is draining when there's nothing on my mind. It makes me want to get out there and read something, except I have this German class. I wonder if I would want to get out there and read if I didn't have it.
I'm making good progress, through. I need to find a German academic article that I can submit. Ideally, something on bad poetry.
Greene's funeral is the other thing I'm thinking about. There's a neat footnote that says (on a potential date for the text) it's hard to believe 2 years would have passed between these verses composition and their printing. That is to say:
1) That the verses seem occasional and like they'd lose interest with time
2)That the verses seem bad and surely would have been revised over two years.
But what the hell is this book? It's egregious, boring poetry, with badly repeated lines. Is it a parody? If so, of what? Is it a false attribution--that I can believe, but it charges me with finding another R.B. poet. Is it just a text thrown together for publication after the death of Greene?
This is something I should look into. I wonder what--Danter, I think is the printer's name?--was printing. And I wonder if there are other Greene funeral volumes coming out at around the same time. Yay empirical questions. They make all the difference/.
Not sure whether it helps or hurts my thesis--what I really need is another middle case, rather than another linguistic case--something closer to Puttenham, than Gascoigne (Rather my Puttenham example.)
Goose giblets wrapped in waste paper doesn't quite get me there, I don't think. I feel like I'm making no progress, but then, I 'm not reading anything that should get me there. Mostly I'm learning German.
I saw a book that looked good on Sex Between Men--oh, in the Love book--I should maybe read it before Leonard's class. But then, Leonard's class may do that, in which case I shouldn't. I wish I had a syllabus.
This type of writing really is draining when there's nothing on my mind. It makes me want to get out there and read something, except I have this German class. I wonder if I would want to get out there and read if I didn't have it.
I'm making good progress, through. I need to find a German academic article that I can submit. Ideally, something on bad poetry.
Greene's funeral is the other thing I'm thinking about. There's a neat footnote that says (on a potential date for the text) it's hard to believe 2 years would have passed between these verses composition and their printing. That is to say:
1) That the verses seem occasional and like they'd lose interest with time
2)That the verses seem bad and surely would have been revised over two years.
But what the hell is this book? It's egregious, boring poetry, with badly repeated lines. Is it a parody? If so, of what? Is it a false attribution--that I can believe, but it charges me with finding another R.B. poet. Is it just a text thrown together for publication after the death of Greene?
This is something I should look into. I wonder what--Danter, I think is the printer's name?--was printing. And I wonder if there are other Greene funeral volumes coming out at around the same time. Yay empirical questions. They make all the difference/.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
06/11/08
Just read Juvenal's 6th satire. It's really pretty atrocious. I didn't know I had much capability for offense left, but I guess I do. I 'm looking forward to seeing how it gets translated in the 17th century--see what stays in it and what comes out. I don't have all that much hope, but it's interesting.
Love claims, a couple of times, that Restoration satire has almost nothing to do with what he calls the Jacobean satire of Marston and Hall. I haven't found a source for it yet. As far as I can reconstruct his argument, he believes the Restoration satire develops out of the 17th-century lyric and various traditions of scorn poetry. And, I suppose, the Roman tradition.
His evidence, though, often seems contaminated by data from another period--he describes the local satirical tradition, for instance, with reference to Philaster, which quite possibly was influenced by Marston/Hall. (That's actually an interesting question itself. I bet someone has worked on it.)
Most of my brain, though, is going into German now. Outside of my morning Juvenal and evening book, I'm studying most of the rest of the time. Which is good, I suppose. But man am I getting tired this morning.
It turns out that alcohol changes my comfort level getting up. I need to drink less at night before I head to bed, and get to sleep faster when I do. I mean, it'll be fine, but just as a general rule, why sell tomorrow's time against today.
Anyway, Love (or Lowe?) finds in the earliest Restoration satires an attempt to take skilled craftsmanship and sprezzatura of the lyric and make it public and filthy, in order to offend moralists. This move isn't far off the bad and satirical sonnets that get written--Greene's Funeral, Harvey's sonnets. Maybe it is--the Greene's funeral sonnets are REALLY awful. I want to look to the publication history of that, to see if there's maybe not much evidence they sold many copies. I understand their relevance to Harvey/Nashe/Barnfield, etc, but they're so bad. It's not a master of craft, so much as a screwing up.
Marston and Hall, to some extent, seem more oriented towards the stage than the sonnet. I'll have to think about that, of course. Or the bitterness of the epigram? (Which, as Rosalie Colie points out, Shakespeare pulls into the sonnet.) Are Shakespeare's sonnets so belated that he struggles with anxiety of influence--of course he does--the RIVAL POET. hmmm
Love claims, a couple of times, that Restoration satire has almost nothing to do with what he calls the Jacobean satire of Marston and Hall. I haven't found a source for it yet. As far as I can reconstruct his argument, he believes the Restoration satire develops out of the 17th-century lyric and various traditions of scorn poetry. And, I suppose, the Roman tradition.
His evidence, though, often seems contaminated by data from another period--he describes the local satirical tradition, for instance, with reference to Philaster, which quite possibly was influenced by Marston/Hall. (That's actually an interesting question itself. I bet someone has worked on it.)
Most of my brain, though, is going into German now. Outside of my morning Juvenal and evening book, I'm studying most of the rest of the time. Which is good, I suppose. But man am I getting tired this morning.
It turns out that alcohol changes my comfort level getting up. I need to drink less at night before I head to bed, and get to sleep faster when I do. I mean, it'll be fine, but just as a general rule, why sell tomorrow's time against today.
Anyway, Love (or Lowe?) finds in the earliest Restoration satires an attempt to take skilled craftsmanship and sprezzatura of the lyric and make it public and filthy, in order to offend moralists. This move isn't far off the bad and satirical sonnets that get written--Greene's Funeral, Harvey's sonnets. Maybe it is--the Greene's funeral sonnets are REALLY awful. I want to look to the publication history of that, to see if there's maybe not much evidence they sold many copies. I understand their relevance to Harvey/Nashe/Barnfield, etc, but they're so bad. It's not a master of craft, so much as a screwing up.
Marston and Hall, to some extent, seem more oriented towards the stage than the sonnet. I'll have to think about that, of course. Or the bitterness of the epigram? (Which, as Rosalie Colie points out, Shakespeare pulls into the sonnet.) Are Shakespeare's sonnets so belated that he struggles with anxiety of influence--of course he does--the RIVAL POET. hmmm
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
6/10/08
So I know a little more about ballads and their economics now, after my research yesterday. A ballad would cost 1/2 d. I'm pretty sure that's half a penny--I need to work through British currency, if only to make sure that all those things I think I know actually are right. I'm beginning to wonder whether the ancient Brits had eight fingers on each hand, given the number of base 16 systems we've inherited. Well, given ounces.
Anyway, ballad-sellers--basically, just vagrants--would be given a dozen groats worth of ballads and would wander (or take determined routes? I wonder) through the countryside. By 1624 or so, a dedicated cartel in London governed the production, warehousing, and distribution networks. I'm more interested in before that time, but I suspect there's not all that much extant. We have about 100-200 ballads from that period and suspect there were perhaps 1000 going around. People would paste ballads up on their walls, as a sort of wallpaper/poster, particularly in taverns.
The fact that our first extant edition of Jack of Newburry happens after 1620 is then quite significant--the chapbook was created largely by our cartel, in order to capitalize on the distribution network and sell cheap books along these distribution networks. (Peddlers were "chap men".)
Ah! I stopped writing to look at my sentences. That defeats the purpose of free writing, which is to open the channel between thoughts and words, not to look at things. I look at things all the time.
Especially this Harry Berger Milton essay. I simply can not make myself either believe him or care about what it is that he thinks he's got to say. He's reading Milton in the sort of overingenious way that I'm willing to accept for Spenser, but here it drives me nuts. He'll talk about flaws in God's view of humanity--I just don't buy that Milton intentionally represented his God as a flawed character that develops. But then Berger knows the poem better than I do. (A lot.) But surely that option is off the table!
I guess reading the damn essay while drinking or falling asleep doesn't help, either. But Rosalie Colie sounds delightful, even while I am falling asleep. It's making ever more clear that that's the kind of book that I'd love to write (and won't be able to)--the small, eloquent, influential book.
I need to pay attention to English sentences to see how frequently Time-Manner-Place holds.
Okay, that's done. It doesn't.
I'm enjoying my slow read through Juvenal--he's punchy, but I feel like I'm doing something I should have done years ago. Because I am, largely. But there must be some other reason.
So, knowing what I now know about ballads, does it help me approach Donnelly/Elderton/Parker any better? One fun question: "what was Jack of Newberry before it was a chapbook?"
Anyway, ballad-sellers--basically, just vagrants--would be given a dozen groats worth of ballads and would wander (or take determined routes? I wonder) through the countryside. By 1624 or so, a dedicated cartel in London governed the production, warehousing, and distribution networks. I'm more interested in before that time, but I suspect there's not all that much extant. We have about 100-200 ballads from that period and suspect there were perhaps 1000 going around. People would paste ballads up on their walls, as a sort of wallpaper/poster, particularly in taverns.
The fact that our first extant edition of Jack of Newburry happens after 1620 is then quite significant--the chapbook was created largely by our cartel, in order to capitalize on the distribution network and sell cheap books along these distribution networks. (Peddlers were "chap men".)
Ah! I stopped writing to look at my sentences. That defeats the purpose of free writing, which is to open the channel between thoughts and words, not to look at things. I look at things all the time.
Especially this Harry Berger Milton essay. I simply can not make myself either believe him or care about what it is that he thinks he's got to say. He's reading Milton in the sort of overingenious way that I'm willing to accept for Spenser, but here it drives me nuts. He'll talk about flaws in God's view of humanity--I just don't buy that Milton intentionally represented his God as a flawed character that develops. But then Berger knows the poem better than I do. (A lot.) But surely that option is off the table!
I guess reading the damn essay while drinking or falling asleep doesn't help, either. But Rosalie Colie sounds delightful, even while I am falling asleep. It's making ever more clear that that's the kind of book that I'd love to write (and won't be able to)--the small, eloquent, influential book.
I need to pay attention to English sentences to see how frequently Time-Manner-Place holds.
Okay, that's done. It doesn't.
I'm enjoying my slow read through Juvenal--he's punchy, but I feel like I'm doing something I should have done years ago. Because I am, largely. But there must be some other reason.
So, knowing what I now know about ballads, does it help me approach Donnelly/Elderton/Parker any better? One fun question: "what was Jack of Newberry before it was a chapbook?"
Monday, June 9, 2008
6/9/8
First day of class. Hooray, I guess.
I've been paying around with Berger's axiom of limitation in all my talking of fit. I'm not convinced it's helpful, though. One of the perils of poetry is that it might distort this world rather than a safely sealed off other world. I'm not sure I believe it.
Reading Juvenal, on the other hand, has been a delight. I'm definitely going to have to go back to the Marston and maybe go read Dryden's versions--I should be reading Dryden's /Juvenal/ now rather than Ramsay's. That's a good idea. But, if Dryden becomes my base line it'll give me trouble judging his difference from the baseline.
I do have a book about the English reception of Latin satirists. I guess I should just read it, huh. It'll tell me how Dryden does as a baseline.
I was fascinated by the passage in Satire 2 that described (and bemoaned) a same-sex marriage. I wonder how folks read that in the Renaissance--obviously it would have been considered an abomination by many, but were there some for whom it was a source of hope or reassurance? Or, for that matter, of regret or feeling doubly out of time... I wonder how that bit gets translated.
Renaissance pastoral gives space for the expression of male desire. With the end of pastoral, it works its way into a few sonnets--Shakespeare and Barnfield, in particular--but where does it go from there? Are there homo-erotic satires? Is it possible?
Writing that betrayed a too thick sense of the way one genre succeeds another--people were writing all sorts of genres from 1580-1600 and the relative decline of one peak in favor of the next does not mean that the older form was unavailable. And satire was not the only new form, for that matter.
Talking to James, yesterday, I mentioned that humanism in general was a homosocial enterprise, but my argument was just that it was constantly between men. I should have observed that classical friendship--perhaps with the sex allegorized out of it--becomes the key axis of emotional involvement. And, for that matter, that it involved men living in close physical intimacy. (Is this really all I remember from Alan's book? Oh well.)
I've been paying around with Berger's axiom of limitation in all my talking of fit. I'm not convinced it's helpful, though. One of the perils of poetry is that it might distort this world rather than a safely sealed off other world. I'm not sure I believe it.
Reading Juvenal, on the other hand, has been a delight. I'm definitely going to have to go back to the Marston and maybe go read Dryden's versions--I should be reading Dryden's /Juvenal/ now rather than Ramsay's. That's a good idea. But, if Dryden becomes my base line it'll give me trouble judging his difference from the baseline.
I do have a book about the English reception of Latin satirists. I guess I should just read it, huh. It'll tell me how Dryden does as a baseline.
I was fascinated by the passage in Satire 2 that described (and bemoaned) a same-sex marriage. I wonder how folks read that in the Renaissance--obviously it would have been considered an abomination by many, but were there some for whom it was a source of hope or reassurance? Or, for that matter, of regret or feeling doubly out of time... I wonder how that bit gets translated.
Renaissance pastoral gives space for the expression of male desire. With the end of pastoral, it works its way into a few sonnets--Shakespeare and Barnfield, in particular--but where does it go from there? Are there homo-erotic satires? Is it possible?
Writing that betrayed a too thick sense of the way one genre succeeds another--people were writing all sorts of genres from 1580-1600 and the relative decline of one peak in favor of the next does not mean that the older form was unavailable. And satire was not the only new form, for that matter.
Talking to James, yesterday, I mentioned that humanism in general was a homosocial enterprise, but my argument was just that it was constantly between men. I should have observed that classical friendship--perhaps with the sex allegorized out of it--becomes the key axis of emotional involvement. And, for that matter, that it involved men living in close physical intimacy. (Is this really all I remember from Alan's book? Oh well.)
Sunday, June 8, 2008
06/08/08
So I'm interested in genres, somewhat longitudinally, from the 1580's through the end of the 1700's--the ballad, the sonnet, and the satire. The sonnet is the easiest of those to trace--it disappears after.. Milton? There aren't many written in the 17th century, I know, and I doubt there are many after the war, period. The ballad I need to study more, pending my questions from Friday. And the satire's trajectory I know a little more about: Marston, Donne, Weever, Guilpin, and Hall---Jonson---Oldham, Rochester, Cowley, Dryden---Pope. Of course, I haven't read most of those guys, and there's a lot that I'm missing, but that's all right for now. It's only books.
I went and read a few Elderton ballads--they're all very orthodox. I didn't see subversion there, so I guess I can't stop interpreting. But I could quite imagine a crowd of people singing them--there's a lot of content there.
In the future, I'm not allowed to stop writing to read things. It doesn't help and it doesn't give me time to think about what I read before I start writing again. So that's what I mean--I got distracted there.
Is part of the pleasure of a ballad finding new words to a tune you already know? so it's a pleasure of fittingness--topicality, plus the words fitting the tune? If that's the case, then it reconciles with my Puttenham/Gascoigne argument completely--the bad doesn't fit, and the good does fit.
How does this reconcile with the arguments about the theater? Is there anything about fit there? Can I find anything about fit in the ballad tradition more generally? I may need to look more closely at those rude rusticall ballad mongers as they come up in texts, to see if there's anything there.
Fit is easy in a ballad, of course--you just need to have the right emphases. One of the Elderton ballads I was reading had accent marks--I MUST check to see if those are authorial. If they are, that's REALLY interesting. (I'm capitalizing a lot.) I think it was the Northumberland or the poisoning King James ballad.
Treason is a topic for a number of ballads. Could they have been sold at executions? Rather--I'm sure they were sold at executions--were they also sold throughout the countryside in order to share news from London? Who else besides Elderton and Donnelly are writing ballads.
How old are the songs that these ballads are tunes for--Greensleeves, for example. What is the chain of transmission for those songs? Maybe Hollander's book will be more helpful than I thought.
Are all ballads mono-vocal, at least largely? These aren't like the court songs I've read so much about--they ain't Purcell. I need to talk to Susan about ballads at some point. I think she could be a great help. She's probably out of town, but hmmmm.
I must finish that doggone review. This sort of daily free-writing is only effective if I keep reading every day, or if I have a problem I'm working on, I'm afraid. I guess it did get me through four Elderton ballads, that now I know. But I'm totally squeezing it out today.
That's okay. I had a couple good ideas, and this is a discipline of showing up. Today, I have shown.
I went and read a few Elderton ballads--they're all very orthodox. I didn't see subversion there, so I guess I can't stop interpreting. But I could quite imagine a crowd of people singing them--there's a lot of content there.
In the future, I'm not allowed to stop writing to read things. It doesn't help and it doesn't give me time to think about what I read before I start writing again. So that's what I mean--I got distracted there.
Is part of the pleasure of a ballad finding new words to a tune you already know? so it's a pleasure of fittingness--topicality, plus the words fitting the tune? If that's the case, then it reconciles with my Puttenham/Gascoigne argument completely--the bad doesn't fit, and the good does fit.
How does this reconcile with the arguments about the theater? Is there anything about fit there? Can I find anything about fit in the ballad tradition more generally? I may need to look more closely at those rude rusticall ballad mongers as they come up in texts, to see if there's anything there.
Fit is easy in a ballad, of course--you just need to have the right emphases. One of the Elderton ballads I was reading had accent marks--I MUST check to see if those are authorial. If they are, that's REALLY interesting. (I'm capitalizing a lot.) I think it was the Northumberland or the poisoning King James ballad.
Treason is a topic for a number of ballads. Could they have been sold at executions? Rather--I'm sure they were sold at executions--were they also sold throughout the countryside in order to share news from London? Who else besides Elderton and Donnelly are writing ballads.
How old are the songs that these ballads are tunes for--Greensleeves, for example. What is the chain of transmission for those songs? Maybe Hollander's book will be more helpful than I thought.
Are all ballads mono-vocal, at least largely? These aren't like the court songs I've read so much about--they ain't Purcell. I need to talk to Susan about ballads at some point. I think she could be a great help. She's probably out of town, but hmmmm.
I must finish that doggone review. This sort of daily free-writing is only effective if I keep reading every day, or if I have a problem I'm working on, I'm afraid. I guess it did get me through four Elderton ballads, that now I know. But I'm totally squeezing it out today.
That's okay. I had a couple good ideas, and this is a discipline of showing up. Today, I have shown.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
6/7/08
I'm only now realizing that it's 06/07/08. I can't wait until 23:45 to come around--this is the first use I've found for military time.
No reading today--I was moving, and so I took the day off, literarily. I did try to explain my idea to Katie yesterday. Basically, what I pointed out was that in both the Puttenham and the Gascoigne examples, the bad, whatever that is, has the ability to wrench the world into a particular shape. I think I was talking about that the other day.
What's interesting about that for me is that it suggests an intensity to the power of literature. I don't know how else we'd find evidence for that, but I can't help thinking of that first audience watching that film of a train and running out frightened. Could it be that the vernacular written word had a little bit of that effect?
Perhaps not. Sean raised the question of value w/r/t my Anxiety of Influx post. He asked if it was really as easy as I was making it sound to talk about "Romantic" and "Pre-Romantic" ideas w/r/t something like Godzilla. Maybe it is, he said. I don't think it is, necessarily, but not because of value, really. My issue is that we don't adequately understand the concept of mind supporting something like Godzilla--it's not really part of the same discourse. Godzilla is post-modern in a way that is looked down on by most theorists. (I disagree with that sentence, but no deleting.)
My concern--I don't want to use value as a way of excluding texts. I like a number of texts that aren't valuable in the way that traditional value hierarchies work, and I'd like to apply the tools--or some of them--of literary study to them. Sean wants to free teachers up to teach and work on the canon in interesting ways. I support that wholeheartedly, but I also want to be able to think about that conjoined twins ballad, because I think it tells me something that's quite interesting about how early modern folk liked something like poetry.
More to the point, I think the ballad tradition is every much as valid a part of the EM experience of poetry as the stuff that would later become the canon. It wasn't canonical then, and people like Nashe, as well as E.K., Marston, Harvey, Sidney, and so on were making a massive effort to decide what the canon would be. I think there was a later re-reading in the 1620's or so, that excluded a number of people who seemed in the Elizabethan period to be essential, and I think the big-canon started then.
Of course, I'm pushing things I don't know into a period I don't know. Which seems like a worthwhile strategy, but not a good way of doing academic work.
I should post the conjoined twins ballad here. And maybe have the Mac textpad application read it to me--I need to get it more in my head, if I'm going to be able to write about it meaningfully. Of course, "meaningful" is the question of value again.
Let me try breaking out that value question into as many subquestions as I can.
What makes a text worth reading? Continued reading?
What did early readers think of this text? Which readers? How many of them?
Why should I care about this text?
How "good" is this text at adapting the traditional literary devices to accomplish a structure or meaning?
How "good" is this text at subverting structure or meaning?
(Does my ability to claim a structure that the text doesn't subvert 'beat' the text? Or am I just pigeonholing there?)
How interesting are the readings that can hang on this text?
I could keep going, but the most interesting one for me right now is the parenthetical one. It seems to certain critics like pointing out where a text confirms social structures wins. I'm reminded of Culler's point that a key question in literary studies is where to stop interpreting. I'm a little bit bored of the end of interpretation (end bearing a couple meanings there) in a number of current schools. That probably just means I need to read more, but that's okay.
I know I need to read more. The question is what do I do in the meantime. (I hoped that my time would run out right at the end of that sentence.)
No reading today--I was moving, and so I took the day off, literarily. I did try to explain my idea to Katie yesterday. Basically, what I pointed out was that in both the Puttenham and the Gascoigne examples, the bad, whatever that is, has the ability to wrench the world into a particular shape. I think I was talking about that the other day.
What's interesting about that for me is that it suggests an intensity to the power of literature. I don't know how else we'd find evidence for that, but I can't help thinking of that first audience watching that film of a train and running out frightened. Could it be that the vernacular written word had a little bit of that effect?
Perhaps not. Sean raised the question of value w/r/t my Anxiety of Influx post. He asked if it was really as easy as I was making it sound to talk about "Romantic" and "Pre-Romantic" ideas w/r/t something like Godzilla. Maybe it is, he said. I don't think it is, necessarily, but not because of value, really. My issue is that we don't adequately understand the concept of mind supporting something like Godzilla--it's not really part of the same discourse. Godzilla is post-modern in a way that is looked down on by most theorists. (I disagree with that sentence, but no deleting.)
My concern--I don't want to use value as a way of excluding texts. I like a number of texts that aren't valuable in the way that traditional value hierarchies work, and I'd like to apply the tools--or some of them--of literary study to them. Sean wants to free teachers up to teach and work on the canon in interesting ways. I support that wholeheartedly, but I also want to be able to think about that conjoined twins ballad, because I think it tells me something that's quite interesting about how early modern folk liked something like poetry.
More to the point, I think the ballad tradition is every much as valid a part of the EM experience of poetry as the stuff that would later become the canon. It wasn't canonical then, and people like Nashe, as well as E.K., Marston, Harvey, Sidney, and so on were making a massive effort to decide what the canon would be. I think there was a later re-reading in the 1620's or so, that excluded a number of people who seemed in the Elizabethan period to be essential, and I think the big-canon started then.
Of course, I'm pushing things I don't know into a period I don't know. Which seems like a worthwhile strategy, but not a good way of doing academic work.
I should post the conjoined twins ballad here. And maybe have the Mac textpad application read it to me--I need to get it more in my head, if I'm going to be able to write about it meaningfully. Of course, "meaningful" is the question of value again.
Let me try breaking out that value question into as many subquestions as I can.
What makes a text worth reading? Continued reading?
What did early readers think of this text? Which readers? How many of them?
Why should I care about this text?
How "good" is this text at adapting the traditional literary devices to accomplish a structure or meaning?
How "good" is this text at subverting structure or meaning?
(Does my ability to claim a structure that the text doesn't subvert 'beat' the text? Or am I just pigeonholing there?)
How interesting are the readings that can hang on this text?
I could keep going, but the most interesting one for me right now is the parenthetical one. It seems to certain critics like pointing out where a text confirms social structures wins. I'm reminded of Culler's point that a key question in literary studies is where to stop interpreting. I'm a little bit bored of the end of interpretation (end bearing a couple meanings there) in a number of current schools. That probably just means I need to read more, but that's okay.
I know I need to read more. The question is what do I do in the meantime. (I hoped that my time would run out right at the end of that sentence.)
Thursday, June 5, 2008
6/5/08
Reading the Deloney yesterday was interesting, because it seemed to me to promote a different model of political efficacy than is tradaitionall y(in the last twenty years) associated with Shakespeare's plays. If on the one hand, Jack Cade and Talus (from Spenser) are figures of a bad sort of redistribution, and I guess we could add the revolting plebians in Coriolanus, Deloney's shoemaker made good seems to be effective at redistribution without the same problems. IT's a patronage model, of course, and he does refuse to take on the title of knight. His ants vs. butterflies moment seems to be a real moment of political engagement that does work. Wolsley doesn't fall, but he does get put into his place. Just like Wolsley's debates with Will Sommers in the same text.
Ultimately that's not really interesting to me, though. There has to be another way of reading these texts--for style? for form?--that gets past their uncanonicalness.
I'm going to like the canon less and less. I guess there's also the broad canon, which includes Jonson and some Dekker, and so on, but so much of this literature seems worthwhile. I guess I'm okay with Pound's theory that if it's any good, someone will always bring it out of disrepute.
Not sure what to say about satire. Reading Juvenal, Horace and Persius is definitely my next step here--it was really great going back to Marston from Juvenal, even informaly. In his "It is hard not to write satire" he takes away all the versions Juvenal has of claims against competing poets and declarations of poetic skill. Perhaps because he's not writing in a vacuum? Perhaps ebcause that's the kind of thing that gets you called out? Perhaps because he's not convinced that he could write other forms--"It is hard not to write satire" takes on a different meaning when it means that satire is blocking you from other writing projects.
It occurred to me that what's very unsurprising in to me in Marston--wardship, the decline of the yeomanry, etc-- perhaps I should say some of the very unsurprising things in Marston--is perhaps the most viable part for him and his contemporaries. Yes, the criticism of wardship had become conventional, but it's the sort of conventional that is so because it resonates--think voter fraud in the United States.
That seems like such a misplaced pity to me, by the way--the poor ward doesn't get to be rich. The real poor can be ignored, however. Marston at least--as Shakespeare does, with Orlando who is kinda a ward--makes it about education as well as wealth. I'm not supposed to be allowed to go back and fix typos, but I need to because they're bugging me.
Berger on Pico I'm not sure of. The idea of criticising the man for failing to accomplish what the tradition would
Ultimately that's not really interesting to me, though. There has to be another way of reading these texts--for style? for form?--that gets past their uncanonicalness.
I'm going to like the canon less and less. I guess there's also the broad canon, which includes Jonson and some Dekker, and so on, but so much of this literature seems worthwhile. I guess I'm okay with Pound's theory that if it's any good, someone will always bring it out of disrepute.
Not sure what to say about satire. Reading Juvenal, Horace and Persius is definitely my next step here--it was really great going back to Marston from Juvenal, even informaly. In his "It is hard not to write satire" he takes away all the versions Juvenal has of claims against competing poets and declarations of poetic skill. Perhaps because he's not writing in a vacuum? Perhaps ebcause that's the kind of thing that gets you called out? Perhaps because he's not convinced that he could write other forms--"It is hard not to write satire" takes on a different meaning when it means that satire is blocking you from other writing projects.
It occurred to me that what's very unsurprising in to me in Marston--wardship, the decline of the yeomanry, etc-- perhaps I should say some of the very unsurprising things in Marston--is perhaps the most viable part for him and his contemporaries. Yes, the criticism of wardship had become conventional, but it's the sort of conventional that is so because it resonates--think voter fraud in the United States.
That seems like such a misplaced pity to me, by the way--the poor ward doesn't get to be rich. The real poor can be ignored, however. Marston at least--as Shakespeare does, with Orlando who is kinda a ward--makes it about education as well as wealth. I'm not supposed to be allowed to go back and fix typos, but I need to because they're bugging me.
Berger on Pico I'm not sure of. The idea of criticising the man for failing to accomplish what the tradition would
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
6/4/08
I wonder how doing this in blogger will work. It's a medium I have some associations with already, but it's limitless, accessible anywhere and I type faster than I write. Plus I can just dump into a Word file after I'm done.
One of the questions I've been asking is Does Bad Poetry exist before the advent of criticism. Bad poems certainly do--that's one of the things I'm turning up--but poeticizers always seem to want to categorize. Rude rustical rimesters, and so on. Perhaps this is because the category of Poet is still being formed by the work of the "laureate poets"--Helgerson-- so there's no easily accessible label for someone who writes poetry that isn't any good.
What about degrees of bad? Johnson has available the category of minor poet--he's willing to point out flaws in poets that he still considers "poets". Yes, one doesn't follow from the other, but together there's something there.
The "minor poet" idea must happen at some point during the 17th century or early 18th century, and it has to have something to do with the remembering of the Renaissance. Right? All the authors who disappeared by 1620--the spare sonnetists, the satirists, others--somehow didn't make a canon that was being constructed by whom the cavaliers imitated.
I'm speculating--perhaps one way to follow up on this is to trace a single genre from its origins to its end-point, paying attention to whom is counted as a practitioner of that genre. Who would Marvell have thought were the most important satirists? Who would he have thought were the most important poets?
I guess that's a matter of reading Dryden, to some extent. He'll probably tell me.
How does Joseph Hall fit into all this? He was around the whole time, and may be part of what helped create the whole thing. So was Donne, actually. The satirists kept writing for a long time. Except, perhaps, Marston, who I can't find much evidence of after SV. (And by "I can't find" I mean in my head--I'm not actually looking things up as a I free-write).
So: to pursue this, I'd need to read more Elizabethans--Hall, Weever, Guilpin--and start tracing the genre up, perhaps through the red book. I'd need to read Horace, Juvenal, and Persius as well, of course.
Maybe that's a good summer project--read all three sets of classical satires, so that I know what people are picking up on. I could even do one satire a day!
And dump it here, perhaps. Hmm. This sounds interesting.
This, by the way, is a key example of why I shouldn't "waste words" as Bolker calls it--I was thinking about totally different things in the shower and now those are gone.
As is my time.
One of the questions I've been asking is Does Bad Poetry exist before the advent of criticism. Bad poems certainly do--that's one of the things I'm turning up--but poeticizers always seem to want to categorize. Rude rustical rimesters, and so on. Perhaps this is because the category of Poet is still being formed by the work of the "laureate poets"--Helgerson-- so there's no easily accessible label for someone who writes poetry that isn't any good.
What about degrees of bad? Johnson has available the category of minor poet--he's willing to point out flaws in poets that he still considers "poets". Yes, one doesn't follow from the other, but together there's something there.
The "minor poet" idea must happen at some point during the 17th century or early 18th century, and it has to have something to do with the remembering of the Renaissance. Right? All the authors who disappeared by 1620--the spare sonnetists, the satirists, others--somehow didn't make a canon that was being constructed by whom the cavaliers imitated.
I'm speculating--perhaps one way to follow up on this is to trace a single genre from its origins to its end-point, paying attention to whom is counted as a practitioner of that genre. Who would Marvell have thought were the most important satirists? Who would he have thought were the most important poets?
I guess that's a matter of reading Dryden, to some extent. He'll probably tell me.
How does Joseph Hall fit into all this? He was around the whole time, and may be part of what helped create the whole thing. So was Donne, actually. The satirists kept writing for a long time. Except, perhaps, Marston, who I can't find much evidence of after SV. (And by "I can't find" I mean in my head--I'm not actually looking things up as a I free-write).
So: to pursue this, I'd need to read more Elizabethans--Hall, Weever, Guilpin--and start tracing the genre up, perhaps through the red book. I'd need to read Horace, Juvenal, and Persius as well, of course.
Maybe that's a good summer project--read all three sets of classical satires, so that I know what people are picking up on. I could even do one satire a day!
And dump it here, perhaps. Hmm. This sounds interesting.
This, by the way, is a key example of why I shouldn't "waste words" as Bolker calls it--I was thinking about totally different things in the shower and now those are gone.
As is my time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)