Thesis

Criticism essay:

Although Mullaney provides a persuasive argument, he is undermined by his assumptions in relation to homosexuality, gender and misogyny.

Metrical Analysis:

Shakespeare uses meter to bring this monologue to life and act as an exhausting life, driving the audience on while providing long pauses as false rest, and then forcing the reader to move on.

OED:

. In one definition fell means ‘savage’ or ‘cruel’, and in another it refers to ‘human skin’. These two definitions change the struggle of the narrator from external to internal, and by shifting the meaning of just one word the interpretation of the line, stanza, and poem are changed.

Poetry Comparison:

Auden argues that the world will keep turning regardless of what great tragedy is taking place, as can be seen in the fall of Icarus which is only a small part of the bigger painting by Breughel. Glück agrees with his theory by creating a poem in which the biggest drama plays a minor role and the main focus is on daily life. These two poems are combined not only by their underlying theories but also through their verb tenses, format and parallel situations.

Theses

Metrical Analysis: By examining Shakespeare’s use of trochaic and spondaic substitutions, caesura, and the clever gendering of both meter and word choice, the reader discerns that Hamlet’s internal conflict is not only a question of life or death, to be or not to be, but also of gender, to be a man or to be a woman. And a battle of masculine versus feminine emerges.
Poetry Comparison (Donne & Piercy): Both poems use paradox, expressed through diction, metaphor and imagery, to uncover and praise their central figures—for Donne his female mistress and for Piercy everyday, inanimate objects. However, Donne uses paradoxical language and imagery in his treatment of secular love as sacred love to seduce and coax his object of desire and, in doing so, seeks to gain power and agency over her. In contrast, Piercy uses paradox to praise inanimate objects and, in the final strophe, a female figure as well. Through her chosen diction, she employs them both with power and agency—rendering them the subjects not objects of her poem.
OED: Through the interplay of definitions of the word legend as both “the story of the life of a Saint” and “an un-authentic or non-historical story,” (OED) Donne further pushes his paradoxical conceit. However even more interestingly, by also examining a third definition of the word legend as something that is written a new reading of Donne’s poem emerges—that it is about not only the canonization or of profane love but also the canonization of the poem (the written verse) itself.
Criticism Review: In her introduction to Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Sedgwick presents two central arguments or claims upon which the forthcoming chapters of the book are hinged. The first is that “concomitant changes in the structure of the continuum of male ‘homosocial desire’ were tightly bound up with other more visible changes” (1); that is to say that patterns of male friendship, mentorship, rivalry, and hetero and homosexuality, which all fall within the continuum of male homosocial desire, were in an “intimate” and changing relation to the more visible structure of class (1). The second is that “no element of that pattern can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole” (1). Sedgwick asserts that there is an undeniable link between the socially constructed, subjective gender system and male homosociality and that the role of women cannot be taken out of the equation when examining male homosocial and homosexual relationships.
*Decided to post my entire intro paragraph because I'm not sure there's a clear thesis in my criticism review
-Devon

My thesis statements:

Scansion:
Shakespeare employs a variety of metrical and poetic devices to forward these aims and to suggest that Hamlet is indeed speaking to an audience. Hamlet's speech is not internalized--rather his monologue is characterized by a universalized rhetoric, with scattered points directed towards his auditors. These aims are both accomplished through metrical aberrations in his speech.

Poetry:
Essentially, she reverses his point on human indifference to suffering through subverting his language, allusions, and tone to suggest that human empathy, particularly love, can be more powerful.

OED:
Yeats’ use of the word brute then works on multiple levels—thematically, structurally, and allusively, to promote the idea that the animalistic nature in humans will continue to promulgate violence throughout history.

Theses: K.S. Anthony (Kal)

K.S. Anthony

ENGL W3001 Literary Texts, Critical Methods

Poetry Comparison Paper: 18 October 2011

The Long, Dark Night: The Language of Hope and Despair in Milton and Hopkins

            John Milton's Sonnet XIX and Gerard Manley Hopkins' "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark Not Day" both address depression and darkness, literally and metaphorically, in Petrarchan sonnets. Although both deal with despair and question God's role in suffering while using ostensibly identical forms, the language and punctuation couple with the content to lead the reader to very different conclusions. Milton's darkness is a road to hope, while Hopkins darkness signals a descent into despair. I shall examine the similarities and differences between the two texts, paying particular attention to the way that they utilize word choice, tone via punctuation, and the Petrarchan form.

K.S. Anthony
W3001 Literary Texts, Critical Methods

Prof. Julie Crawford
TA: Olivia Moy

22 October 2011: OED Assignment: A Massive Emptiness: the Vacuitie of Hell in Paradise Lost

            The word "vacuitie" appears only once in John Milton's Paradise Lost. The line in which it appears is one of the shortest in Book 2-- just five words--in a scene that baffles Satan as he seeks escape from Hell. He spreads his wings and begins to fly "Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets/ A vast vacuitie: all unawares/ Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops" (931-933). The meaning here seems simple enough: Satan takes flight, daring the heavens once again, but suddenly hits an air pocket--turbulence--and begins a spiraling plummet while beating his wings in vain against its force until being fired back into hobbled flight and a new direction by a thundercloud (935-950, not quoted here in the interest of space). The word "vacuitie" evokes the word "vacuum" in the modern mind and it's easy to gloss over the line without really probing its full meaning. I shall explore the depth of Milton's use of the word here as a powerful negation that, like "darkness visible" (1:63), serves to create an image of Hell that is, paradoxically, unimaginable. In "A vast vacuitie" Milton creates a vision of emptiness that is far more powerful than anything that could be described loco-descriptively. This is what Hell is: it is space empty of God, the absolute and total absence of God, paradise not simply lost but negated and unreachable.

K.S. Anthony

ENGL W3001 Literary Texts, Critical Methods
Metrical Analysis Essay: 30 September 2011
A Darkness Visible: Surveying The Sights of Hell Through Meter

In Book One of Paradise Lost, Satan has been cast out of Heaven and is surveying Hell. In lines 56-69, John Milton describes in blank verse the landscape that is to be Satan's kingdom. Milton shows the unrest in both Satan's visual and emotional experience of Hell through the unexpected use of trochaic and spondaic substitution that enhance his sparing imagery that follow the subtle and dramatic transitions created by hard and soft enjambments. The nightmare landscape does not demand visceral images. Indeed, Milton's depictions of Hell are sparse and vague: this vacuum of imagery paves the way for form to effect mood. This essay shall illustrate how by simply altering tone, meter, and rhythm, Milton engulfs the reader in the vastness of Satan's "darkness visible." 

In Book One of Paradise Lost, Satan has been cast out of Heaven and is surveying Hell. In lines 56-69, John Milton describes in blank verse the landscape that is to be Satan's kingdom. Milton shows the unrest in both Satan's visual and emotional experience of Hell through the unexpected use of trochaic and spondaic substitution that enhance his sparing imagery that follow the subtle and dramatic transitions created by hard and soft enjambments. The nightmare landscape does not demand visceral images. Indeed, Milton's depictions of Hell are sparse and vague: this vacuum of imagery paves the way for form to effect mood. This essay shall illustrate how by simply altering tone, meter, and rhythm, Milton engulfs the reader in the vastness of Satan's "darkness visible." 

 

Metrical Analysis--"In this poem, Dickinson uses no regular meter, and through her use of dactyls, trochees, spondees, and a forceful caesura, she has created an unstable environment that contradicts the safety and relative serenity of the dead."

Poetry Comparison--"In both 'Musee des Beaux Arts' and 'Palais des Artes,' the underlying poetic structure, controlled imagery, and calm tones create an atmosphere of passionate restraint reinforced by the narrative arcs of Bruegel's Icarus and the lovers by the pond."

OED--"Stella holds a lofty position in the poem compared with the simplicity of Astrophel, exemplified by the poem's transition from the ideals of Queen Virtue's court to the simplicity of a man of straw."

Criticism Review--"Using this construction for her argument allows her to move Ophelia's character out of just literary criticism into a more historical perspective, allowing a deeper contrast between the Ophelia of Shakespeare's times when the role was played by a man, and the modern depictions of Ophelia that have evolved out of contemporary psychoanalytic readings."

Theses

So I'm listing the theses that were intended to my theses although in the edits I realized other lines and sentences could've been a better wording:

Metrical: Specifically from line 57 to line 70, Shakespeare divides the monologue into three main parts that depict Hamlet's fluctuations in thought; beyond just these plot differentiations, he also achieves distinct effects with unique stylistic and metrical usages in each division. Through deliberate emphases, well placed caesuras, and metrical fixtures, Shakespeare does his best to deliver Hamlet's depressing dilemma in the most effective manner possible.

Poetry Analysis: While Housman makes use of pristine imagery and implements an optimistic tone in his poem, Larkin takes a more somber approach with a darker, connotative diction. At the same time, the two share common grounds in incorporating consonance and overall structure to enhance their respective portrayals of trees in connection with their larger significations. The ultimate result is two differing thematic life messages presented to the reader. In comparing the thematic elements, structure, and literary choices (consonance and diction), one can see how Housman and Larkin wrote in tune with the morals they desired to communicate.

OED: At an initial cursory scan, one can see that Herrick uses a different metaphor to represent the nipple and breast in almost every line: A red rose, a cherry, a lily, a strawberry; the list goes on. However, his usage of the word “beam” in line 5 isn't only another metaphor. Rather, its dual definitions and connotations detailed in the Oxford English Dictionary allow it to be interpreted as both serving as a descriptive metaphor of the nipple and a unit of structural cohesion that ties the poem together.

Criticism Review: Although Barthes has an effective introduction and interesting implementation of examples, his overall structure and attempt at cohesion of these are slightly hectic and implausible. Some of his structural choices are questionable, and he overgeneralizes certain aspects throughout his essay.

Theses

Metrical Analysis Essay
In her poem “How many times these low feet staggered”, Emily Dickinson guides the reader through an examination of a deceased housewife. Moving from her feet to her mouth, forehead, hair, and fingers, the poem spotlights housewife’s features in a gradual revealing that ultimately fails to rid the reader of the sense of mystery and anonymity. Through the use of a four-beat accentual meter, Dickinson establishes an underlying forward-jerking rhythm and builds up the expectation for a consistent pulse. In the second and third stanzas, however, the trochaic tetrameter with a regular leading dactyl is disrupted by further dactylic substitutions and frequent caesura. By varying the stresses and creating a disjunction between the rhythmic expectation and the visual caesura cues, Dickinson portrays as futile the attempt to understand what the housewife’s rhythmic, routine life was like by visual postmortem examination alone.

Poetry Comparison Essay
In Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” and Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” the exposure of the speaker’s insanity occurs with a linguistic shift halfway through the poem. By juxtaposing the effect of the style and form with the effect of the shift, Browning and Lowell successfully portray characters that transition between two extremes of the insane mind.

OED Assignment
In John Donne’s “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed,” the tension between the power of the speaker’s verbal eloquence and the power of the mistress’s physicality is encapsulated in line 2, where Donne uses the word “labour” both in its verb form and in its noun form: “Until I labour, I in labour lie” (2). This repetition creates a juxtaposition that emphasizes the differences in the subtly varying definitions of verb “labour” – definitions which, when considered simultaneously, foreshadow the bawdy tone of the poem and accentuate characteristics of the poet and the speaker.

Criticism Review
The question that arises upon reading “The Storyteller” is whether Benjamin is writing an essay – or a story. While the lack of characters and plot and mainly informative nature of the piece characterizes “The Storyteller” as an essay, there are significant indications of story-like traits in Benjamin’s writing. Indeed, Benjamin seems to craft this essay as a hybrid of information and story, simultaneously adding to it both vividness and ambiguity.

Previous Theses

Metrical Analysis: "..She redefines the word safe, as the unfulfilled promise from Christ of life everlasting. Dickinson successfully accomplishes this task by enhancing meaning using meter to signify the cyclical nature of time, as well as the differentiation of the worlds of the dead and living and their increasing dissociation from one another."

Poetry Comparison: "Lowell and Browning use many of the same literary tools to deliver these experiences, especially in regards to execution of juxtaposition, imagery, and punctuation."

OED Assignment: ". In what follows, I analyze the poem in the context of two definitions of the word “betray.” The first reading conveys the speaker’s desire for membership into the Catholic church, and in the second reading I consider a more deceitful scheme, cross referencing the two interpretations to demonstrate the double-meaning of the poem, that may imply, the speaker’s dilemma of whether or not to reject Catholicism."

Critical Review: Sedgwick manages to address the way in which the definition and nature of sexuality, “both depend on and affect” documented power relationships and raise questions about their application to literature

Essay Theses

OED Essay: I will argue that Marvell is, instead, using two very distinct definitions of quaint. Firstly, Marvell uses quaint to describe objects and concepts that seem beautiful and eternal, yet are actually superfluous and impermanent. Secondly, Marvell employs a bawdy joke with his use of quaint, adding a layer of playfulness to an otherwise morbid stanza. His vulgar joke, however, also emphasizes the explicit imagery of the stanza, making his argument all the more powerful. These two definitions reflect a tension central to the poem—the tension between the eternal and the profane.

Poetry Comparison Essay: Both Keats and Plath describe what they fear as a negative space; for Keats, this negative is death, while for Plath, this negative is life.

Metrical Analysis: Milton registers the monotony in hell in part by keeping his iambic pentameter very regular, to the point of tedium. Milton also communicates the alienating paradoxes of Hell by deploying caesuras and enjambments as the recognizable becomes abnormal. Hell becomes not just a fiery wasteland, but also an inverted Heaven foot-by-foot and pause-by-pause.

Essay Theses

OED: As a response to W.B. Yeats’s Leda and the Swan, Carl Phillips’s Leda, After the Swan offers a reflection on the events of Yeats’s poem from Leda’s point of view, defying reader expectations by casting her experience in a positive light. In achieving this goal, it is necessary that Leda’s account take on a tone of serenity and avoid the language of fear and violence so prevalent in Leda and the Swan. For this purpose, the word “grace” used in the second line of the poem is essential.

Comparison: John Keats’s When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be and Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus each deal with the subject of death, specifically the way in which one’s attitude toward death affects the quality of one’s life. The speakers in each poem hold opposing views on death, Keats’s narrator paralyzed by a dread of death and Plath’s spurred on by an attraction to it.

Metrical Analysis: Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress is fundamentally a poem about time. In each of the three stanzas of the poem, the narrator expresses a different conception of the effect of time on his relationship with his mistress.

Essay Theses

1. Hamlet's third soliloquy conveys the heart of the paradox that underlies the play. Shakespeare's use of what is quaintly called the feminine ending, and his arrangement of caesuras and enjambments, formally execute the emotions inherent to Hamlet's monologue.

2. Just as Gunn's poem idealizes materialism as a mode of self-expression and a measure of identity, so too does Mullen suggest the importance of money in a "rotting" tangible world.

3. In every case where "perpetuity" and its analogs arrive, the word carries an undercurrent of blasphemy. With a single word, Milton posits an argument that questions the justice of God's omnipotence in the poem.

4. The ostensibly opposed conclusions Anderson arrives at when working with literature proves exactly the point that he maintains throughout "Cultural Roots": that the nation is an "imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (7).

Essay Theses (and Question for the Class)

Before I post my theses I have a quick question for the class. I thought I remember someone mentioning they had a PDF of the Sedgwick criticism (on homosociality). I could be totally wrong but if someone does have it, if you could please email it to me (mje2123@columbia.edu) I would REALLY appreciate it. I am going to use it for my critical essay and all of the copies in the library are checked out, and I'd rather work with a PDF, that I can highlight, anyway. If anyone has the book that would be great too - I could photocopy it and return it right away. Thanks!

And here are my theses:

OED: Toomer embraces the blazon genre in order to draw attention to and ironize this objectification. He overgoes the blazon genre using the technical language of modern technology, such as “lamp-posts” (Toomer, line 2), “power-house” (6), and “wires” (7), to metaphorize the sensual woman, literalizing and ironizing the blazon’s tendency to make the sensual seem technical. Building off of this, he offers a critique of this tendency through his use of the words “insulate” (7) and “incandescent” (12), suggesting that perhaps the blazon genre is dangerously detached from a sensual reality. In fact, within his own poem, despite his technical language and metaphors, Toomer restores a feeling of sensuality.

Comparison: However, Housman’s use of forceful, declarative metaphors and a rhythmic, urgent meter stands in stark contrast to Larkin’s questioning similes and relaxed, regular meter. It becomes clear from these differences that while Housman forces a meaning onto nature, Larkin criticizes this approach by dismissing the idea that nature has an inherent meaning.

Metrical Analysis: This all leads up to an abundance of metrical deviations in the third stanza, which highlight, strengthen and enact Marvell’s final conclusion that even though one is powerless to stop time from causing physical deterioration, one does have the power to make time seem fleeting by having passionate sex.

Essays Theses!

Metrical Analysis (Hamlet): While Shakespeare develops the allure of death with the metaphor of sleep, he reinforces suicide's temptation with the rhythm of sleep itself, a lulling iambic pentameter punctuated by jarring reminders that keep sleep out of reach.

Poetry Comparison (Donne and Piercy): While Donne's male-dominated comparisons literally take ownership of he woman by progressing from heavenly to objectified, Piercy's progression from sexual descriptions of an inanimate uncovering to a desexualized description of a denuded woman removes the male hand from this female figure.

OED ("tape" in Jean Toomer): The interpretation of tape as a facilitator of electrical and telegraphic communication then complicates the poem's reconciliation of words and touch: while the tape's removal suggests liberation in sexual union, it also implies that this liberation compromises capacity for verbal communication.

RLML-OED-Criticism

I didn't realize we were supposed to post on this stuff, so I'm doing it a bit late.

1. I really liked the RBML and am going back soon to see the Jane Eyre books we were supposed to see on Thursday but didn't get to.

2. OED word: "straw" from Sir Philip Sidney's "Sonnet IX"

3. Criticism review--I still don't know but I'm looking over them carefully to see which one I like best.

Stacy

Post!

1.) I saw they had some Goya sketches/engravings - I love Goya and would REALLY like to see them.

2.) My OED word, pending approval, is "flimsy" from Kim Addonizio's What do Women Want?

3.) I'll be focusing on Eve Sedgwick's English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, mostly likely, though I am interested in some of the feminist works on Hamlet. Going to figure both the OED word and the crit piece for sure this weekend because I have been absolutely SWAMPED with midterms work.


- Emma Stein

Rare Books, OED, Criticism Review

1) I would love to see the Plimpton Manuscript 296 if possible.

2) I would like to focus on the word "vacuitie" in Milton's Paradise Lost. I would like to focus on it's meaning as an internal emptiness, in addition to the definition of an emptiness of space.

3) For my criticism review I will focus on Patricia Parker's Othello and Hamlet: Dilation, Spying, and the "Secret Place" of Women.

RBML, OED, Criticism

1) I went into the RBML search engine trying to find the most thing possible and came up with a sound recording of Allen Ginsberg performing William Blake's poems. Tennessee Williams' manuscript for Streetcar Named Desire would also be interesting!

2) I would like to explore the subtext of the American Prohibition in 'Her Lips Are Copper Wire' through the alcohol-related definitions of either "licker" or tape."

3) Cathy Caruth: Unclaimed Experience, probably the chapter on Hiroshima Mon Amour.

RBLM - OED - Criticism

1) RBLM: So, after several unsuccessful search queries involving words like “Rings,” “Hobbit,” and “Narnia,” I decided that, tomorrow I hope to thumb through manuscripts belonging to the late Jack Kerouac. (http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078982/summary)

2) OED Word: “peep” from John Donne’s Sonnet XVIII “Show me, dear Christ”

3) Criticism: Sedgwick’s Between Men

Rare Books/OED/Criticism

1. RARE BOOK/MANUSCRIPT: I stumbled upon an entry in the Rare Books Library of a Random House record that includes manuscripts of Robert Browning, whose poem, "Porphyria's Lover," was one of the two that I used for my Poetry Comparison Essay.

2. OED word: "labour" in John Donne's "Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed"

3. CRITICISM: Probably Cathy Caruth's "Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History"

Three Things

1.) I can't really think of anything in particular I'd like to see at the RBML. Sad right? Maybe I'll come up with something by tomorrow's seminar.

2.) My OED word is "legend" found in Donne's "The Canonization." I plan to focus on the definitions of legend as "the story of the life of a saint" and "a book of readings or 'lessons' for use at divine service." This notion of legend as something that is written--not just a history, story, or account transmitted orally--is interesting to me, especially when considering the idea that Donne wanted not only to canonize his love but the poem (the written verse) itself.

3.) For my criticism review, I am writing on Eve Sedgwick's English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, either the Introduction or Chapter 1.

Hope everyone's surviving midterms!

-Devon

Rare book/OED/Criticism

1) Last year in lit hum we went to the rare books library and I was able to see manuscripts of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse along with covers that she had painted with her sister. I would love to see anything else they have of Virginia Woolf (it looks like they do have other things based on my CLIO search) or even those items again since I found them really interesting.

2) For the OED assignment, I will be doing the word "insulate" from Toomer's "Her Lips are Copper Wire"

3) Right now I'm thinking of doing "Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme" by Vickers for the criticism paper.

-Mary

THREE THINGS

1. A rare book, letter or manuscript I'm interested in pulling from the RBML collection: A manuscript of "Catcher in the Rye," if they've got one. Or some kind of sexy love letter from a famous author.

2.The OED word and poem I'll be writing on, as well as potential ideas for the paper: The word "perpetual," in Milton's "Paradise Lost." My thesis concentrates on the definition that alludes to God, which Milton alludes to in order to depict Tyranny in heaven.

3. The piece of criticism I'll be writing on for Prof. Crawford: Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities."

Weekly assignment

1) I've chosen the word "vacuitie" from Book 2 of Paradise Lost. I'll be exploring it in the context of Miltonian negations.

2) I have not yet decided which criticism to tackle in my review, though it will more than likely be the Nancy Vickers piece we read a few weeks ago.

3) Columbia's rare book room has one of 14 known copies of Harry Crosby's "Aphrodite in Flight," published after the modernist poet killed himself on 10 December 1929 at 1 W. 67th Street, Apt. 9M (The Hotel des Artistes). I look at it whenever I go there.

Hope you're all enduring the tempests and storms of midterms and papers, stress and tumult, agony and ecstasy...

K.S. Anthony

And the World Keeps Spinning: A Conversation Between Auden and Gluck

Thirty years separate the poems “Musée des Beaux Arts” and “Palais des Artes”, and yet one has clearly been influenced by the other. In the “Musée des Beaux Arts”, W. H. Auden starts by describing suffering in relation to painting and introduces his argument that the greatest sufferings are generally gone unnoticed. He specifically uses Breughel’s painting of Icarus as an example for his argument. “Palais des Artes”, on the other hand, does not try to make a general argument, but instead exemplifies Auden’s argument by presenting a garden-like scene where a greater drama is happening between a woman and a man but no one else in the scene notices. Auden argues that the world will keep turning regardless of what great tragedy is taking place, as can be seen in the fall of Icarus which is only a small part of the bigger painting by Breughel. Glück agrees with his theory by creating a poem in which the biggest drama plays a minor role and the main focus is on daily life. These two poems are combined not only by their underlying theories but also through their verb tenses, format and parallel situations.

Intro for Keats & Plath Poetry Comparison Essay

The speakers in John Keats’ “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” and Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” are both fixated on the prospect of death, yet view it in completely opposite ways. In “When I Have Fears,” death is the spectral absence of a future, whereas life is seen through the imagery of the harvest. The poem’s form—a Shakespearean sonnet—conveys Keats’ belief in the unattainability of potential fame and love. “Lady Lazarus,” on the other hand, utilizes much darker imagery, comparing life to the horrors of a concentration camp, and death to a state of protection and peace. Unlike Keats’ poem, Plath’s is structured in tercets, a form that evokes the chaos and torture depicted in Dante’s Inferno. Both poets describe what they fear as a negative space; for Keats, this negative is death, while for Plath, this negative is life.