Review of Week 1 (Aug 21, 23)

by Dr. Seaman

Overview

Class started this week with a general introduction to the course on Tuesday and our first encounter with readings from the Broadview on Thursday.

Tuesday we discussed what you might expect from the course (as discussed in the “Our Course” page of the blog) and what the course requires of you (on the “Policies” page of the blog). The course blog is at http://blogs.cofc.edu/seamanm-engl201-f12/

Two different student responsibilities were especially emphasized: secretarial duties for the Review of the Week (which each student will do on one day during the semester) and Blog Questioner duties (which each student will do for one week).

In terms of the course itself, we discussed what “British Literature to 1800” seemed to emphasize and what perspectives it seemed to encourage (as compared, for instance, with “Major British Writers I”).

On Thursday, students signed up for Questioner and secretarial responsibilities and we discussed in depth your experiences (or at least those shared by select students in the class) making use of the RAP and, especially, the RAPQ. Based on what I gleaned from our discussion, I returned to OAKS to discover the different default mechanisms that were causing trouble on some of the questions and sent a number of emails on Friday addressing these. By now, I hope everything seems well in place for the next RAPQ. As for the RAP itself, I will produce the next one, for you to prepare before Thursday’s class, with the benefit of hearing from you your various experiences with the first one. RAPQ 2 will benefit similarly from input you shared in class.

After that discussion, we spent what remained of class building from the reading you’d done in pp. 1-12 on The Medieval Period, considering the way most of our conceptions of it were inherited from the Renaissance, which defined itself as a rebirth of classical learning by positioning the Middle Ages as a period of relative darkness (the so-called “Dark Ages”) in between them and the classical period. We discussed some of the ways Anglo-Saxon women’s experiences weren’t as narrow and socially confined as we might expect, and we discussed further the role and nature of the lord-thane (what we tend to call an Anglo-Saxon warrior) relationship and the role of wyrd (‘fate,’ or ‘what happens,’ as our translator of The Wanderer put it in a footnote).

We then discussed the main Old English literary forms:

religious tracts—imaginative biblical paraphrases and reworkings of the story of creation, Exodus, the Advent, Judgment Day, the lives of the saints and apostles, instructions for Christians, and so on.

wisdom poetry—collections of proverbs, clever or true sayings, rules for conduct, ways of explaining the world.

elegy—all of the remaining examples are housed in the Exeter Book (c 975), which are loosely elegaic, in tone, rather than specifically in terms of verse form, as in ancient Greek & Latin poetry.

In terms of The Wanderer, we considered the position of the exile, the individual without a society, in Anglo-Saxon culture (as a “wulf,” an outlaw, as no longer fully human, and as lacking in worth or reputation with no lord to confer it on him publicly) and contrasted the attitude toward “Nature” to that of post-Romantic society. We considered how wisdom is something learned through personal experience, and over time (as compared to later medieval faith in wisdom as something the select few have, those who are authorized to speak by their being representatives of divine wisdom–more on that as the semester progresses). We looked at the way the last two lines of the poem are the only ones that point toward a spiritual alternative to the earthly impermanence that is the speaker’s concern. We ended class with a discussion of the “ubi sunt” motif in Old English (and other) literature, and how it is a moment asking “where are” the former days, and asks this through reference to the various material objects that reflect that previous time of glory.

Noteworthy Quotes

[Here you will include any quotes from the text that we considered in depth, as well as any quotes from the classroom discussion that you think will help your audience to remember details of the discussion and represent more fully the nature of the classroom conversation. Since I wasn’t taking notes during class, I have none of these to include. Next week, though, I’m sure we’ll have some–from the text (which will be Beowulf) and from students in class.]

Key Terms

wyrd

comitatus

hagiography

thane

“ubi sunt” motif

Preview of Week 2 (Aug 28, 30)

This week we will begin our work on the blog and have our secretaries in place during class; see the schedule here: http://blogs.cofc.edu/seamanm-engl201-f12/student-schedule/

I somehow just had the realization that using the same course blog for both sections (the 9:25 and the 10:40) that I teach means that you will all be asking questions and giving responses in the same blog space. What this means, then, is that there is the potential (and even the likelihood) that someone from the 9:25 class will post a question that someone from the 10:50 class will respond to, and vice versa. I’d not anticipated that, but I’m not sure it’s a problem and think it might actually be a bonus. What it does mean, though, is that each of you responding to the blog by commenting on a question posed by a Questioner will have 4, rather than 2, questions to respond to. We’ll go with it that way this week and see what happens.

For the 9:25 class: Michael and Kati-Jane will each post a question regarding Tuesday’s scheduled reading of Beowulf by Monday at 9:25. The rest of you will select one of the (four [see previous paragraph] questions and post a COMMENT in response to the post. Michael and Kati-Jane will then each post another question, after Tuesday’s class but before Wednesday at 9:25, on the reading for Thursday, which is the rest of Beowulf and pp. 30-34 of the Broadview (with the RAP and RAPQ).

For the 10:50 class: Desirée and William will each post a question regarding Tuesday’s scheduled reading of Beowulf by Monday at 10:50. The rest of you will select one of the (four [see previous paragraph] questions and post a COMMENT in response to the post. Desirée and William will then each post another question, after Tuesday’s class but before Wednesday at 10:50, on the reading for Thursday, which is the rest of Beowulf and pp. 30-34 of the Broadview (with the RAP and RAPQ).

In class on Tuesday at 9:25, Kati-Jane will take notes on the classroom discussion and will write those up and email them to me by Thursday at 9:25. On Thursday, Samantha will take notes on classroom discussion and will write those up and post those to OAKS by Saturday at 9:25. Before Monday morning, I will post those along with a preview of the upcoming week.

In class on Tuesday at 10:50, Desirée will take notes on the classroom discussion and will write those up and email them to me by Thursday at 10:50. On Thursday, Teajay will take notes on classroom discussion and will write those up and post those to OAKS by Saturday at 10:50. Before Monday morning, I will post those along with a preview of the upcoming week.

As for what we will be doing in class: On Tuesday we will finish up the reading you prepared for Thursday, when much of class time was spent getting us established with our experiences with the RAP and the RAPQ. (I expect both of those to go much more smoothly this week.) We will discuss, especially, Dream of the Rood and The Wife’s Lament, with some additional discussion of The Wanderer. Then we will move on to Beowulf, which has certain affinities with all three of those shorter Old English poems but brings as well an orientation toward the particular history of a group of people, a tribe. When you do the reading for Tuesday, I encourage you to pay special attention to the way stories of the past (distant past, group past, individual past, recent past, etc.) intervene in the present of the Beowulf narrative. Consider how much of the poem comes to us in the form of characters’ speech and what that speech seems to “do” in within the events of the poem. Pay attention to women, when you see or hear about them, and consider what Grendel and his mother represent to the humans at the center of the poem’s focus. What, too, do we learn about Grendel and his mother themselves, apart from human society? There is much to discuss, so I encourage you to keep track of the different emhpases you have as you read the poem. Please keep track of questions, areas of confusion, etc. so we can discuss those, too.

On Thursday we will finish Beowulf and you will prepare, before class, pages 30-34 in the Broadview (including listening to the RAP and taking the RAPQ before class). This second half of Beowulf is often skipped over when the poem is taught in high school, and yet it offers a really compelling complement to what we encounter in the first half of the poem. As you read, consider why the dragon is presenting the threat he is (and what is it, exactly, that he threatens?) and what the narrative seems to value in its depiction of the experiences of Beowulf and his people with the dragon. We will turn careful attention to the story of the Lone Survivor (around line 2235)and to the way the poem concludes. Consider, before Thursday, what seems to make a “good king” in the poem, in the first and the second halves.

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