Comments on: Miltonheads Unite!

By: Troy Camplin, Ph.D.

Troy Camplin, Ph.D. — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:46:54 +0000

I just find it hard to believe that anyone can effectively teach something when they have the attitude toward the work Gee has. I find it very likely that bad attitude is going to be passed on. I have no sympathy with the politics behind throwing out the great works – precisely because that’s going to be the result. Why can’t we rather be more inclusive rather than be exclusive? I never had the great works of the West replaced by the great works of the East (I had to read those on my own too) or the great works of men replaced by the great works of women. Rather, I found that great works in general were replaced with contemporary garbage (which were also typically written by Western white males — so I don’t know what the big change was really all about, in the end). With the exception of The Great Gatsby (which I loved from the get-go), high school teachers mostly assigned the worst garbage they could find. I wasn’t assigned much that was good until college, and all of that was 19th and 20th century works. I got the real garbage in grad school.
Personally, I’ll all for popularizing classics. I thought that the Beowulf film was an attempt to tell the “real” story behind the myth, resulting in a bit of a diminution of the hero, but that it was overall okay. I also think that “Troy” failed precisely because they tried to give it a Hollywood ending, where the bad guys all got theirs, even though they defeated Troy. Too bad, because they cut themselves off from an interesting sequel with Agammemnon. Still, if these movies got some people to go out and read the works, then I’m all in favor of even a bad movie.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:48:59 +0000

Troy–
I just want to make clear that I’m not criticizing Gee’s teaching–I’ve never been in her classroom, so can’t judge–nor am I indicting all of higher education, which is too various a beast to characterize easily. Like Gee, I’m all for popularizing classics, especially when the popularizations are good art in their own right. As I said, I simply don’t think you need to falsify the original to do so. I think there’s room for both. As many of the comments above indicate, lots of people, including teenagers, find Milton, gasp, fun! I do agree that it’s a shame many schools have thrown out core curriculum/great books courses, though I certainly sympathize with the politics behind doing that. I’ve done a lot of filling in, myself, since I was an undergrad (never a grad) in the late 80s. The advantage, as you point out, is that one appreciates it so much more when one reads because one feels like it, not because it’s assigned. Isn’t there a scene in Hard Times where learning is ground into the children so mechanically that it becomes meaningless and garbled? I’m guessing that Gee’s against that sort of teaching, and so am I.
Daisy

By: Troy Camplin, Ph.D.

Troy Camplin, Ph.D. — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:01:25 +0000

If this is Gee’s opinion of two of the greatest, most important works of literature, I absolutely would not want her teaching my children about literature. Her attitude expresses everything that is wrong with higher education in this country. In fact, I have come to realize that it is because of people like her teaching literature that I have had to play catch-up ever since I graduated with my Ph.D. There should be no excuse for having someone graduate with a Ph.D. in the humanities who has not read The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy . . . I could go on and on, but that’s the bizarre situation I was in and am still working to rectify. Fortunately, I am motivated to catch up on all the things I was made to miss, but how many, especially those not majoring in the humanities, will do that? Yet Gee is out there “teaching” students literature — in fact, teaching them to hate it.

By: john

john — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:54:01 +0000

Daisy,
It’s line 283 in Comus. Comus has found the Fair Lady alone in the forest:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/comus.html
Co. What chance good Lady hath bereft you thus?
La. Dim darknes, and this leavy Labyrinth.
Co. Could that divide you from neer-ushering guides? 280
La. They left me weary on a grassie terf.
Co. By falshood, or discourtesie, or why?
La. To seek i’th vally som cool friendly Spring.
Co. And left your fair side all unguarded Lady?
La. They were but twain, and purpos’d quick return.
Co. Perhaps fore-stalling night prevented them.
La. How easie my misfortune is to hit!
Co. Imports their loss, beside the present need?
La. No less then if I should my brothers loose.
Co. Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom? 290
La. As smooth as Hebe’s their unrazor’d lips.
Comus is a masque, and masques were formally comedies, so maybe the bantering iambic rhythm would play fine in a bantering mood, I’m not sure. There are some lovely passages in Comus, and some powerful lines in Lycidas.
Contrary to what I mistakenly said before, I don’t require joy in my Christian poems. “Batter my heart, three-personed God” (Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14) is hardly joyous — but it is moving. It’s just — “hideous hum” and “hollow shriek” are bad propaganda poetry; if you like the propaganda, fine, but it’s still bad poetry. I am curious to read Empson’s account of Milton’s Christianity. And I will give P.L. a shot. Thanks again.

By: Susan McLean

Susan McLean — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:32:42 +0000

I first read Milton in high school, took a course on him during my freshman year in college, and later taught him regularly in a British literature survey course in college. He’s someone I find personally uncongenial but poetically impressive, and each time I teach him I have a few students who really fall in love with PL. For me, many of his lines are unforgettable–hear them once and they become part of you forever. PL is incredibly cinematic in how it tells the story–for a blind writer, he certainly was visual in how he told the story. The weight of all that learning is often oppressive (in a way that it usually isn’t in Shakespeare, for instance, who also is full of allusions), but the passion in the lines is undeniable.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:27:19 +0000

John–I’m not sure asking a writer not given to religious joy to express religious joy makes a lot of sense. It’s like asking Hemingway to put in more adjectives, or something. I mean, you may prefer a lusher writer than Hemingway as a matter of taste, and a more rapturous writer than Milton, but not doing Christian joy, or adjectives, is not a fault. As for his attitude “to life”–don’t forget Milton’s anti-censorship prose pamphlet, “Areopagitica” not to mention his complicated and interesting approach to theology and to his characters. I think you’re reading pretty ahistorically in the passages you cite. As for the supposedly padded line, “And left your fair side all unguarded, lady?” without looking up the line, it sounds to me like he’s not talking about leaving the side of her body, but rather, leaving being beside her, whom he finds fair. It’s rather compressed, not padded.
I don’t know the recording Bill’s talking about, but it sounds miserable. The lines in Milton are load-bearing walls, and a lot of the aural excitement comes from all that mass straining to contain itself while pouring onward down the page. You wouldn’t want an end-stop for each line, but you do want somebody who understands he’s reading poetry, and acknowledges what’s going on in the language.
Alicia–Not really on topic, but do you know James Richardson’s poem “A Suite for Lucretians”? It’s in his new & selected volume, Interglacial. I think you’d really like it.
Daisy

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:02:23 +0000

With respect to Mr. Knott’s observation about his Quayle (perhaps related to Dan?) recording not observing the ends of lines … not bothering with them is the sort of thing Mr. Pinsky advises in his book The Sounds of Poetry. Frankly I think it is a balancing act and a good poem let’s you know how to read it. I don’t hear the poetry in the strapped-on, sing-song-breathy-poet-voice readings and I don’t hear it in the ones that rip through it like prose. Can’t say I have an alternative to recommend. One of the latest is by Ralph Cosham which came out a little more than a year ago.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:47:23 +0000

Aaron, great point! Here's one useful hyperlinked version.

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:22:50 +0000

We live in the age of DVD extras. With the wide variety of online resources, Paradise Lost is the ultimate Google poem. In fact the whole poem could hyperlinked. And it could inspire the dawn of new technology–a multihyperlink featuring the shades of meaning you wish to explore.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:01:16 +0000

Bill, I’ve not heard them, but there’s an audiobook of P.L. by Ralph Cosham… and excerpts can be heard on one by Samantha Bond just out on Naxos, in their “Great Poets” series.