Here's what's up this term. Once again, by popular demand (and to help meet my 'quota' for what our higher-ups tactlessly call "bums-in-seats"), I'm teaching Mystery and Detective Fiction. Some of you will remember the convolutions I went through trying to revamp the reading list for this course. I undertook that re-thinking process a bit belatedly, as I had already ordered most of my books for this term; I am using a new anthology, the Longman Anthology of Mystery and Detective Fiction instead of the Oxford Book of Detective Stories, which means a different selection of short texts, and I have added Auster's City of Glass. But otherwise the major landmarks of the course are the same as last winter's version. Next year, however.... One text I'm sure I won't change is, actually, The Moonstone. It's just so much fun; I'm not sure I'll ever be sorry to wake up on a Monday morning in January and realize it's Gabriel Betteredge Day. We haven't done much yet this term. Tomorrow's "Big Intro Lecture" day. I just hope more of the students have actually bothered to get back in town.
My other class is a new one for me, an upper-level seminar on "Victorian Literature of Faith and Doubt." Back when we still offered a lot of full-year courses, I sometimes taught a Victorian literature survey, and it included a "crisis of faith" unit (along with the "Woman Question" unit that became the basis of another special topics seminar I have now offered several times). I thought I'd like to get back to some of the prose and poetry I don't otherwise get to teach much, and religion is not only the quintessential 19th-century topic but also a topic of some personal interest to me; this new seminar is the result. I would not feel competent to offer a graduate level course on this material, but I've been brushing up on key texts and contexts and I think (I hope!) I'm going to be OK for my purposes this term. I've got my intro lecture on "varieties of 19th-century faith and doubt" ready to go. We haven't done much but organizing so far, but one comment in yesterday's class meeting did take me by surprise--maybe unreasonably, I don't know. The students were signing up for seminar presentations and I remarked that they seemed to be avoiding Hopkins. "It's because we've never heard of him," one of them said. Never heard of Hopkins? Am I crazy to find this startling in a room full of 4th-year English Honours and Majors students? I've been trying to remember when I first came across Hopkins and what my first reading would have been. I'm thinking it was "God's Grandeur" in my second-year Chaucer-t0-Yeats survey class, or maybe (since I was the kind of person who read around) I just encountered him while reading on my own. I always teach something by Hopkins when I'm doing a poetry class or a class with a poetry unit; I'm pretty sure that when I taught Close Reading (still my most challenging and rewarding pedagogical assignment) we did at least "God's Grandeur" and "The Windhover" every year. It's hard to think of poetry that better illustrates both the rewards and the limits of close reading! Dear readers, do you read--have you read--any Hopkins? How obscure is he these days?
To close, then, because I'm in a poetry frame of mind, here's a study in contrasts from my 'faith and doubt' syllabus: my favourite section of In Memoriam (Tennyson, often belittled for his "pretty" language, shows he can be stark and restrained with the best of them) and a dose of Hopkins (ah! the ecstasy of that last moment). Go ahead: scan them both. You know you want to.
from In Memoriam A.H.H.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I standHere in the long unlovely street,Doors, where my heart was used to beatSo quickly, waiting for a hand,A hand that can be clasp'd no more --Behold me, for I cannot sleep,And like a guilty thing I creepAt earliest morning to the door.He is not here; but far awayThe noise of life begins again,And ghastly thro' the drizzling rainOn the bald street breaks the blank day.
"God's Grandeur"
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West wentOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --Because the Holy Ghost over the bentWorld broods with warm breast & with ah! bright wings.
7 comments:
I too find it shocking that they hadn't even heard of Hopkins. I also find it irritating that no one purposefully chose to do a seminar on him precisely for not having heard of him. Where's the desire to read widely and push the boundaries? I thought that was one of the points of studying literature. Sigh.
Not heard of Hopkins? Wow.
Do you know why honors students might not have heard of Hopkins? Are they unfamiliar with 19th century English poetry in general, or is it just Hopkins they've somehow missed?
I first came across Hopkins in Brit Lit II, just where I was supposed to find him. I also knew people who had been led to Hopkins by their interest in T. S. Eliot and other modernist poets. Maybe the modernists are not so hot with the youngsters anymore?
These are all interesting remarks. I'm thinking that maybe it is as much our fault as theirs (us in this case being my department) as, like many English departments, in trying to be all things to all students we have watered down what were once "core" requirements in Brit Lit to the point that it is perfectly possible to get your degree without ever studying Victorian literature at all, much less Victorian poetry. (I'm in favor of some aspects of this effort, of course, but the bottom line is that for everything you do to be more inclusive, you end up excluding something.) My experience has been that students often shy away from poetry classes--and I know the Victorian poetry class is not offered frequently (partly because it typically gets modest enrolments). Still...
I agree with you. In my department an English major has some core requirements: What we might think of as roughly equivalent to Parts I and II of the Norton Anthology. But teachers can create their own syllabi. They need not use an anthology similar to the Norton; for English Lit. 1798-today they can teach nothing but Rushdie if that gives them joy. A lot of younger faculty members don't like to read poetry themselves and many students won't read it voluntarily and may get through the major without having to read it.
Sorry for this rant. I love Hopkins and perhaps it's because I first encountered him via the lovely voice of a professor who read "Spring and Fall" to us outloud in an introductory class.
I do lament that in the program here the 19th century seems to be vanishing vanishing vanishing....
I have to say that I am one of those youngsters who has not come across Hopkins. I graduated two years ago with a degree in English from a well-reputed university with a beautiful English department but somehow managed to graduate without reading Victorian poetry. Thanks to you, Professor Maitzen, I will read Hopkins now.
Our own department doesn't have a core requirement, so quite a number of students get through without ever having heard of Hopkins, sadly.
However, I wanted to say that I'm teaching a bit of Hopkins myself this spring, in a course I'm doing called "Texture in the Text." Following your example, I should get my act together in the next couple of days and do a "What I'm teaching" post as well.
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