My English teachers (part 5)

(Most recent post in this series—Nov. 2. Others at irregular intervals and in the Archives.)

I went to college under the impression that I would major in art. I only vaguely recall now why I thought I could have any kind of future as an artist, but fortunately, after one or two college-level art courses, I realized that (a) I wasn’t nearly as talented as I had somehow been led to believe, and (b) I didn’t care enough about art to work at it as hard as I would need to in order to get better. College is like that, or can be.

So I changed majors to something I had always cared about: English. The English department at St. Andrews included a strong creative writing and modern poetry contingent, led by Ron Bayes. I took a modern/contemporary poetry course with him, in which the foundations were Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and then Roethke, Stafford, and the Black Mountain poets—Creeley, Olson, Levertov, etc. He taught us how to read and appreciate these open forms, and gave us the skills to develop our own tastes. Having spent some time in Japan, Bayes was also enthusiastic about Japanese poetry and the fiction of Yukio Mishima; for me, the poetry took, the fiction did not.

Bayes is an encourager—not only in the writing workshops I recall, when probably some of us should have been stifled a bit more. He supported my applications to creative writing MA/MFA programs. Thanks to Bayes, I knew that “Old Possum” was a nickname of T.S. Eliot (as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), enabling me to answer the Final Jeopardy clue correctly, even though I still only came in second. And when I co-edited a book recently, Bayes was kind enough to e-mail congratulations, even though the book was nothing to do with poetry.

Bayes is still going strong and apparently unstoppable. As I prepared to compose this post, I googled him and the first result was a story about his readings this past week in Wilmington. Dozens of SAPC English majors and writers will testify to his skills as a poet and teacher, and to his graciousness.

Dorothy Dunnett

Eight years ago today, Scottish historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett died. The first of her books I encountered was Queens’ Play, the second novel in the Lymond Chronicles. I had no idea what was going on—the hero is in disguise, so for the first hundred pages or so I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad even with a program (if the lengthy list of characters can be so designated)—but I couldn’t put it down. Maybe I fell for what Yeats called “the fascination of what’s difficult,” but in the end it was completely worth it. I went back to the library and found the first book, The Game of Kings. All the pieces started falling into place.

For about twenty years, I seemed to be the only person in the world who had ever heard of or read anything by Dunnett. Even when I recommended her novels to friends, the fascination didn’t seem to take. Except on my sister, who, being related to me, is of course unusually perspicacious. In 1994, I joined the Internet and it occurred to me to look for fellow Dunnett-readers online. Oh—there they were! Over the course of the next several years, as Dunnett’s House of Niccolo books were being published, the enjoyment of reading them was enhanced by having people to discuss and speculate with, even if they were scattered from London to Tokyo.

About a week after her death, my sister and I were in Dublin with about twenty other devoted readers of Dunnett’s fiction, most of whom we had become acquainted with originally online through Dunnett e-mail discussion groups. When Dorothy Dunnett toured the US in 2000 to promote the final novel in the eight-book House of Niccolo series, Gemini, we had met a large number of these people for the first time at an event in Philadelphia, and we had met the author herself. We braved a trans-Atlantic flight just two months after 9/11 to see some of these people again, and—we had expected—to meet Dorothy again. There’s no good time to lose someone you admire and respect, even less someone you know and love (and some at this gathering did know Dorothy Dunnett well), but it is good to be with friends at such a time.

Dunnett’s novels are difficult and rewarding. They fulfill at least one criterion for the definition of “classic”—they reward repeated re-readings and connect to many other intriguing paths. Elspeth Morrison worked with Dunnett on two Companions to the novels, which identify historical characters and events, translate or give sources for the many literary quotations. In Dunnett’s obituary, Morrison quoted Sir Lewis Robertson on Dunnett’s books:

Dorothy Dunnett’s works called forth admiration, awe, bewilderment, almost reverence for the scale, the ingenuity of the plots, the unique sweep of the narrative, the quick felicity of the language and so much else.

She was the best.

Try doing that with a modern book

Medievalists.net is one of my favorite sites. They collate all kinds of fascinating (to medievalists, anyway!) articles and news stories, like this one on their blog, about an NC State research project to trace the source and dates of medieval manuscripts using DNA testing on the parchments:

North Carolina State Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson . . . says genetic testing could resolve [problems in determining manuscript origins] by creating a baseline using the DNA of parchment found in the relatively small number of manuscripts that can be reliably dated and localized. Each manuscript can provide a wealth of genetic data, Stinson explains, because a typical medieval parchment book includes the skins of more than 100 animals.

It’s exciting to see science, history, and literature working together!

They also provide a trove of images of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon-era gold & gems, and an interview with Ian Mortimer, author of A Time Traveller’s Guide to the 14th Century. Although the title initially makes me think of one of the best books about time-travelling to the 14th century, Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book, it seems as if Mortimer may have found a way to make history come alive:

The idea that became Time Traveller’s came to me in 1993. It was to write a history book that not only appealed to the reader but also directly prioritised their interests. Being a fan of the Douglas Adams books, my first idea was a ‘hitchhiker’s guide to history’. I planned to include all the extraordinary facts I knew about the English past, from Henry VIII passing legislation requiring those guilty of mass poisoning to be boiled alive (it was enacted twice), to nineteenth-century wife sales, reactions to public executions, great escapes, secret treaties, etc.

Sounds a bit silly on the surface of it, but he seems to have done the serious research and I suspect you’d know a lot more about life in the 14th century after reading Mortimer’s Guide than after reading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror–which medievalists have probably read anyway.

This post not titled

…”It’s a small world,” because then you’d have one of the top-ten “Get out of my brain!” songs circling horribly around in there, and it would be my fault. It’s probably already happening. I’m sorry. I could also have called the post “It’s all connected,” because I’m thinking of how once you have spent a lot of time with a book, an author, a TV show, or anything, many other things either remind you of that original “fandom,” or really are connected to it, sometimes in unexpected ways.

For example, earlier this week, my British Lit survey classes were reading book 4 of Paradise Lost, in which Satan faces the flipside of his boast in bk. 1 that “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (1.254-5), when he leaves Hell for Earth, only to realize “Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell” (4.75). This morning in chapel, the speaker gave a modern example: a criminal in solitary confinement is not alone; he is only confronted with himself and his crime(s).

A less dire example: ABC’s revised sci-fi show V (reviews by Todd Hertz, Nik at Nite, Nikki Faith) has cast actors from a number of previous sci-fi shows that fans should recognize, including Morena Baccarin (“Inara” of Firefly) and Alan Tudyk (“Wash” from Firefly and “Alpha” from Dollhouse). Executive producer Jeffrey Bell used to work with Joss Whedon on Angel, and in an interview with Todd Hertz, referred to Buffy:

What does sci-fi allow you do in terms of storytelling that maybe other genres don’t?

What I love about genre storytelling is it allows you to tell stories as metaphor. When they first started Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they’d talk about each episode’s “themons” as opposed to demons. For instance, you had the girl in high school who turned invisible as a metaphor for being the shy, wallflower girl who feels like she doesn’t exist. And then, the very idea of a hellhole being under the high school? That’s one of the great metaphors in television. With these genres, you can tell really rich stories that don’t feel literal. You can talk about areas that people may not want to sit and watch a show about—but mask it in action, fantasy or science fiction and make it more palpable. I love that.

So do I! And “themons”?! Has anyone connected to Mutant Enemy mentioned that before? How great is that? I’m totally using it (properly attributed, of course!) in my next essay on BtVS.

WILLOW: It’s all connected. The root systems, the molecules…the energy. Everything’s connected.(Buffy 7.1 “Lessons”)

My English Teachers—part 4

The last time I posted in this irregular series was in January, marking the passing of my grad school Middle English professor, George Kane. Before that, I wrote about my boarding-school teachers. In between, I completely skipped high school and college, but not because I didn’t have important and memorable teachers.

Actually, all my high school teachers were quite impressive, given that many of them were conscientious objectors who had chosen to teach at an American school in central Africa as an alternative to serving in the military in the late 1960s. High standards, concern for the community and the world, and a sense of adventure and possibility—they demonstrated all these values along with the subjects they taught.

My senior year, Mrs. Wiebe also supervised the school newspaper and yearbook, and I worked on both. These enterprises took on great importance in our small pond. The only professional work on either was the printing. The photography, layout, writing, art, and editing was all done by students. Compared to today’s glossy computer-generated productions, they look quite amateurish—but amateur in the original sense of work done for love. Along with a bit of competition and desire to snap the administration’s suspenders. I also wrote reams of bad poetry which seems to have been admired by some at the time.

A friend from those days reminded me recently that she and I wrote a play together. She sent it to me, but I’m afraid to re-read it. Maybe later.

Wrapping this post up, I think I’ve figured out why I  haven’t done more of this recently. I started the draft at about 2:30; was interrupted three or four times; it’s now almost 4:30. If I’m going to keep this up, must either write shorter posts, or find uninterrupted time.

Happy Hallowe’en, or How did I miss this?

Let this be a lesson to us all (especially me)—this is what happens when you don’t blog for a month or more & people stop checking. I missed “Chaucer”’s enthusiastic post on the Middle English version of Twilight, or rather Vespers:

Sure, the prose kynd of maketh Dives et Pauper look lyk George Orwelle, but the storie pulleth me yn….

In this fyne book of sparklie vampyres, Bella Cygne moveth from Essex to Yorkshyre to lyve with her fathir, who ys a sheriff and escheator. At a scole ful of recentlie coyned stereotypes, she witnesseth the fayre skyn and fashion-sprede slow-mocioun hotenesse of the Cu Chulainn clan, the which have all eaten long ago of the magical Irisshe Salmon of Really Good Hair (oon byte of this magical salmon and ye shal have good hair for evir). Aftir Bella doth see the hottest of the clan, Edward, stop a wagon wyth hys bare handes, fight off twentie churles, and brood so much he did make Angel look lyk Mister Rogeres, she doth realise that the Cu Chulainns are vampyres. But they are good vampyres, who drinke wyne. Ther is considerablie moore sexual tensioun than in Piers Plowman.

We are amused. Also amusing: Castle’s many Whedon-allusions in the Hallowe’en episode. (For some reason WP is not allowing me to embed video today.)

My resolution for November: to post more frequently. Much more frequently. You’ll see.

Two Biblical movies and a TV show

Carmen at in the open space tagged me with a Bible Movie Meme started by Matt at Broadcast Depth. It asks you to name your three favorite “Bible movies” and one that you would like to see made. Like her, I’m taking some liberties with the directions (we share at least one favorite). My colleague Ken Morefield has posted his (cautious) favorites as well.

1. Ben Hur—OK, maybe not really a Bible movie, but since it’s subtitled “a tale of the Christ,” I think it qualifies. Defines the term “over-the-top Hollywood epic”—well, after Lawrence of Arabia—and also embodies Biblical values of grace, healing, rebirth, and forgiveness. Plus, chariot race. It’s extreme, but also somehow irresistible. Sort of like Gone with the Wind, but that is more of a guilty pleasure.

2. Kings—not a movie, but this 13-episode TV revision of the story of Saul and David from 1 Samuel brought us some of the most intriguing treatment of religion, faith, and contemporary culture in recent years. Shiloh—which looks a lot like a somewhat futuristic New York—is the newly rebuilt capital of the kingdom of Gilboa, with “Silas” (Saul) as its divinely appointed king. Of course it was too too good to last. Well, maybe not TOO good—at times the sort-of Shakespearean style writing falls between high and low stools, but Ian McShane as King Silas usually makes it work somehow anyway. There’s plenty of material left in 1 & 2 Samuel to have kept this combination spiritual family drama/battle adventure going for a while.

3. The Gospel of John—It may not be the most artistic gospel film ever, but I was particularly taken with Henry Ian Cusick’s charming and compelling Jesus (and that was before I’d seen the actor in anything else, such as Lost). The low-key but generally authentic settings put more emphasis on the text, and one is struck by Jesus repeated statements, “I am telling you the truth.”

Arg…I had to edit this post in a major way twice as I was distracted and hastily stopped after #3.

So really, a movie based on the Bible that I would like to see made? That’s a difficult one, but what immediately came to mind was the Anglo-Saxon poem “Judith,” based on the apocryphal book of Judith. For one thing, it has plenty of battle action; and secondly, it has the wise, beautiful, courageous, and wily Judith. And a beheading. On the other hand, it is kind of talky. But the book is always better than the movie.

William Blake: I don’t understand him either

…but I still like his poetry. I’m pleased to be teaching the “Romantics to 20th c.” survey this summer, and am starting, conventionally, with Blake. I even like his pompous prophetic stuff—some of it, anyway—the parts that I can make some kind of sense of. I’m bold enough to say that I don’t think Blake understood Milton nearly as well as he thought he did (famous quote: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” [The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]), and also that most people—including me—don’t understand Blake nearly as well as they think they do. Most of us have grasped the inspired bits that shine clearly, or pieces that seem clear, but perhaps have been taken out of context. And with Blake, there’s always more context.

When I teach this survey, we do tackle the Songs of Innocence and Experience and pick through The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (because “Without Contraries is no progression…”), but don’t even try to talk about his elaborate mystic symbolic systems, and so on. To a great extent, I see Blake’s writings as an experience in poetic sensation. That’s probably wrong, too.

Nevertheless, for example, consider how the poem which is now known as “Jerusalem” has become totally embedded in English cultural consciousness, apparently on the force of the imagery in the first and last two verses, and having been set to a stirring Elgar tune, even though it asks rhetorical questions to which the factual answer is (repeatedly) “No,” and otherwise is fairly empty of orthodox theological content. Nevertheless, it gets you every time (I like the way this particular vid connects the lyric with a variety of English people and settings without making it overly “romantic” or pastoral):

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among those dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor Shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Poetry.

Language and thinking

Research seems to be demonstrating that “people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world.”

Intriguing article! I’ve often said, as this writer does, that language is an essential element of our humanity, and I tell students yearly that  gaining mastery over one’s own language (and at least one other) is vital for thinking and living effectively in the larger human community. Boroditsky’s research and other experiments are showing, for example:

How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they think. In our lab, we’ve taught English speakers different ways of talking about time. In one such study, English speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think.6 In practical terms, it means that when you’re learning a new language, you’re not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking.

… Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.
(6 Ibid., “How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in Speakers of English and Greek” (in review); L. Boroditsky, “Does Language Shape Thought? English and Mandarin Speakers’ Conceptions of Time.” Cognitive Psychology 43, no. 1(2001): 1–22.)

And these ideas about the pervasive effects of language and perspective also apply to reading poetry and any literature. If one can possibly encounter a literary text in its original language, that is best. An English translation of a Japanese haiku is not actually equivalent. Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf is not really Beowulf, though it’s a rattling good read. Buffy in French isn’t quite Buffy.

Books you can actually read

…if you haven’t already: 12 favorite 20th century fantasy novels/series from Allan Yeh, along with some musings on the origins of fantasy literature. Some of these books are also on my list, such as the Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series—at least the first two books. I had to wait so long for the next two that I literally “lost the plot” and haven’t had time to re-read, but I’m sure they’ll all be worthwhile when I do!

Yeh includes Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series as his “favorite,” and that’s his prerogative, of course. In my opinion, any series that “bogs down” for five—five—books (vols. 7-11) is out of control. Many friends recommended WoT to me, but I got bored after book two. Nevertheless, these books have their appeal, obviously, or there would not be so many.

As a medievalist, I’m required to note that in his comments on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Yeh says:

Tolkien wanted to write the first British mythology. Some may object that King Arthur should rightfully fill that spot, but actually the Camelot legend began with Sir Thomas Malory, a Frenchman, who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur.

A couple of errors here: The Camelot legend did not begin with Malory (late 15th c.), but long before him in Britain (before the Anglo-Saxons), Wales (5th-10th c.), and France (12th c.). Also, though we don’t know much about Sir Thomas Malory, most scholars are pretty sure he was English, born in Warwickshire (Le Morte Darthur, Norton Critical ed., Stephen H.A. Shepherd). Like many an upper-class person of his day, he seems to have been able to read/speak French well enough to use several French versions of Arthurian legends as sources for his compilation.

If you can, read Malory before reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. If not, White will probably influence the your reading of Malory, which may not be a bad thing.