Walt Whitman Online

by Dr Davis on October 12, 2009

Another work in Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Spring 2009, is about teaching Walt Whitman using the Walt Whitman archive and wikis.

walt_whitman1I have never even seen the archive, so I am not an expert, but it seems that the approach in “”A Noiseless Patient Spider”: Whitman, Wikis, and the Web” would be a positive class experience and an interesting education.

I wish I were in the class for the 200 minutes of declaiming on the campus lawn. “Leaves of Grass” aloud, lounging… What a perfect juxtaposition for serious online research.

I think this class benefited from the 200 minute class periods. But I would assume the same could be done in smaller chunks. The course as she teaches it is an upper division course, but I think students would gravitate toward it: “Literature and the Digital Archive: Walt Whitman.”

Once again, you’ll have to scroll down but this author at least takes significant advantage of the electronic medium of the journal. (Having read through the others I am delighted that the editor of CEA Forum asked me for links to be embedded into the article.)

{ 0 comments }

Shakespeare and Fantasy

by Dr Davis on October 12, 2009

Just something to think about:

This aspect of life, as continually changing and presenting fresh opportunities for happiness and laughter, poetic comedy idealizes and presents to us by means of fantasy. Fantasy is the natural instrument of comedy. . . .

Helen Gardner, “As You Like It,” in More Talking of Shakespeare, ed. John Garrett (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1959), quoted in Shakespeare: The Comedies, ed. Kenneth Muir (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965), 62.

See also Kenneth J. Semon’s “Shakespeare’s Tempest: Beyond Common Joy,” ELH 40, no. 1 (Spring 1973): 24-43.

{ 0 comments }