British Literature

From a friend on Facebook, I have found a video that is a wonderfully funny and pertinent introduction to Shakespeare’s language through comedian John Branyan’s Shakespearean translation of “The Three Little Pigs.” It is AMAZING.

I am using it tomorrow in fyc, since we are practicing writing about literature using the fairy tales. Next semester I will use it to introduce Shakespeare in my Brit lit class.

Still mining the comments from Siobahn Curious’ Classroom as Microcosm blog post “How Do Games Help Us Learn?”

Samuel Wood said:

One which I have used when teaching Shakespeare’s sonnets is to take them back to their early schooling and actually draw the woman as described in many sonnets and then turn to Shakespeare’s Nothing Like the Sun. This gets students thinking about the preposterousness of much imagery, cliché and metaphor as well as ideas of love and poetry.

And Siobahn replied:

I often think I should get students to draw more in my classes. One teacher I know breaks the class into 14 groups and then has each group create an image for one line of a sonnet – then they post the pictures up in order and reconstruct the sonnet together. I always thought that sounded like a lot of fun.

Remember the six elements of the Conceptual Age that Pink argues we have moved into?

That’s okay if you don’t. Unlike my students, you don’t have a quiz (or a test) on the topic.

One of the six elements was narrative.

In 1986 psychologist Jerome Bruner, now at New York University School of Law, argued persuasively that narrative is a distinctive and important mode of thought. It elaborates our conceptions of human or humanlike agents and explores how their intentions collide with reality.

Earlier, the article, from Scientific American says:

[W]riters and readers … use fictional characters to think about people in the social world.

Psychologists once scoffed at fiction as a way of understanding people because—well—it’s made up. But in the past 25 years cognitive psychologists have developed a new appreciation for the significance of stories. Just as computer simulations have helped us understand perception, learning and thinking, stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general.

Literature is important to life in general. Not just to a well-rounded education or to a liberal arts degree, but to life in its full and varied forms.

Something to think about.

I was a rhetoric and composition major field person at Purdue University for my PhD. My second field, however, was Old English language and literature. I also studied OE works in translation in my master’s program. Until SCMLA on Friday, though, I had never heard of the Old English epic Waldere.

Jonathan Himes, one of the speakers in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section of SCMLA, wrote a critical edition of the poem from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The Old English epic of Waldere is a sixty-one line fragment that mentions Attila the Hun and other migration-period legendary figures.

Right hand of Attila, let not your royal strength
droop now, nor your daring — now that the day has come
when, son of Aelfhere, you shall surely either
give over living or a long doom
have among after-men, one or other.

Never shall my tongue tell to your shame
that I saw my friend at the sword play
with a fainting valour falter before the attack
of any man whatever, or make for the baulk
to save his neck — though new foes came
and reaching blades rang on his breast.

No, you carried the fight so far into the open
that I dreaded your death. You drove on too boldly,
crowding the strike, with each step further
out of your ground. God is with you:
you may enrich your name with less reckless strokes.
(translation from the Penguin collection The Earliest English Poems)

The basic storyline and the history of the manuscript can be found at heorot.dk:

The handwriting of the fragments seems to date the MSS to roughly 1000; the language appears to be late West Saxon, though some forms appear to be late Northumbrian – the date of composition may have been early, in the 8th-c., or as late as the MS itself, late 10th-c. Based on the form of the continental Walter stories and the style of the two remaining OE fragments,Waldere in its complete form must have been a poem of impressive length, at least 1000 lines long, possibly as long as Beowulf.

Other information can be found at acravan.blogspot.com (which is where the two pictures come from):

Waldere is considered the only evidence that the Anglo-Saxon people had knowledge of the Walter of Aquitaine legend, which remained popular throughout the Middle Ages.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging. (Note: While I wrote the post while in the session, I didn’t post till later.)

Fun beginning with all the three panelists reunited grad students (from ULa:L) finishing each other’s humorous sentences. One of the SF/F panelists said he was excited to see this on the program, as it is a special session.

Chair: Geoffrey B. Elliott, Technical Career Institutes

Michael J. Bernstein of University of Louisiana-Lafayette
“The Legacy of Influence, Appreciation, and Revision for Milton’s Paradise Lost“
Humorous introduction. Graduating in May 2012 and seeking an academic position.

Whole dissertation is on just about every adaptation of Paradise Lost. I will be looking at three:
1. the most recent, John Troutman’s virtual comic strip
2. Lanzara Paradise Lost: The Novel and Paradise Lost in Plain English
3. children’s work The Tale of Paradise Lost by Nancy Willard

Despite Paradise Lost‘s place on the hierarchy, they imprint their place on the ghost of Milton.
Samuel Johnson said not to adapt the work. To adapt it is to reduce it.

Adaptations of PL are collaborative. They indicate a strong connection on the part of the adapter to the original PL text itself.
Every text is an interpreted text, because any time you read, you interpret. –Leech
Reader becomes an author and the text becomes a second text.

PL as an adaptation of the Bible suggests how adaptations can begin.

We resist Milton’s overwhelming allusions and stilted language.

Several interesting new adaptations:
Angel, Broadway musical
Paradise Lost, almost a spinoff, where angels have kids and sneak all their babies away from Satan in the war, but then forgot about the babies.
But I am only going to look at four, two by same author.

Lanzara’s novelization is a clear attempt to encourage reading PL.
L’s version allows “full grandeur of imagery” without language problems.
Some adaptations exist to keep a strong work in the reading stable of contemporary readers.

No real textual core exists.
PL contains undefinable elements that seem to encourage adaptation.
Language, despite difficult layers, entrances.

Lanzara’s attempt uses a language far more Miltonic than modern.
The syntax is not unique, but he succumbs to the fear of destroying Milton’s majesty.
His diction is not modern: sought, spied…
It becomes a stunted adaptation.
Desire to be faithful to the language rather than to the narrative structure. (Movie version coming out in 2013.) Language fidelity brings Milton adaptation an interesting scope addition.
The novelization seeks to preserve the language.

2009 publishes John Milton’s Paradise Lost in Plain English
line-by-line translation into modern English, very different adaptation
“Heaven got dark and fiery. It was a sign of God’s anger.
Equally scary was the trumpet that blew.
All of God’s powerful army came out when they heard it. It motivated them to go to fight…” (56, 59, 61)

Director and producer are using the novelization, not the poem. The movie version will focus on the war of Heaven. Folks today want the plot, not the language.

Willard’s tale sees Paradise Lost as a tale of pride. She recreates Satan as the fallen/tragic hero. The story is Satan’s. His deterioration will guide the force of the story. Readers are left with a lesson of pride, which does exist in Milton.

“Long, long, ago, before the world was, before minutes ticked and seconds tocked, before beginnings had endings, there was a war in Heaven. The most radiant of God’s angels was also the most proud.” –Willard

“jealous of the Son’s glory, [Satan] stood his ground, determined to win or fall but not retreat.”

Satan’s loss is the greatest in the poem, according to Willard.
Michael laments that the world will be corrupted by Satan and that “evil will often triumph.”

Critical interpretation by transforming the meaning and hero of the poem. Alters language.

Troutman decided to approach PL because he is reading the Norton Anthology. He didn’t know it before and he didn’t read the notes or anything else on the poem.
Prefers his own ill-informed conclusions as considerably funnier.

See Strip 16 and Strip 1.

I would actually argue that in terms of narrative structure and theme, he is one of the more faithful adapters, despite his authorial vision of sole entertainment.
He is writing as a parody.

He neglects criticism, but his following of narrative structure shows that even a new reader will see that the plot is well-constructed and strong.
Unlike some of his other strips, in which he parodied multiple scenes, he took time to plot out his parody of PL. Overall he just makes fun of major characters, but when he gets to PL, he realizes that he needs to preserve in media res and every other aspect of the narrative.

Troutman‘s Eve is bored/frustrated with her chores. “Stupid work. Stupid Paradise.”
Satan says eating the apple will make her work either.
“There’s science in my mouth and everyone’s invited! … And I’m naked.”

Similar to a British satirist, PL Illustrated.

Troutman is making fun of Milton’s text. He is not making her fit with modern feminist paradigm.
Eve’s observation that she has science is important.
Her choice to eat the apple is logical, even if selfish.
Concept of seeing nudity as shameful talks about loss of naivete.

Satan looks like a Calvin Klein model look. Not monstrous, but human.
Also enhances familiarity for modern audiences.
Having Satan look more human heightens his dangerousness, since he is not clearly other.

Demons use popular culture for humor.
“Hell ain’t such a bad place to be.”
“Oooh, we should install a water slide now!”
“You constructed the roof of my palace with one of the softest and heaviest metals in the universe?” Is that bad?

extend serious literary works into the area of comedy
Uses comedy to draw attention to more obscure texts. Provides context and direct connection to the work as well. He also uses his commentaries to crack jokes, too. But they educate as well.
Relevant, relatable, and translatable to modern sensibilities.
Thus Troutman promotes literary works.

Every adaptation of PL is a testimony as to its timelessness.
We continue the epic ritual of passing down stories through adaptation.

PL is “a poem of the infinite theater” (?).

In justifying God’s ways to man, Milton composes the ultimate human drama and justifies why two people would abandon God for love. Explains why a man would get rid of God for his wife. Life without God becomes a life that is worth living.

Wendi D. Wilkerson of Bronx Community College, CUNY
“Permutations of Lilith: Change and Consistency in the Contemporary Myth Creation Process”
ethnographer and editor

Myth has been a great exploration of history, but now it is seen as a compelling part of psyche.
What is missing is how myth has been reclaimed by modern oral tradition.
Myths tend to evolve in the same way as traditional oral experiences.

This refiguring of Lilith has transformed her from a vicious child-killing demon into a strong, loving goddess.
For her followers, she serves as a symbolic element that encourages human-divine connections.
Further transformation into Adam’s first wife and then evil, dark goddess.
Now: queen of Hell and a vampire

She is an enigmatic figure. There is no single narrative that defines her.
Kless, priestess for 20 years: Lilith was the demon who lived in the tree in Gilgamesh.
Sumerian and Babylonian myth also showed her as a demon endangering childbirth.
Jewish myths around the 13th century.
Misdrash texts attempt to reconcile the two creation stories in Genesis.
Lilith was conscripted into the story as a rebellious wife. Adam insisted that she lie beneath him in sex. Lilith refused and flew up. Took demons as her lovers and went to a cave to live with her hundreds of children.
Three angels came from God and threatened to kill 100 children a day unless she returned to Adam. She said no.

One key role of a later passage aligns her with both Satan and the serpent in the garden.

Most shocking story takes Lilith as the wife of God, who has left him sad.

1974 Lilith appeared as Dracula’s daughter in Marvel.
1996 vampire-role playing game gave rise to new Lilith stories.
Stories revolve around her experience with Cain.

One culturally specific reason: unsubstantiated personal gnosis
The powerful notions that people experience regarding their deity.
But new myth is made possible by peer-corroborated personal gnosis (pcpg) and unverified shared gnosis (usg).
Pcpg has folks who don’t know each other have the same ideas and eventually share them and meet each other.
Usg is when folks in worship experience another gnosis that is a group situation.

Shy(?) dreams about Lilith from childhood. A male child dreaming of a child-murderer. He dreamed he was carried away by a demon. He was terrified. The demon took him to a cave. Woman in cave yelled at the demon and told him to let the child go, because he was awake. The demon let him go. Woman sat next to edge of cliff on an animal skin. Boy remembered how excited the woman was to see the boy in the cave.

Common education or understanding brings associative elements into the narrative of the myth.
Emerging myth becomes integrated by performance.
Lilith followers are highly positive towards new narrative of the myth.
Changes or permutations must match what the folks who are following expect.

One such myth is from Canton, Ohio who refer to themselves as lilitu.
Group had accumulated a large oral narrative about Lilith. The myth drops pre-Hebraic material, but adds Misdrash information.
Lilith and Adam had been one homophradiphic person whom God divided. Lilith was the life and equality of woman. Lilith wanted to name some animals, but Adam had already named them. So Lilith sought out to name things that Adam had not given names. She gave names to the things that Adam was afraid of. She named the night and the moon and the stars of the heaven and all animals that were scary.
She refuses to have sex in the manner Adam wants, but she just goes to the other side of a garden.
Instead of three angels, God comes to talk to her. She says she is no beast to be lain upon.
God curses her and sends her out. “Your desire will be for the comfort of man, but his existence will pain you… You will thirst for the blood of your hymen…”
Other part of myth is that she was already pregnant with a male and female child and has the babies at the caves.
Cain’s rejection by God, Cain believes is because he did not have any blood in his offering. So he slew Able and gave God the blood as a sacrifice.
Cain took as his wife as one of Lilith’s daughters. Their son was named Enoch.

Implications of this myth are astonishing.
Creates a parallel for them to claim.
She is a compassionate mother.
Only time will tell how well this oral tradition will survive or spread.
But the personal insight into deity influences the creation of new myth.

Geoffrey B. Elliott of Technical Career Institutes
“Which Way I Fly is Middle-earth, Myself am Middle-earth; Miltonic Resonance in Tolkien”

Much of scholarly attention has focused on Northern European reception of Tolkien, because of his own work and experience (scholarly, etc) in The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, LOTR. Some of the work is written in OE.
There is significant relation of Tolkien’s work to northern pagan mood.

Some folks argue that it is more Christian, and Tolkien’s letters indicate that it is in fact more Christian.
Milton’s PL and Tolkien’s Silmarillion –especially in presentation of evil
concepts and even wording that is strongly reminiscent of PL
If Silmarillion has PL as a source, then it is even more Christian.

Tolkien’s valar Melchor “the mightiest of those ainurs who came into the world” and the brother of someone very important.

Both Lucifer and Melchor draw together as they call their own forces.
Lucifer says he is calling his folks together to serve Jesus.
Melchor does this same thing, calling folks together, when god is encouraging singing. He begins to bring things into his own creation and his melody changed the music of the ainurs.
Melchor’s disobedience ensnares some of his own kind.

Both L and M first bring their partners away from God without clear, set out evil.

When L says he is going to go against commander (God), angel is not happy.
Adviel? also is said to have been in service to God before the war of Heaven (kind of like Lilith).
Assi, a lesser power of Morgath, but later returns to his original allegiance. Assi has a love of violence. Does echo that of going from service of good, to evil, and back to good.

Satan and Morgath are both shown as northern invaders.
Both attack from an incomplete garrison.
Both attack with never before seen weapons.

Defense against both is mountains.

Defeats are both foretold by stars in the sky.

Even with their ultimate failure foretold, they still cause problems.
Satan->tempts Eve
Morgath->has the elves turn against humans
Neither enjoys full success, but both get some of what they seek against their makers.

Rafael says he ought to call Lucifer Satan, delegitimizing his celestial name.
Melchor becomes Morgath (dark evil of the world) to the elves.

Satan and Morgath both change from beautiful to ugly.
Milton: “how fallen, how changed”
Satan recognizes he must alter his normal form, so that there is no doubt of his alteration.
Milton: says he had awesome majesty, but darkened and scarred on his face “excess of glory obscured”

Tolkien’s Morgath takes on the form of a dark lord, tall and terrible. “in that form he remained ever after”
Retains outward evidence of power.
Also has facial scarring. An angel descends on him and attacks his face.
The pain of his wounds could not be healed.

Association of both figures with darkness are unsurprising.
A specific presentation of darkness
Milton hell = flames of darkness
Tolkien = as Morgath rapes trees of light he uses “unlight” “darkness with a thing with being of its own”
The two darknesses are visible, powerful, evil.

Supernatural orders are the same.
Worlds are circular.
Trees with magic fruit.

Tolkien sourced PL for much of his foundational points.

Don’t forget to sign in for the sheet.

Questions:
Wendy, where does Upg come from? 2003 Wiccan article

Do you have a sense of upg as invited through ritual practice?
Yes, usually. Almost always.
Sometimes an individual ritual but sometimes a group ritual.

Notion of heterotopia, luminality
Luminality is precursor.
Sense of otherness.
Time moves from chronos to kairos.

Comments for everybody:
Have you read George McDonald’s Lilith?
Yes.
How does that fit?
As a lit scholar, it fits.
As a polytheistic scholar, not so much. They don’t care. They don’t look at it. They go to the older texts. They either go very far back in time or to specific pop culture references.
Zokar is the preferred text.
Nephilim, children of angel of man, is covered in Midrash. (idea from first speaker that children of angels were taken away from the war in Heaven)

Second you read anything, you adapt it. You are interpreting and it is an adaptation.
The only way we can read is that we have some sort of relation to other experiences/knowledge.

Inter-text fits with reading. The idea that we interpret as we read is very important and that we in lit were re-appropriate the term for other experiences.

Medieval studies are adapting inter-text as language.
Much of medieval studies adapt.

Mark Hall worked on Victorian adaptations in dissertation, so used inter-text.

Calvin Miller: Symphony in the Sand, retelling of PL

Elliott:
Work of Geoffrey Elliott is an older paper that is reworked. You might want to look at the letters and a pub out of Wheaton might be interested in this.
Elliott addressed archetype issue. Think it is more than archetype?
Yes, there is archetype, but Tolkien who said he wanted to create a myth for Britain that was in line with trinity doctrine of Catholicism.

Bernstein:
Does Troutman make money?
Not really.

So he is less motivated by money?
Yes.
He loves doing this. It is his passion. Less motivated by money.

So does that lack of financial motivation create part of the different take on the adaptation?
Somewhat.
Willard can’t be faithful to the language, because for children.

Does the incredible interpretability of PL make it easier or more difficult to be faithful to PL?

Bernstein:
Difficulties of writing about someone who is easy to be reinterpreted:
Bloom Anxiety of Influence
Double-edge sword, because it is so vast, we can pull beautiful scenes (Dore) or story parts.
What do we do with Eve? That’s a hard question for PL.
As an adapter, it is liberating to be able to only use parts of the work of PL.
Dryden says he is a little anxious for adapting PL.
A lot of adapters feel liberated, not feeling anxiety of influence.
I’m going to take on a work that is great and has a marketable niche and I will have a marketable niche.

Elliott:
For Tolkien it is not nearly so problematic an experience.
Partly because of the time he was composing, many of the issues were not on the scholarly radar.
Since he was after creating a British mythology, PL was a perfectly situated work to adapt.

Bernstein:
Fidelity is only an issue with audience.
Only an issue if the audience has read the work.
The differences between Twilight book and movie are seen as fun.
Gone With the Wind the movie was exactly following the book, so it was thought to be absolutely perfect.

BladeRunner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
reach the same level of truth in very different ways
Not just how faithful, but how well it speaks to a truth.

Elliott:
Tolkien fanboys hate Tolkien movies, because of the songs and Tom being missing, etc.
XMen comic fanboys hate XMen movies.

Bernstein:
Audiences love the XMen movies, except the third one. (It was awful.)
Depends on what is important to that audience.

Elliott:
Shakespeare was the most successful plagiarist (adapter) in history.

Question:
Why now?
Why is Lilith exploding now?
Why is PL being adapted now?

Wilkerson:
Not just Lilith.
What it is: elucidating a spiritual experience that is not following the rules.
John Gardner, pagan ideas.
fairies on the West Coast.
Polytheists are embracing worship and ritual. “Yahweh is real, but Zeus is my god.”
Adaptation.

Question: Acceptance of Greek gods?
One friend I know is doing a reconstruction of Canaanite polytheism, from which Hebraic monotheistic religion sprang.

The polytheism is fascinating and a discussion of how monotheism arose from it is interesting too.
Polytheists have communities that are pantheon specific, community-based practice and devotion.

They are looking to recreate traditions because they want the devotional practices within a community context.

Mark Sample has a post on Reading Aloud in the Classroom, specifically talking about having the students read.

Reading aloud is a right reserved for the professor.

And how wrong this is. How drearily, dreadfully, dismally wrong this is.

Sheridan Blau argues in The Literature Workshop that one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of readers is rereading. And reading aloud—reading out loud—is in turn one of the most powerful ways of rereading.

I will confess that it is only in my British Literature courses that I have students read aloud. And most of the time in Brit Lit I that is for only one play, Everyman. (And this semester, due to an MWF schedule, the students are reading that at home.)

This is making me stop and rethink my plans, not for reading in class, because I do that, but for having the students read more often. It is true that my students are more likely to be good readers now (at an SLAC) than in the past (at my CCs). I definitely want to help the students in any way I can and it looks like this is one way.

Professor Sample also gives a discussion over a passage from Frankenstein that he chose for reading aloud in the classroom. I may come back to that, as I do Frankenstein in my Brit Lit II course.

We talked about the plague in class on Wednesday. Then I saw these two posts online:

Rats not involved with plagues, because there weren’t any dead rat infestations.

Yersinia Pestis WAS present with plague victims, not before that. So, while the rats did not deliver, what we thought was the Black Death apparently was.

So how was it spread? Perhaps through the air or by fleas, which do not need to have rats.

Hrothgar’s Playlist is an assignment one of my colleagues has come up with for Brit Lit I. I like it and will be adopting/adapting it for my class. I haven’t actually seen his assignment, just heard someone else talk about it, so I may change it up, but here is what I have so far.

Hrothgar’s Playlist
Choose a character whom we have read about this semester. Find ten appropriate songs for this particular character. Attach the MP3 files or links to the songs online. Attach the lyrics. Write an essay explaining why you picked the songs you did and/or how those songs apply to the character.

Extra credit, minor: Find ten images which express something about the character and explain in a paragraph each how the images are related to the character.
Extra credit, major: Create a digital story (audio and visual) using lines from the songs to tell about this character. (There you will have the original playlist plus the images, plus a title, introduction, discussion, reflection, etc.)

Apparently this is a very popular assignment and I think it could be a great final assignment.

Introduction
I am going to introduce Hrothgar’s playlist with this commercial: Stethoscope.

The Winter’s Tale symposium — 12 November 2011
University of Liverpool. UK
contact email:
ndas@liverpool.ac.uk

This one-day Symposium is a part of the larger month-long Liverpool Winter’s Tale Festival (www.liv.ac.uk/the-winters-tale) celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. It aims to enhance our understanding of this complex play, and papers presented at the symposium may focus on the text at the moment of production, its relationship with its predecessors and contemporaries, both within Shakespeare’s own writing and beyond, its transmission through editorial processes, as well as its interpretation through contemporary performances and re-readings. Confirmed speakers include Helen Cooper (Cambridge), Subha Mukherji (Cambridge) and Lori Humphrey Newcomb (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

We warmly invite proposals for 15-20 minute papers. Proposals for papers, including titles and abstracts (of no more than 300 words) should be sent to Nandini Das (ndas@liverpool.ac.uk) before 31st July 2011.

We are also delighted to offer up to 3 bursaries of £100 each, which will be awarded to postgraduate speakers courtesy of the Society for Renaissance Studies, www.rensoc.org.uk.

I wish I could go, but I can’t. However, if some of yall can go, have fun! And wear a party hat for me!