The fiction evaluation download page has been created.
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Important Dates
May Videos: Shakespeare
May 14, 2008 – 6:40 pm
May videos for Shakespeare are up. Enjoy.
Congrats to the Shakespeare 08 students.
Two More Fiction Downloads
May 14, 2008 – 3:15 am
Two more downloads for the last workshop day in Fiction.
See you all tonight.
Final Exams, Spring 08
May 9, 2008 – 10:52 am
The finals for both Shakespeare and Brit Lit II are up for download in their respective areas. Note that the emphasis here in on short answer because the research papers and whatever revisions you make to older writings in the course serve to cover gen eds in writing and content areas. Good luck with the exams.
Creative Writing Downloads
April 28, 2008 – 4:00 pm
We have new Creative Writing downloads ready in the downloads page.
Ersinghaus on Sonnet 10
April 17, 2008 – 8:25 am
Here’s Ersinghaus’ reading of Sonnet 10
Hatred and Love: A Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 10
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 10 appeals to the male subject with a challenge, a challenge to prove that he really loves by managing his resources: the love he has for the “self.” Proof of good management means: to change and to prove that he can change.
The speaker in Sonnet 10 first expresses anger toward a young man, who, according to the speaker, suffers “murderous hate” (5). This attributed hate comes in the form of accusation. He accuses the man of “unprovident” behavior (1-2). Providence, in this sense and in this non-theological context, can be defined as a rational or reasonable management of resources. The speaker clearly attempts to make the man feel shame for mismanaging his “beauteous roof ” (7). The roof, of course, is the man’s young body, which is slowly dying, but can be repaired by having children. The speaker is angry because he recognizes some amount of hypocrisy in the young man: “For shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any / Who for thyself art so unprovident (1-2). In these lines, the speaker challenges the young man to “deny” that he really loves others when he shows no evidence of loving himself. According to the speaker, the man does not reciprocate love, a form of management and reciprocation: “Grant,” he stipulates, “. . . thou art beloved by many / But that thou non lovest is most evident” (3-4). Here the speaker attributes murderous hate (5) to the man’s “unprovident behavior.” The speaker measures hate against love as a set of opposing values: hate because he’s committing suicide by not planning for his future, then love as the remedy. Love will “repair” (8) the “roof” (7).
It would appear that while the sonnet on the surface reads as an accusation, but the concluding couplets link back to the first line, reducing the accusatory tone and initial tone of anger in the speaker to a more honest appeal. In this I’ll paraphrase the challenge, then support it: “Young man, change your mind and therefore prove that my opinion of you is wrong: “Make thee another self, for love of me, / That beauty still may live in thine and thee” (13-14). Beauty here is the sustaining of the body of the young man and expressing the will to manage that beauty will “change” the speaker’s “mind” (9).
Sonnet Update from Bryan Carroll
April 16, 2008 – 6:23 pm
Erin’s Response to Sonnet 18.
Shakespeare Sonnet Analysis
This sonnet concludes that the human cycle is an unavoidable path that all will take, where in youth one will find love and even with age one will keep the love they have found. Shakespeare uses many natural elements to parallel and connect human emotion and the human life path to nature. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and temperate:”(1-2) These lines are referencing youth through summer, beauty and how these things are even more appealling then summer. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all to short a date”(3-4) He references the delicateness of beauty and youth and how life or ‘nature’ is constantly wearing away at it.
Further in the sonnet he includes an important reference to the inevitability of time, “And every fair from fair sometimes declines; By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d” These two lines speak of love fading over time. “Fair from fair declines…By nature’s changing course”(7-8 ) references looks fading specifically because of nature. “thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; ” (9 - 10) Shakespeare recognizes that one can holds onto their youth internally forever or lose the one they possess through marriage. Which is for the most part true, a
person fondly remembers their youth and with the bond of marriage promises to be true to their partner, in sickness and in health.
As the sonnet concludes lines reference the idea that you are respected by Death if you have lived a life with love as you grow older, “Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest” (11- 12 ) Shakespeare concludes the sonnet with a couplet and in the couplet he adds an almost prescriptive truth: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” (13-14) This statement concludes the idea that human nature brings man and women together and this coupling brings new life to the world and cannot be stopped.
In my opinion Bryan was close to the same conclusion, but he was a little to general with his analysis. He pointed out the fact that everything beautiful will decay over time, but really didn’t go any further then that. I feel that not only was Shakespeare recognizing the aging process, but he was recognizing the fact that with love youth can be preserved.
More Sonnet work
April 16, 2008 – 2:16 pm
Here’s Betsy’s reading of Sonnet 19
Sonnet 19 is about time and Shakespeare’s bargain with it. In the beginning of the sonnet he is telling time that it may do whatever it wants to the world and for it to run its natural course. “ And do whate’er thou wilt, swift footed time, to the wide world and her fading sweets” (6-7). After line 7, though Shakespeare seems to plea with time to spare his work when it comes to his love. Shakespeare wants time to leave his love untouched. I think he means that in a physical way because he writes, “O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen” (9-10). The drawing might refer to wrinkles. However, in the last two lines of the sonnet, Shakespeare seems to have found a way to leave his love unaltered by time, which is through his words. He writes that time can do its worst, but “My love shall in my verse ever live young” (14). Meaning that his words will still remain the same and have the same meaning no matter how much time may pass.
Ersinghaus’ response to Betsy:
Betsy Marceau reads Sonnet 19 as a work about time and bargains. She writes, “Sonnet 19 is about time and Shakespeare’s bargain with it.” She reads the poem as having three divisions. The first is time as a natural phenomenon that has, as she writes, “a natural course.” To support this reading she quotes lines 6 through 7: “And do whate’er though wilt, swift-footed time, / To the wide world and all her fading sweets.” Marceau’s secondary division is the “plea” section, where the speaker of the poem pleas “. . . to leave his love untouched.” Thirdly comes the final two lines. Marceau claims that these lines point to a “resolution,” where the speaker has found a solution to the dilemma of time: poetry itself.
This is a solid reading (though light on context: re: supportive quotation), especially in the context of “time” and “bargains.” In the first few lines of the poem, Shakespeare develops a conclusion about time as a force to whom one can plead. In the sonnet the speaker addresses time directly, engaging a figure of speech called apostrophe (yeah, sure, I can’t help but tease in a term for you to play with), as if time has “reason.” But this apostrophe, the direct address to a “thing,” comes in a fairly forceful and perhaps rude form. “. . . time,” the speaker says, “blunt (1), “make” (2), “Pluck” (3), “burn” (4). The speaker even “accuses time of “devouring” in line 1, not really a great way to make friends. Are these verbs, when addressed to time, appropriate if the speaker is asking for a favor or making a “plea”?
Of course not. Because a favor is not being asked. Rather, as Ms. Marceau suggests, this address merely “describes” what time does as a natural force and, as Marceau explicates, if time is going to be time, then it may simply proceed, because, as the last lines assert: “My love shall in my verse ever live young.” It is interesting, on the speaker’s part, that the content of a poem can be described as being alive in the sense that the poem is a container for memory.
