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Eh 242 British Literature:

Since we last met, we have read the following:

William Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven,”  “Lines,” and the 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

We will begin this work in a moment, but first we need to organize the following items:

• Short Research Paper: 20% of your final grade

Your short research paper will be 3-4 pages in length. It will offer a literary argument on one of the texts we have read by mid-semester. The paper will need to follow MLA conventions, and have at least four academic secondary sources. It will be due at the end of week five (two weeks from today)

• Individual Presentations:   20% of your final grade

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• These presentations will be 10 minutes long, and will occur throughout the semester. You will be presenting to the class on a particular aspect of a story or poem or historical development that interests you.  As part of your presentation, you will be facilitating classroom discussion. These can occur any time prior to midterm. You will need to contact me with a date and topic no later than the end of next week.

Let’s get a round of discussion: What are you responding to in the writing?

If we look at our current time-line of events and poems, we may begin to see a pattern emerging.

Anna Barbauld

The Mouse’s Petition                    1773

The Rights of Woman                    1792-95

To a Little Invisible Being             1795

Charlotte Smith

Church Yard                       1789

Lunatic                                 1797

Mary Robinson

London’s Summer Morning                        1800

The Haunted Beach                                        1800

William Blake

All Religions are One                                     1788

Songs of Innocence                                        1784

Songs of Experience                                       1794

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell            1793

William Wordsworth

Lyrical Ballads                                   1798

If we return to our time-line, a couple of notable things emerge:

1)      Blake is writing his experience poems as the Bastille is stormed

2)      All of this poetry occurs before the Reign of Terror begins in France.

• Why might this be important? Is it?

Well, we might not have an answer to this now, but we may shortly.

William Wordsworth

Short Free Writing Journal Assignment: (Suggested: Five Minutes) I think the best way to begin this conversation is to  take a few moments and write down what we think a poet “is.” What is a poet? What is poetry? Do we have preconceptions here? If so, where do they come from?

Class Discussion:

One of the things we will learn this semester is that different poets have very different ideas about what poetry is and what its potential functions may be.

I want to approach Wordsworth in the context of language, so let’s consider the opening stanza’s of

• To A Little Invisible Being (36)

• Written in A Church-Yard (41)

• London’s Summer Morning (69)

• The Lamb (83)

• We are Seven (248)

How might be begin to organize or categorize these poems in terms of their language?

Discussion of “We Are Seven”

Discussion of “Lines”

Discussion of Preface to “Lyrical Ballads”