Course Finished

Having braved security in Amsterdam (they do not mess around) I am back in the US.  I’ve got a few more blog posts to go about my travels.  Hope folks will keep checking…I thought I would write a quick final reflection on my course and what I learned since that is what I ask my students to do at the end of the year.

Overall, my course ended well.  I certainly learned a lot between the two papers  I wrote.  In the first, I was way too bogged down in theory.  I was trying to do too much.  The best moments in the paper were when I was observing and thinking about the the text.  Big lesson:  STICK TO THE TEXT!!!  My second paper went much more smoothly for this reason.  I did a little research on Walter Benjamin– brilliant philosopher who developed a theory of the city.  Writing mostly about Berlin and Paris, he believed cities could be read like texts.  Sadly, he died trying to escape the Nazis in 1940 before his last work, The Arcades Project, was finished.  It has been published as a long series of notes about different aspects of the covered markets and shopping “alleys” in Paris. Using Benjamin’s ideas as a guide, I looked at the descriptions of cities in two novels (The East End of London in A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and the Parisienne Les Halles–the markets of The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola) and “read” the descriptions of the cities and how the architecture and urban elements affected the characters–specifically grotesque and flaneur figures.  I learned so much by thinking about the descriptions and patterns in the text.  Humble observation and patient thinking is the most original and exciting way to interpret literature . I was pleased with my final work and will certainly take these lessons to my own students as well my own work.

The Most Important Word in British English…

…is not “bloke” or “fish and chips” or “Right!” or “Cheers,” although these words/phrases are all essential to British vernacular and expression. One can learn the most about English culture from the word, “proper.”

A side note: After six years of work, Samuel Johnson finished his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 –the first to use definitions and literary references and not just synonyms.  It was the most widely used and respected dictionary until the OED was published 150 years later. We visited his London house this week.  His dictionary is exhaustive, and many entries are quite funny.  Look here for some examples: Dr. Johnson’s Definitions. Here is his entry (from a later edition edited by Alexander Chalmers and published in 1843).

PROPER. a. [propere; Fr; proprius, Lat.]

Peculiar; not belonging to more; not common.  Hooker. Noting an individual.  Watts.  One’s own. Shakespeare.  Natural, original. Milton. Fit; accommodated; adapted; suitable; qualified.  Dryden. Exact; accurate; just. Not figurative. Burnet. It seems in Shakespeare to signify, mere; pure. Shakespeare [propere. Fr] Elegant, pretty.  Heb xi. Tall, lusty; handsome with bulk; well-made, good-looking; personable. Shakespeare.

Here is my dictionary entry, Johnson style.

PROPER. a [most significant word in British English, according to non-lexionographer, Anne Tommaso]

England. Right. good. as it should be. I’ve experienced so much that is proper England: London, Pubs. Moors. Dales. Cricket. Etc. Fry Up. Robust, salty, filling. A day of study must begin with a proper breakfast. [Consists of egg, sausage, ham/bacon, stewed tomatoes, beans, black pudding (if it’s really proper). Haute Couture. Pressed. tucked in, well-groomed. Peruse Walter’s or Duckers on the Turl in Oxford for a proper shirt, trousers, and wingtips.  Etiquette. Fair, according to standard, civilized. Form a proper queue when waiting for bus, ATM, coffee, ticket, anything. Jumping a queue is not proper.

Feel free to add another entry…

Howarth

Got to Yorkshire, which felt like real England.  Endless stone walls, cozy pubs, green rolling fields, chatty sheep…and we also got to spend the morning in Howarth, land of the Brontes, and the surrounding Keighley Moors, which are the setting for all that blustery walking in Wuthering Heights.

The Howarth Parsonage sits up at the top of the cute and sooty village.  It wasn’t too “cute” in the nineteenth century however.  It took courage to try to live there–there are devastating health statistics about Howarth like: The average life expectancy was 26; an average of four families shared one privy; 41% of people died before they were 6 in Howarth; 21% of people died from disease without ever being seen by anyone connected to the health profession. There is not an empty space in the graveyard surrounding the parsonage, which was etherial and misty– the grass was sort of electric green and the stones are all at skewed angles.  Women from the village used to come up and hang their laundry on the gravestones, a practice the parson, Patrick Bronte, discouraged.

There were six Bronte children. After the family buried their mother who died from cancer, the two eldest Bronte sisters died after ill-treatment at a nearby school (which was the model for Lowood in Jane Eyre).  The four remaining children stayed with their father at the parsonage in Howarth, and died all very young from tuberculosis.  Charlotte lived the longest, continued writing, publishing, and editing her sisters’ works,  but died in her mid thirties as well.  There are many more details of their short lives found on the museum’s webpage, linked here.

The climate, remoteness up on their mountain next to the blustery, empty landscape of the Moors, the everpresent threat of death from the unhealthy conditions all possibly contributed to the stormy imaginations of the sisters.  They’re some of the most bold, brave, and inspired literary recluses.

A student’s recompense?

So, I have a paper due tomorrow.  5-10 pages and the paper is bigger in England.

I’ve chosen to apply Structuralist theory to the non-literary texts that are important to the conflict and deceit in Madame Bovary.  I’m sitting on the floor of my room.  There are no less than 15 piles around me: either annotated books, notebook paper, earlier drafts, photocopied articles, etc.  I have been working for about 20 hours total, not including reading the novel (which I’ve done twice).  I have been productive tonight though: started a poem and revised another, added new knitting patterns I like to my list, eaten some chips, checked my 3 email accounts about 10 times each, and written this post. I have a high degree of uncertainty about the quality of my writing and ideas and not a lot of direction of where to go next.  It has to get done though. I’ll write a post after my tutorial on Wednesday when I get feedback from my professor.

Literary Adventures in Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury: Modernist Mecca. At the risk of ticking off literary spots, here are some we hunted down in London.

1. 48 Doughty St, Home of Charles Dickens and now a museum

2. Gordon Square, One of the homes of Virgina Woolf (there are so many London locations associated with her), Vanessa Bell, Lynton Strachey, Maynard Keynes Et al.

3. Russell Square: Past home of publisher, Faber & Faber where T.S. Eliot worked for 25 years; it is the current home of SOAS: School for Oriental and Asian Studies

4. Tavistock Square, July 7, 2010 was the fifth anniversary of a suicide bomb that went off on a bus and killed thirteen people. Flowers and notes were left in memoriam.

5. Soho…funky, progressive, and expensive shopping, eating & drinking district…and we found The Dog & Duck, haunt of G.O.

Stratford-Upon-Avon

This little town is kind of Shakespeare Disneyland.  I wandered around looking up with my camera in my hands before going to see a production of King Lear with other Bread Loaf students. It’s crowded and there is a lot for sale.

Not being a very religious person, I can’t say I have had many spiritual or moving experiences while physically inside a church.  However being inside Holy Trinity Church where is Shakespeare is buried was moving. 

I’m not sure if it was the clear piano echoing across the walls, or the tidy man to whom you hand your pound, or the fact that every seat has a corresponding hand needlepointed pillow for kneeling that made me pause, take a seat,  and stay in the church for a while.  Or more abstractly, maybe it is because I haven’t been to many memorials dedicated wholly to writers, especially not incorporated into churches. We mostly build monuments to war. Maybe this place is more sacred because it pays homage someone who toiled in words and human emotions and who made it his work to think about  both the dark and beautiful workings of the human mind.  I’m not sure where else to go with this, so I’ll just end it here.

Space and the City

It appears like I am putting up two posts in one day, but this one has been in the works for a while.

I’ve been here a week, wandered around Oxford’s college, shops, and green space a lot and had one visit to London. In Oxford space is very delineated.  There are courtyards following courtyards at the different colleges, all with gravel paths and unwalkable greens.  It gives those who live and study here a sense of privacy and very clear indications of what is private space and public space.

This is the front quad at Lincoln College, my home for this summer in the first picture.  Visitors can enter the huge doors during open hours and look over the gate at the quad, but only the college’s residents can access the private interiors: eating and living space.  It’s like there are levels of inclusion or maybe exclusion….

The Bodelian Library is also interesting to think about in terms of space.  It’s layered.  First, gates with huge heads staring out and heralding Muses on the tops of buildings, then gates surrounding space, then the library itself which is a big square with a hollow middle.  The middle makes up a sort of stone courtyard with doors labeled for disciplines of study.  From there, only readers with a card are allowed in and even we must show ID, open our bags for the guard.  The rooms themselves are wooden and creaky.  All of this sits over 10-12 million books that must be ordered from underground and which cannot be removed from the library. And, you must say and sign an oath when you first get your card.  These layers of defined space seem very connected to the culture and expectations of the library.

The Front Quad at Lincoln College

Muse on the Roof of the Bodelian

From the outside, looking into stone courtyard of Bodelian

The Bodelian’s Inner Courtyard

Tate Modern Interior

And then yesterday I went to London.  There will much more here about London, but keeping with this theme is my first visit to the Tate Modern Art Museum.  It’s one of the most striking museums I’ve visited for its use of space.  It is surrounded by green lawns, trees, benches, and the Thames walk, but the parallel of a courtyard is inside the building.  Huge studded steel beams and a gradual ramp frame the space that is so huge and beautifully empty.  After all the cornices and decoration of Oxford’s colleges, this solid, blank space felt expansive even calming.  And there is nothing exclusive about the Tate.  Walk right in, no admission fee, open floors with gallery space all around.  You can even take pictures of the art.