Here's a thread to answer Professor Hamlin's email: Let's see if we can't come up with a good story based on this prompt:
By midnight look to hear.
The luckiest stars in heaven. NeverMonsieur Parolles my lord. Attain to their abhorred.
Will be too chill andtender.
Had a fatherO thathad! how. To another so we seem to know is.
(This came to Prof. Hamlin from Glenda, with the subject heading "Your mistress and make much of.")
For those of you who have not yet read Norman Jones' short essay on the nature of love and its relationship to literature on the English Department website, be sure to check it out. He's raised some interesting points about the subject, just in time for Valentine's Day. Check out the whole thing below, and share your thoughts on one of the most 'ancient debates'...
This week, we commemorate a holiday associated with Saint Valentine, traditionally considered the patron saint of lovers. In honor of St. Valentine's Day, I have a question for you about love as represented in (you guessed it!) literature. Who could put such a question better than Shakespeare? So I'll take a break and let him ask you for me. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus argues that the impulse to fall in love is like the impulse to create poetry--both are a form of madness:
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
See Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear! (5.1.2-20)
Love and literature are created by the excesses of our imagination, and both are no more reasonable than a lunatic's ravings. They invent out of nothingness "a local habitation and a name" (one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare) and pretend it's a real place they've discovered. What do you think--does Theseus have a point here? (On a different note, what about his nasty disparagement of Egyptians? The sentiment contrasts provocatively with one of Shakespeare’s famous Dark Lady sonnets (130), "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.")
Compare Theseus' argument with Plato's Symposium, which lauds the potential for love to carry our imaginations beyond the ordinary givens of everyday life: here, love is valuable precisely because it provides an intimation of the transcendent--an intimation of "the forms of things unknown," to borrow Shakespeare's phrase. In this regard, it's interesting that we often forget that Valentine's Day is named after a saint, since our culture generally makes an unofficial religion of romantic love (for evidence, just listen to any "top 40" radio station for an hour and figure the percentage of songs that portray romantic love as the end-all-be-all, the alpha and omega, in life). Popularly, we often seem to side strongly with Plato's Symposium: love gives a kind of "religious" meaning to life in that it suggests we are connected to a reality more meaningful than that of ordinary, everyday existence (to relate this back to Shakespeare, one might describe such ordinary existence as "sublunary"--does being "moonstruck," then, make us lunatics or prophets?).
This is one of the most ancient debates: what is the nature of love? I invite you to join the debate, using literature as your vehicle. Try to find a literary representation of love that best articulates your own personal view of the question. Are you a moonie? Or do you prefer to keep your feet on the ground? (By Theseus' argument, does being an English major mean you must be a moonie?) You will find this debate everywhere in the literature around you (whether in class, on the radio, on t.v., or elsewhere). Perhaps the English Club will start a thread on our blog so we can compare our choices of literary representations of love. Or perhaps we'll keep to ourselves, and some of us will wonder quietly whether there are others, too, who will choose one view this Tuesday, another on St. Valentine's holiday (a holy day?) itself, and then a third the day after when those little heart-shaped chocolates are all gone.
On this snowy Valentine's Day, I thought some of you might enjoy a puzzle. Punctuate this!
dear John I want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous
kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and
inferior you have ruined me for other men I yearn for you I have no feelings
whatsoever when we're apart I can be forever happy will you let me be yours
Gloria
Since we have new students in the English Club, and since I'm sure our older members have become addicted to something new in the past year, here's a rehash of our Secret Shames thread from a while back. Dr. Hamlin has admitted to being a Trekkie, and Dr. Jones a Buffy buff, among others (see archives to read what everyone said). What are you addicted to that might not be considered "low art?" I'll ask what Dr. Hamlin asked the last time:
"Here's my question: how do we connect our guilty pleasure in these secret shames with our literary conscience. Should we feel guilty? Is there something wrong that we enjoy something we think we shouldn't, or that we don't feel comfortable SAYING we enjoy? Or should we fess up and assume that because we enjoy it it must have some merit? Do we feel guilty because we know what we're reading isn't real quality, or just because we're told (by teachers, booklists, authorities, etc.) that it isn't? What do you think? Do you have guilty pleasures too?"