Excellent discussion today! We're off to a great start. If you're curious about Mary Jones, I encourage you to look her up in the Eighteenth-Century Poetry anthology (aka Blackwell), which has a comprehensive biographical note about her. The anthology does not reprint "Holt Water" (surprising?) but it does have some other poems from the volume of her poetry, the only book she is known to have written.
What follows is a grab-bag of questions about "Holt Water." You can get blog credit for answering any one of them (so long as you don't repeat someone else's response), or by taking issue (kindly and constructively, please!) with what someone else has written. As I said in class, blog posts are meant to be short, informal, and low- stress. That said, any interpretive remark about the poem should be supported by a brief and relevant quotation drawn from it.
1. How does the biographical info about Jones change how you read "Holt Water"?
2. It was suggested in class that "Holt Water" might actually mean "holy water." What outside information about the term "Holt Water" or "Holt" can you find to support this claim or to suggest some other reason for the title?
3. What is significant about the name "Baucis"? What outside information can you find to suggest why Jones goes from calling the dairy-maid "Nan or Mary" to calling her "Baucis"?
4. [This question continues the tail end of our discussion in class, and assumes that you had a look at the biographical info about Jones.] What additional questions would you like to ask about "Holt Water"? What continues to puzzle or surprise you about it?
Deadline:
(Please note--the "For Credit" questions below are still open for responses and will be until Monday.)
2 comments:
According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, classical Greek mythology tells the story of Baucis and her husband Philemon. The couple offered hospice to Zeus and Hermes when no other Greeks would take them in, thus they were gifted salvation from a flood and appointed priest and priestess to the Gods. Jones' shift in nomenclature for the dairy maid from that of lowly pastoral "Nan" to the mythical "Baucis" could prove deferential. While the woman is utterly unaware of the vile transgression, her propriety of the milk house (or affiliation thereof) implicates her as provider of sanctuary for a traveling soul in dire need. In providing this ethereal service, the poet grants her honorary mythical status. On the other hand, Jones may be poking fun at the milk maid, for despite her implicit hospitality, she was not quite granted the same impunity from the Gods as Baucis, for in the myth, Baucis and her husband were saved from the flood. The milk maid, unfortunately, receives the entirety of Chloe's "flood," even mistaking a draught of it for spoiled ale.
"Philemon and Baucis." Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 22, 2009, from Columbia Encyclopedia Database
According to OED (and dictionary.com), Holt refers to a wooded area or holding something. Holt could also refer to a location as we discussed in class. If we took Holt to refer to holding, then the title would be holding water. For obvious reasons this would be a fitting title. The girl's situation is entirely due to her inability to 'hold' her water anymore, and so she has to find a new 'bathroom'.
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