The topic sheet for this part of the Midsemester Project specifies that you are to make a blog post about the editing choices you made in making a modern edition of your poem for your class. Feel free to make that post here, in the form of a response to this post.
What kinds of choices did you find yourself making in (a) selecting a poem to teach to your classmates, (b) preparing a modern edition of the poem, and (c) writing a short analysis of the poem? Reflect on the process of doing this assignment here.
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Mary Masters’s poetry is very straight forward; in fact, almost all that I read from her was extremely plain. There are very few frills or extended metaphors. I chose “On a Lady who refused the Address of four Gentlemen eminent in their Profession, and died a Maid” because while being in the same trend as Masters’s poetry it is humorous. The plain language and lack of allusions is the primary reason that there were so few annotations needed. The gentlemen are all unnamed except by their professions. The term ‘physic’ is an antiquated term for doctor, not a scientist. ‘Albion’ was probably the most obscure word in the poem, but after I looked it up in the OED I discovered that it is a traditional name for England, much like Eire is for Ireland. The term ‘Albion’ was later used by William Blake in his mythology as the primeval man. The final notation is just a reminder about Greek mythology if anyone was unclear of the fourth suitor’s profession.
Besides those few clarifications Masters’s language is very simple; however, there is a certain amount of ambiguity within “On a Lady who refused the Address of four Gentlemen in eminent in their Profession, and died a Maid.” Masters never mentions exactly why Celia refuses all of her gentlemen. Three of the gentlemen are from very respected and stable professions: a doctor, a lawyer, and a clergyman. The fourth suitor is a musician, but Masters states in the first stanza of the poem that Celia’s beaus are “Distinguish’d each in his Profession.” Is Masters continuing the tradition of anti-matrimony sentiments as Backscheider presents it? Or is it just a fanciful tale about a maiden who was “sprung from Race Divine” and was too good to “with a Mortal join?” Also, the choice of terminology describing the professions is interesting? Why does the doctor “Sue Celia to comply in vain,” or the lawyer have “Vows and Pray’r” or even the clergyman have the unrequited love that is characteristic of musicians and artists?
See you all in class tomorrow!
While I was perusing Mary Barber's poems, I was looking for something for class that had enough depth to be open for discussion and remained interesting. "Breeches" was the first poem I came upon back when we were assigned to find a C18 woman poet for our project, so it stuck with me in the back of my mind while I looked through all of the other poems. Ultimately, after some close contenders came into the playing field, I decided to stick with my first intuition.
After reading through the poem a few time and figuring out what it was that I wanted to say about the poem, I decided to look into the various possible connotations that her language suggests, focusing mainly on the tyrannical and surgical images. I made good use of the OED and tried to footnote a couple possible definitions for each of the terms I found interesting or poignant. The footnotes weren't necessarily, in my eyes, what the poet was definitely implying, but rather offered a couple of different stances from which the terms could be interpreted. As is the case with most poetry, I felt like Barber was choosing words which didn't solely speak on the basal level. Consider the case of the shoemaker, which I feel didn't go over quite as well as I hoped it would in discussion. Barber could simply be speaking of a shoemaker, or could be making use of the Latin proverb that I came across in the OED. Whether or not she actually had said proverb in mind isn't necessarily what I found important. For me, it was more a matter that the possibility that she did have this in mind existed and could be discussed.
After making all of my footnotes, I took a little while to finish up my formulation of arguments, made a rough lesson plan for the main tenets of the discussion, and then let it simmer on the back burner over the weekend before presenting to class on Monday. So there it is! A window into my creative process.
In selecting a poem to teach my classmates, I wanted something short and to the point. The reason for this is because a lot of times, when reading treacherously long poems, one often finds themselves lost in the lines of the poem rather than being able to make connections and draw conclusions from the words themselves. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy a long poem—some poems are pages upon pages and are very interesting—but I wanted to be able to have a relatively short poem so that I could teach it to our class in a 30-40 minute time frame. Also, I wanted a poem that I felt the students in our class could relate to. Male/female dynamics still play a huge role in our society today, and the question of whether or not marriage is the right way to go is even more prominent than it was in the 18th century. Thus, I chose my poem.
In preparing a modern edition of the poem, I read over it a few times and underlined words that didn’t make sense to me because of their C18 context. I searched for meanings in the OED and replaced the words I didn’t understand with the new words and read the poem again to see if it made sense. The words/phrases I didn’t know were ‘fratch’, ‘nae mair’, ‘frae’ etc., and when I looked in the OED, it was more than helpful in translating the older English/Scottish words. I figured if I did not understand the words, most likely, my classmates would not either which is why I chose the words I did. When writing an analysis on the poem, I found myself reflecting on the Blamire’s take on marriage. She does not say outright that she doesn’t agree with marriage but for the first 5 stanzas, she pretty much lays out all the bad things about marriage and ends on a note saying that perhaps friendship is the way to handle your relationships. It made me question how other women might have regarded marriage during the 18th century and a lot of my analysis was based on that topic. Also in analyzing this poem, I thought a lot about how it connected to other poets we have read either in this class or in other time periods. It was amazing how many connections I could actually make once I got started. Doing the assignment helped me see how Susanna Blamire’s work is in essence spread over 100 years of literary critiques. After writing my analysis, I was able to come up with questions I wanted to ask the class and was able to come up with a direction of where I wanted to go.
I chose “To the Nightingale” because it is one of the very small number of Bannerman’s poems that actually fit into Backscheider’s taxonomy. As I stated in class, much of her poetry is riddled with gothic imagery, and is difficult to place within an eighteenth-century critical view. This also relates to the fact that, by selecting a poem that adheres to what we’ve been learning, I was also able to reveal key differences presented by Bannerman’s poetry, such as the melancholy mood that runs unresolved throughout “To the Nightingale.”
Once I picked that particular poem, I made sure to create footnotes for the mythological allusions included in it because we seem to ask a lot of questions in class regarding this topic. Aurora was also an important figure in other relationships that work within the poem. In addition to the annotations on mythology, I found a few words that the poet employed in ways that were dissimilar to modern usage and thus, possibly confusing when a modern reader tries to define them within the poem’s context. The OED was quite helpful in most of my research, and I feel that it broadened my view of Bannerman’s poetry. Some of the words that I chose to footnote were those with two or more meanings that seemed to fit into the poem. In this way, I tried to give it more depth and to welcome a variety of interpretations.
I originally wished to teach "Epitaph to a Tame Chicken", but after reading through it a couple times I decided it didn't have enough substance to warrant a fifty minute discussion. When I found "The Choice" I immediately locked onto the interesting imagery of the 'pen' as her friend. Although it was not a perfect match for Backscheider's view on friendship poetry, it did contain an interesting twist on the idea of a friend.
When preparing the modern edition I noted that there were many hyphened words. Instead of taking out these hyphens I decided to leave them in because they were necessary for the flow of the poem. The poem also did not contain many words that needed footnotes, so I focused on words that had a different meaning than the most common in modern English. Fad was the most interesting of the footnotes, because of its variance from the modern form.
The short analysis was the most difficult part of the process, because there was such an open ended approach to writing it. I decided to focus on what made "The Choice" friendship poetry, and what clearly separated it from friendship poetry. I played on the contrast between its elements that made it both a poem about agency and a poem where agency is denied.
Well, to be honest, I ended up looking through quite a few different poems by different authors mentioned in Backscheider and chose this one simply because it fit the criteria necessary (or so I thought at the time...Smith has been collected recently [I found later]. Mia culpa) and I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps it is frightfully creepy of me, but I love the depth of thought and emotion that is often present around the subjects of "shuffling off this mortal coil". No, I am really not creepy (or obsessed with lesbians) in real life, I swear. It appeals for no more threatening reason than that it allows me to observe how different people react to their inexorable journey. Thought and fear of death have driven people to some of the extremes of heroism, comedy, eccentricity, cowardice, hatred, and harm. It was once said that the nature of a person can be judged by their enemies. To take this further it seems that the best measure of a soul is displayed in how it reacts to said enemy. The larger the foe, the more severe, and telling, the reaction. I am interested in what makes people face an implacable obstacle and react with such varying actions. It is a puzzle to me.
Ok, defensive rant over. It is a dark poem and the gothicy-ness appealed to me. In addition, I chose it due to the possible presence of same sex attraction which I figured would give me more to talk about and would segway into other works we have read.
The editing of the poem was a little tricky in parts but not as hard as some of my peers' appears to have been. I was spared any direct classical allusions which was actually a bit of a let down. The easiest part was the changing of the f's to s's. No brainer. I include it to be precise. I centered the text BUT I should not have done so as the original text is laid out in quatrains where the first and third lines jut out slightly from the second and fourth. While I am not certain what that layout brings to a poem it would be foolish of me to knowingly change it and, in so doing, deprive others of the ability to find meaning within it.
I replaced words such as "robb'd" (6) with "robbed" as it brings the word into a modern spelling with no change in syllable count or meaning. One of my more controversial decisions came in replacing "yon" (10) which I knew referred to something "over there" and replaced it with "that". ("this" would indicate something over 'here') I really wrestled with this one. The syllable count remained the same, the word was updated, but I worried about any lost meaning. For the purpose of this poem however, the definition of "that" and "yon" seemed close enough save for the fact that "yon" tends to connote things that are not just "not here" but are rather distantly someotherwhere. Some indication of that meaning may have been lost but, for the purpose of editing this assignment, the positives seemed to outweigh the consequences. The other editorial choice which I think bears mentioning is the replacement of "thine" with "yours" with an explanation that "yours" was originally "thine" and therefore preserved the rhyme scheme. "Thine" simply seemed too outdated for a modern reader and "yours" matches syllabically and updates the term but compromises the rhyme scheme until one looks at the notes. A choice I was willing to make. The changing of "wert" to "were" follows the same logic.
The most difficult part of this assignment was the paper. I found that when I went to write on this particular poem I had quite a bit of trouble filling up a page. Bad news, I know. The ideas that I had wanted to pursue upon sighting this poem took up remarkably little length on the page. I chose to focus most on the presence of gothic imagery and theme as well as the same-sex desire threads I mentioned earlier. There was not, aside from these two main elements, all that much to recommend the poem that was substantial enough to warrant a paragraph. This would concern me in light of the upcomin paper were it not for the expanded base of the upcomng assignment.
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