For Credit: New Challenges in Writing

The third paper you're writing for this course requires you to exercise some different mental skills than the other writing you've done so far. Reflect here on what kinds of challenges this paper topic is presenting for you.

Deadline: Wednesday (4/22), noon.

For Credit: Essays for Third Paper

Over there in the right-hand sidebar is the topic for the third paper, along with the three articles you can choose among for writing it.

The three articles vary a great deal, and each will present different challenges for writing a critique.

The Doody article is the one that lines up most squarely with the time frame for our readings, and it may be the most clearly written of the three--but though it is perhaps the easiest to read, it may be difficult to find a standpoint from which to pick some critical holes in it.

The Jackson and Prins essy, "Lyrical Studies," is the most recent of the three essays and perhaps the hardest to get a handle on. It's also firmly oriented, though, towards the C19, which may make it a bit easier to write about (once you understand what it's arguing). You can ask, as you read along, "how do these claims NOT apply to the earlier poets we've been reading?" "what here is more generally characteristic of women's poetry than the authors assume?" "how are these claims about poetry not taking into account earlier poetry by women?" Answers to questions like those may give you some interesting avenues for writing.

Mellor's "The Female Poet and the Poetess" is perhaps the most influential of these three essays--it gets referred to a lot (Backscheider makes mention of it, and Jackson and Prins clearly have it in mind, as do most critics who choose the term "poetess" over "poet.") It describes historical phenomena that, according to Mellor, largely begin with early Romanticism--precisely the sort of arguable yet plausible claim that can give you room for a good counterargument based on your reading (much of which has been pre-1780).

We'll be talking about these essays on Friday. Here, though, feel free to identify anything in these essays that you're finding particularly baffling, ask any questions that would help you make more sense of this reading, or try out any fledgling ideas about how to write about this material.

Deadline: Friday (4/17), noon.

Emily Was Right! It was A Totally Different Poem. OMG.

Wow--in my zeal to give you all Lonsdale's belittling summary of Carter's achievement I managed to overlook the fact that Carter wrote (at least) two poems about Elizabeth Singer Rowe, and that the poem published in Lonsdale's anthology is NOT the same poem I posted on the blog (which as Emily pointed out, is much longer and goes on to the next page). See those close reading skills in action? It takes a Ph.D. to get it THAT wrong.

Ahem.

Anyone care to comment on the interesting differences between the two poems? (If you missed class today or lost your handout, the Carter poem I distributed is available in the sidebar).

Anyone care to read a little Rowe, now that she's inadvertently come up 2x with relation to Carter? Here's an elegy she wrote on her dead husband--evidence that some C18 women did in fact love their male life partners (and yes, if you click on the window, you will find the poem extends for a couple more pages).


The Miscellaneous Works, in Prose and Verse, of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe By Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Theophilus Rowe, Thomas Rowe

For Credit: Links in the Chain

Milcah Martha Moore's book includes Hannah Griffitt's reflections on the poems of Elizabeth Carter. Elizabeth Carter's Poems On Several Occasions (1762) is probably the work that Griffitts was familiar with; it includes the following poem, on another female poet, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, who wrote on religious things and was enormously popular in North America as well as England during the C18. Here's the poem, from the 1825 edition of Carter's collected works (edited by her nephew):


Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, With a New Edition of Her Poems, Some of which Have Never Appeared Before; to which are Added, Some Miscellaneous Essays in Prose, Together with Her Notes on the Bible, ... By Montagu Pennington, Elisabeth Carter

Your thoughts?

For Credit: Elizabeth Carter

On Wednesday, we read Griffitt's poem in praise of Elizabeth Carter. Here's what Roger Londsdale has to say about her, in his anthology, C18 Women Poets:

Early in her career, Elizabeth Carter did much to make the woman writer "respectable," taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by the periodical press, dealin gconfidently from an early age with publishers and literary men, and dedicating herslef to impressive scholarship, without arousing the mockery or hostility usually directed at women who wrote professionally or at "learned ladies," For thse reasons she was often cited and hailed with some awe as an exemplary figure for women. Having won high literary reputation and financial security by the 1760s, she did not thereafter develop this inspirational role. Her elegant and decorous, if relatively small, output of verse was highly influential...but its effect was mostly inhibiting. An obituary praised the "Sublime simplicity of sentiment, melodious sweetness of expression, and morality the most amiable" in her poems, but her nephew and biographer granted her "ease, correctness, and elegance" rather than "fire or strength." She is perhaps doomed to be best remembered for Johnson's intended compliment, that "My old friend, Mrs. Carter, could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus." (Lonsdale 166-167)

There's a tone of disappointment to this narrative; Lonsdale seems to think that Carter somehow let the team down. Without having read Carter's work, you are not in a position to evaluate the "fire and strength" of her verse, but as readers of a broad swathe of C18 women's poetry, you do have a context for evaluating the interpretive frame Lonsdale puts around it, particularly given the very different spin that Griffits gives it in #92, "By the same on reading Eliza. Carters poems" (p. 263-264). Your reflections?

For Credit: The Poems We'll Be Talking About Friday

This week, we're transitioning from the mapping of C18 women's poetry--what's out there, what are the various kinds of experience depicted in poetry, who's writing it and why, what does and doesn't get said in verse--to questions about what it all adds up to. What interesting interpretive claims can one make about C18 women's poetry (or any coherent subset thereof)? What are the key contextual questions to ask? What does the study of this body of literature tell us about the world that we didn't already know?

Obviously, an effort to answer those questions with reference to the whole of C18 women's poetry will result in claims that are so vague as to be useless. So let's start by trying to come to some interpretive conclusions about the particular subset of C18 women's poetry brought together in Martha Milcah Moore's book. Let me ask again the question I put on the board on Wednesday: To what extent (and how) does Martha Milcah Moore's book express/articulate/give voice to a feminist consciousness? Or to put the question another way, what does it matter that most of the poems included in MMM's book are by women?

In addition to the poems and prose from the book that we've been talking about this week, here are a couple of others that might be read as speaking directly to these women's awareness of the gendered parameters of their lives:

85. To the Memory of Sarah Morris... (p. 253-255): she was well-known Quaker preacher, who spoke not only within her own congregation but travelled widely to preach in other places.

99. On reading the Adventurer World &c. (p. 270-272): Griffitts here critiques British women based on their representation in British periodicals of the time.

We'll be talking about these poems in class on Friday. Feel free to respond here with your reflections on the MMM poems we've been reading this week, the issue of how the poets in the book treat their specifically female experience of the world, or more broadly, the question of the broader interpretive questions to which C18 women's poetry can supply useful or provocative answers.

For Credit: Writing Process

Take a step back for a moment from the literary content of this course, and consider instead the fact that it is an Advanced Composition class. Bracketing the frustrations of the particular assignment I've saddled you with, what kinds of more general problems in academic writing would you like to work on? What do you find particularly difficult when you write academic papers for your lit. courses? What writing skills do you feel like you need to develop further? When you start working on an academic writing assignment, was aspects of the task seem most daunting, even baffling?

Reflect here on your own writing process, and those aspects of it that you would like to work on improving.

Deadline: Friday (4/3), noon.