More's Utopia: Page Numbers and Study Questions

Re-reading More's Utopia, I've decided that not all of Book I is absolutely necessary to read--the descriptions of the island of Utopia are far more interesting. This'll keep your total reading for this week the same, and cut way down on next week's. So, for 5/4, please just read:

• "Thomas More to Peter Giles, Greetings" (521-24)
  
• Book I, only through Raphael's dialog with the Cardinal about thieves, slaves and the death penalty (524-35)
  
• And then from Book II, just up to the section entitled "The Travels of the Utopians" (545-56)
  

QUESTIONS:

Q1 (Sophia): How would you describe the tone of the opening letter to Peter Giles? If you had read it without knowing that Utopia wasn’t a real place, and that Raphael was a made-up character, what would you think? How does that effect the tone?

Q2 (James): What do you make of Raphael’s argument against private property? What historical events does More seem to be reacting to? (Hint: check out this passage, “Your sheep . . . that used to be so meek and eat so little. Now they are becoming so greedy and wild that they devour human beings themselves, as I hear,” p. 531).

Q3 (Emily): What do you think of Raphael’s alternative to capital punishment as a penalty for theft?

Q4 (Carrie): Why does More set Utopia in the Americas (i.e., in the “New World”)?

Q5 (Mardy): Based on what you have read about Utopia so far, what do you think would be the ramifications if certain of their laws and customs were imported to Taiwan? Pick a couple. (Bonus: Is a Utopia, or perfect society, possible?)

Q6 (Debbie): Say something about the “occupations” of the Utopians (550-53).

Q7 (Verthandi): Say something about the “social relations” of the Utopians (553-56).

Q8 (Valerie): What do you make of this Raphael Hythloday figure? How seriously do you think we should take him? (Hint: Look at the early footnote about his name; does that undercut what he says, or does it merely relieve More of responsibility for his character’s controversial ideas?)

Midterm Tips

As all of you finish up your studying, here's a few last minute tips:

1. Once again, re-reading all of the words in each of the texts might not be the best way to use your study time. Instead, go back through the texts and look for key passages that you think will be important, or that you think you could write an essay about; remind yourself of the basic order of events in each text, but only focus on what you think is important in the context of the class. Study, in other words, strategically.
   
2. Get those passages straight in your head so that you don't have to flip open the book to re-remember what they were about; the test will be timed (2hrs), and searching for the 100% perfect quote will, more often than not, waste more time than it will save you. I recommend keeping a closed book for the first half, in fact.
   
3. To refresh your understanding of the history of the texts, read the Norton introductions to them, and to the periods. Also, in the Chaucer handouts, it might be helpful to read the bits and pieces of the tales that come before and after The Miller's and the Wife of Bath's tales.
   
4. Practice reading a few sonnets you've never seen before. (Hint: For inspiration, push the Shakespeare bobble-head doll, pictured right.)
   
5. Write some sample questions, and organize the texts and quotations you might use to answer them.
6. Practice your facility with meter by reading Shakespeare's Sonnet 12 (pp. 1062-63), and marking the stresses and unstresses... then decide what that meter is emphasizing. I'll note some interesting things about the meter in the comments below.

Happy studying! If all goes as planned, we'll watch a movie in the last part of class tomorrow.

Midterm Study Sessions

Later this week I have planned a set of 5-7 person study sessions to help all of you prepare for the midterms. Tentative times are:

Wednesday, 5-6pm
Friday, 11-12
Friday, 1-2
Friday, 2-3
Friday, 4-5

Feel free to claim a spot in one of those times in the comments section below (there will be a cap of 7, for now). The basic format will be 100% informal, with you asking questions and me answering them.

Therefore, when you come, you'll need to do two things:

• Bring three questions about the readings we've done, one of each of these types:
  

One Detailed Textual Question (e.g., In Sonnet 65 what does Shakespeare mean by "the wrackful siege of battr'ing days"?; or, What is iambic pentameter, and what is an alexandrine?);


One Thematic Question about a Text (e.g., Why is the Green Knight green? or, Why does Julian of Norwich keep repeating that Christ told her that "Sin is behovely, but all shall be well"?);


One Big Question about History or the Connections between our Texts (What, again, does feminism mean? or, Why did the sonnet become so popular in England during the 16th century?)

• Also, bring along your Norton Anthology, and the photocopies of The Canterbury Tales.
  

See you all tomorrow!

The Faerie Queene: Week 7

The readings for this week will be from Edmund Spenser's unfinished allegorical romance, The Faerie Queene (1590):

Read: the "Letter of the Authors," pp. 716-19;
Book II, Canto 12, pp. 857-67;
and Book III, Canto 6, pp. 867-79.

It is also essential to read the editor's introduction (pp. 714-16), since it goes far to explain the poem's goals and narrative structure, which are complex.

Q1 (Joanna): In his "Letter of the Authors," Spenser tells Sir Walter Ralegh that The Faerie Queene is a "continued Allegory, or darke conceit." First, what is an allegory? Second, what is a poetic conceit? And lastly, from what we've read in Books II & III, pick out a few moments that seem to you particularly allegorical. (Hint: the Norton editors' intro could help you here. Also, bonus: why does Spenser call his poem a "darke conceit"?)

Q2 (Mandy): In the beginning of the "Bower of Bliss" episode, we hear about "a place pickt out by choice of best alive, / That natures work by art can imitate" (Book II, Canto 12, ll. 372-3). Find some places throughout the canto where "art," imitation, and illusions are discussed. What do you think the canto leads us to believe about the value of art? (Bonus: what about the fact that Spenser needs to use art to tell us this?)

Q3 (Carol J.): In the "Letter of the Authors," Spenser makes it clear that his poem is in some sense a political allegory; the Faerie Queene, for instance, is allegorical of Queen Elizabeth's public rule and private virtue. This political aspect of the poem has led some critics to suggest a connection between Book II's "The Bower of Bliss" and the colonial condition of the Irish people; (a condition Spenser knew well because he lived in Ireland, helping England impose a brutal regime upon the Irish). Take a look at this excerpt from Spenser's essay "A View of the State of Ireland" (click on the link). What connections can you draw between Book II, Canto 12 and the essay? (Hint: Lines 703-83 in that canto might be a good place to start.)

Q4 (Christine): Comment on something in the Bower of Bliss that you found interesting (or confusing, or paradoxical), or come up with a question for me. Use some quotations from the text.

Q5 (Matt): If the "Bower of Bliss" is the realm of Art and Illusion, then perhaps the "Garden of Adonis" is the dominion of Nature; it is "so faire a place as Nature can devise" (l. 255). How does Nature and how do natural things seem to work in this episode; what sorts of principles seem to guide them? Give some examples. (Hint: you can choose examples from the actual description of the Garden, or from the opening of the canto which describes Belphoebe's miraculous conception, ll. 19-81).

Q6 (Mark): Compare and contrast the initial description of the creation of forms in the "Garden of Adonis" (ll. 280-320) with the description of the "huge eternall Chaos" (ll. 321-342) that fuels that production. How are the two aspects of earthly creation related? Are they polar opposites, or do they share any qualities? Are they necessary to each other? Why does the one contain more "positive" associations and descriptions, and the other more "negative" ones?

Q7 (Renée): The "Garden of Adonis" and the "Bower of Bliss" possess an astounding number of similarities. To name three examples: they each are described as being intensely beautiful; each is somehow related to the "infinite" (Book II, Canto 12, l. 550 & Book III, Canto 6, l. 307, for example); and each have a powerful woman amorously engaging with a (more mortal) lover. (The Witch and the young man in the "Bower of Bliss," and Venus and Adonis in the "Garden"). Why then is the "Bower of Bliss" destroyed by Sir Guyon and the "Garden of Adonis" let be? What's the difference between the two? Do the differences strike you as real differences?

Q8 (Josie): Comment on something you found interesting (or confusing, or paradoxical) in the "Garden of Adonis" episode, or ask me an extended, quotation-rich question about it. Talk about whatever you like.