ENG201Y (L5101, Prof. Percy): Essay #1
Due: Wednesday, November 13th,
2002, at 6:10 p.m.
Length: 4-5 typed pages (1000-1250 words)
Handing in: If not to me in class, then to the porter at Wetmore Hall, New
College. It is your responsibility to get it date-stamped!
Weight: Worth 12.5% of final mark.
Late penalty: 2% per working day (Monday through Friday
inclusive), to a maximum of 2 weeks/20%. Not accepted thereafter without
medical/registrar-supported documentation.
Topics: As I think of them, I will add specific essay topics to the
course home page. It’s your responsibility to check out the list on
http://cpercy.artsci.utoronto.ca/courses/eng201-2002.htm
As with the directed responses,
this assignment will encourage you to support an argument
(a)
drawn
from a comparison of two poems
(b)
principally
with points about the form of the poems.
Topics?
(a)
I
have provided a few broad suggestions below: you (and the Writing Centre?)
should refine these broad suggestions into a specific, coherent thesis.
(b)
As I
think of them, I will add topics to the version of this page on the course home
page.
(c)
If
there is a topic that you would like to write on, you must get my written
permission by November 6th! A specific, coherent working thesis and
a list of form-related supporting points will be particularly persuasive.
Supporting
points?
Although
you should support your argument with the most persuasive points (which might
not relate to the poems’ form), those points should, as much as possible,
relate to:
(a)
the
poet’s choice of form (i.e. what assumptions does a listener/reader bring to a
ballad? to a sonnet? etc.)
(b)
the
organization of content between stanzas or within a stanza;
(c)
the
organizational effect of repeated sounds or words at the beginning or ends of
units.
Primary
and secondary sources?
(a)
Your
essay must have a bibliography that gives an accurate, full,
conventionally-formatted reference to the source(s) of the poems that you have
used: i.e. to the Norton Anthology.
(b)
You
do not have to use secondary sources for this assignment.
(c)
If
you do use secondary literature, you must use a range of relevant articles and
books (8-10) and must cite them fully and accurately and conventionally.
Your
essay should “read” like an essay: although you will be thinking about “form”,
your topic sentences should be focussed on content, and should connect
logically with the topic sentences in adjacent paragraphs. Your argument should
unfold, step by step, with each paragraph.
The
subjects I’ve provided are very broad
and you will need to work hard to come up with a specific, coherent,
provocative thesis! Why not get some help? I am a fan of College Writing
Centres and urge you all to work with the tutors at your college writing
center.
I would like
you to write about two poems and about a topic that engages you. I actively
encourage you to formulate a topic of your own that draws a thesis from two
comparable poems. Think about the poems that you have most enjoyed and have
been most intellectually and emotionally engaged by; I’ll be happy to help you
come up with something. Just remember to get my written permission.
You will
have to refine these subjects into a specific, coherent, provocative thesis
about the two poems that you have chosen.
1.
What
does the portrayal of the natural world reveal about the human figure(s) in it?
You might consider:
“Fowles in the frith” and Surrey’s “The Soote Season”.
2.
Identify
and interpret the differences between versions of the “same” poem:
The two versions of “Mary Hamilton”.
Surrey’s “Love that doth reign...” and Wyatt’s “The long
love...”
“The Corpus Christi Carol” and “The Three Ravens”
3.
How
does the repetition of a refrain contribute to the portrayal of time in
Spenser’s “Prothalamion” and Wyatt’s “My lute awake!” ?
4.
What
thematic purposes are served by the itemization of women’s body parts or other
attributes (eyes, voice, breath)? Consider two of
d’Orleans, “The Smiling Mouth”, Spenser, “Sonnet 15”,
Drayton, “A Roundelay between two shepherds”, Shakespeare, “Sonnet 130”,
Donne’s “Elegy XIX. To his mistress going to bed”.
5.
What
thematic functions are served by the apparent interference with Time in
Drayton, “A Roundelay between two shepherds” and Spenser,
“Prothalamion” ?
6.
A
number of the poems we’ve looked at have represented dialogues: between a man
and a maiden who rejects him (and his idea of love?), between two shepherds,
between a body and a soul, between a Christian and his silent God. Choose two
poems that work well together, and carefully compose a well unified and
coherent paper that incorporates your analysis of the dialogue’s effects into
your interpretation of those poems. You might consider:
“The unquiet grave” and (Marlowe, “The passionate
shepherd” and Ralegh, “The nymph’s reply”)
Drayton, “A roundelay between two shepherds” and Sidney,
“Ye goatherd gods”.
Sidney, “Ye goatherd gods” and Herbert’s “The flower”
[focus on the relationship between prayer and poetry?]
7.
Both
Keats’ “La belle dame sans merci” and Drayton’s “Roundelay between two shepherds”
involve a questioner and a respondent whose relationship with nature seems to
have been changed because of an encounter with a somehow non-natural female
figure. What can you make of this (in a well unified and coherent paper)?
8.
Some
of the lyrics that we have read have silent or ambiguous audiences: Sidney’s
“goatherd gods” have “silent ears”, the reference of “thou” seems to shift in
Wyatt’s “My lute awake!” (and in Donne’s Holy Sonnet 5); the addressee of the
first stanza of “The unquiet grave” was not easily identified. Forge a unified
and coherent argument ...
9.
Far
too many of these poems are responses to loss. Compare and contrast the
thematic significance of the symbolic natural landscapes (and perhaps the human
role in producing them) in Norton’s extract from Pearl and Sidney’s “Ye goatherd gods”.
10. In sixteenth-century poetry, the word nymph could denote “one of a numerous class of semi-divine being,
imagined as beautiful maidens...” (OED,
“nymph” 1) or “a young and beautiful woman.” Consider the thematic function of
the nymph in Spenser’s “Prothalamion” and Drayton’s “Roundelay between two
shepherds.”
11. Some of the sonnets that we read
in week 7 consider how poets, or poetry, immortalize beauty, or love. Pick two
that you feel fit together well, and write a coherent and unified paper
exploring the issue: Sidney’s 90 and Spenser’s 75 both involve an interaction
between speaker and the woman; mortal things dominate Shakespeare’s sonnets 55
and 65.
12. Some of the poems that we have
looked at present an idealized woman as the object of the gaze of somebody (or
somebodies): d’Orleans, “The Smiling Mouth”, Drayton’s “Roundelay”, Spenser’s
Sonnet 15, Sidney’s sonnet 71, Shakespeare’s sonnet 130. Consider the thematic
function of “looking” in two poems on this term’s syllabus.
13. How can we know God? Consider how
the deity is portrayed in Milton’s “When I consider how my light is spent” and
Herbert’s “The flower”. You will need to think about figurative language!
14. What is the relationship between
the body and the soul? Conflict and ...? Compare and contrast the metaphors
used in two of Shakespeare’s sonnet
146, Donne’s holy sonnet 5, Marvell’s “Dialogue between the body and the soul”.
15. The writing of poetry (or the
singing of songs) seems to be a secondary subject of some of these poems. What
is the relationship between poetry and praise of love or a lover or a god?
Consider two of d’Orleans “The
smiling mouth”, Sidney’s sonnet 90, Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 (maybe!),
Spenser’s “Prothalamion”, Sidney’s “Ye goatherd gods”, Herbert’s “The Flower”.
16. The flower is a convenient symbol
(beauty, vulnerability, transience, resilience). Compare and contrast its
function in two poems that we have looked at this term.
17. Compare and contrast the metaphors
describing marital unity and separation by Donne in “A Valediction forbidding
mourning” and Bradstreet’s “Letter to her husband, absent upon public
employment”. If you wish, you may narrow your focus and consider astronomical
imagery!