Although the words don't have the same root according to the OED, 'sacred' certainly sounds like 'secret', and they come from words which have very similar meanings. 'Sacred' comes from L. 'sacer' and means to set apart. 'Secret', as you know, comes from L. 'secernere', which means to separate, or to divide off. Perhaps the Latin words 'sacer' and 'secernere' are cognates, and the OED simply does not trace the words far enough back (it is Latin after all, and not English).
Also, the word 'share' can mean to divide, according to the OED. Consider a ploughshare, which cuts the soil. Thus, both words in the title can mean to divide. This title is doubly about division! In this sense, it could be that the secret sharer is the one who destroys the secret, rather than distributes or keeps it. It's a title that opposes and divides itself in a number of ways. It was fun looking into these things.
1.] In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty has the following exchange with Alice:
- "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
- "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
- "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."
Using a word to mean whatever the speaker chooses it to mean is a definition of nonsense. Consider Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism" and Swinburne's "Response" as a dialectical exchange, where the subject is nonsense. Continue that dialectic with your essay, using literary analysis to show which one of the two previous stages -- Tennyson's or Swinburne's--is Humpty Dumpty nonsense, and which one is sense.
2.] Robert Browing's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came is arguably the most evocative poem of the Victorian Age. In lecture, for instance, we saw how it can work as a dolourous representation of the state of a Christian's faith after Darwin. Concentrating on the transformative effect that the final stanza has on the work as a whole, interpret the poem as an allegory of some specific dark state of mind or social condition. Keep in mind that as an allegory, each aspect of the work -- word, phrase, line, object, place -- must have some direct and precise analogue to that which is being allegorised.
3.] Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din" and "Without Benefit of Clergy" give literary representation of Indians during the British Raj. Concentrating on the texts themselves, explain what Kipling might intend by these representations in relation to the Empire. Use Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "The Burden of Ninevah" to inform your configuration of Victorian England's understanding of Empire.
For 5 marks, explain how there might be a connection in Victorian literature between nonsense and the cult of the child.
I absolutely despise poetry. In my humble opinion, the poetry we are doing is being over-analyzed. Im sure there are others who agree with me when I say that, maybe the poet did not have anything more to say. For example, in "Cement Worker....", yield", as you said is a yellow sign and emphasizes the almost synesthesia-like description of colour throughout this book. However, I think that you were possibly the only person in the entire lecture hall who thought of it that way. Of course, your thought is what counts being our professor, but I think that maybe, its just a simple poem, without five hundrer million deeper meanings. Or maybe its just my hate for poetry that is coming to the surface.To the charge of over-analysis, I replied, à la one of Archie Bunker's malapropisms, "Now listen here, I resemble that remark." Heck, I get paid to over-analyse!
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.To rephrase that for us, you will never know what is a full interpretation until you know what is an over-interpretation. Here in English Literature courses, we learn how to push interpretations to their limits--learn to see how wide and deep a single word, or a phrase, can go--and then, once we see all the possibilities (of meaning, of reference, and of association), we can then learn how to winnow out the the likely from the unlikely; plausible from the implausible; the valid from the unvalid; the certain from the uncertain.
"....most people doing interpretive work in literature proceed from precisely the wrong point of inception. It seems to me that when doing an analysis of a text...[many people] begin from a point of total clarity. This is not surprising, as it a position of security and cohesion, but it all to often means that....[many people do] a lot of work to offer an interpretation that is apparent to most other readers.... [Instead, they should rather be] approaching the point in the text....[found] most difficult, and...linger there until it speaks....in a way that coheres with the other aspects they are already confident in their understanding of. In doing this....[they are] far more likely to produce a piece of analysis that is fresh, insightful and not readily apparent to the average reader. Of course, this is a far more difficult thing....but then that is really the point, isn't it?"
I think that this movie might be of interest both to you and to students in the class (ENGL 206). Ben Stein, in his "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," critically examines the theory of evolution, its history, its basic tennets, and its role in our society. He also seeks to establish creationism as a legitimate science or route of discovery. I think everyone would find this movie engaging, whether their interest is in science, spirituality, society, or listening to Ben Stein's monotone
For your review, three of the slides from the Lewis Carroll lecture today are on-line at this link.
Into the Valley of Death
Anger at vote-rigging has worked to rip a thin scab off many years of frustration at poverty, corruption and inequitable land ownership
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
January 26, 2008 at 12:28 AM EST
KIPKELION, KENYA — With the sun barely over the edge of the valley, the colours on the hills were muffled. The banana leaves were dull green, the sugar cane stalks pale yellow. And so the flames, when we saw them flare in first one house, then a second, then streets and streets on fire, were shocking, vivid orange, more alive than anything around.
From "Today in Literature" a brief story on "Browning, Barrett, Love":On this day in 1845 Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, so inciting one of the most legendary of literary love stories. The letter belongs to the 'fan mail' category -- the praise of a thirty-two-year-old up-and-comer for one just six years older and already internationally famous -- but it was more than just poet-to-poet. After commending "the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought," Browning confides that he is addressing "your own self," and that "for the first time, my feeling rises altogether."
Here are two dummy Final Exam questions with answer (first question) or guidance (second question). "We still live in a society that was in large part made by the Victorians. We may affect to despise them, ridicule them, even condemn them. We certainly misunderstand them. Part of this misunderstanding is that we mistake their confidence for arrogance; for we misunderstand the paradoxical nature of that confidence....
We imagine the Victorians as stuffy and orthodox; yet they were the most questioning, most radical and most open-minded generation in our history. Perhaps it is our own arrogance....that prevents our seeing this."
As I suspected, there is excellent internet presence for Victorian 'penny dreadfuls,' such as can be seen here. And also here.
From Britain's Daily Mail, an article excerpting Sweeney Todd: The Real Story Of The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street by Peter Haining, published by Robson Books at £8.99. ° Peter Haining 2007. [The picture I include here is the most frightening, terrifying, maleavolent, horrifying Sweeny Todd image that I could find. Shudder. Anyone music fan from the '70s-'80s will feel their flesh crawl....]Sweeney Todd's name is seen in Victorian 'penny dreadful' newspapers and then 19th century melodrama, complete with his own catchphrase, "See how I polish 'em off!" .... This undercurrent of malevolence was compounded by the young Todd's bizarre interest in the instruments of torture displayed at the nearby Tower of London. To escape his parents' brawling, he lingered in the Tower's museum, where thumbscrews, racks and other macabre tools were displayed to discourage citizens from dissent.
A current article from Britain's Times of London on our first course story, A Christmas Carol, (with a gratuitous climate-change shibboleth for good measure!)Dreaming of a white Christmas? Put it down to Dickens’s nostalgia for his lost childhood.
Paul Simons and Will Pavia
Small flurries of Christmas cards are falling on doormats across the land today, bearing pictures that combine idyllic village scenes with the snow conditions of northern Greenland. The Met Office, which tends to be less romantic in its outlook, provided an entirely different forecast for Christmas Day in Britain yesterday: it will be cloudy, mostly dry and rather mild.
Some will blame climate change for the discrepancy, and imagine snow-bound Christmas Days from distant childhood — yet the truly snowy Christmas of Christmas cards has occurred only seven times since 1900. Before then, sparse records suggest that less than a score of 19th-century Christmases were white.
It now appears that the true culprit was Charles Dickens, whose childhood coincided with a decade of freakishly cold weather. The novelist persistently described a Britain smothered in snow on Christmas Day.
Here are the points of e-mail protocol for our course :Missed classes and deadlines are not to be reported by e-mail: if a medical or bereavement exception is being claimed, the supporting documentation is handed in, along with the completed assignment, either in person or to the Instructor's mailbox outside the Department Office.
An amusing Flash game from the BBC online: "SURVIVE DICKENS' LONDON"Dodge through Victorian London, avoiding the gangs and villains and trials and tribulations of Dickensian London in order to seek out Charles Dickens in his chalet hideaway in Rochester. You'll face tasks and choices - you might have to pick pockets for Fagin, or rob bodies for Gaffer Hexham. Perform well and you'll be able to wend your way through dark alleyways and winding streets. Make the wrong choice and you could end up in jail, or worse... You'll need to keep your health up and you'll need to keep your eyes open in order to make money for your fare to Rochester. Be warned; time is short and the streets of London are not for the faint hearted...
The BBC has a marvelous webpage on the Victorians, from a post-colonial point-of-view, and with several articles relevant to course lecture and, even, essay topics.
"Four gray walls, and four gray towers"What does the first "four" give us? With "walls" we have a image of imprisonment. The four right angles implied invokes rationalism: closed rather than open, and thus associated with controlling masculinity (cf. Gaskell's Cranford.) This masculine element of the enclosure is strengthened by the phallic "four....towers": alluding perhaps to four levels of men (incl. lover) The "four" additionally suggests enclosure for the four points of the compass. It is also a sharply non-religious number: odd additional from the sacred number three. It is also the number of iambs in the line. The second word, "gray," denotes colourlessness, which is a direct contrast with the vivid colour-words in the stanzas immediately surrounding (e.g. "blue," "yellow," "red.") Gray also has a moral connotation of being neither openly good (white) nor openly bad (black.) "Gray" is the colour of ambiguity, which sets up the quality of the Lady's ambiguous action in leaving the tower.
Victorian Cool includes
Canadian Victoriana presents aspects of the fact that Canada is a Victorian country.
The project can take the form of a blog; a video-taped theatrical presentation, documentary, a short film, etc.; a written collection; or any creative form of presentation.
The objective is to give evidence of a creative engagement with and understanding of the Victorian character; as a means of better comprehending the period and cultural character of the Age under our present literary study.
On the last seminar week of term -- March 30th or April 1st -- hand in along with the project any hard copy material -- scripts, blog URLs -- that you wish to have included in the grading.
"Learn how to listen and you will prosper even from those who talk badly.” Plutarch (AD 46-120) Greek Biographer & Philosopher.
The Student Learning Commons at the W.A.C. Bennett Library has an exceptionally helpful on-line guide to effective note-taking at university lecture. (It is a trifle disconcerting reading for the Lecturers themselves, because it implies--indeed, all-but declares--that many of us are dull, confused, inarticulate, habituated and otherwise deficient in our craft.)
The guide is available online in .pdf format at this hotlink.
The Student Learning Commons additionally has an entire page of links to on-line resources to imprioove the student's "Listening & Note-Taking" at this hotlink.
Note-taking in lecture is one of the skills that one learns at university with broad applicability in life. Arguably, learning how to take written notes from oral delivery is one of the most practically valuable benefits of a university education.
These resources linked here are very valuable: especially as it is increasingly common for undergraduates to confuse note-taking with copying down PowerPoint slides. It is rule worth learning that PowerPoint is not the Lecture: lectures are what happen when you are distracted by copying down PowerPoint slides....
