Have you ever looked back on time and wonder where it could have possibly gone? As Christmas and New Years I find myself staring at the Christmas lights pondering where time has gone. So much has happened over the past year, and I have no idea how to explain it all. I am sure years down the road I will be able to look back at this time in my life and in depth explain what every important moment is truly about, but at this point in time I can’t completely wrap my head around it.
As I look back on this semester in English 203 Fluid Readers and Texts, I realize that there is one common idea that I repeatedly took away from discussions, blog posts, and the readings that we did for this class. That idea is the theory of everything having a unique identity. Continue reading “Unique but Common”
Today’s theme song in ENGL 203-04 is “Sir Roger de Coverley.” It’s really a dance rather than a song, as explained below.
Dickens refers to this traditional English country dance in his description of Fezziwig’s ball in “Stave Two” of A Christmas Carol:
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.
In The Annotated Christmas Carol, Michael Patrick Hearn gives this explanation of “Sir Roger de Coverley”:
Also known “slip or Sir Roger,” [it is] a dance similar to the Virginia reel. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) took the name for a member of the fictitious club of The Spectator (March 2, 1711); his great-grandfather supposedly invented the dance. It was first described in John Playford’s Dancing Master (1692): the first man goes below the second woman, then round her, and so below the second man into his own place; then the first woman goes below the second man, then round him. and so below the second woman into her own place; then the first couple cross over below the second couple, and take hands and turn round twice, then leap up through and cast off into the second couple’s place. Dickens describes a more complex pattern, with steps borrowed from other dances. Sir Roger de Coverley was the most raucous and best known of country dances in the nineteenth century and traditionally the last one performed on a night of merrymaking. It was a bit out of fashion at the time of the story, however. “Country dances being low, were utterly proscribed,” Dickens notes in Chapter 8 of The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). The quadrille was considered far more chic at the time. A Christmas Carol and its dramatizations may well have done much to revive Sir Roger de Coverley in the cities. (W.W. Norton, 1976, pp. 70-71).
On their Library of Dance website at the University of Texas at Austin, Nick and Melissa Enge offer a detailed discussion of the dance that includes diagrams, historical and literary references, and a list of options for the music, typically in 9/8 or 6/8 time. “[F]or the early 19th century (i.e., a Regency Sir Roger), use a slip-jig (in 9/8),” write the Enges, linking to this sample from Spare Parts. The early nineteenth century is the appropriate time period for Scrooge’s youth.
As the Enges point out,
Many 19th century sources propose that Sir Roger De Coverley was (and should be) danced as the final dance of the evening. For example, in Thomas Wilson’s The Complete System of English Country Dancing (c. 1820) he proposes that: “At all Balls properly regulated, this Dance should be the finishing one, as it is calculated from the sociality of its construction, to promote the good humour of the company, and causing them to separate in evincing a pleasing satisfaction with each other.” Likewise, Routledge (1868) writes that “Sir Roger de Coverley is always introduced at the end of the evening; and no dance could be so well fitted to send the guests home in good humour with each other and with their hosts.”
This description illuminates the symbolic significance of the dance in the Carol. Its inherent sociality is a contrast to Scrooge’s present-day wish to be (as he tells the charitable gentlemen in Stave One) “left alone.” We might say the same, more broadly, of Fezziwig’s party, and we might think, in this connection, of the significance that Clarissa Dalloway’s parties hold for her in Woolf’s novel, as an opportunity to bring disparate and disconnected people together in one place in an act of creation that she imagines as an “offering” to life.
Finally, in thinking about parties as a meaningful human activity, we might remember what Alasdair MacIntyre says about those strains of thought in philosophy and the social sciences that attempt to take de-contextualized human “actions” as a fundamental unit; by contrast, he argues, “an intelligible action is a more fundamental concept than that of an action as such” — actions taking their intelligibility from the narratives to which they belong. To put this another way, the things humans do always have meaning built into them. Because we’re meaning-making animals, there’s no way to understand the things we do apart from the meanings those doings have for us.
If true, this fact about human beings has two consequences relevant to our studies in ENGL 203. To begin with, we can think of the arts in general, and literature in particular, as a realm in which creative individuals leverage socially meaning-laden stories and symbols to offer new ways of finding meaning in human experience. Partying is a socially meaning-laden activity that both Dickens and Woolf leverage, in a second-order act of meaning-making, to say something meaningful about the relationship between individuals and society.
It follows, then, that the study of the arts generally, and of literature in particular, represents a third-order act of meaning-making whose purpose is to say something meaningful about the ways in which individual artists, and the arts collectively, make meaning.
What form does this study take? To come satisfyingly full-circle, we’ve already seen that for Kenneth Burke, it basically takes the form of … a party. And it’s a party whose central activity, in Burke’s account, is more or less an elaborate social dance in words:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Is there such thing as original literature? This question was toyed with during Thursday’s class and when I left the class I found myself thinking back to a book I read in my AP Literature class in high school, How To Read Literature Like A Professor by Thomas C Foster.
At the time I hated this book and thought it was the most boring thing ever written. When other class members said they liked the book I brushed it off as that they were just simply stupid. Who would like a book that had no point, but to make comments about other works of literature and common themes? Being of how I was a junior transitioning into a different high school, I began questioning asking if this was what this high school was like. I contemplated dropping out of AP Literature feeling like if they liked that type of books I should never hang out with them, because those books are just awful.
Well, I didn’t drop the class and looking back on the book it really was not bad. It honestly is such a helpful book with interpreting other works of literature There are simple things like the concept of a quest in a story, the importance of sharing food and it even discusses the concept of original literature. Honestly, based on several discussions in classes I should read it again and would recommend that others in this class read it to.
I wanted to share some of this books input on original literature. First of all no literature is completely unique. They all share some figure, archetype, or image. Stories grow out of other stories. If I was to tell a story then you were to wonder what happens next you could tell a story about something that could happen next. The authors are borrowing ideas from each other.
Perhaps the reason they seem to be borrowing from each other is there is actually only one story- human experience the book says. I feel this would make sense because most people agree that humans have a common ancestor. So we all must have somewhat similar experiences in a sense.
How To Read Literature Like a Professor also suggests that authors are truly skilled people, because in order to write they must try to clear their mind of all other literature to not focus on writing something completely different. If they clear their mind then although the stories might be similar they will not be as worried about being completely original.
This book is extremely interesting, and I feel I may have done it injustice in this conversation. highly recommend reading it for yourself to get your own interpretation of the things discussed about this and others.In conclusion, I agree with How To Read Literature Like A Professor no book is completely original, but when writing one must not worry about being brand new. They must instead focus on conveying the message they wish to relay to their audience. Even if that lesson has been told before because of the shared trait of simply being a human and our inherent values.
I grew up surrounded by literature. My dad is an English professor with a specialty in Early American Literature, it’s just always been a huge part of my life, even to the point that Edgar Allan Poe was my bedtime stories.
My favorite way that my dad’s profession bled into our home life, though, was always his colleagues and the talks that he would let me come with him to see. I love to hear people talk about what they are passionate about and do what they love, so I tagged along to as many presentations as I could.
The best event my dad ever brought me to was Dr. Marc Napolitano’s performance of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Dr. Napolitano was relatively new to the department that year – I think it was 2013 – and I hadn’t met him before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew the story of A Christmas Carol, everyone knows the story. I’d never read it, I was still in middle shool, but I was familiar with the plot. I’d seen renditions of it through disney animations and such. Worst case scenario, what I was walking into was some professor standing in front of a crowd and droning on about the significance of the story or something else that wouldn’t hold my attention.
It absolutely was not that.
For two hours, I sat next to my dad, absolutely riveted by Dr. Napolitano as he stood in front of a full room of students and other professors and gave a one man performance of A Christmas Carol, with voices and expressions and a passion that I’d never seen before. He was the only person up there, but each character was unique and all it took was a shift of his shoulders and a different lilt to his words for me to know that someone different was speaking. He was phenomenal. This was A Christmas Carol as it was supposed to be.
Looking back on it now, Dr. Naoplitano’s performance was a perfect example of how little it takes for an old work to take on new life. He was so passionate about this text that he was willing to memorize it in its entirety and stand in front of a crowd to bare his heart as he performed it so that he could share it with others the way he saw it, which was no small feat especially since Dr. Napolitano was a small, quiet man with a gentle smile and an even gentler voice. None of his shyness was present during his performance, his voice was booming. Even now I can hear him.
“Are there no prisons?! Are there no workhouses?!”
The fluidity ofA Christmas Carolcomes to my mind as we start to tackle it in class. After seeing that performance, I’ll be honest, no other adaptation of Dickens’ work has been good enough for me. Somehow, Dr. Napolitano had taken this thing that so many people knew by heart and made it his own. He made it new and he made it riveting, and I know all too well how hard it is to make a room full of cadets at USMA pay attention for that long.
After that first performance and until three years later when Dr. Napolitano left the academy, my family made it a tradition to go see his performance. In 2015, he left USMA and accepted a job offer at USAFA, and my childhood best friend who is a current cadet there assures me he’s still continuing his tradition of sharing Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with anyone willing to listen.
Today’s theme song in ENGL 203-04 is “Joy to the World,” as performed by The Klezmonauts. The song is from their album Oy to the World and is available as a free download from the album website.
This coming Sunday is the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish eight-day celebration marking events in Jewish history from the second-century BCE that may be seen as revolving around the principle of religious liberty. The name Hanukkah in Hebrew means “re-dedication,” and it refers to the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem that took place after the successful Jewish revolt against the Seleucid monarchy.
The central symbol of Hanukkah is the menorah, which is lit each night of the eight-day celebration.
As we continue our reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it’s worth thinking about the central role of light, as a symbol, in a variety of celebrations connected to the winter solstice. One of these celebrations was the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which included many of the symbols and activities that later became part of Christmas tradition.
Although Hanukkah and Christmas lights have particular meanings associated with their respective holidays — the same holds true for the lights that play a role in Kwanzaa, a celebration of African heritage observed in nations of the African diaspora — we might ask ourselves, broadly, why light would serve as a central symbol in all of them, given their place on the calendar.
We might also ask ourselves how this common thread through holidays representing multiple traditions relates to ideas at the heart of Dickens’ tale.
Finally, we might ask ourselves why it would make sense to a klezmer band to mash-up a Jewish musical tradition with a traditional Christmas song.
Whenever I read anything for a class, I like to poke around on the internet for any interesting tidbits relating to the text. Call me a nerd if you feel like it, but I find it incredibly interesting to hear other people’s takes on the things I’m reading because I feel like it enriches my own understanding of the material. Such was the avenue upon which I discovered what might be the be one of the strangest and most interesting YouTube videos I’ve ever seen.
It’s called “Twelve Hundred Ghosts”, and it was put together by a man called Heath Waterman. It’s about an hour long, but you certainly don’t have to watch the whole thing (although I’d recommend it!) to get what he was going for. Waterman has edited together video clips, sound bites, music, and illustrations from over 400 adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to create a semi-cohesive version of the story.
Yes, you read that right. Four hundred different versions of A Christmas Carol.
Movies, TV episodes, cartoons, comic books, musicals, and even advertisements. From Mickey Mouse to the Muppets, it seems everyone and their mother has taken a shot at adapting the story, and in watching this it’s pretty obvious that some are much better than others. But still, Waterman passes no judgement. This is not a video of criticism, nor of making fun of these derivative works. It’s in total a celebration of the enduring spirit of the classic story.
Think about it. This is a book that was published centuries ago, and we’re still finding new ways to adapt it. Throughout this video we see many traditional Victorian Scrooges… but we also see modern Scrooges, female Scrooges, black Scrooges, gay Scrooges, and even animal Scrooges. I think that really says something about the universality of Dickens’ narrative. The type of story he told doesn’t only apply to the time he lived in, nor to the gender, race, or sexuality of its leads. The story of redemption, of a callous soul learning the error of their ways and striving to become a better person, is ultimately a human story. And although the video does often stray towards the comedic, I think the motivation behind it has real heart.
I’ve always thought the core of Dickens’ story was the idea that no human being is beyond redemption. In creating the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens crafts a hard-hearted man who cares for no one, and as a consequence the audience is all the more satisfied to watch the character slowly realize the effect his cruelty has had on the other people in his life. The moment where Scrooge realizes that his stinginess when it comes to paying Bob Cratchit may very well lead to the death of Cratchit’s ill son is, to me, one of the most poignant and heartbreaking moments in the entire literary canon.
In creating “Twelve Hundred Ghosts”, Heath Waterman imparts to us the sentiment of redemption being a possibility for all better than any single adaptation of A Christmas Carol ever could. Seeing all these different versions of Scrooge, all of whom exist in different time periods, and who have vastly different lives, realize that their philosophy of uncaring will only hurt those around them, embodies the universality of Dickens’ story. In this way, with this video, we can all see ourselves in at least one version of Scrooge, and understand that no matter when you live, what you look like, or who you love, you always have within you the ability to change.
You can watch “Twelve Hundred Ghosts” below. I would highly recommend checking it out — if you have an hour to spare between studying for finals, that is!
The room is dark. The only light there is, is the one being emitted from the TV screen. The killer is chasing his victim through the dark alleyway, adrenaline pumping through his body, waiting for his moment to strike. You have to look away from the screen when he catches up to his prey and hacks her to bits right in front of your eyes. You can’t believe they would actually show that on a movie, there is so much blood.
In the early twentieth century, this just would not fly. Parents were concerned with the content their children were seeing in films. Many people feared that movies were negatively influencing the youth and wanted some form of censorship.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, the Payne Studies were used to determine the effects of movies on the behavior of children and concluded that movies did indeed have a detrimental effect on the health of children. They claimed that movies disturbed children’s sleeping patterns, heightened their emotional feelings, influenced social attitudes, caused day dreaming, taught lovemaking, among other things.
These courses were intended to give youth the tools and knowledge to appreciate movies and get educational value from them, rather than watching inappropriate, gory films with seemingly no purpose. In this way, it taught children to choose better films. Not only were the children supposedly choosing better films, but were reading more books used in writing screenplays.
The National Council of Teachers of English established a reviewing committee for films which produced study guides for films like Little Womenand Alice in Wonderland. Although we didn’t use a movie study guide, or even watch the movie, it’s cool to think that kids in school many years ago were potentially having insightful conversations like ours.
Today’s theme song in ENGL 203-04 is “Fear No More,” from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. You’ll find the words here.
In Shakespeare’s Songbook (W. W. Norton, 2004), Ross W. Duffin explains how the song fits into the play:
This song survives without any indication of its original music. In the action of the play, the singers preface the song with comments on their breaking adolescent voices and talk about speaking rather than singing it, so it may not have been sung at all. It occurs as a kind of dirge shortly after the apparent death of Imogen (as Fidele) is discovered, and it is thus intriguing to find that the lyrics fit best to When Griping Grief (q.v.). The latter occurs in Romeo and Juliet at almost exactly the same point after the discovery of the feigned death of Juliet. The music, perhaps by Richard Edwards, survives as an arrangement for keyboard in the Mulliner book (1558-64) and as an accompaniment to the singing part in the Brogyntyn Lute Book (ca. 1600). (p. 142)
Clarissa Dalloway first encounters the opening lines of this song on her mission to buy flowers for her party:
But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards’ shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages.
This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. (Modern Library, 1922, pp. 12-13)
Clarissa thinks of the song again at the party itself, during her brief withdrawal from her invited company, prompted by what she has learned of the “young man” whom we know to be Septimus Smith:
Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! (p. 283)
The words come to her several times between these two points. More generally, the experience of fear itself serves as an important point of connection between Clarissa and Septimus.
It’s worth thinking about just how this experience connects them. What do they fear? Why? How are their respective fears related to the song from Cymbeline?
