Work for today's lesson

I hope that you are enjoying reading through 'To His Coy Mistress'. What I would like you to do is to compare this with the reading that we did yesterday of Donne's 'Elegy on His Mistris Going to Bed'. You might want to compare, for instance, some of the mercantile imagery used--of possessions, jewels and so on-- and you might also want to consider the different audiences for each poem.

For background on Donne, the best site is Luminarium, which has a wealth of information about his life and works.. You can find some especially interesting essays here.

Marvell is also well represented on Luminarium, and you can find some interesting background reading and critical essays here. You might find it especially helpful to consider the biographical background to each poem--how relevant is it--and how much is it a construct? In other words, are these poems written for real women in real situations, or are they in effect rhetorical showpieces, whose primary purpose is to entertain and demonstrate the ability and wit of the poet?

At a minimum, you should carefully read and annotate 'To His Coy Mistress' and be prepared for a blazing discussion on the comparison next lesson.

Find out, for instance, why Vegetable love would be slow, and what is the relevance of 'antediluvian' to the poem...

Happy researching!

COVER FOR MISS DAVIES

With reference to the Gothic concepts discussed in the lesson yesterday, continue to explore the following scenes in Macbeth in preparation for the forthcoming essay on female characters in the play:




Act 1, Scene 5 – Lady Macbeth’s first appearance

Act 1 ,Scene 7 – Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Act 2, Scene 2 – Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Act 5, Scene 1 – the sleepwalking scene



Aim to annotate these scenes in as *much detail as possible* and remember you are focusing on:



How the female characters talk

Who they talk to

What they say

Any gothic concepts that are useful in analysing the way the female characters are presented

Tennyson's Women

"But what is time given us for," asked Laura, "except to enjoy ourselves? I mean a lady's time. Gentlemen and poor people are different." — Laura Courtenay in Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Gertrude (1845)

The Lady of Shalott by J W Waterhouse (1888)

It was good to see ytou in class today, and thank you for those last essays. Hopefully the next ones will be a little easier to write after today's lesson. Remember that if you look at the assessment objectives, it will make it much easier to see where there might be gaps in your work.

The following links you might find helpful when researching ideas. Most important is The Victorian Web, which is a site which has a huge amount of solid, reputable information about Victorian literature and culture on it. Though you can wander around it as you please, I shall give you some signposts to save you time, for instance for some interesting information on Tennyson, you can go to the central Tennyson index  while for broader matters of gender, you can find plenty of information here. Those of you who were asking about the details of the pictures we looked at can find them--and many more in this section on the illustrations to 'The Lady of Shallot'. If you are wondering where to start when connecting 'The Lady of Shallot' to 'Mariana', then this short essay might give you some ideas of where to start. Similarly there is an extract from the excellent essay by Elizabeth Nelson  "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott," from Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979.

Another interesting part of the site is the questions area, where it suggests some ideas for exploring texts. If you look at the Reading and Discussion questions for Tennyson's Poems, you'll find a whole section on 'The Lady of Shalott' and Mariana' which will perhaps start you tihinking about new ideas to explore.

If you're being more adventurous, here, also, is the list of articles I mentioned in the lesson. You might be able to find them in JSTOR or in the county library:

• Jeffers, Thomas L. “Nice Threads: Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott as Artist.” Yale Review 89 (2001): 54-68.
• Showalter, Elaine . “Victorian Women and Menstruation.” Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. 38-44.
• Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.
• Wright, Jane Cooke. “A reflection on fiction and art in ‘The Lady of Shalott’.” Victorian Poetry (2003): 54-68.

Happy writing!

Tennyson's Women

OK, I just created the longest post ever on this topic, and lost it by accident, so I am feeling very negative about the whole blogging thing now. I shall try again.

J W Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888

The most useful resource that I can point you to with regard to your homework task is The Victorian Web, which is a conucopia of information about Victorian literature and culture orginally created by Brown University in America, and now hosted by the University Scholars Program. It is quite vast, so I shall give you a few navigation points to steady you.

The main Tennyson Index is your first point of call, and there are many sub-sections which you can investigate usefully. One of these deals with Visual Art, and discusses the many painterly responses to the poems that we have been discussing.

Many scholars are also very generous about their contributions to this website, and they are well worth citing. For instance, Elizabeth Nelson gives a simpler version of her article  "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott," from Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979, and the whole text of her article on 'The Embowered Woman'

Should you get stuck when thinking about the poems, there is a useful list of Tennyson's poems, reading and discussion questions which you can refer to. Read through these short essays and the questions they suggest, to loosen up your ideas.

Those of you who asked for the references to the paintings can find them all here, with paintings of 'Mariana' here.

The useful articles I suggested are these, which you might be able to find at the central library, or on JSTOR, but there might be enough on the Victorian web to keep you busy.

• Jeffers, Thomas L. “Nice Threads: Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott as Artist.” Yale Review 89 (2001): 54-68.
• Showalter, Elaine . “Victorian Women and Menstruation.” Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. 38-44.
• Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.
• Wright, Jane Cooke. “A reflection on fiction and art in ‘The Lady of Shalott’.” Victorian Poetry (2003): 54-68.

 Happy essay writing!

Tennyson's poetry

Dear Year 13 (as you now are)

Alas, I am unable to be with you on Thursday, which is really annoying as it is our first lesson. I am out at Warwick University. This term we shall be working on your unit 4 coursework, and tomorrow we shall discuss this in detail.

For the moment, all you need to know is that it will be due in on November 11th (put the date in your planners) and that before you complete it, you will have to write at least three other substantial essays in preparation.

For the first of these, we are going to look at two Tennyson Poems.

For Thursday's lesson, I would like you to read through both poems (you may have come across them before).

Then, using the computers in room 5 , research the following questions:

1) Find out some biographical information about Tennyson. When did he live, what were the important events in his personal life? What was going on in the world at the time? At what stage in his career as a poet did he write these poems?

2) Find out some information about women in Tennyson’s time. What were their rights? What were their social expectations? What were the differences between women of different classes, and how did this affect what they could or could not do?

3) Find out some information about the background to each poem. Try and discover what story each one was based on, and what inspired Tennyson to write them.

Present this information as a lavishly illustrated powerpoint presentation to be shown to the whole class and me) next lesson.