Joe's Class Summary

On a snowy Thursday morning, the early arrivals to the classroom were treated to a posting on the board by the infamous Professor Richards; it announced the probable late arrival of none other than that sturdy former citizen of Minnesota, Doctor C. Foss, an individual prone to pontificate on the hardships caused by weather in his home state, and the relative ease of gaining attendance in class regardless of the vagaries of weather in Old Virginny. His attendance was obviously made possible with assistance from a winsome young lady who immediately sat and dove into her own studies. The poor little creature was eventually rescued by some other member of the faculty.

Doctor Foss began the class with a reminder of the poetry reading to be held this very evening at five in the evening, here in Coombs Hall. He cautioned us about defacing the flyers posted for said reading.

This pair of announcements was followed with a direction of our attention to page 1068 of the Longman Anthology, section The Age of Self-Scrutiny. Doctor Foss treated us to a short description of the arts and artists (writers) of the Victorian period. Following, Foss read excerpts from the section titled The Role of Art in Society. Foss elaborated and explained that the artists, and their critics of the period, debated the value of art for the sake of art, and art being the artist’s life. Doctor Foss launched into a reading of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses, which held the class spellbound, or almost so. Upon completion of the reading, Father Foss took a moment to bid his daughter adieu, then had the class, i.e. large group, discuss the poem, including comparisons between it and Tennyson’s The Lotos-Eaters. One of many interesting points was the fact that Ulysses was the speaker, not Tennyson, unlike The Lotos-Eaters, in which Tennyson was writer and speaker. Five or six of the class offered viewpoints: Ulysses was a jerk; he left his wife and responsibilities to go off to sea, and see the world, while he, Ulysses, spoke of the need to stay busy and have goals, for “It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags,”(1-2) as the poem begins. Overall, the large group came to the conclusion that Ulysses was “a jerk’ or a hypocrite; Personally, I felt the poem urged the continued search for knowledge and accomplishment throughout life, as written, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine inuse!”(23-24) It seemed there was a general agreement of allusion to empire and industry throughout the poem, and a feeling that Tennyson’s The Lotos-Eaters portrayed an entirely different outlook, one of indolence, leisure, and pleasure. His Lordship writes, “In the afternoon they came unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon,”(2-3) possibly alluding to siesta time, and, “The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.”(27) Tennyson ends with, “Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.” (173) The poem seems quite different than Ulysses with its admonition to sail on and explore. Doctor Foss himself mentioned their contradictory suggestions, and felt Lotos would have been written toward the end of the Victorian period instead of near the middle. Cracking his whip, Doctor Foss cut the large herd into small, manageable groups, whereupon the groups discussed, in my group’s case, Robert Browning’s, My Last Duchess, and The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church. We came to agreement that Browning’s take on the gender issue in society amounted to women being property that could be disposed of in any way a man wished, provided she was his property. Living in Italy, married to Elizabeth Barrett, Browning set Duchess in accordance with Italian social rules as the focus. He also took on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, writing of the Bishop’s “nephews,” in actuality sons born out of wed lock, a double whammy sin of fornicating, and having pledged before God to remain celibate; he writes of envy, another sin, this one committed by “Old Gandolf,” the greed of the bishop having the best stone work, columns, and the vanity of having his legacy engraved for all to see. The entire poem concerns things temporal, with virtually nothing mentioned of a priest/bishop’s real service, the spiritual. The discussion of Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister settled on Browning taking another swipe at the Catholic Church, using anecdotes of life in the order as being less than religious, and even running counter to the teachings of the Church. The speaker would appear to dislike one of the brothers to the point of tricking him into eternal damnation while covering himself from the same fate. Browning begins, “Gr-r-r – there go, my heart’s abhorrence!”(1) which is not exactly a Christian/Roman Catholic thought, and it is followed with, “If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you!”(3-4) Overall, Robert Browning seems disinclined toward religion, saddened with the state of gender bias, and undecided on the life style of the industrious versus the indolent. Before allowing the class to retire for the day, Doctor Foss said the Hard Times are now concluded, but our quest for knowledge would take us to Calcutta, India, birthplace of a poetess, Indian by blood, education by Brits, and torn between the two worlds. Foss instructed us to read the poems by Toru Dutt, presently available on the Wiki. This would begin MIDDLEMARCH. Finally, I would like to make available to the class a video that teaches everything you’d ever want to know about the British Empire. You must be a speed listener to follow the dialogue. Enjoy, if I get it set up. http://www.wimp.com/differencebetween/ Hope this works.