Sarah D's class summary essay

Sarah Deffenbaugh

Class Summary

Dr. Foss

Word Count: 1207

After spending the first fifteen minutes of class battling bad drivers and slick pavement I arrived to class to discover I missed a reward quiz but was just in time for the start of the lecture concerning the topics faith and science. The selected poems assigned for the class period exhibited the way faith, doubt, and science were viewed during the Victorian Era. The poems we read are important because they help paint a picture of Victorian views concerning faith and science and the interaction they have amongst one another.

Foss began the lecture with a dramatic reading of the poems “The Windhover,” “God’s Grandeur,” Pied Beauty,” and “Carrion Comfort” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. We then turned to the biographical pages of Gerard Manley Hopkins which Foss read the majority of aloud while managing to not insult our intelligence in case we hadn’t skimmed it on our own (which I’m assuming most of us had not). Foss went on to elucidate the belief that, for his time, Hopkins was an extremely advanced and challenging poet to interpret. Many people consider him to be even more radical and innovative than Whitman himself. Hopkins led a very interesting life eventually becoming a Jesuit which led to him taking a vow to never write poetry again (unless deigned by God). He then became a professor of Greek Literature in Dublin where he eventually died of typhoid by the age of 45. Hopkins is particularly famous for his concept of inscape which he attempted to communicate through the instress of an object and communicates the importance of an object in the grand scheme of all creation.

Foss then split us into small groups to discuss the four Hopkins poems and the tension between faith and doubt found within them. My group bonded over the difficulty of analyzing Hopkins’ poetry and language. We started with the poem “God’s Grandeur” which we thought dealt with the question of how people can disregard God’s existence when observing the world around them. The poem also seems to exhibit the belief that when nature is untouched by man it remains pure and deep as God originally created it. Similarly, the “Windhover” contained difficult language and intricate metaphors throughout the entire poem. My group discussed the possibility that the Windhover “dauphin” could be a metaphor for Christ, which would serve as a device to illustrate the beauty of God in nature. The next poem “Pied Beauty” is interesting because it differs from Hopkins’ other poems because it celebrates God’s imperfect creations. Theee poem consists of the speaker giving glory and thanking God for his love of flawed things. The poem’s overall message seems to be celebrating God’s love for everyone, even people who are flawed and turn away from their faith. “Carrion Comfort” was perhaps the most difficult poem in the selection (at least for my group) it was difficult to decipher the overall message of the poem because of Hopkins’ use of diction and metaphors. Thankfully, a member of our small group informed us that carrion was another word for rotting flesh, which gives a whole new interpretation to the poem. Reading the poem with the new knowledge of the word carrion, could be interpreted as the idea that the speaker will not feast on the rotting flesh of despair, meaning he will not turn his back on God’s love to embrace the temptations of the world. The speaker is essentially fighting despair while wrestling with his love for God.

The first selection of poems for this class period depicts man’s struggles against their faith in God and the secular world. My group came to the conclusion that these poems give an accurate portrayal of man’s struggles in this world and the uncertainty of faith everyone feels at some point in their life.

While our group began to discuss the first set of poems, Foss told us about his own series of unfortunate events that had taken place including leaving his teaching jacket and papers in his office and the demise of his air conditioning unit occurring the day before. After lamenting with Foss over his tragedies we then turned to Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” and Rossetti’s “Sleeping at Last” to discuss the two poems views on Victorian doubt on faith. As a class we turned to “Crossing the Bar” which Foss had a volunteer read aloud to the class. He then had another volunteer read aloud Rossetti’s “Sleeping at Last.” We then discussed “Crossing the Bar,” a seemingly simplistic poem about faith and Christianity, which takes a twist in subject matter towards the end of the poem. The second to last line of the poem seems to suggest a creeping doubt with the usage of the phrase “I hope to see my pilot” instead of the concrete knowledge of “I will see my pilot.” It was then pointed out by a member of the class that the line “my pilot has been there the whole time I just have not seen him” has a very strong Christian connotation which gives the poem an overall peaceful feeling about the speaker’s faith in God. However my group felt that the poem “Sleeping at Last” gives a faithless connotation throughout the entire poem. The line “sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep” seems to suggest a faithless death with no prospect of Heaven as a resting place. However we also discussed the possibility of God being reflected through His creation of the natural setting of purple thyme and clover.

Class then went on to discuss the poems from the Victorian Women Poets textbook, and their relation to natural selection. The poem “Motherhood” by Mathilde Blind discusses the possibility that the act of giving birth to a child is a miracle similar to Mary’s birth of Jesus. Our small group then discussed the poem “Natural Selection” by Constance Naden, and the way it depicts natural selection in a modern setting. In the poem the “dandified males” are at the top of the food chain despite their lack of knowledge on the subject of science or any other subject of useful information. Discussion then turned to Kendall’s poems “Lay of the Trilobite,” “Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus," and “The Philanthropist and the Jelly-fish." “Lay of the Trilobite” points out that man is a less evolved creature than he realizes. Kendall uses Darwinism to back up her mockery of man, for instance, in “The Ballad of the Ichyosaurus” she depicts the men being obsessed with the beauty of the eye instead of the lack of brain matter. Similarly, “The Philanthropist and the Jellyfish” also illustrates man’s vanity by describing a man enjoying the feeling of being a hero for an act that did not help, but ultimately hindered the progress of the jellyfish. Throughout Kendall’s poems she illustrates her belief that baser creatures or people of the lower social statuses have a better understanding of life than the men who supposedly occupy the top of the food chain.

My group came to the conclusion that the poems taken from VWP show a powerful parallel between nature and humanity especially concerning mankind’s self-important attitude towards nature and the world around him.