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Works every time 2008-03-27 15:39:51 Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" is a short poem that takes Homer's original Sirens from the myth and gives one of them a modern voice. Recall that Odysseus's men tie him to the ship preventing his hearing the irresistable song of the Sirens, which lead to a listener's death.In a sarcastic but world-weary tone ("Alas") the Siren/speaker is talking to a potential victim. He is listening and therefore cannot resist: he has heard the song. But what is this song? Notice how the Siren leads her victim down the slippery slope of flattery and damsel-in-distress cajoling to achieve her purpose. She whines about her outfit, her companions (there were three Sirens often depicted as birds,) and her desires to flee. He falls like a rock. She finds the process effecti Read more:Works
, every
What is a literary classic? 2008-03-18 10:53:02 Most classrooms eventually entertain the topic of why literary classics are awarded that status thereby becoming part of the canon of Great Books. In school it's, "Why do we have to read this?"It's necessary to note that the term "canon" as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary refers to sacred texts. It always did until the nineteenth century when writers began to offer a secular list of classics, or canon, of their own. Louise Cowan claims that this was natural in a post-Christian world. The term is a kind of misnomer, really, but is widely used in the field nonetheless.A satisfying list of criteria is offered by Cowan in an early chapter of the text that she edited with Os Guinness, Invitation to the Classics, a book which I heartily recommend. The two authors int
Hardy's "The Oxen" -- an agnostic's Christmas 2008-03-18 10:50:58 In Thomas Hardy
's poem a speaker contemplates the evolution of his unbelief and that of his family and society as they sit around a Christmas
fire. The theme depends upon an old myth that claimed that the animal kingdom, farm animals, knelt on Christmas Eve in honor of the Christ-child's birth. Hardy uses the myth and Christmas itself metaphorically for the Christian faith. First he remembers how once upon a time the "elders" would announce the fact that the time had come and that the animals were on their knees. No one, including the speaker, considered doubting. But time has passed, the speaker is older, and he now calls the idea a "fancy" no longer believable. And yet, in keeping with the many emotions stirred by the
Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" -- not just at Christmas 2008-03-18 10:42:28 One of Eliot
's post-conversion-to-Christianity poems, "Journey
" is essentially a monologue delivered by one of the "wise men" who journeyed perhaps hundreds of miles long ago to visit the Messiah, if not in his infancy, at least in the earliest years. A manifestly modern poem, it captures that period of time when the world and the individual were being introduced to Christianity. The speaker makes references throughout to elements of his old world and ways, the "silken girls, " the food, his sumptuous surroundings, as he contemplates what all this means and why he has made this difficult journey.He cannot fully embrace the new faith, nor can he fully abjure the only life he knows. He knows a few things. One is that even though the trip is about a birth, it is Read more:Christmas
Yeats's "The Second Coming" 2008-03-18 10:39:30 Yeats's "The Second
Coming" affords a grim look into a future in which the cumulative events of history have led to societal, spiritual entropy. The initial image is that of a falcon spinning circularly out of control above the head of its master. Then Yeats catalogs distressing events that describe modern man's condition. Anarchy, blood, the drowning of innocence. It's a world where the "best" people have lost their spark, enervated rather than challenged by the pandemonium around them. The "worst" people, however, are passionate and intense.The speaker answers his own reflections becoming rhetorical with what might be epiphany. "Surely the second coming is at hand." It mimics Christians parodied as carrying their placards emblazoned
Not with a bang 2008-03-18 10:34:39 The epigraph for T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Hollow Men" is a quotation from Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, "Mistah Kurtz, he dead." Fittingly the mysterious Kurtz, who is touted by one and all as a wonder boy, turns out to be hollow, a symbol of modern man. Kurtz, you may recall, is remembered for exclaiming, "The horror, the horror," as the knowledge of his own evil heart becomes apparent to him as he is dying. More on the novella later.The poem proceeds to give a series of images both visual and auditory that invoke aridity, sterility, and hopelessness. It is a poem of allusion and image foremost; it lacks any real narrative structure. Eliot himself had doubts about it, this sequel to The Wasteland. Note the first two stanzas which pressent
"The horror. The horror." 2008-03-18 10:28:18 Conrad's singular phrase from the turn-of-the-century novella, Heart of Darkness, says it all. So many have borrowed from it, the best known work being Apocalypse Now, which is set in Vietnam instead of the Congo. Most people find the book a challenging read, but with a few pointers up front, it's worth the effort.First, the organizational structure is a frame story. The narrator, Marlowe, is sitting on a boat on the Thames as he relates his experience of a trip up the Congo River. The point of view is that of Coleridge's "sadder but wiser" man in recollection. Marlowe had been a model British navy man -- a young, company man, somewhat naive. His assignment was to travel to the Congo and retrieve a "superior" man, Mr. Kurtz, who has been out of contact with author Read more:horror
The Bodies Exhibit: Why we read Frankenstein 2008-03-17 20:36:04 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man's overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions.In Shelley's day, early 19th century, many in the field of "natural philosophy," or science, were trying to discover the "life impulse," or the origin of the life. This was the time that Dr. Galvin (see Galvinism) was attempting to resurrect dead bodies. It was commonly believed that electricity, also newly discovered, was the spark of life and experiments were conducted making a dead frog's legs jump, for instance. Percy Shelley's first wife, the pregnant Harriet, drowned herself in the middle of London in a pond upon learning th Read more:Exhibit
Frost: It's the road NOT taken 2008-03-17 16:12:44 Do they still make students memorize Robert Frost
's "The Road Not Taken?" If not, at least the poem is still included in most antholgies. Courses in American literature usually deem Frost a very rural, pro-American, voice of democracy, voice of the people kind of poet. He is that. But there is much more. More brillance.His deliberate ambiguity is easily overlooked, and yet therein lies the heart of his work. Without it "The Road Not Taken" is another good poem with a common theme: There was this dilemma. I had a difficult choice to make. I made it. The poem shares this theme with "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." (. . . and miles to go before I sleep.)The speaker describes a pleasant wooded pathway that forks. Both paths have adva
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