All entries for December 2009

Writing Tips

From George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’; worth bearing in mind for the assessed essay:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Alice Eardley : 21 Dec 2009 23:30 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Union First Line Index

A brand new and really useful research resource: http://firstlines.folger.edu./

It’s a searchable first and last line index of manuscript poems in the Bodleian Library, Beinecke Library, British Library, Folger Shakespeare Library, Harvard University, Huntington Library, and the University of Leeds, and other places.

It’s a good way of finding out if a poet is drawing on a common motif or responding directly to another poem.

I just did a search (under ‘Advanced’, search term: ‘First line’) for ‘tell me no more’ and it brought up 30 results including Hester Pulter’s poem on her daughter Jane.

Alice Eardley : 13 Dec 2009 10:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Journals

In one of the seminars yesterday I went through a list of journals that are particularly useful for this module. One of them is Early Modern Literary Studies, which is freely available online: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html

The others are: The Seventeenth Century; English Literary History; and English Literary Renaissance. These are all available online and can be found very easily via a search of the library catalogue.

Alice Eardley : 11 Dec 2009 17:18 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Useful Book

Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion ed., Patrick Cheney, Andrew Hadfield and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr (OUP, 2006). A useful collection of short essays (all written by leading experts) on specific aspects of sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry.

Alice Eardley : 11 Dec 2009 17:13 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hester Pulter

As usual, the reading in bold type is a compulsory part of the course and everything else is optional but highly recommended.

Please read the selection of Pulter’s poems on the website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/projects/hesterpulter/

Points to think about:

- What does Pulter have to say about gender? How are these ideas conveyed? You might want to think about poetic form, use of imagery etc.
- The poems on Charles I make it clear where Pulter’s political sympathies lay. In the selection of poetry provided, does she convey her royalism by other means?
- Think about Pulter’s manipulation of literary form. What does she do that’s familiar? In what ways does she innovate?
- We’ve talked a lot about personal voice this term. What can we say about Pulter’s ‘voice’?
- In what ways do the material circumstances in which the poems were produced impact on the form and content of those poems?

Optional Extra Reading:

A full list of everything ever published on Pulter has been supplied on the website.

Watch the video!

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED TO KNOW THAT PULTER HAS HER OWN PROFILE ON FACEBOOK (FROM TIME TO TIME SHE COMPOSES A NEW POEM)

Alice Eardley : 11 Dec 2009 16:55 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem