Posted by Dr. Ted on April 01, 1999 at 08:59:58:
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 10:24:48 -0800 Received: from bc.barnard.columbia.edu (bc.barnard.columbia.edu [128.59.144.41]) I have little problem with the Defense--but then my own students can be On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Dr Susan C Oldrieve wrote: > Christine Gilmore writes:
From: "Gerald J. Rubio"
Sender: Sidney Journal
To: SIDNEY-L@LISTSERV.UOGUELPH.CA
Reply-to: Sidney Journal
MIME-version: 1.0
X-X-Sender: grubio@pobox.cs.uoguelph.ca
by testinfo.uoguelph.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA24214
for
Received: from localhost by bc.barnard.columbia.edu (8.9.1/8.9.0/05/5/98) with SMTP id NAA09207
for
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 13:15:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Anne Prescott
To: Sidney Journal
Subject: Re: Defense in the classroom
awful snobs--in part, I think, because I teach it as a paradox with
considerable slipperiness and self-mockery. It is not, I think, a
"straight" text, but a very slithery one. By the way, on this whole matter
of teaching early mod. lit., may I do a little advertising? Patrick Cheney
and I have a volume coming out with the MLA "Approaches to teaching"
series on teaching shorter Elizabethan poems (i.e., everything but
Spenser's FQ). It has, as I recall, 37 authors--modern scholars, I
mean--and a lot of exciting suggestions. A colleague of mine,
incidentally, tells me that when his students complain about 18th c.
elitism or sexism or whatever he tells them that the past is another
country--would they hop off the airplane in a foreign land and start
telling the natives how to live? I tell any students who talk that way
(and I'm blessed in having very, very few who do) that if they can't
"identify" with this material that's fine. We stretch our imaginations by
relating to the "not-us," to what is new and even repugnant and learning
to empathize with what is different, not just more of what we already are
or know. Don't be squeamish and puritanical, I urge them. It seems to
work, at least most of the time. A little humor helps, mixed with
disconcerting ventures into eloquence. The most important thing, my
students tell me, is to have a professor who herself likes the material
she teaches. Anne Prescott.
> > As a side note on Sidney in the classroom, after spending three
> > sessions on Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella," the students have
> > designated him a whining stalker who practiced the 16th c
> > equivalent of date rape on poor Penelope! We will begin the
> > Defense of Poetry tomorrow, I cannot even imagine their response.
> >
>
> I finally stopped teaching the Defense in Brit Lit because the students
> were so turned off by its intellectual elitism. I don't know if it's just
> Ohio, but my student do not accept class structure--they don't believe in
> it, and they find it offensive, whether it's intellectual or
> socio-economic class. They get personally offended by Sidney's allusions
> and the way that he challenges the reader to keep up with him and then
> sprints ahead. I found that starting the 16 th c. unit with the Defense
> killed the whole Renaissance for them.
>
> So now I provide a summary and study guide for students who are interested
> or need it for research they are doing and I start the 16th c. part of the
> survey with a selection of sonnets from Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and
> Wroth. They are usually familiar with at least some of Shakespeare's
> sonnets, so they have something to build on and feel like they are in not
> entirely uncharted territory. I tell them what Sidney's
> Defense says and why it is important, and some of them actually go and
> read it. But the rest focus on just learning to read sonnets in general
> and getting some idea of what Renaissance theories of love are.
>
> In my upper level course, again, I don't teach the Defense directly, but
> I certainly talk about what's in it. First I have the students write down
> what their criteria for good poetry are. Then I tell them what Sidney's
> are and have them compare theirs to his. That works pretty well to help
> them understand what Renaissance poets thought they were doing and how
> their criteria for poetry differ from the students' own. Then we can talk
> about why Early Modern poets wrote as they did and why criteria for
> poetry are so different today.
>
> I also had them evaluate Shakespeare's sonnet sequence according to these
> two sets of criteria, comparing how Shakespeare's sonnets would have
> measured up against Sidney's and Spenser's then and now. That exercise
> (which I did in groups) generated good interest and a clearer
> understanding of why Sidney and Spenser were writing as they were.
>
> I wish I COULD teach the Defense, because I really enjoy and admire it
> myself. But since I gave it up, my students have been a bit more
> receptive to the other literature.
>
Post a Follow Up: