Posted by Dr. Ted on April 01, 1999 at 09:34:29:
In Reply to: More on Sidney's Defense from the Sidney List posted by Dr. Ted on April 01, 1999 at 08:59:58:
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 13:41:42 -0500 I've just got into this discussion after coming back from the RSA conference Roger Kuin -----Original Message-----
From: Roger Kuin
Subject: Re: Defense in the classroom
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in Los Angeles, and find it fascinating. I think I can offer a little hope,
at least from the Canadian side of the border.
Just to set the scene: I teach in a large multicultural urban "overflow"
university with about 40,000 students: I've taught everything from freshman
intro courses to third (Junior) year Shakespeare and Renaissance poetry to
fourth (Senior) year Poetry of the Renaissance and graduate Sidney and
Spenser.
The numbers, except in Shakespeare, are not huge: average 28 in
third-year Renaissance and early modern poetry, and my senior Renaissance
poetry seminar has 8 students remaining of the 12 originally registered.
Those eight, however, are enjoying it hugely (we did the Sidney, Spenser and
Shakespeare sonnet-sequences the first term and the Faerie Queene the
second), and have been concerned to hold me to my rash promise to organise
an Elizabethan dinner at my house.
I get the impression that perhaps Canadian students have less aggressive
social attitudes than American ones, and are (prepared to be) less angrily
presentist about early texts. I should add that I teach this material very
much as a journey to an in every sense foreign country (the past) and try at
the beginning to impress upon them how *different* are not only the
Elizabethans' answers, but even their questions. I give them lots of
anecdotal history, and introduce the Defence by telling them the story of
Sidney's life and sharing with them my pleasure at his texts' sheer verve
and elegance. Illustrating "energia" by reading some of the A&S's sonnets
aloud works wonders. We don't do the Arcadia this year, but the ones who are
willing to make any sort of effort at all find the Faerie Queene addictive,
and claim to be inflicting it upon their families and significant others.
As for Shakespeare, dramatic readings in class help a lot for the
language, as do films such as the three Branagh ones and the BBC versions.
John Barton's "Playing Shakespeare" video series helps them understand the
texts as a performance score, and gives them a sense of the language.
One thing I've found disastrous at undergraduate level is trying to feed
them what is currently miscalled "theory"-- they are emphatically not ready
for its sophistications and it warps their learning of other material by
attacking the generous open-mindedness most of them naturally have when
coming to new stuff. There is lots of fun to be had in combining "all that
modern stuff" with the Renaissance, but it works far better at advanced
graduate level.
The best early preparation, I've found, is to help them as much as
possible with their own language skills early on. The nicest compliment I
ever had from a student was from a girl who'd been silent all year in a
freshman course that included grammar and spelling exercises, and who wrote
me a brief note at the year's end saying "Thank you for teaching me the
beauty of the English language." I'd been afraid of a revolt when slipping
in the grammar stuff, but all they said was "Why has nobody ever done this
with us before?"
I should perhaps add that, so far from abolishing the Renaissance,
we have just hired a very fine young scholar for a Renaissance appointment
(with a specialisation in Shakespeare, but a much greater range). So all is
not gloom and despair.
York University
Toronto, Canada
From: Dr Susan C Oldrieve
To: SIDNEY-L@LISTSERV.UOGUELPH.CA
Date: Thursday, March 25, 1999 1:15 AM
Subject: Defense in the classroom
>Christine Gilmore writes:
>> 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.
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