English 427W

Ballads, Bards and Banshees: Orality in Romantic-era Britain and Ireland

Fall, 2010

http://www.sfu.ca/personal/leith/427Fall2010.htm

Dr. Leith Davis

Office hours: Monday and Wednesday 12:30-1:30 in AQ 6111

Phone: 778 782-4833

Although (or perhaps because) they lived in an era in which print and print culture constituted the dominant medium, Romantic poets were fascinated with oral culture. This course will explore what oral culture meant for Romantic poets as well as how they employed what critic Maureen McLane refers to as ‘orality effects’ in their poetry. We begin by considering the state of orality in the late eighteenth century and examining collections of ballads that were compiled by antiquarians in England and Scotland. We move to a consideration of the figure of the bard as a charged figure of political resistance in the work of a number of late eighteenth-century poets: the English poet Thomas Gray, the Scottish poet James Macpherson, the Welsh poet Iolo Morgannwg and the Irish poet Charlotte Brooke. We also reflect on how Mary Balfour reworked the figure of the bard for her own purposes in the early nineteenth century. The course concludes with a focus on the poetry and songs of Robert Burns, the oral/visual creations of William Blake in Songs of Innocence and of Experience and William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s use of orality in Lyrical Ballads.

Required Texts:

Custom courseware package

Robert Burns, Selected Poems, ed. Carol McGuirk (Penguin)

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford

Paperbacks)

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800,

ed. Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter (Broadview)

Course Requirements:

This is a writing intensive (W) course, so you will be doing a considerable amount of writing and revising.

Seminar presentation and 3-page essay: 20%

Participation and attendance (including *informal writing assignments): 10%

Short essays**: 2 x 15% = 30%

Final paper ***proposal (due Nov. 15) and draft (due Dec. 1): 2 x 5%: 10%

Final paper (15 pages): 30%

Bibliography for course

*Students will be given ten 400-word informal writing assignments to complete with the weekly readings as part of their participation mark. These will not be graded, but must all be submitted on time. Failure to complete any of the informal writing assignments may result in a participation grade of zero.

**For short essays, students do two 4-page revisions of informal writing assignments. These must be handed in by October 13 and December 6 respectively, but may be handed in any time before these dates.

***Students will be encouraged to craft their own essay topics and will be given proposal forms to fill out.

Note:

1. Regular attendance is required in order to pass the course.

2. Students who miss more than 2 classes for reasons other than a medical or family emergency will receive “0” for the participation/attendance grade.

3. No late papers will be accepted.

4. Please turn off all cell phones and do not text while in class! It’s distracting for me and for the other students.

Week 1

September 8:

Introduction

Week 2

September 13: Paula McDowell, "Mediating Media Past and Present: Towards a Genealogy of 'Print Culture' and 'Oral Tradition,'" from This Is Enlightenment, ed. Clifford Siskin and William Warner (PDF)

Thomas Gray, “The Bard” (handout); “A Memorable Song Upon the unhappy hunting in Chevy Chase” (in reader);

See also the facsimile at: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20279/image;

And listen to the ballad: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20279/recording

Informal writing assignment #1 due

Suggestion: What is McDowell’s thesis? How does reading her essay change how you think about reading the ballad “Chevy Chase”?

September 15:

Thomas Percy, “The Preface”; “An Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels” from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); “Edward, Edward,” “Sir Patrick Spence” from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) (in reader);

Seminar: Nick Groom, “The Ballad and Literary Antiquarianism” from The Making of Percy’s Reliques (PDF)

Week 3

September 20:

James Macpherson, “Fingal” (in reader)

Informal writing assignment #2 due

Suggestion: Write about how Macpherson depicts the ancient Scottish bards.

September 22:

Seminar: James Mulholland, “James Macpherson’s Ossian Poems, Oral Traditions and the Invention of Voice” (PDF)

Week 4

September 27:

Research seminar with Rebecca Dowson

September 29:

Iolo Morgannwg (Edward Williams), title page and “Ode on the Mythology of the Ancient British Bards, in the Manner of Taliesin,” from Poems, lyric and pastoral. In two volumes (in reader);

Evan Evans, “A Paraphrase of the 137^th Psalm, Alluding to the Captivity and Treatment of the Welsh Bards by King Edward I” (in reader)

Seminar: Sarah Prescott, “’Gray’s Pale Spectre’: Evan Evans, Thomas Gray and the Rise of Welsh Bardic Nationalism” (PDF)

Informal writing assignment #3 due

Suggestion: Write about the difference between Morgannwg’s representation of Welsh bards and Macpherson’s depiction of ancient Scottish bards OR Percy’s depiction of ancient English minstrels.

Week 5

October 4: Edward Jones, title page, illustration and “Mynediad Câdpen Morgan” from Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784) title page and “A Song of the Wooing of Queen Catherine by Sir Owen Tudor” from Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1794) (in reader)

Charlotte Brooke, title page and Preface from Reliques of Irish Poetry (in reader)

**4:00: talk by Paula McDowell

Informal writing assignment #4 due

Suggestion: Compare Brooke’s and Jones’ projects in collecting the “Relicks” of their respective nations.

October 6: Charlotte Brooke, “Tale of Maon” from Reliques of Irish Poetry (in reader)

Seminar: Sandro Jung, “Synthesising Difference: Charlotte Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, the Construction of Identity and the Politics of the Literary Collection”

<http://www.informaworld.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/smpp/section?content=a911823758&fulltext=713240928>

Week 6

October 11: THANKSGIVING

October 13: John Bartlett and Rika Ruebsatt perform ballads

Short essay #1 due

Week 7

October 18: Mary Balfour, “Kathleen O’Neil” from Hope: A Poetical Essay with Various Other Poems (in reader);

Informal writing assignment #5 due

Suggestion: Write about the role of the banshee and/or the bard in “Kathleen O’Neill.”

October 20: Mary Balfour, “Carolan’s Receipt,” “Ceann Dubh Dilis” and “Joyce’s Tune” from Hope: A Poetical Essay with Various Other Poems (in reader)

Seminar: Luke Gibbons, "From Ossian to O'Carolan: The Bard as Separatist Symbol," From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic Translations, ed. Fiona Stafford and Howard Gill (PDF)

Week 8

October 25:

Read the Preface in the edition on ECCO: Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, by Robert Burns (Kilmarnock, 1786).

Also read the following in Selected Poems:

“The Twa Dogs” (92 ff.)

 “Epistle to J. Lapraik, An Old Scotch Bard” (29-33)

“To William Simson-Ochiltree” (36-40)

“The Vision” (41-48)

“To a Mouse” (67)

“The Cottar’s Saturday Night” (100-05)

Informal writing assignment #6 due

Suggestion: Do a close reading of one of the poems for this week.

October 27:

Robert Burns, “Tam O’Shanter” (160-67)

Seminar: Murray Pittock, “Robert Burns” from Scottish and Irish Romanticism (PDF)

Week 9

Nov. 1:

Robert Burns, “It Was Upon a Lammas Night”(4)

“Song Composed in August” (5)

“John Barleycorn” (6-7)

“Green Grow the Rashes”(14)

“The Fornicator. A New Song” (50)

“Auld Lang Syne” (146)

“John Anderson, my Jo” (157)

“Ae Fond Kiss” (170)

“Scots Wha Hae” (177)

“A Red, Red Rose” (178)

“Is There For Honest Poverty” (181)

Informal writing assignment #7 due

Suggestion: Do a close reading of one of the poems for this week.

Nov. 3:

Robert Burns, “Love and Liberty” (69 ff)

Seminar: Kirsteen McCue, “Burns’s Songs and Poetic Craft” from The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns (PDF)

Week 10

Nov. 8

William Blake, “Songs of Innocence”

Informal writing assignment #8 due

Suggestion: Do a close analysis of one of the “Songs of Innocence,” paying particular attention to the way in which the text is presented visually.

Nov. 10

Seminar: Kevin Hutchings, “William Blake and the Music of the Songs”

http://www.erudit.org/revue/RON/2007/v/n45/015815ar.html

Week 11

November 15:

Blake, “Songs of Experience”

Informal writing assignment #9 due

Suggestion: Do a close analysis of one of the “Songs of Experience,” paying particular attention to the way in which the text is presented visually.

Proposal for final essay due

November 17

Seminar: Maureen McLane, “Ballads and Bards: British Romantic Orality” (PDF)

Week 12

November 22: Lyrical Ballads

Advertisement from 1798 edition

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

“The Foster Mother’s Tale”

“Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-tree Which Stands Near the Lake of Esthwaite”

“Lewti, Or the Circassian Love Chant”

“The Female Vagrant”

Informal writing assignment #10 due

Suggestion: Do a close reading of one of the poems for this week.

November 24: Lyrical Ballads

“Simon Lee, the old Huntsman”

“Anecdote for Fathers”

“We are Seven”

“Lines Written in Early Spring”

“The Thorn”

Seminar: Celeste Langan and Maureen N. McLane. “The Medium of Romantic Poetry” from The Cambridge Companion to Romantic Poetry, eds. James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane (PDF)

Week 13

November 29: essay-writing day

Dec. 1: Lyrical Ballads (1800)

Preface to the 1800 edition (171 ff)

“Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”

“Michael, A Pastoral Poem”

Hand in draft of final essay

Week 14:

Dec. 6: Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat sing ballads. Essays handed back for revision.

Second short essay due.

Dec. 13: Final essays due by 10:30 am.

Explanation of Seminars:

Seminars are intended to encourage students to develop critical and oral presentation skills. Students will work together in pairs or small groups. Each group will present a critical article to the class as well as a creative project based on the reading for the week.  Then they will facilitate a discussion based on the reading for the week and incorporating the ideas of the critical article.  The formal part of the presentation should take no more than twenty minutes, allowing plenty of time for discussion. The entire seminar should occupy approximately 1 hour of the class.

An essay exploring one primary text for the week from the perspective of the critical article is due 1 week after the presentation of your seminar.

The seminar presentation is worth 10% of your grade. The essay is worth 10% of your grade.

Directions:

1. Read the assigned article (or find an article or book chapter dealing with the texts we are reading that week which interests you--please check articles out with me before you use them and provide me with a copy one week before the presentation). 

2. Write a 1-page précis of the article in which you a. describe the thesis in your own words and b. briefly summarize the argument.  Think of two questions that relate the ideas raised in the article to the reading for the week. 

3. Work together on a creative response to the reading for the week.  This can take any form you like: a dialogue with one of the characters, a dramatized version of an aspect of the reading, a modern-day adaptation, a dance, graphic novel, a multi-media or visual art piece.  If you have an idea you aren’t sure about, just ask. 

4. Present the critical article and the creative response to the class during your seminar.  Include the precis (with bibliographical information and the two questions) as hand-out. 

5. Facilitate discussion of your two questions. 

6. Write a 4-page essay in which you consider one of the primary texts we have read for this week from the perspective of your critical article.

You will receive a mark based on:

* discussion of the article: conciseness, comprehension of the ideas, engagement with the ideas, engagement with audience (don't just read out your material), effectiveness of audio-visual aids.

* presentation: conciseness, comprehension of the ideas, engagement with the ideas, engagement with audience (don't just read out your material), use of audio-visual aids.

* creative response: originality, effort and imagination involved .

* choice of questions: engagement with the material, level of challenge and interest

* facilitation of discussion: effectiveness, time management.

* cohesiveness of group and participation of all members.  Please indicate who has done what in the group. 

*critical thinking skills and writing skills for your essay.

List of seminar presentations:

Seminar presentation