Talk:BM1 - Introduction to Literature - Assignment 1

Question One

The speaker (male) addresses an unspecified audience. The last line offers a change with his report of the words the Muse finally offered him as advice. The reported problem and the interaction with the Muse lie in the past (the problem is – obviously – overcome).

Commentary: the question was rather simple, we gave ten points for the speaker/audience part and five each for the muse and the past.

Several people gave us more complex (and as it turned out: misleading) answers. The speaker is not identified as Sir Philip Sidney (we do not read “I, Sir P.S. had a bad time…”), nor is the speaker identified as “Astrophel”. Several participants saw the title of the whole collection (Astrophel and Stella) as the full clue and concluded that the poem addresses a “she”, Stella, or, in “reality”, Penelope Rich. The Wikipedia article offered this information [1]. The attributions were in any case problematic. We did not ask “who is behind Stella”. The problematic aspect was the risk to continue with the “truth”. Penelope Rich was another man’s wife, so the poem is about unfulfilled love. Those who went that way were likely to give a number of wrong answers on question 2.

Why should one ask for the communicative situation? Most of all: to get a notion of the problems presented in the poem, a notion of the tensions and the suspense it offers. The question was designed to lead you into the content.

Another marginal problem might be mentioned: Some began to muse about the Muse. Do Muses exist? Several people were sure that they are completely fictional – and concluded that in reality Sidney must have been talking to himself. Others noted that many poets speak of their beloved ones as Muses – in which case they were ready to see Penelope Rich suddenly answering (or Stella) (or the “dear she”). You can just as well conclude that Robinson Crusoe was fictional and that the whole novel Defoe wrote was hence invention, and that we rather had to consider why Defoe wrote such a novel than read it.

Question Two

A note on the content – not on the theme:

The sonnet has different sections. In the first (roughly the first quatrain) the speaker considers that writing a poem might help to win the feelings of the lady he has fallen in love with (not writing this poem!). He develops a plan – namely to arouse her interest with the poem and through that her pity – he wants to give a bleak picture of his situation – with the result that she might finally answer his feelings.

To make his poem interesting he decides to adorn it with inventions suiting the lady’s wit – a decision which leads him into a desperate situation: the harder he tries to contrive inventions the clearer he fails. He takes resort to the pages of others, i.e. he reads collections of poems to get inspiration. The result is a complete loss of ideas he could use.

The problem’s solution is stated with the last line: He has to look into his heart (rather than the poems of others). We can conclude that the solution was successful; the use of the past tense gives that clue: the problem is overcome. The collection of poems can count as further prove.

Commentary – content an theme: The poem is the first of the entire collection and perhaps a good start. The author does not promise a load of conventional sonnets. He offers a collection of unconventional poems – he could not write after the fashion of others, so he claims. He was in love when he wrote the collection and he wrote as his feeling dictated – an apology (in case he violated some of the rules), a promise (to offer real feelings, not just texts after the fashion of others) and a good start as we get a reason why we actually receive a big collection of poems.

Several people did not get the content. They remained fixed on their initial notion that this was a sonnet written by a sad lover to a lady who does not answer his feelings. We did not offer more than 10-12 points if the topics – “this is a poem about writing poems” or “this is a poem about what happens if you try to get your inspiration from the works of other poets” or “this is a poem on the question of originality in poetry”… – was not noted.

Answers that remained on the level of content recapitulation could also not get the full umber of points. The question was to identify the themes – the theme is the general topic of the text, what is it about? If you gave the correct plotline of the poem – as given above – and stated: So the general theme is unfulfilled love and unhappiness of a lover, this resulted in a loss of points. If you read a poem in which 90% of the lines deal with the problems of writing a poem, we feel that writing a poem is at least to some extend a theme in this poem.

Why do we differentiate between content and theme? Well basically as understanding and interpretation afford such a differentiation. Jesus simile of the prodigal son[2] is not understood if you come to the conclusion that Jesus wants to advertise the eating of lamb with his words. It is part of our culture that content and theme can differ. The study of texts affords a readiness to speak about such differences as lie between "literal meaning", "plot", "content", "theme", "intention" etc.