Lessons, Week 5, 17-21 February 2014

English 1302

Lessons

Spring 2014

 

Week 5, 17-21 February 2014

 

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure yr. sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.  Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when more concrete ones will do.  If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
4. …Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing.  I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified.  Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description.  You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me.”
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject.  Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

 

• C. S. Lewis, Letters to Children, 1956
   
  John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “To Autumn,” which also is an ode.  So what is an ode?  That’s a good test question.
   
  William Wordsworth – we read and discussed “The World is too Much With Us”  last week.  We’ll look at his background and “Lines Compose on Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1902.”  Next week we’ll read “Tintern Abbey.”
   
  I have for you a number of handouts to read, re-read, and enter into your notebook: 
   

1. A very good encyclopaedia entry (which I found on the photocopier) on the Romantics
2. A handout on prosody by wonderful, brilliant Dr. Barbara Carr of Stephen F. Austin State University
3. “Old Mr. Hall’s Very, Very, Basic, Basic Introduction to Sonnets” by, well, me
4. “Attitudes on Romanticism” by wonderful, brilliant Dr. Carr
5. A brief synopsis of Jane Campion’s Bright Star, a flawed bio-flick about John Keats and Fanny Brawne.

 

To conclude this week, we will enjoy a great celebration of learning.  I will be on site earlier than usual, D.V., probably by 0830, and you are welcome to come early and begin the test…um…merriment.