THE SEMINAR IN DETAIL: WEEK-BY-WEEK (MWF 1:30-4:30)
PLEASE NOTE: the list of poems to be read for each session is not complete; the list of critics offers suggestions for critical readings on each session’s topic; they will not all be assigned or reported on.
A “Key to Critics” follows the Week-by-Week description.
WEEK 1
- Monday, 7/7/14: Introduction
“My God, what is a heart?”; revisions & manuscripts.
SEGMENT I: HERBERT
- Wednesday, 7/9: Theology 1 (Sin)
Poems include: Sin (1), Nature, Unkindness, Ungratefulness, Sin’s Round, Sepulcher, The Pearl, Vanity (1), Divinity, Confession, Submission
Topics: Herbert’s conception of sin; strategies of manipulation
Critics: Strier, Veith, Schoenfeldt, Clarke
- Friday, 7/11: Theology 2 (Grace)
Poems include: Assurance, Faith, Gratefulness, Justice (2), Death, The Holdfast, Dialogue, Love (3), The Glance, The Collar
Topics: the nature of faith; transformations
Critics: Stein, Fish, Bloch, Strier, Young
~ 5:00 PM: SOCIAL GATHERING AT CHEZ STRIER ~
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WEEK 2
SEGMENT I: HERBERT (continued)
- Monday, 7/14: The Institutional Church
Poems include: The British Church, The Church-floor, The Windows, Sion, The Altar, Aaron, The H. Communion, The Invitation and The Banquet, Lent, [Love (3)]
Topics: the place of architecture, vestments, holidays; attitude toward the Eucharist
Critics: Hodgkins, Strier (2), Whalen, van Dijkhuizen, Netzley
- Wednesday, 7/16: Autobiography & Affliction
Poems include: Affliction (1-5), Complaining, Longing, The Search, Employment (1), The Glimpse, The Temper (1 & 2), Love Unknown, The Cross, Discipline, A Parody, The Flower
Topics: the representation of suffering and confusion; the representation of relief
Critics: Harman, Vendler, Smithson, Malcolmson
- Friday, 7/18: Nature, Poetry, & Language
Poems include: The Quip, Mortification, Life, Conscience, The Rose, Life, Virtue, Matins, Man’s Medley, Home, Denial, Jordan (1 & 2), The Storm, A true Hymn, The Forerunners, [The Altar]
Topics: nature and worldly pleasure; the place and value of poetry; language
Critics: Tuve, Todd, Sullivan, Strier (3), Schoenfeldt (2)
~ 5:00 PM: SOCIAL GATHERING AT CHEZ STRIER ~
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WEEK 3
SEGMENT II: DICKINSON
- Monday 7/21: The Church, The Bible, and Theology
Poems include: I have a King, I think just how, Why make it doubt, Some keep the Sabbath, God is a distant stately Lover, The Moon is distant, Must be a Woe, My period had come for Prayer, He gave away his Life, Abraham to kill him, The Bible is an antique Volume, Of God we ask one favor
Topics: the figure of Jesus & Gospel ethics; the Father & Calvinism; the institutional church and devotional practices
Critics: Weisbuch, St. Armand, Brantley, Keane, Freedman
- Wednesday 7/23: The Soul, Death, And Immortality
Poems include: I shall know why, Safe in their Alabaster Chambers– both versions, The Soul’s Superior instants, The Soul unto itself, I died for Beauty, Because I could not stop, Death is a Dialogue, ‘Twas warm at first, The last Night that she lived, This Me
Topics: the soul’s nature & experiences; immortality; death: of self, of others
Critics: Wolosky, Stonum, Doriani, McIntosh, Raymond
- Friday 7/25: Nature
Poems include: These are the days, I taste a Liquor, The Birds begun, There’s a certain slant, A narrow Fellow, Further in Summer, The Murmuring of Bees, The way to know the Bobolink
Topics: aspects of nature: birds; times of day & year, etc.; meanings in nature
Critics: Diehl, Brantley, Peel, Miller (Perry)
~ 5:00 PM: SOCIAL GATHERING AT CHEZ STRIER ~
*
WEEK 4
SEGMENT II: DICKINSON (continued)
- Monday, 7/28: Love
Poems include: There came a Day at Summer’s full, I cannot live with You, My Life had stood a Loaded Gun, I’m wife, I’m ashamed, Forever at His side, Wild Nights, He touched me, We learned the Whole of Love, That first Day
Topics: passion & sexuality (reality or fantasy?); renunciation; the “Master” letters
Critics: Shure, Pollak, Juhasz collection, Farr, Smith (Robert), Benfey
- Wednesday, 7/30: Pain
Poems include: I like a look of Agony, Despair’s advantage, A weight with Needles, After great pain, There is a pain so utter, Pain has an element, Pain– expands the Time, ‘Twas the old road, Renunciation– is a piercing Virtue, The Birds reported
Topics: pain vs. “affliction”; kinds of pain; value in pain?
Critics: Cody, Cameron, Noble, Jackson
- Friday, August 1: Poetry & Language
Poems include: This was a Poet, Shall I take thee, Could mortal lip divine, I found the words, Your thoughts don’t have words, A Word made Flesh is seldom, A Word dropped careless, To tell the Beauty, Speech is one symptom, There is no silence
Topics: peculiarities of Dickinson’s language; Dickinson’s view of poetry; Dickinson’s view of the powers of language; Dickinson’s view limits of language
Critics: Thackrey, Miller (Christanne), Baker, Olney, Cameron (2), Fulton, Vendler (2)
~ 5:00 PM: SOCIAL GATHERING AT CHEZ STRIER ~
*
WEEK 5
SEGMENT III: REPORTS & PLANS
- Monday August 4, Wednesday August 6 & Friday August 8
Reports on conclusions, investigations, and projects (each participant would have approximately 1/2 hour over the three sessions).
~ 5:00 PM – TBA : FINAL BANQUET ~
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Key to Critics
Baker, Wendy. Lunacy of light: Emily Dickinson and the experience of metaphor. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. pp. xi, 214.
Bloch, Chana. Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1985. 324 pp.
Brantley, Richard E. Experience and faith: the late Romantic imagination of Emily Dickinson. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. pp. xi, 275.
Cameron, Sharon. Lyric time: Dickinson and the limits of genre. Baltimore, MD; London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. pp. xi, 280.
Cameron (2): Choosing not choosing: Dickinson’s fascicles. Chicago; London: Chicago UP, 1993. pp. xiv, 257.
Clarke, Elizabeth. Theory and theology in George Herbert’s poetry: ‘divinitie, and poesie, met’. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: OUP, 1997. pp. 299.
Cody, John. After great pain. Cambridge: Belknap, Harvard UP, 1971. pp. 538.
Diehl, Joanne Feit. Dickinson and the Romantic imagination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. 1981. pp. ix, 205.
Doriani, Beth Maclay. Emily Dickinson: daughter of prophecy. Amherst: Massachusetts UP, 1996. pp. xii, 230.
Fish, Stanley E. Self-Consuming Artifacts: the experience of seventeenth-century literature. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1972. Xiv, 432 pp.
Freedman, Linda. Emily Dickinson and the religious imagination. Cambridge; New York: CUP, 2011. pp. x, 210.
Fulton, Alice. Feeling as a foreign language: the good strangeness of poetry. St Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1999. pp. 309.
Harman, Barbara Leah. Costly Monuments: Representations of the Self in George Herbert’s Poetry. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1982. x, 225 pp.
Hodgkins, Christopher. Authority, Church, and Society in George Herbert Return to the Middle Way. Columbia U of Missouri P, 1993. xiii, 231 pp.
Jackson, Virginia. Dickinson’s misery: a theory of lyric reading. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton UP, 2005. pp. xvii, 298.
Keane, Patrick J. Emily Dickinson’s approving God: divine design and the problem of suffering. Columbia; London: Missouri UP, 2008. pp. xii, 256.
Malcolmson, Cristina. Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999. 297 pp.
McIntosh, James. Nimble believing: Dickinson and the unknown. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 2000. pp. xiii, 194.
Miller (Perry), “From Edwards to Emerson,” in Errand into the Wilderness. Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1956, 184-203.
Netzley, Ryan. Reading, Desire, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Religious Poetry. Toronto, ON: U of Toronto P, 2011. viii, 287 pp.
Noble, Marianne. The masochistic pleasures of Sentimental literature. Princeton, NJ; Princeton UP, 2000. pp. viii, 258.
Olney, James. The language(s) of poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Athens, Ga.: Georgia UP, 1993. pp. xiv, 158.
Peel, Robin. Emily Dickinson and the hill of science. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2010. pp. 435.
Pollak, Vivian R. Dickinson: the anxiety of gender. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984. pp. 258.
Raymond, Claire. The posthumous voice in women’s writing from Mary Shelley to Sylvia Plath. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. pp. 262.
Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship. Chicago, London: U of Chicago Press, 1991. Pp. xii., 345
Schoenfeldt (2): Bodies and selves in early modern England: physiology and inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. Cambridge; CUP, 1999. pp. xii, 203.
Smithson, Bill, “Herbert’s ‘Affliction’ Poems,” SEL 15 (1975): 125-40.
St. Armand, Barton Levi. Emily Dickinson and her culture: the soul’s society. Cambridge; New York: CUP, 1984. pp. xii, 368.
Shurr, William H. The marriage of Emily Dickinson: a study of the fascicles. Lexington: Kentucky UP, 1983. pp. x, 230.
Stein, Arnold. George Herbert’s Lyrics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968. pp. 265.
Stonum, Gary Lee. The Dickinson sublime. Madison; London: Wisconsin UP, 1990pp. x, 221.
Strier Richard. Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert’s Poetry. Chicago U of Chicago P, 1983. xxi, 277 pp.
Strier (2): “George Herbert and Ironic Ekphrasis,” Classical Philology 102 (2007): 96-109.
Strier (3): “George Herbert and the World,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1981): 211-236.
Sullivan, Ceri. The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan. Oxford, England Oxford UP, 2008. pp. xiv, 275.
Thackrey, Donald E. Emily Dickinson’s Approach to Poetry. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 1954. pp. 82.
Todd, Richard. The opacity of signs: acts of interpretation in George Herbert’s The Temple. Columbia: Missouri UP, 1986. pp. xiii, 223.
Tuve, Rosemond. A Reading of George Herbert.Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press; London: Faber, 1952. pp. 215.
van Dijkhuizen, Jan Frans. The Reformation unsettled: British literature and the question of religious identity, 1560-1660. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. pp. 244.
Veith, Gene Edward, Jr. Reformation spirituality: the religion of George Herbert. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP; London: Assoc. UPs, 1985. pp. 289.
Vendler, Helen. The Poetry of George Herbert. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975. 303 pp.
Vendler (2): Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. pp. 142.
Weisbuch, Robert. Emily Dickinson’s Poetry. Chicago; London: Chicago UP, 1975. pp. 202.
Whalen, Robert. The poetry of immanence: sacrament in Donne and Herbert.Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: Toronto UP, 2002. pp. xxi, 216.
Wolosky, Shira. Emily Dickinson: a voice of war. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1984. pp. xx, 196.