Poetry – Experiments in Criticism

Religious Poetry

In the editorial introduction to a book called George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (1978), Mario Di Cesare discusses how he put the book together. His talking points are revealing. First, Di Cesare finds the title “metaphysical” for the five poets less convincing than “the school of Herbert.” The book only puts Herbert’s nameContinue reading “Religious Poetry”

What To Say

In his article “What To Say About a Poem,” William Wimsatt says there are four broad categories for what teachers and critics can say about a poem. First, you can explain everything from the meaning of a word to a knotty form of syntax. Second, you can describe the external features of the poem (e.g.,Continue reading “What To Say”

The Reeve’s Tale: A Covenantal Outline

This is the third in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT TRANSCENDENCE: There is no transcendence in this plot: only the authorial intent of the Reeve (a town official) who wants to get back at the Miller for telling a tale that satirizes carpenters because he is himself aContinue reading “The Reeve’s Tale: A Covenantal Outline”

The Miller’s Tale – A Covenantal Outline

This is the third in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT Transcendence: A clerk claims he knows God plans to destroy the world by flood.Hierarchy: The clerk is living with a miller and sleeping with the miller’s young wife. The scholarly clerk (Nicholas) is able to woo the wifeContinue reading “The Miller’s Tale – A Covenantal Outline”

Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale

This is the second in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT/THEME/RHETORIC Plot: The knight tells a classic chivalric romance about the battle two cousins (Arcite and Palomon) have for the same woman: the Duke’s sister-in-law Emily. Because the two cousins were political exiles, neither can fulfill their desire ofContinue reading “Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale”

The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue

This is the first of a series of posts on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1390s). PLOT/THEME/STYLE Plot: the opening of this frame narrative is pretty simple. Thirty-one pilgrims meet in an inn on their way to Canterbury, the destination of a religious pilgrimage to visit St. Thomas A Becket’s grave. The narrator, himselfContinue reading “The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue”