The Blotted Line

Oh, what pleasure do you take

To hear the nurse discovery make,

How the nose, the lip, the eye,

The forehead full of majesty,

Shews the father, how to this

The mother’s beauty added is;

And after all with gentle numbers,

To woo the infant into slumbers.

And these delights he yields you now,

The swathe and cradle this doth show;

But hereafter, when his force

Shall wield the rattle and the horse,

When his ven’tring tongue shall speak

All synalaephaes,* and shall break

This word short off, and make that two,

Prattling as obligations do,

‘Twill ravish the delighted sense

To view these sports of innocence,

And make the wisest dote upon

Such pretty imperfection.

These hopeful cradles promise such

Future goodness, and so much,

That they prevent my prayers, and I

Must wish but for formality.

I wish religion timely be

Taught him with his ABC

I wish him good and constant health

His [parents'] learning, but more wealth.

May he have many and fast friends,

Meaning good will, not private ends

[...] Have no sad cares to break his sleep

Nor other cause, than now, to weep.

May he ne’er live to be again

What he is now, a child;  may pain,

If it do visit, as a guest

Only call in, not dare to rest.

4 November 2009 ~ Hamilton.

Glossary of Terms.

synalaephaes. n. “confused sounds”

Works Cited.

Cartwright, William. “To Mr. W.B., at the Birth of His First Child.” Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Ed. Hugh MacLean. New York: Norton, 1974. 282-283.

in the sorts of small assignments/weekly preparation I do for class, here is the Spenser position I posted for this week’s discussion (I feel better posting it now the class is finished for the week)

Stephen Orgel argues concerning court masques:

In a theater employing perspective, there is only one focal point, one perfect place in the hall from which the illusion achieves its full effect.  At court performances this is where the king sat, and the audience around him at once became a living emblem of the structure of court.  The closer one sat to the monarch, the “better” one’s place was, an index to one’s status, and more directly, to the degree of favor one enjoyed. (10-11)

The king’s position as privileged gazer gives him authority: his eyes view the masque’s entire spectacle. This gaze that signifies his power also opens the king’s body to the gaze of the other spectators who read the “living emblem” (allegory) of the room, noting who shares the king’s gaze. James’s power depends upon these other gazes being present. Orgel’s metaphor models how gazes work in early modern court (Elizabeth’s or James’s): attending a masque or conducting court business, the monarch’s body occupies the central position, and nearness to their gaze determines the power of bodies around them.

Britomart occupies the privileged position of gazer in Cupid’s masque in III.xii, though her body is vulnerable in a way that Elizabeth’s and James’s are not; their bodies may be the object of courtiers’ gazes, and open to malicious “readings” (gossip), but those monarchs maintain control: it is their body, their gaze which sets in motion the flow of other gazes at court.

Britomart in III.xii is not the subject of a visible gaze: she is alone for most of the masque. Yet following her viewing of the masque her body is physically opened: “The wicked weapon [...] strooke into her snowie chest” (III.xii.32).  The moment recalls III.ii, when Britomart’s gaze renders her vulnerable (as she looks into the mirror and falls in love with Artegall).  Add in the narrator’s description in III.xi.53, as Britomart views the tapestry: “The warlike Mayd [...] could [not] satisfy / Her greedy eyes”.  The gaze is among Britomart’s greatest weaknesses.

Unlike Orgel’s monarchs, Britomart’s body does not possess any inherent authority. Authority resides in the body of the absent Busirane, the narrator who describes Britomart, and the reader who, unknown to Britomart, watches her body watching the masque. Britomart’s position in Spenser’s poem mirrors her position in the histories of Britain: Britomart has no control over her future, or whom she loves. Her gaze as she looks into the mirror in III.ii is controlled by an invisible author of history [God?]: little wonder this gaze is displaced by a mirror!

Works Cited

Stephen Orgel. The illusion of power: political theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: U of California P, 1975.

4 November 2009 ~ Hamilton

And this is how Celia makes cooking take twice as long as it should.

2 November 2009 ~ Hamilton

(Also, I apologise for the dissemination of kitten photos, that are entirely frivolous and non-literary.)

Yesterday I stood at the kitchen counter, knife in hand, finally confronting the pumpkin that had sat on my table for the better part of the last week.  I found myself weirdly appreciative of my mother for teaching me how to cook.  The pumpkin is, after all, one of the weirder-looking vegetables, and, if one doesn’t already know better, also appears fairly inedible.  I think if I had not spent so much time in the kitchen with my mother when I was younger, I might have given up in despair before I even started attempting to cut the thing (“pie, soup, muffins, roasted seeds, perhaps, but damned if I know how to get at them”); more likely, I would have tried to cut the large gourd and made an utter mess of things (there’s a story in my family where I tried to serve ice cream before it had time to thaw: my brother came home to an angry little sister and a block of half melted, half frozen ice cream with the scoop, two bent spoons, and a knife stuck in the frozen half).

Following the fairly simple procedure for pumpkin preparation, I did not make a mess of things: insert the knife halfway and use the middle of the blade to slice once around the circumference, producing two halves.  Scoop out the interior of the pumpkin (the part which seven-year-olds universally refer to as “pumpkin guts”) with your hands, separating the seeds from the stringy flesh. Use a spoon to scrape out any remaining strings; dispose.  Quarter  the halves, and halve the quarter segments.  Slice off the rinds.

By the time I went to sleep yesterday, I had a large container of cubed pumpkin, and one each of butternut and buttercup squash, from which I made two separate meals (pie, and soup) for the rest of the week. I had also realised why it never bothered me that my mother was so insistent that I learn how to cook.  She never approached cooking as something that was an inevitable part of being female; indeed, my brother, too, learned how to cook, and some of the best memories we have together are spent in the kitchen, preparing meals for our parents (for a change).  My mother taught me how to cook because, as she would reiterate, “you’ll need to know it when you live on your own.” Cooking was the farthest thing from an education for a future that would end in marriage and cooking for my three children: it was preparation for a future as an independent adult.

When I was older, and busier (and snarkier), I used to brush off my mother’s cooking lessons, telling her I would learn how to cook when I finally did live on my own.  I’m pleased, now, that she was so persistent.  Otherwise I may not have been able to do all this today:

1 November 2009 ~ Hamilton

Our TA union called a strike last night.  I have mixed feelings about the situation (I think everyone does).  Fortunately, teaching third years, I have not encountered the verbal berating some of the other grad students/TAs have: my students are a bit more aware of the complex position in which we find ourselves.  It’s difficult to ignore emails from good students who are earnestly trying to improve their work (I have an unusual number of these students this year).  I’ll miss hearing their ideas for their performance project, and working with them in tutorial (which was starting to be a lot of fun).  Hopefully I’ll be back there soon.

31 October 2009 ~ Hamilton