The film assigned was Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), but mainly we discussed Freud on pleasure vs. unpleasure, instincts, their vicissitudes, what we want and what we don't, with just a very little attention to scopophilia itself, to which we'll return in the last class Tuesday April 29th.
Brief considerations of the historical, political and personal background of "Upon Appleton House," and then the rest of the class on "The Unfortunate Lover." Worst love poem ever written? Or amazing and strange outlier. Hint: the latter. Some talk of vexillogy, in particular of heraldic blazons, for those who get excited by that sort of thing.
We start by viewing one of the film projects that a student did for his midterm: blinking eyes. This will be more or less silent in the podcast, for a minute or two. Then a discussion of blinking, partly Erwin Goffman style. And then on to Vertigo , another movie about repetition: one's own; the world's; the other's. Comparison to Groundhog Day and Source Code . Opening considerations on Freudian repetition, as in Beyond the Pleasure Principle , via an account of the relation of pleasure to inst...
A class sort of entirely on Marvell's Garden: sort of because we have occasion to talk about synecdoche vs. non-synecdochal metonymy, which naturally gets us talking about W.V. Quine, and therefore his nephew Robert Quine (guitarist who recorded the Velvets and worked with Lou Reed), and then Anthony and the Johnsons, because of course.
First class on Marvell: Introduction mainly about what we (what I) don't know, but with some historical context. (There's a new biography, which I haven't read, which apparently has lots of new information.) Empsonian explanation of pastoral. Eliot on minor vs major, good vs great poetry. "The Mower Against Gardens," and being rich in hay. Figuration in "The Garden." A lot of this course is about the fascinating subtleties of figuration in our poets, and this is something we'll concentrate on in...
Final class on Source Code and Groundhog Day. Acting. Repetition. Subject and object. Death and other minds. Why Groundhog Day is a more radical movie than Source Code (in case you need to know). Counterparts. Would you transport yourself to another world where you'd switch places with your counterpart in order to be with the surviving counterpart of your dead love here? Would that be enough?
Never got to "Love" (III). We go through "The Forerunners" again and the relationship of the soul to language and expression in that poem, and Herbert's addresses to his own language; then on to "The Pulley" and the interplay of wealth and poverty there (as in "Redemption").
Herbert's view of poetic subject. "Jordan" (I); "Easter Wings" and its prosody. "The Flower," and a start to "The Forerunners."
The plausibility of Source Code . Possible worlds in Lewis. Truth-makers. ("If a sentence is true, there's something that makes it true." --Donald Davidson) Some vague, but licensed BS about quantum theory and the many worlds interpretation, and how that fits in with Source Code . Differences between Source Code and Groundhog Day ,
A class on repetition in Groundhog Day ; a little bit of discussion of Kierkegaard and the idea that repetition is always a step behind. How this plays out in the movie: what comes first before it's repeated. How much is left to elision. How philosophical issues in the movie overlap with technical and narrative demands of film making. Groundhog Day compared to Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, and to the Mr. Magoo version of A Christmas Carol.
His relation to his vocation as priest and as person. His ministry. Typology - prefiguration and correlative types. Being an Aaron: "Aaron Dressing," "Denial," and "The Collar."
A class on the difference between external world skepticism and other mind skepticism: their conceptual independence. Parmenides and Zeno on why to be skeptical of the external world. Filming Achilles and the tortoise: what you'd see. Egerton. Berkeley's solution to Zeno's paradoxes.
The wonderful Robert Herrick, and a few of his poems: his relation to Jonson; his erotic lyrics. Just a class on Herrick, really.
Last class on Ben Jonson: a little time on his Weston-Stuart Epithalamion, and then most of the case on the Cary-Morrison Ode, with special attention, in both poems, to Jonson's stunning formal brilliance.
Mainly a discussion of La Captive and the question of other minds, and of what the male lead (Simon) wants from his captive (Ariane): what kind of thing wanting more from her or something different from what she gives him could possibly be. Discussion therefore about replicants, zombies, and other minds. The sheer fascination of looking in La Captive. Some discussion of Jeanne Dielman, but without the spoilers that would indicate how Jeanne turns out (to herself even) to have a mind -- an other ...
A class mainly on Blade Runner , and how it is practically the same movie as Chantal Akerman's La Captive : both Cartesian explorations of the reality of others, and of other minds. Tyrell as the evil genius in Descartes. Seeing souls in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , Emerson, and Blade Runner . The ontology of voiceover.
A little bit about Jonson's urbanity, and his different voices, then a reading mainly of "The Hourglass, " and a comparison with Herbert's "Church Monuments." The hourglass as symbol of vanity, but the dust also the literal remains of the dead, so that it's both the sign of time and its result (like the skull). And then a brief look at "Inviting a Friend to Supper" (and some discussion of the nature of rhyme), and "To Penshurst."...
Mainly a close reading of the unutterably subtle effects of the Song to Celia "Drink to me only with thine eyes." Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I’ll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope, that there It could not withered be. But thou thereon ...
Then another class that I thought went pretty well (two decent classes in one day!) on Beckett's Film . To put in the form of a paradoxical tweet: the title refers to Buster Keaton's irreducible and insoluble condition, existing in a film of perception, not to the fact that it's a film. But what I was glad to have articulated was the distinction opposing what I was calling the Descartes/Kant/Emersonian view that the difference between the perceived (empirical) self and the perceiving self redoun...
I thought this class went pretty well: first a discussion of the Trinity based on a really fine letter to the TLS by someone named Neville Martin Gwynne (hello! if you're Googling yourself: that was a great letter!). Then a brief intro to Jonson and a close reading of Jonson's beautiful epigram/epitaph "On My First Daughter," here: Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth,Mary, the daughter of their youth;Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,It makes the father less to rue.At six months’ end sh...
We finish discussing the Trinity, and then go through the seven La Corona sonnets, where the interesting question of their temporality -- of the eternal vs. the sempiternal, of endless time vs. being outside of time -- comes up in the very question of how or where the sequence may be said to begin, since the first sonnet sums up the fact that the sequence is the crown which seems to spring out of that very first sonnet,
A quick exposition of Berkeley's idea that to be is to be perceived, followed by a viewing of Beckett's Film , starring Buster Keaton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqh6uwCkZno
I finally discuss, somewhat clumsily, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, after a brief introduction to Berkeley. A short class because the second half was given over to a viewing of Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr.
We conclude Satire 3, and talk about the difference between an aesthetics of difficulty (Donne's) and of effortlessness (e.g. Herrick and the Cavaliers). Satire 3 as promoting difficulty as promoting thought. Then on to "Batter My Heart..." and "Father, part of his double interest..." Some discussion of the NIcene Ring.
A line by line exposition of most of Satire 3 (TBC). More discussion on metonymic relations among a series of metaphors.
A class where we mainly discuss Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas). Question of memory, personal identity, love, and of course space and time. Some of the same issues as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Me, I felt that the class didn't cohere, but the students seemed to like the more extensive conversation.
A full class on the poem, and on teasing out the metonymic interaction of its metaphors. The interesting sexual switch at the very end. A discussion mid-class about whether people liked Donne passionately or not: are his wit and strangeness a bug or a feature. Is his poetry poetry you want to quote?
More on the different speakers in Donne's "Songs and Sonnets." The idea of the most capacious intelligence: the one who gets most others. How this plays out in kinds of narrative, especially fantasy fiction. Who gets whom better: Aslan or the White Witch? Voldemort or Dumbledore? Sauron or Gandalf? Yoda or Palpatine? The surprise when we're surprised that the good guys get the evil guys being a staple of narrative interest, because more generally being able to understand others' limitations is c...
...which is an overgrand way of saying that I try to give a quick view of Heidegger on the worldhood of the world, its relation to the image, and the sorts of ontological discussions that ontologists have. A quick summary of the periods of Platonic dialogue, and a little of the Parmenides. Achilles and the tortoise. The relation of object to image, in Cavell and Blanchot. A start....
A class devoted entirely to puzzling out the figurative language in "Love's Alchemy," and the way it's partly about puzzling out figurative language. The punctuational crux of the last lines. The idea that Donne's "Songs and Sonnets" have multiple speakers and that they address each other.
