I have been talking about the work of the Romantic poet and artist William Blake lately in the Expanding Eyes podcast, which brings me back to my beginnings many years ago when I read Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye’s great book on Blake, at the age of 19.
Oh yes, I have often laughed to myself imagining the look on that professor's face when he saw that this 19 or 21 year-old had turned in a 90 page paper! In which he apologizes for leaving out some genres of Romanticism! You would know you had either a genius or a lunatic on your hands--exactly the theme of the newsletter! When I've taught the Nativity Ode, I teasingly ask the students how they spent THEIR holiday break. So your introduction to Frye was the Massey Lectures--how interesting.
Good to read about your early absorption in and of that great book! I only read it after I graduated from college -- very shortly after, for I was looking forward to it. However, I heard Frye's Massey lectures rebroadcast over NPR when I was 20, and my senior-year high school teacher assigned Frye's Rhinehart edition of Milton's poetry, where I was much taken by his introduction. He wrote there about the shock of receiving the Nativity Ode in a 21-year-old mind. Frye himself was almost 21 when he wrote the essay "Romanticism" for his philosophy professor.
Oh yes, I have often laughed to myself imagining the look on that professor's face when he saw that this 19 or 21 year-old had turned in a 90 page paper! In which he apologizes for leaving out some genres of Romanticism! You would know you had either a genius or a lunatic on your hands--exactly the theme of the newsletter! When I've taught the Nativity Ode, I teasingly ask the students how they spent THEIR holiday break. So your introduction to Frye was the Massey Lectures--how interesting.
Good to read about your early absorption in and of that great book! I only read it after I graduated from college -- very shortly after, for I was looking forward to it. However, I heard Frye's Massey lectures rebroadcast over NPR when I was 20, and my senior-year high school teacher assigned Frye's Rhinehart edition of Milton's poetry, where I was much taken by his introduction. He wrote there about the shock of receiving the Nativity Ode in a 21-year-old mind. Frye himself was almost 21 when he wrote the essay "Romanticism" for his philosophy professor.