Course Guidelines Path 1 Calendar Class Discussion Path 2 Groups & Texts Writing Assignments Reference Texts

 


ornamental line

The Way of Distortion

"'Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water,
but thick and dark like blood'" (50).
C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces (1956)

 

Points for Reflection

The Bible: Mark 12:1-12

  1. the ill-behaved tenants must be assuming what about the nature and power of the vineyard's owner?
  2. would this parable work just as well if the business in question, winemaking, were replaced with a business venture like shepherding or fishing?
  3. some of those listening to the parable (chief priests, scribes, elders--see chp. 11) believe that Jesus is obliquely commenting on them (v.12). For what actions might he be implicating them?
  4. does the owner's response seem extreme, or justified? Does your response to the previous question alter if you assume the vineyard owner represents God?
  5. let's assume for the moment that Jesus is employing "the way of distortion." Can you identify in the tale both the violent and comic elements which O'Connor claims are inevitable in such "wild" tales (O'Connor 816)?


Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Lord Walter's Wife" (1862), PDF

  1. William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair (a novel) and editor of the Cornhill Magazine, declined to publish this poem by Barrett Browning, having categorized it as an “account of unlawful passion” inappropriate for readers of all ages.  What about this poem might have earned it such an assessment from Thackeray?
  2. at what point does the poem turn and begin to reveal the speaker’s true endgame?
  3. should we take the suitor’s desire to go, in order to save himself, at face value?
  4. why might Barrett Browning compare the lady’s eyes to the Kraken (l.2)?  In your answer, consider Tennyson’s short poem “The Kraken” (183).
  5. is this woman actively encouraging her companion to utter his provocative observations about her attractions?  Is she toying with or testing him?
  6. is the poem’s female speaker an adulterous flirt?
  7. what precipitates the male speaker’s anger and conclusion that his companion has suddenly lost her beauty (ll.19-20)?
  8. is the disdain she shows in response to his own anger earned (ll.21-22)?
  9. why might the wife have broken the fan her companion once kissed (l.36)?
  10. what might it mean that her companion was once “‘moved at [her] side now and then / In the senses,’” and why consider this an “‘honor’” (ll.37-38)?
  11. is she celebrating illicit love, or marital fidelity, in lines 39-40?
  12. does the narrator appear to have invited her companion to “‘falter’” for a week (ll.41-42)?
  13. what truth has she determined to show her auditor (ll.45-46)?
  14. is she calling herself clean, or unclean, by comparing her eyes to a man’s palm (ll.47-48)?
  15. explain the vertiginous, contradictory movement of the narrator’s words in the concluding couplet (ll.53-54).


Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" (1834; 1836, 1842), PDF

  1. should the reader attribute the personification of lines 1-4 to the narrator or to the author?
  2. what rhyme scheme does Browning follow in this poem? Why might Browning hide the poem's structure (it contains twelve five-line stanzas) by eliminating the traditional lines of space between each stanza?
  3. consider the significance of Browning's interrupting (with a period) the enjambment implied by the grammatical unity of lines 5-6.
  4. what does Porphyria do, while kneeling, that warms the cottage (ll.6-7)?
  5. which character appears to be in control in lines ll.15-20?
  6. what struggle does Porphyria relay to the narrator (ll.21-30)?
  7. is the narrator correct to interpret Porphyria's "passion" (l.26) as "worship" (l.33)?
  8. do you consider the narrator's assessment of Porphyria as "perfectly pure and good" to be a function of her actual character or his current emotional state?
  9. what does the narrator's perspective on his shocking actions reveal about the workings of his mind (l.41-55)? Do you consider his actions those of a criminal or a madman? Does the poem's final line inform your response at all?
  10. does it change your understanding of the poem to learn that Browning first published it as "Porphyria" in 1836, then paired it with "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" under the title "Madhouse Cells" in 1842, and finally separated it out again in 1863 under its current title?


C. S. Lewis' "Transposition" (1940) / PDF

  1. what is Lewis's own view of "speaking in tongues"? Excitement, disdain, ambivalence, or something else?
  2. which three different explanations does Lewis give for glossolalia (93)?
  3. Dalí, in his "Mystical Manifesto" (1951), declares that mystical ecstasy and erotic pleasure may overlap. He uses orgasmic language to describe unification with God. Does Lewis reject such an association (93-94)?
  4. Lewis notes that unbelievers and cynics look at Christian talk of "spiritual" matters and find only that which can be explained by science, and that believers themselves describe the spiritual/unknown in terms of the material and known (94-95). What various examples does Lewis provide of this?
  5. Lewis observes that joy and anguish can prompt the very same displeasing, physical response, but that one knows with certainty that the cause is quite different (95-98). Can you think of other, similar examples of this phenomenon beyond the one he provides?
  6. our philosopher argues, still further, that a richer, more varied system can only be represented in a poorer system by an algebraical (not arithmetical) transposition, by a kind of interpretation of the higher thing into the terminology of the lower in which something is lost in translation (98-99). This apparently happens when a complex emotion is transposed into a relatively simple physical sensation that can itself, signify a few different things (i.e. joy, anguish, queasiness, sickness, etc.) What linguistic, musical, and artistic examples does Lewis provide to enumerate his point (99-100)?
  7. under what conditions can an individual conversant in the lower medium/system understand correctly interpret and decipher a lower image/example that points to a higher idea/principle (100-101)?
  8. though symbolism can explain transposition when it comes to the way written and spoken language transpose or signify one another, a picture is not a mere symbol of the visible world, but something more than a mere sign. Lewis calls the relation between the two sacramental (102-103). He uses it to describe the relation between mind and body (103-104) and also between the spiritual and the natural (104). Why, according to Lewis, do some people remain unable to recognize the spiritual within the material (104-105)?

sketch of large structures with narrow bases and a larger top. Colored butterflies on the largest of the two
Study for the Jewel, 'Chalice of Life' (1954)
Salvador Dali



Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu