A Guy Could Get Used to This
My article on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the neoliberal thuggery committed by its devotees in the later twentieth century has just been published in Arena Magazine. The editors did a lovely job of slimming it down for publication, but I remain fond of my slightly fuller account, which I’ve posted in “News and Articles”.
New Courses Booked In
The three short courses I’ve recently announced, on Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and the history of English, are now booked to run at Ross House in April-June. Full details can be found on the “Courses and Seminars” link.
The Old English Reading Group
Or, Duh! Why Didn’t I Think of This Before?
I’ve had a good number of requests about when I’m going feel able to offer a proper course in Old English language and literature. If you’ve attended MLS classes, you’ll have heard me mention the Old English reading group I’ve been leading since 2011 or so at the University of Melbourne. It’s still going strong, translating Beowulf line-by-line (no end in sight, though we’re into the 2200′s) in its second hour and in its first doing some translation and discussion of easier prose texts (at the moment a famous early-eleventh-century sermon by archbishop Wulfstan of York). So it occurs to me (a bit belatedly!) to invite anyone who’s free and interested (and willing to troop up to Melbourne Uni in Parkville) to drop in on us. I’m going to attach PDF’s of our room-booking schedule through June, along with scans of the relevant texts we’re currently working on.
You won’t be learning Old English as such, since we are past working with the basics of grammar (though we do review regularly), but it would certainly give you a taste of what such learning might involve. We meet regularly from 1pm to 3pm on Tuesdays, and I bring the biscuits. Anyhow, should you be so moved, please feel very welcome to come and sit in on our session(s), which have been very happy events for all concerned (over and above the biscuits!). I’ve got a few hard copies of all the scans I’m posting below, so you don’t have to download and print them if you don’t want to.
Old English Reading Group Room Bookings March
Did You Say “Poetry”?
A few people have been asking about whether I wrote my own. I’m afraid I have, and you can find a PDF of five of ‘em on the “News & Articles” link.
Look! Over there! It’s Halley’s Comet! You will remember NOTHING.
An Article! A Palpable Article!
I’ve just got published in PN Review an article titled “The Play’s the Thing: Word-Play and Poetry.” It’s about what bad puns can tell us about great poetry, and I wrote it for pure fun. If you’re curious, I’ve uploaded a PDF under the “News and Articles” link on this page.
Three Short Courses Provisionally Booked!
Quick update: scheduling gribblies (availability of suitably-sized rooms, mainly) at Ross House have arisen. I will try to talk to the relevant people tomorrow to see what we can thrash out, so for the moment the dates and times below for the Dickinson and Shakespeare’s Sonnets courses are subject to negotiation. I’ll keep as close to what I originally requested as I can, and of course I’ll keep everyone in the loop as things get worked through. The Brief History of the English Language has gone through, with decent rooms, as listed below, so that’s confirmed.
I have just submitted booking requests for the short courses listed below. These are NOT confirmed yet, but I wanted to give interested students a heads-up about what’s likely to be on between now and July. All will run for six weeks.
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?”: the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Fridays 1-3 from 25 April
A Brief History of the English Language
Thursdays 1-3 from 17 May
“That then I scorn to change my state with kings”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Wednesdays 10-12 from 28 May
Listen to a Lecture on the New Audio Link
On your right you will see a spiffing new menu-button, “Listen to a Lecture”. If you go there, you’ll find details and images from a lecture I delivered recently, along with a recording of the lecture itself. When, from time to time, I am asked to delivered one-off free-standing lectures, I will record them if I can and add them to the one currently available. If you’re new to The Melbourne Literature Seminars, a listen (of whatever duration) will give you some sense both of what I do and of what you might be letting yourself in for if you attend one of our courses!
Three New Short Courses
First shout for these three new courses, which I will be scheduling through late April, May and June of this year. Nothing is booked yet, so let me know if (and in which ones) you might be interested. If you have any scheduling limitations among the possible Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday slots let me know as well, so I can try to accommodate as many as possible. Here they are:
A Brief History of the English Language
From dagger-wielding Saxons (that might be how they got their name) to iThingie-wielding moderns, English has served as a remarkable medium of communication, expression, and some of the best literature in the world. In six two-hour sessions we’ll explore the three main periods of English marked out by modern linguists: Old, Middle, and Modern, and consider some of the historical, social, cultural, economic, political (phew! and any other) factors that have shaped its emergence of one of the world’s most spoken languages today. I will provide a reader containing essays and representative samplings of English from different periods that will form the basis of our discussions
“That then I scorn to change my state with kings”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
In six two-hour sessions we will read and discuss a representative selection of the sonnets of William Shakespeare, which comprise some of the most engrossing, moving, and downright baffling lyrics ever composed in English (did I mention rude as well?). Over the centuries across which they have been read, recited and studied, they have consistently raised hosts of unanswerable but irresistible questions that will, no doubt, lead us a merry chase as well. This is a slightly enlarged version of the three-week course I gave last year in CAE
“I’m Nobody, who are You?”: the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson is responsible for some of the most quirky, engaging, challenging and enduringly popular poetry composed in nineteenth-century America. She ranges effortlessly from near-nonsense verse to profound metaphysical speculation with an engaging wit and humour. Her wit and fundamental good nature allow her to conduct her interrogations of the divine, the human, and the natural realms with a quiet but compelling authority that generations of her readers have found irresistible. This six-week course will also be an amplified version of a three-week CAE course from last year.
Dante’s Divine Comedy and Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
Happy New Year! I have had confirmation of bookings for the rooms for these two new courses, which are now ready to begin. Details below. If either appeals and you’d like to check out how our sessions tick, feel free to drop in on the first without charge or commitment. Vistiors welcome. Here are the basic details. Feel free to use the “contact us” link to let me know if you’d like any further information.
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Thursdays, 10am-12noon (12 weekly sessions, all-in fee $250.00), starting 23 January
Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf
Wednesdays, 10am-12noon (6 weekly sessions, all-in fee $130.00), starting 5 February
Both courses will meet in various rooms at Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane.
Courses on Dante’s Divine Comedy and Heaney’s Beowulf to Run Next Year
Announcements of a 12-week course on Dante’sDivine Comedy and a six-week course on Heaney’s translation of Beowulf can be found on the “Courses & Seminars” link.
The Book of Books Begins This Week
Our wide-ranging survey of the Bible and its influence on (mostly) English literature begins this week. It’s filling up, but there are still places available. Feel free to attend the first session without obligation if you’d like to test the waters first.
Frontispiece to Blake’s The First Book of Urizen
Have a Say!
I’d love to hear comments, both from students and from visitors to this website. My internet wizard Mike Cutter has just unlocked the comment box at the bottom of this page, which now allows you to comment without your needing any WordPress login. All you have to do is scroll down a bit and write in the window.
A First Look Back and a Quick Look Ahead
Hard to believe we’ve got through three whole courses already! The response has exceeded all my expectations on just about every front you could name. My warmest thanks to all who have taken part. The Canterbury Tales, The Inklings and What Is Poetry? were among the most enjoyable courses I have ever taught, thanks to your enthusiastic participation. With two courses setting off in the next two weeks (see below), and The Divine Comedy slated to begin in January, the new year beckons. Nothing definitely planned yet, but expect courses on Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats and the modern short story. I’d still like to run my previously proposed courses on Moby Dick and short horror fiction, so I’ll be canvassing interest. Beyond all that, the world’s our oyster: Homer? Virgil? We’re going to have to do some Shakespeare eventually. Use the comment function that my clever web-designer has provided us with to post suggestions. I’d love to hear them. Sorry–you’ll have to scroll all the way down this page to the comment box, but it’s there and looking very lonely and neglected. Go ahead, make its day.
Seamus Heaney short course and Book of Books still have places
They’re both starting soon and filling up, but ample spaces remain on both courses. Check out the details on the Courses & Seminars link.
The Book of Books: Game On!
It’s official: the new twelve-week course on the Bible in English literature has been booked in to run in Ross House on Flinders Lane on Thursdays from 31 October. Full details can be found on the Courses & Seminars link.
Special Thanks to McIver’s!
McIver’s, the specialist coffee and tea merchants in Vic Market, have been special friends to The Melbourne Literature Seminars. See the “News and Articles” link for an appreciation. Do yourself a favor and pay them a visit which you won’t regret. The finest beans and leaves in town.
Or you can visit them online at http://www.teaandcoffee.com.au/
Seamus Heaney 
You’ve probably heard about the passing of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel-Prize laureate and one of the finest poets in English of the twentieth century. He will be sorely missed by many, and I’d like to celebrate his achievement with a six-week course on his poetry. If you’re already familiar with his work, you’ll know what an extraordinary punch it packs. If not, prepare to be astounded and delighted and equal measure. Details to follow.
Have a Look-In!
Anyone interested in checking out The Melbourne Literature Seminars is welcome to attend any single session without charge or other obligation. You can see dates, times and venues for what’s currently running in the posts on the Courses & Seminars link.
What Is Poetry? Begins
Then next course in The Melbourne Literature Seminars sets off on a six-week cruise from the Middle Ages to, well, not quite today, but well into the twentieth century. Along the way we’ll be focusing on the poetry as poetry: how it works and to what ends. I’ll be doing my best to show how the 
pleasure and the power of any effective poem can serve as both oxygen-bottle and fairy-dust in an age where leaden prose governs so much public discourse. Need I say “the recent elections”? Details can be found on the courses link.
The Inklings begins as Australia votes!
Whatever you think of the Federal election, there’s always good books to keep us warm. On Saturday, 7 September, the first session of a six-week course on the writings of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien will run from 1pm to 3pm in the Large Meeting Room of Fitzroy Library. All welcome, whether or not you’ve expressed an interest. There are plenty of places available, and I’d be happy for people to attend the first session, without charge or obligation, to see what we’re about.
More New Courses on the Way!
Our first two short courses, The Inklings and What Is Poetry? are now booked to run at the Fitzroy Library in late September and October. Check the notices on “Courses & Seminars”.
Further on Down the Road
Here are some brief notices of courses I hope to offer beginning from late October/early November of this year and into 2014. If any appeal to you, let me know via “Contact Us”. If you have any scheduling preferences, let me know as well, and I’ll try to accommodate them as best I can.
Nasty, Brutal and Short: The Modern Horror Short Story 
(6 weeks)
Why do we love to terrify ourselves? What things terrify us, and how do those things change over time? Even more mysteriously, why do some of the best writers in the language make beautiful and challenging verbal art out of a bewildering assortment of creepy-crawlies, rational impossibilities and thing generally going bump in the night? Never mind Monsters, Inc.—come see where the real monsters be, in short stories by (among others) Nathaniel Hawthorn, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur Machen, and Stephen King.
The Book of Books: The Bible in English Literature 
(14 weeks)
The influence of the Bible on western culture and literature is simply beyond calculating. But we won’t let that stop us! In this unit we will survey some of the major themes, images and literary genres of the Bible and trace their impact on the literary imagination of English-language authors from medieval to modern.
Dante’s Divine Comedy 
(14 weeks)
Another enormously influential work of the Western canon, Dante’s Divine Comedy has been shaping our notions of heaven and hell for seven centuries. Dante’s uncanny literary vision of life, the universe, and everything beyond delights, astounds, horrifies and inspires by turns, in some of the most sumptuous poetry ever committed to paper. In a good English translation, it still packs a considerable wallop. In this course we will read and discuss all three sections of the Comedy—the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso.
I’m Nobody—Who Are You? - The Incomparable Emily Dickinson
(6 weeks)
Emily Dickinson remains one of America’s best-loved poets. And for good reason. Her deceptively simple and accessible poems reveal a mind of extraordinary acuity, and a wit biting and playful by turns. In one sharply focused lyric after another, she explores a panoramic expanse of human experience, its joys and terrors, its follies and exaltations. In this course we will read and discuss a representative sampling of her poems.
Moby Dick 
(14 weeks)
Hast seen the white whale? You will in this course, in which we will read and discuss the whole of Herman Melville’s whaling epic. In its ample embrace it combines oceanography, cetology (whale-science), history, cosmology, metaphysics, uproarious comedy, blasphemous biblical parody and reverent biblical echo. And if all that weren’t enough, it’s a cracking good adventure story to boot. A zest for adventure of every kind (and a spare set of dry clothes) heartily recommended. You won’t be disappointed.
How and Why I Teach Literature
Bob DiNapoli
Across the three decades I have taught at various universities,
I’ve been moved and sustained by a small number of considerations, most of which
no longer carry much weight (if they ever did) in those institutional settings.
Human beings have been doing unusual things with the same words they use for everyday communication for as long as they’ve been aware of this thing we call “language.” Maybe longer. We can only guess at what motivated the earliest users of literary language: the makers of myth and communicators of ancient story and legend. The building up of cultures and religions and big meanings out of those sorts of narratives had to have been a serious business in some ways, but pleasure could never have been far from the top of the list, either. Just look at the book of Jonah, whose serious message is carried by a comic gem of story, which beautifully caricatures the sober prophetic careers of an Elijah or an Isaiah.
The very serious authorities responsible for including Jonah in the canon of Jewish and Christian scriptures can never have really got the joke.
I would suggest, tentatively (and with an awareness of many honorable exceptions), that those who take up the professional study and analysis of what we now call “literature,” commonly in the institutional setting of the modern university, often stand in a comparable plight, for far different reasons. Chronically difficult issues of funding and administration have led those who manage university policy to emphasise research that attracts funding (no surprise here) as just about the only measure of academic success and preferment.
A piece of collateral damage in all of this has been the radical devaluation of teaching on the agendas of deans and department heads at universities around the world. They will all insist otherwise (particularly in their publicity), but it just isn’t so. A hiring committee, faced with making a choice between a inspired and inspiring teacher with an indifferent research record and a researcher with a strong track-record of landing research grants will choose the latter every time, with little serious regard for any evidence of his or her teaching abilities. They have scarcely any choice, given the material considerations they must address.
On top of these institutional issues, the last fifty or sixty years of literary scholarship in Europe and America and elsewhere have seen a succession of revolutions in what is now called “critical theory.” Each of these revolutions has made some sort of valuable contribution to our understanding of literary texts and how they work, but as a whole their various proponents have tended to emphasize a bewildering variety of abstractions and quasi-scientific theorizings that have called the whole traditional notion of “literature” into question. They have their reasons, but I have my own for resisting the urge to stand back and analyze literature as though it were pinned down on the anatomist’s dissection tray.
Across my own career as a literary scholar, I have found that discussing literature with students has been the best “research” I know or need to know. All of my most satisfying insights into those texts that matter most to me have taken shape in how I’ve learned to understand and communicate their workings to less experienced readers. The intense pleasure I take in such texts is my only reason for taking them up in the first place, and communicating that pleasure to others, as clearly and thoughtfully and engagingly as I can, the only sane and worthwhile thing I can see to do with them.
In institutional settings, the notion that literature constitutes a “subject” or a “syllabus” in which hopeful and anxious degree candidates must be assessed and sorted into statistically distributed categories of formal achievement is a very recent historical aberration. It is a necessary evil, since those institutions must somehow demonstrate that they are making making good and proper use of the funds they are allocated by public and private bodies and offer some valid measure of student progress. But necessary evils don’t become goods by being necessary, alas.
It is my almost constant experience—in the teaching of literature, at least—that the pressures and anxieties attendant on the most benign assessment scheme imaginable tend to narrow and choke off real, lasting learning. The deepest engagements with any literary text arise from an expansive, relaxed and disinterested delight in the dance of sound, word and meaning they embody. That delight, and communicating it to my students, has been my primary concern in all my dealings with those literatures, ancient to modern, I have worked with and taught. But the current temper of university administration has made it increasingly difficult—indeed, almost impossible during the last few years—for me to find any kind of university position where I can teach what I love in the way I most love to teach it.
It is for all of these reasons—and at the urging of many of my present and former students, to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude for their continued enthusiasm and encouragement—that I have begun offering courses to the public under the banner of The Melbourne Literature Seminars. In a relaxed, non-institutional setting, I hope we can all share the delight, the wonder, and the sheer unadulterated fun of getting ourselves acquainted with some of the most beautiful, profound and entertaining productions of human verbal invention I have had the privilege to work (and play!) with.
That’ll do for a mission statement. Let these our revels now begin…