Okay, good morning everyone and welcome back.
Today we move to speak about our first poem, our
first English poem in the course. Last time we
examined a Palestinian poem by a young Palestinian
poet Tamim el Barghouti about Jerusalem. We
discussed issues related to the themes and the
forms, and we kind of, in passing, mentioned some
features of Palestinian poetry highlighted in the
poem itself, and I gave you this as an assignment,
so I'm hoping that you're working on this, again,
on excavating the Palestinian features Palestinian
poetry features from the poem Vitamin Al Barwati.
Today we move to Renaissance poetry and this is
Sir Thomas Wyatt from the 16th century. from the
16th century. Sir Thomas White was born around
1502 and died around 1542, something like this. It
means he was born, wrote poetry, did what he did
and lived in the first half of the 16th century.
The poem We will talk about today is this one.
It's called Whoso Less to Hunt. Many poems in the
past didn't have titles, so many people tend to
give them either titles revolving around the theme
itself or sometimes people take the first line or
the first part of the first line as the title of
the poem. If you look at the poem, it's short.
This is the first thing we notice. It's a short
poem.
If you look at the form or the shape, it's kind of
regular, more or less. The lines are not exactly
the same, but they are close. Sometimes the length
of the line is significant, but what is more
significant is the number of syllables.
My advice is usually when you look at a poem, a
short poem like this, is to count the lines.
Because if this is a 14-line poem, it means it's a
sonnet. Thank you very much. It means it's a
sonnet. Why is a sonnet special? Can you tell me?
Why is it special to highlight the fact that a
particular poem is a sonnet or is not a sonnet?
Please. It has a certain high scale and it usually
speaks about How did you know it's a Petrarchan
sonnet? Okay. Thank you. It has two parts.
What's the most significant thing about the
sonnet?
More. More important. More important. What's the
most significant thing about the sonnet? More.
Yeah? The number of lines, the 14 lines, that's
number one, that's a given. Yeah, but let's go
back and work on things in a regular manner. 14
lines, 13 lines, no sorry, not a sonnet. 15 lines,
still not a sonnet. So when I say what is special
about the sonnet, the first thing is that 14
lines, sacred, it's a given. And then we talk
about, because even when you talk about the rhyme
scheme, there are varieties. The structures, there
are varieties. The subject matter is basically
what some of you mentioned could be basically a
love poem. But we'll see later on how this could
also shift and change. When we talk about the
sonnet, we talk about Italy. It originated in? In
Italy.
So Italy has given us not only good food, but also
good poetry and good football. Hopefully, you like
football. Now, it was the sonnet became very
famous, became trendy, very fashionable form of
writing poetry sometime in the 14th century, I
guess. And it was made very popular by two giants,
two significant poets. Number one is Dante and
number two probably more important is called
Petrarch. Look at the spelling. And then the name
sounds strange because almost all Italian words
end in vowels. I don't know why this is different.
So Petrarch, Petrarch. Petrarch. That's why we
usually hear about the Petrarchan sonnet. It means
the Italian sonnet. Now, in Petrarch, we have
particular features for the sonnet. If you want to
describe a sonnet as Petrarchan, it has to have
certain things. We can organize these into three
categories. Number one, the theme.
What it is about. Number two, the form.
The parts, like you said. And number three,
the rhyme scheme. We defined rhyme before as the
ending sound or sounds of a line of verse.
So what's the theme in a Petrarchan sonnet? Can
you tell?
So it's about like what is he saying? Like women
are good, women are bad, women are what exactly
going on?
in the Petrarchan sonnet is love. It's a love,
that's why many people insist on defining the
sonnet as a 14 line love poem. Because it was
basically kind of invented to express this love
relationship, to chase women, to come after them,
to hunt them down, we see this. So it's a love
poem. But even this poem, this kind of love theme
is also special. There's something different. We
find it in other poems, but here Petrarch usually
represents the woman as unattainable, cruel and
heartless. She's cruel and heartless, sometimes
cannot be reached, cannot be attained. And usually
the lover is presented as an abject man, a man
usually doing his best, but failing not because
he's a loser, but because of the woman, the
heartless woman.
And some people might find this very interesting
in the sense that when you usually express love,
and strong emotions like love, they usually
overflow. Remember we spoke about overflowing? And
putting this in this very tight shape, restricting
us to 14 lines, that could be limiting sometimes.
If 14 lines can limit us, wait until you see what
other rules there should be, what other features
there should be. Now, the Italian Sonnet or the
Petrarchan Sonnet It has a particular form. It's
divided into? Thank you very much. An octave and a
sester. Easy. Octave means eight, like octopus,
you know, octopus. Eight. Eight lines.
Sestet? Six. Okay, thank you. Six lines.
Now in the first part, what happens in the first
part, in the opening eight lines? Please. Okay, so
there is the introduction of, the problem, the
issue, the crisis, the complications, the issue,
he's discussing his, what exactly is going on.
Because many people, like Shakespeare, Shakespeare
wrote, we'll see this next class, 154 sonnets,
give or take. Same with Petrarch, I'm not sure how
many, but he wrote over 200 sonnets. So if this is
a love poem, and you're saying something about
your relationship with a woman, why are you saying
it in 200 different ways? Yeah? It's never enough,
I don't know. But in the first eight lines, the
poet exposes us to what's going on, how he feels,
what's going on. Usually something is wrong. He's
down. He's not feeling good. He's not optimistic
about winning the woman. The woman is doing
something that doesn't help him win her heart. And
naturally, in the Sestet, we have The solution,
the kind of answer, the resolution, the closure,
hopefully sometimes, or the justification. Why
what happened in the first stanza, the first part
happened.
Okay, so look at this. We said 14 lines, and some
might say, wow, that's very limiting, very strict
and rigid. And then we say, also, wait a minute.
The first eight lines, the octave, form one
part, one particular part. It discusses this
particular issue. And then the poet kind of
twists, moves, shifts. to the resolution, usually
some kind of a closure or a justification
sometimes in six lines. Now even more limiting is
the rhyme scheme, the ending sounds. We'll see
this in a bit of the poem. How it ends. And we
discussed this before, we mentioned it very
quickly in Ali Abunayem's poem because the five
lines ended in I, I, I, I, I sound, we said it
ended with I. In English, the rhyme in English
follows, the sounds follow the alphabet, A, B, C,
D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, I, S, T,
et cetera, et cetera. Because Arabic is a very
flexible language. You could read a poem of 2000
lines ending in the same sound. Hundreds of lines
could end. Arabic language is said to have 12
million words. That's a lot. And the second place,
in the second place comes English with close to
half a million. Notice the gap? more than 11
million words. That's why Arabic is a very
flexible language. English comes second, very
flexible, but doesn't sometimes come close. So
usually the first sound, let's work on this before
we talk about dialect scheme. The first sound,
whatever it is, Whatever it is, whether the poem
ends in zero, pizza, salad, morning, class,
teacher, whatever, the sound or the sounds,
because sometimes it's not the last sound, the
last two sounds. We give it A.
Where did the A come from? The alphabet, the first
letter from the alphabet. You should know this
because you need to do it in your exams. Now, we
look at the second line, the ending of the second
line. If it repeats the same sound or sounds as
the first line, another A. No, we go back to the
alphabet. The next one is B.
That's more saw. That's another B. Behind. A. And
then we have mind, wind. Okay, we'll see this in a
bit. Another A, a four, therefore, B. Look at
this. If you look at this word and compare it with
this or this.
or this, they look similar. The last three
letters, I-N-D, I-N-D, I-N-D, they are the same.
But it's not the letters we care about. It's the
sounds. It's the sounds. So hind or ind in middle
English. And then we have here behind. and then
mine but this one this is now by the way the verb
is wind when something you know but this is the
noun wind wind it looks the same but it sounds
different we call this an imperfect rhyme or
sometimes I rhyme. I rhyme. You look at it. It
sounds the same. You read it. It's not the same.
It's not the same. Now there is an issue here.
Some people might give this like some kind of
poetic license, you know, and would say something
like probably the poet originally pronounced it
wine just to make it look more musical or perhaps
in the past 500 years ago it was pronounced wine
but now we don't say wine so we say win in this
case we'll give it an imperfect rhyme and I
usually use the small letter so that's why I like
you to use the capital letter this is my thing
Capital, capital, capital, and then to indicate an
imperfect rhyme, go for small. And we will always
ask the question, why is there an imperfect rhyme?
Because there's a reason behind everything in a
poem. Everything counts. Okay, so basically this
is the first part. This is the octave, the eight
lines, the opening. And they kind of mirror each
other. Yeah? A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A. It's very
musical. Although the sound A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A
is not what we hear. We hear the sounds hind, mo,
mo, hind, mind, fore, fore and wind. And then this
is different, a different sound. Doubt. Doubt. We
go to the alphabet. What's after B? C. Doubt.
Vein, plane, D, D, about. Look at this. This is a
silent letter. That's why we care about the
sounds. And then about is yet another, another C.
There's one line missing. Okay. So the last line
here, C, D, D, C. Am, you know, am, we say am. For
Caesars, I am.
Did we get the last line?
Yup. So the last line, the last two lines, am is?
and then and then that's tame tame I think it's
another imperfect rhyme scheme so let's go back
again because we have a smaller screen now we have
high a B, B, A, A, B, B, imperfect, C, D, D, C, E,
E. One imperfect rhyme, two imperfect rhymes.
Because this is M, this is the sounds, the
phonemic transcription, but team is
Same with this one, this is Ind, for example Hind,
but mind is, wind is just wind
This is how you get the rhyme scheme from a poem,
from a stanza. Usually, if we move to a new stanza
in the poem, we begin again, we go back to the A,
but the sonnet is written in one block, so we just
continue counting.
Okay, so the Petrarchan Sonnet has a special rhyme
scheme. Do you know it? What it is? What is it?
Please. Okay, so the rhyme scheme is What should I
write it? So the rhyme scheme for the Petrarchan
sonnet is A B B A A
B B A Say
again Okay,
A B B A Yet again, A B B A Yes or no?
I'm talking about the Petrarchan sonnet.
Petrarchan sonnet rhymes A B B A A B B A. What
about the assistant?
Okay, so we could go for C D E C D E R C, D, C, D,
C, D. This is Petrarch.
Listen, the Italian sonnet itself has 11 syllables
in every line. Look at how strict and rigid this
is. It's highly calculated. It's tightly
structured. The sounds, the rhymes, the lines.
Even the syllables. And this is what makes the
sonnet different. It's not only the theme. It's
not only sometimes the number of lines. And that's
why many people describe it as a rigid form of
poetry. And these rules, by the way, make the
sonnet a difficult kind of poem to write.
because you were surrounded by rules from all.
It's not just, okay, I want to write a 14-line
poem. Wait a minute. The number of syllables, the
number of the structure, the rhyme scheme, the
form, et cetera.
Now, in the Renaissance, whether in Italy or in
England, it became a fashion. The sun, it became a
fashionable trend. And that's why almost all major
poets wrote sonnets. It's like now when one of
your friends doesn't have an account on Twitter or
Instagram. It's like, what? And it was a show off.
I know people who start all their conversations by
like, I have 10K on Twitter. I have 15K on
Instagram. I think in the past it was like, I
wrote sonnets. You know, I wrote a sonnet last, in
my sonnet last time, I did this and that. In my
sonnet to Laura, this Petrarch, he was writing to
Laura, sometimes pronounced as Laura, Italian
musical way. So this sonnet kind of migrated to
England, or was brought to England, depending on
how you like to look at things. If you think that
the sonnet is like an organism, a human being, Did
it migrate or was it brought, imported? Is it a
product? I like to use the word migrate,
migrating. How it migrated from one place to
another. Now Sir Thomas Wyatt, the guy who wrote
this poem, and Henry Howard, they brought it to
England. And England always had this problem with
Europe. Because all the good things originated in
Europe, in the continent, not in England itself.
Even football that the English claim to have
invented, they have won the World Cup only once
and they are always beaten up. So this inferiority
complex, let me say, is, and again probably some
people complain, connect this to Brexit nowadays.
It's like the English want to be different. They
wanted to write things their own way, but
eventually they end up borrowing the sonnet,
borrowing even the novel, even classical drama.
Everything is not originally British. Not many
things are originally British, maybe except
imperialism and colonialism and evil and bad food.
So what I'm saying here is that when Sir Thomas
Wyatt brought this small, beautiful, baby poem to
England, he adopted it. I'm sorry for the extended
metaphors. It sounds stupid now. Okay? And he
tried to make it a little bit English. You know,
when somebody copies your homework, you say, just
copy it so it doesn't sound you're plagiarizing.
So he changed a little bit about it. He introduced
something at the end. The couplet, the two rhyming
lines. So today we know we have the octave, eight
lines, the sextet, six lines and also the couplet.
Two rhyming lines. This is necessary. It's
necessary to say two rhyming lines, not all
couples of lines are couplets. They should rhyme.
And some people insist that they should be about
one idea, sometimes one image.
The question is, is this poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt
a Petrarchan sonnet? Or not? Has he changed
anything? What did he change and where? Somebody
please read. Read the poem. Please. Who saw less
to hunt? I know where is the night. But as far
from me, alas, I may know more. The vain travel
hath wearied me so sore. I am of them that
farthest sunk behind. Yet may I by no means my
weary mind I draw from the deer, but as she fleeth
afore painting, I follow. I leave off, therefore,
since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list
her hunt, I put him out of doubt. As well as I may
spend his time in vain and graven with diamonds in
letters plain, there is written her phrenic
roundabout.
Okay,
good reading. One more, please. Can you speak up?
Where is Anaheim?
But as for me, alas, I may no more. The vain
travail hath wearied me so sure. I am of them that
far this cometh behind. Again, yet may I be no
means my wearied mind. Draw from the deer, but as
she plays at once, painting I follow. I leave off
therefore. Since in a myth I seek to hold to it.
Okay,
one more please, finally. And I know where it can
hide. But as for me, alas, I may know more. The
vain travail hath wearied me so sore. I am of them
that hardest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means
my weary mind draw from the deer. But as she
fleeth afore, fainting, I follow. I leave off,
therefore, since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, as well
as I may spend most of his time in vain. Engraven
with diamonds and letters plain, there is written,
prepare next roundabout. Money me tender, for
Caesar's I am, and wild boar to hold. Okay, nice
readings, thank you very much.
Now, before we comment on the poem, there are many
things to notice. This is, by the way, a
modernized version of the original text. I tried
to use words that correspond with today's English,
but still there are words like kamith, but it's
two syllables actually, like Rahaf said, kamith.
even fleeth fleeth this is and hath hath this is
hath this is comes this is flees middle English
they use th for he she it that was replaced long
time ago by s today we say she has she goes she
flees she runs In the past it was fleeth, cumth,
heth, the th. The other thing to notice is the
Latin here in the last two lines. Noli, me,
actually there are many readings for this, but
many dictionary online say Noli, me, tangiri.
making it one, two, three, four, five, six
syllables. No limitangere. Although I love the no
limitangere, the Italian way of saying it.
Anything else to notice?
Language-wise. So that's it. This is all the
middle English have, comes and please. Now what is
this about? What is the poet saying? Can you
guess? Look at the pronouns, the people, the
characters in the poem. And probably you could
have noticed this. We don't say an honest
nowadays, yeah? An honest. But today we say hind.
Hind, it means a deer, yeah? Gazelle. So basically
probably in the past, the H could have been
silent, like it's silent in honor, in hour, you
know, and honest, etc On YouTube, many people say
Anhein, it reads well, but I guess it should be
Anhein It's heavy to pronounce But you can make it
not heavy, Anhein, but I would go for Anhein If I
will pronounce it as Hein, why should I use
Anhein?
That's why, that's why, okay? So this is basically
why we have the N for the vowel that follows. The
H is not a vowel sound. And there's a big story
about the H and how, why is it, why is the H
silent in our and honest and honor? Why? And why
it's not silent somewhere else? And by the way,
It's sometimes you will read something like and.
And this is strange because we say history,
historic and historical. Both are correct. You
could say and or a. And I know some people who
just want to show off that they know they have the
depth of you know. The language, so they say, they
write an historical. It's like, wait a minute,
there's a typo here. No, both are okay. But if you
say an, it should be an historical.
ahistorical the same with hysterical and
hysterical or some anyway so this is probably the
H sound must have been a heavy sound to pronounce
and I know people I met an American woman who
couldn't say Ahmed even Ahmed Ahmed it's not like
the how we have in Arabic anyway so what's going
on in the poem what's what what is it about what
is the poet talking about please
Okay,
so it's about hunting Okay,
so he doesn't directly say a woman although he
uses the pronouns her and she To pass you know
personify The deer here, the hind. So is this
about hunting or is this about hunting women?
Please.
Okay, so the extended metaphor here is that
falling in love is like hunting. Sometimes you
win, sometimes you hunt what you're after,
sometimes you go back home empty-handed. More.
Okay,
I know where you're going. Let's not go outside
the text for now. What is the text telling us?
This is what I care about. The history, listen,
the history, the background of the poem might be
interesting. It could help us, you know, further
understand aspects of the poem. But let's assume
that this is what we have. Please.
So is
it about hunting? That's my question. What is it
about? Please. The poet is using a hunting
metaphor to describe a suitor who is trying to win
the affection of another woman and here again we
have the lover who is doing his best but the woman
is cruel and he just can't get her. So the woman
is the deer and he tried to hunt her over and over
but she just keeps escaping and he keeps falling
By the way, this is a poem from the perspective of
a man. He's saying she keeps running away. He's
not saying I'm a loser. Although sometimes he
indicates that he doesn't follow, he leaves off,
he gives up. But he doesn't say because I'm a
loser or I'm a good guy. It's because she's wild.
She's wild. So can you describe this as a love
poem? It talks about unattainable love, and I do
believe this, and he describes the woman as, okay,
a deer, and he describes her as wild, though tame,
so this means that there is some kind of, yes, I
want to maybe come to you or something, but still,
she's restricted by something that the poet
himself does not know. I just want to say
something that maybe this metaphor could be
extended even more to say that this woman or this
deer can be actually The poem itself. How's that?
Let's go back to this probably at the end of the
class. But the point is here, can you describe
this as a love poem? We don't have much
information, let's say. We only know that this is
a sonnet written by Sir Thomas White, an
Englishman in the first half of the 16th century,
the Renaissance period before Shakespeare.
You said here this is unattainable love, love that
can't be. Please. I think it is just giving
justifications because we don't listen to the two
points of view. You just listen to him and he's
giving justifications for giving up his love.
Okay. He shows his love to her somewhere in the
poem. Does he show somewhere? He describes her as
Beautiful, you know, the fair neck. She's a deer.
She's not a crow, a raven, or I don't know, a wild
cat. She's a deer. Yeah.
So he's searching for the right suitor, the right
partner possibly. Okay. And may I by no means my
weird mind that it can't stop thinking about me.
But his mind is weird. He's tired. He's giving up.
And also he is saying, who's soulless to hunt? I
know where is a lion. Whoever wants to hunt, I can
tell you where you can find a deer. So you can
hunt here. That's giving up. That's horrible, by
the way. In the age of me too, this is This is mad
and sad, yeah? Because clearly we'll talk about
this in a bit. The woman seems to be saying no,
rejecting him, turning him down. But this is a man
who is not only insisting on having her, pushing
further after having his advances rejected. This
is a man who is telling other men to hunt this
woman, to go after her. Horrible, horrible. You
know, no is no, right? Please?
Don't we
do this all the time? Don't we compare people we
love to certain animals? Does it mean they are
animals or we hate them?
Because when you put it this way he compares her
to an animal Wow don't do this, but a deer is kind
of unacceptable image Even
dogs sometimes in certain situations can be can be
positive. Yeah More
More
Can we take this, simply speaking, can we take
this under, does it go under the umbrella of a
love poem? If you want to categorize it. I think
yeah. Maybe it's not reciprocated, you know?
There's no loving back. So the theme here is,
sorry?
Okay, so we have here the theme,
probably courtly love.
What about the form? Before the form, maybe you
can talk about the rhyme scheme.
Quickly. The rhyme scheme is here. So it is A, B,
B, A, A, B, B, A. That's Petrarch. And then C, D,
D, C, E, E. Okay, if you want to insist on the
imperfect rhyme, it could go like this. So is the
rhyme scheme a Petrarchan rhyme scheme?
Usually in Petrarch, we don't, I think, Very few
Petrarchan sonnets have the rhyming couplet at the
end. So it's not something characteristic of
Petrarch. The rhyming couplet at the end is an
English thing. Some English poets introduced it,
but it was made so popular by Shakespeare. We'll
see next class. Okay? So while the octave might
sound Petrarchan,
The cystate is not at least 100% Petrarchum. So
how is this divided? It depends. I could go for
octave, quadrant, couplet. Like you could count it
this way, like we have four, eight lines, four
lines, two lines. This is the octave. This is the
quatrain. This is a new word maybe to some of you.
Quatrain from quarter means four, four lines. So
we have couplet, quatrain, sextet and octave and
then the couplet. Which makes it different from
Petrarch. Or you just could go simply for eight
lines, six lines ending in a couplet.
But the rhyme scheme is a little bit different
from Petrarch, especially that we have, we have a
couplet here. So he's, the theme, almost the same,
the rhyme scheme, almost the same. The theme is
probably typically Petrarchan because this is a
lover who's giving up. We pity him. Yeah, haram,
she's cruel, she's heartless. But he is, you know,
he's doing his best. Look at him, he's writing
sonnets. But because of her cruelty, he's giving
up. So probably this is pure Petrarchan theme. The
rhyme scheme is not 100% Petrarchan, which means
the form or the structure of the sonnet is also
not 100% Petrarchan. But again, it depends on how
you want to divide it. I leave this to you. If you
want to divide it into eight, four, two, I'll
accept that. If you want to divide it into eight,
six, I'll also take that. But don't forget that we
have here a rhyming couplet, which is an English
thing. So if you want to answer the question
whether this is a Petrarchan sonnet or not, many
people would easily say yes. And many people will
say yes with just a little kind of change. But
it's not 100% Petrarchan. And this is the tiny
little thing the English poets wanted to introduce
to the sonnet. We'll see how Shakespeare does to
the sonnet later on. Okay, something before we
move? Yes. Please. I would say that we can push a
theme in love because I think even any words like
fun or dear still this is a love story. And I
think this is what usually happens in love
stories. There is that kind of
Uh-huh.
That's a very interesting question. Is the woman
pretending to say no because, and this is horrible
by the way, but also is the man saying I'm giving
up just to make her pity him and have him back?
It's like, oh no, no, no, I'm just kidding or
something. This is, I leave this for you, but
let's not again accuse every woman of just
pretending deep in her heart that she wants to say
yes, but she's saying no because, this is a
horrible idea, please. Interesting, yes we can
classify it under the love category but at the
same time I don't think he's really in love
because usually the term, in English there's a
term called husband hunting, I never heard about
wife hunting, it's, it's, you know usually There's
always wife hunting It's like, no, but usually the
term they use also wife hunting what's wrong for
women who just want to get any husband especially
if he was a rich husband like back then in their
age okay so he's using so the word hunting in this
context usually has a negative meaning and when we
hunt something down we usually hunt it because we
either want it needed to survive or in their case
they used hunt for pleasure to show off because
they are rich people a trophy you know she's a
trophy okay interesting although in like
traditional societies like ours in the Middle East
here there's always wife hunting okay so if you
look at the text there's a huge difference between
the woman and the man
There's a huge difference in the representation.
It's probably not clear, but we can comment on
this. How many people are there in the text?
Please. Who are they?
Let's say poet, be more specific. The hind, who's
the hind, the deer? The woman? Very good. Caesar,
where would you put Caesar, here or here?
Caesar is here. Also, who else is there? Thank you
very much. The other hunters, the other men.
There's also the speaker. It's not always mixed
between the speaker and the poet. The poet is the
man whose name appears next to the poem, but the
speaker is the persona there. It could be
fictional sometimes. Sometimes they are the same.
Sometimes they are not. The speaker in the text.
So this is a poem dominated by men.
And the woman, somebody said here, is talked
about. And she is objectified, she's an object of
desire. People want her, not because of something
in her mind or heart, just because she's
beautiful, fair, she's fair, she's beautiful.
Meaning the woman's voice is weak or not there.
Let me ask this in other words. Is the
representation of the woman positive or negative?
Do you like the way the woman is introduced to us
or not? Okay, why? I heard somebody say positive.
So it doesn't have to be 100% positive, 100%
negative. Is it both? Where can you see good
representation of the woman? Where can you see
good representation? How does this give a good
image about the woman or women in general in that
age? Quickly, please. I think it is a negative
representation. My question, where do you see a
positive representation of the woman or women in
the poem? We'll come to the negative later on. So
Fernick, if you describe a woman as beautiful,
that's something good? The physical appearance? Is
it more important than other things?
Where is the woman positively depicted in the
poem? Please. Yeah. Remember we said that women
were weak, are weak. It's described like this all
the time, that men are strong and intellectual and
tough, but women are not. That's sentimental, the
stupid distinction. But here, the woman is
resisting the man's advances. She's saying, no.
And she's insisting on saying, no. She's rejecting
him. And this very act is significant. It shows
how strong and independent this woman is. Nice.
What else? What other positive things can you
find? Please. What other positive things? I'm
coming to the negative things. I know what you
want to talk about. But what other positive things
can you see in the poem about the woman? Do you
want to be this woman?
Okay, so that's why, what I'm talking about. The
maybe here means because there's something good
that might make you identify with here. Please.
Very good.
Okay, so why, why do you think the last two lines,
the couplet?
Okay, what does that indicate? Aha, nice. So even
the king himself can't own them. Why? No? You're
contradicting yourself here because the very
couplet says, for Caesar's I am, meaning I belong
to Caesar. The apostrophe S here is significant.
Though, so she's saying, I seem tame like all
women might be, might do, but I am wild,
uncontrollable. I can't be controlled by men.
That's also a declaration of resistance from the
woman's part. Wild, withhold, it's like she's hard
to get. To catch.
Okay, that's nice. Other positive things? Yes, I
like the way that the decision in this
relationship maybe or in this love story is
related to the woman. That if she wants to be in
this, she will say yes. She is the center of this
relationship. Yes, she is the center and the
decision is with her. I like this. Okay, nice. Who
thinks this is negative? What don't you like? in
this poem representation of the woman how she is
depicted please I feel like the voice of the woman
is not here like she didn't have her idea she
didn't explain what she thinks about this
relationship she is just escaping Okay, but here
Amina is suggesting that the very act of running
away and rejecting and saying no is an act of
resistance at that time, but you're saying that
she should at least confront this man as the
lover, the hunter, pretending, like saying go away
directly, but isn't running,
like in a way, like running away is also an act of
resistance here, please.
Okay, you're saying as an object. Where in the
poem does it show that she's an object?
Where is that? Very good. Where is that?
Where is her appearance in the first line?
Okay, when he used the hind to say this woman is
like a hind, like a beautiful deer. But also she's
fair. Fair means beautiful. And look at how he
spoke about himself. Mine. The man is
intellectual. But the woman is beautiful, the
appearance, and wild also. She is what? She is
unattainable, cruel, heartless. Okay? Now, I'm not
sure if some of you noticed here, the couplet is
not what the woman says. I know some people take
the couplet as evidence that the woman is strong,
independent, but no, it doesn't say the woman
says, the woman replies. So I agree the woman is
silent or silenced. Huge difference. It is written
passive voice indicating how inactive, how passive
she is. She doesn't even talk. She's not allowed
to talk to people. There is something written
around her neck, possibly written by Caesar or the
King. You know you'll read about King Henry VIII
and Anne Boleyn, what's her name, and the history
about this, which might be interesting. to
understanding the text, but this is enough. So for
Caesars, I am, and even this, I belong to Caesar.
I am the property. Yes, he's treated as property,
as an object of admiration. Even when the man is,
you know, fed up, he says, hey, anyone? Anyone?
Want a woman? Want a woman? I know where you can
find one. And he's insisting on this. Who lists
her hunt? I put him out of doubt as well as I may
spend his time in vain. But it's going to be in
vain because she's wild. She's cruel. She's
heartless. She probably, she's senseless also. She
doesn't love, she doesn't have a heart. She
doesn't love back. She doesn't care. And this is
negative. So women generally are represented as
sentimental and emotional, but when it comes to
love, they don't love back. And this is, again,
very interesting because, again, this is the frame
that a man is putting on a woman. The man wants
the woman to behave in this particular way, wants
to control the woman, wants her to behave in the
way he likes, whenever he wants, wherever he
wants. But again, I think some of you might like
to say that The representation of the woman is a
lot better than many representations of women in
other poems at that time. This is a little bit,
this is a step forward. This is a step forward.
This is not a woman submitting to the wills and
wishes of the advances of man. Okay, brief.
But sadly we don't hear her say this. We don't
hear her say this. She doesn't talk, she doesn't
speak, she's silent.
Probably a
sign of rejecting. She doesn't say, I love Caesar,
I am in love with Caesar, I am owned by Caesar, to
be more specific.
I like this. Thank you very much. She's controlled
from the neck. She's a slave. She's enslaved here.
Now, can we trace the features of that age in the
poem? Basically, we do. And this is what we will
be doing. We'll try to understand the age from the
poem, not vice versa. So please don't read the
history of the poem and the poet and his mom and
his mother-in-law, what he liked, what he didn't
like. Let's see what the poem tells us. So it
tells us that the sonnet here was a fashionable
trend. And it tells us that women were presented
in a particular way.
Mainly negative, as objects of desire, to be
hunted. Voiceless, heartless, senseless, even
mindless. And the man is more superior to the
woman. More intellectual. He writes, he is
dominant. Men dominate. They hunt, they chase,
they write. Sorry? They control. Women are the
object. They are the do's here. There's something
I love, something else I love about the poem.
Basically this line. You want to talk about this
line? Look at what's going on. Draw from the deer,
but as she fleeth afore, fainting, I follow. I
leave off therefore. Please.
Thank you very much. Look at this. Fainting.
Again, look at this man panting, running for a
while and then he's giving up and he's like, who's
who? Let's go hunt. I know where's the knife. This
panting is mirrored. in the repetition of the fa
fa fa sound and other friction sounds this is
called alliteration and it doesn't only create
music it also creates mirrors what's going on what
else what's
this
A caesura, there is a break. So the full stop,
what does it say? Taking a
break, stopping. In old English, there was a space
in the middle of the line like classical Arabic
poetry. It's called a caesura, the break, the gap.
But later on, this changed into punctuation marks,
the false stop, the comma. Here, there is a
physical that says you are in the very middle of
the line. By the way, if you count the syllables,
you'll find most lines, many lines, I think half
of them have 11 syllables, closer to Petrarch than
English. We'll see in Shakespeare, they are almost
all 10 lines. So, fainting I follow. There's a
contradiction here. The man is lying. He hasn't
done his best. He says, fainting, I follow and he
stops. He doesn't follow. He stops following. He's
a quitter. I leave off therefore and then I leave
off therefore since look at this beautiful image
here since in the original text there's some other
ugly word since in a net I seek to hold the wind
sounds like a cliche today but perhaps in the past
yeah
Okay, hunting this woman is as impossible as
hunting wind, holding wind in the palm of your
hand.
It's useless, it's futile. The vain prevail, in
vain. Also the word vain means something else,
proud. One of them is arrogant, is proud. Okay,
we'll discuss other things related to the poem in
this list of questions. Look at this list, please.
We kind of answered and addressed some of them.
How does the poem reflect its age? What can you
say about the age from reading the poem? How does
the poem create a particular image of women? Is it
positive? Where? Where is it positive, where is it
negative? What type of sonnet is this? What is the
rhyme scheme of the poem? The sonnet, again, like
we said, it's more or less Petrarchan, not 100% he
introduced some change.
Number five, significant point, whose voice is
dominating? Whose dominant in the voice? Who do we
hear? Who is speaking to us? Is the woman
speaking? Does she have a voice? She's silent.
Even when she talks, it's through some kind of
mediation. Now number six, how does the form of
the sonnet And the content of the sonnet relate to
the content of the sonnet. Why did the poet choose
the sonnet form? Why doesn't he choose some other
form? Please. I think he used more likely to be
Petrarch's sonnet. So Petrarch in his sonnets used
to talk about love and about a cruel woman. So he
used this form to describe the content of it. So
when you look at it,Okay, more? Okay, well I'm
going to comment on his use for a sonnet itself
mainly because a sonnet has some rules and he's
driving to control something so this is what I
meant by saying like talking about the poem not a
lover specifically He's trying to control this
poem by following some rules. And here I believe
that it's very significant that he used two
imperfect rhymes. The first is when he said that,
since in a net I seek to hold the wind. So we can
see that as he's trying to hunt this deer or his
lover, he cannot. So it's like the same thing
happens. So again, we go back to what we started
with. The sonnet is rigid. Sonnet is highly
calculated. A sonnet is tightly structured. Every
sound, every syllable counts. It's there for a
purpose. On the other hand, we have a chaotic
world. Men running after women, a man not having
his woman sort of. It's a mess, yeah? It's
chaotic. So it could basically be the man is
trying to control life within the walls, so to
speak, of the sonnet, trying to put it, to stick
it in this tiny little space so he can organize,
control, structure what can't be structured and
what can't be controlled in real life. In other
words, He sounds to be trying to control the
uncontrollable. We'll talk about this more in more
detail when we talk about Shakespeare. But also
the sonnet was a fashion. Again, it's like again
buying a modern car. Like again I said having like
hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of
followers on social media. It's something people
use to brag about, to show off. It's like, you
know, I have this. And yes, thank you for hinting
to the imperfect rhymes. The imperfection of
probably his attempts, he falls short, he can't
have hair, basically creating some kind of
tension.
Number seven, I'll give you a moment some of you,
but let's read question number seven, question
number eight. Number seven, could you please write
your own poem being the woman replying some sort
of parody? Some of your classmates in the other
group wrote really fascinating poems. It doesn't
have to be a sonnet, but if you can, that would be
amazing. It would be a bonus. So reply to Sir
Thomas Wyatt. Be the deer, be this woman, the
hunted. And the question for this poem that I want
you to reflect on, this is the assignment. You
need to do seven out of 25 poems. I want you to
compare the use of the deer image in this poem and
in another Arabic poem. See how different poets,
different cultures use The deer to talk about
women. Are they similar? Are they dissimilar?
Where do they meet? Where don't they meet? I think
this is a very interesting thing to do. This
question will be group work. So question number
one, if you did Tamim's poem reflection, it's
individual. It will close in two days, by the way.
This one will be done, I'll give you details
online, probably groups of twos, threes, or even
fours. I'll stop here, but somebody wanted to say
something. Very short. I wanted to comment on the
imperfect triangle in the last couplet. Quickly. I
wanted to say that it might relate to the paradox
in this part. Because he's saying that yes and no,
like I cannot be, she cannot be changed, but at
the same time she is actually changed by having
this around her neck. Okay, finally. Maybe he's
rotating this board because he started reminding
her and this board It's an attempt to win her
back. The very sonnet itself is again an
expression of admiration and love. That's a good
point. We'll stop here ladies. Thank you very
much. Next class we prepare Shakespeare's Sonnet
18. Thank you and see you later.