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Back in My Day, The Pen Was Mightier Than the Sword.

But with the use of computers (and therefore keyboards) constantly on the rise, this phrase is fairly outdated. Therefore, so us people that still adhere to the power of prose and poetry can keep up with the hipness of the times, I propose an amendment. We will now say, “The wording pwns the swording.” Ignoring the fact that sheer lameness might be worse than being outdated, I would like to take the time to point out that it is simply the terminology and not the literature itself that is outdated.

 

So, you enjoying your LOTRO account? Heck, you enjoying any sort of video game or movie or modern book that employs the use of magic, dragons, wizards, knights, or any other variety of mystical creatures? Go ahead and send props to a guy named Spenser, then. The “older” writers like Tolkien and such totally riffed off him — legitimately and in good fashion, but riffed off him nonetheless. It’s Spenser’s work, The Fairie Queene, which you have to thank for your ability to send a ball of hurling fire from your palm into the face of a charging knight.

 

Granted, Spenser himself worked off of even older dudes like Ovid. Ovid’s the Roman guy who wrote the epic, The Metamorphoses. Don’t confuse him with the German Kafka, who wrote a completely different book by the same name. Don’t confuse Kafka with Kefka, the evil villain from Final Fantasy VI either, for that matter. He’d be insulted and call you an awful vermin. But yeah, even with taking his writing from Ovid and the like, Spenser’s the first who really made an impacting writing with an English Influence rather than translating the actual legends themselves.

 

Now, I often found myself as an outlier in high school due to the fact that I could read Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean Shakespeare was easy for me; much of his writing was quite difficult to muddle through. That being said, Spenser’s difficult level smacks Shakey. I was thoroughly intimidated after reading the first couple stanzas. But once you can get into the flow of reading the lyrical nature of his sonnets, Spenser is fascinating. It’s much the same as putting on some techno music and grinding out some levels on your MMO of choice. After realizing the depths to which his words plunge, it’s no surprise that hundreds of years of literature in multiple genres can be traced almost exclusively back to this one work, The Fairie Queene. Yeah, it’s a tough read. It’s a bloody hell of a read. But bloody hell is what you’re into dark magic and conjuring demons for anyway, right?

Another Language

Okay, so you’re an IT professional, right? That means you’re pretty good with computers and computer programming. I, for one, could never deal with computer programming. To me, even the simplest HTML code is completely and utterly unintelligible, but for an IT professional, code can be an intuitive way to send richly detailed messages. Here’s an example:

 

Sample HTML Code

 

 

There is no way I could translate this code into standard English; maybe a professional can, but I am certainly not one. I can, however, understand bits and pieces of it though, and gather a few bits of information from it. I can guess that the </html> symbols at the beginning and end symbolize the start and finish of the code. By seeing “blueborder.jpg” in the text, I can deduce that this code will display something on a computer screen, and it’s probably something blue. Furthermore, I know a little bit about color hex codes, and a quick Google search of “#FF0000″ tells me that some text will be written in red. Finally, I can also see that the text will be written in the font “Brush Script MT.” So you see, I can understand parts of the code, and gather some information, but I cannot visualize completely what this code is trying to tell me.

Likewise, the same can be said about Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Although it is written in English, it can look like a foreign language to some. For example, modern English doesn’t tell us to include “bounti-hed” in our vocabulary, but Spenser tells us that it means “cherished.” Sure, we can take bits and pieces from the text, and get a general understanding of it, but unless someone is very well trained in Medieval English, they will have a lot of trouble while reading Faerie Queene.

Both Faerie Queene and HTML code are similar in that they are written in “almost” another language. While they are both technically in English, they are very difficult to understand for the untrained. This is where the value of reading becomes obvious. To an IT professional, and to the common reader, new languages allow us to understand more of our surroundings, of our history, and of our future.

-Matt Thumser

That is soooo 489 years ago.

Ah, the digital age. I have almost every conceivable medium of entertainment available from the comfort of my laptop. I could download a 70-hour long RPG, if I choose. A movie, maybe? Weeks worth of music might suit my mood, instead. And, of course, I could also read a book online, provided that it’s been uploaded. An IT professional like Prof. Hall is, of course, familiar with this flexibility of engaging media. So, then, what value could the most antiquated of all these experiences possibly hold? In a time when we are greeted by immediacy in the form of audiovisual engagement, can a poem over 450 years old still enrapture us as it did audiences of the Renaissance period? Spenser’s The Faerie Queene provides a strong case for the affirmative.

The Faerie Queene is a tough read, make no mistake. However, this primarily arises from the nonstandardized spelling of Spenser’s time which can easily throw off modern readers. But, if a reader delves deep enough into the work, they will find that it contains infinitely more meaning and significance than even the most complex games and movies. Allegories abound, and the poem overflows with symbolism. Whereas a movie or video game can be breezed through without interruption, a reader quickly glancing over a stanza of The Faerie Queene could easily lose every bit of meaning jam-packed in that passage. References to the Bible, Dante’s Inferno, and other classic works would be marred by a patience-desensitized mindset.

Of course, this last bit more or less summarizes the underlying cause behind the relative unpopularity of literature in modern culture. While the newer forms of media require less effort to fully understand, classic literature still remains open to interpretation. Simply put, many people (IT professionals included) have been, in a sense, pampered by the relative “easiness” of movies, video games, and music. Of course, Professor Hall is on the more intelligent end of this spectrum; he is not a good case study for the average IT professional. I personally have known many IT workers (as I have, in fact, almost worked in an IT department myself as a part-time job), and I can tell you that many of them far prefer a great game to The Great Gatsby. This obviously does not mean that tech-savvy people are not as intelligent as literature junkies; it merely comes down to a learned preference.

In The Faerie Queene, Professor Hall will find a much less immediately accessible experience than that of, say, Lord of the Rings Online. However, coming from someone with the same basic preference of media, I believe that there is just as much, if not more, value in this excellent work of classic literature. While it may require more effort to properly interpret than modern culture has taught us to use on almost anything (we live in an age of convenience and instant gratification, directly brought about by technology), there is easily much more to be gained from it than most other forms of media. The journey is arduous, but the destination is a treasure trove of depth and meaning.

-Billy Bunce

The Physical Nature of Poetry

If you are an IT professional, you are probably used to reading about computers, software, and other things of that nature. I am used to reading about science myself, and I always dread reading poetry because I can never understand what is going on. My attitude towards poetry was like that of one of my favorite physicists, Paul Dirac, who said, “The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way.” When you can understand it, poetry can be interesting, but I can seldom understand it without help. The Fairie Queene is an example of  incomprehensible poetry, that completely baffled me when I first read it. However, I gradually began to understand. Here are some tips that someone with a background of science can use to read The Fairie Queene:

1. Read each passage slowly, and read it at least twice

When read quickly, the poem seems like a haphazard jumble of strange words, without any meaning or discernable story. After multiple readings, sometimes you can pick up meanings or themes that you may have missed the first time.

2. Look up words that you do not understand

You cannot ignore words you do not know, just as when working an equation, you must look up constants that are necessary for calculations. Although you may think that skipping a word every now and then won’t affect your understanding of the poem, they can be crucial to it.

3. Understand the symbols

The poem is full of words that are not meant to be taken literally, but instead are symbols for something else. In science, equations are also full of letters or symbols that stand for a number or quantity. It is important to understand from the context what these symbols mean if you do not know what they are.

4. Get help from others

Sometimes, no matter how much you try, you cannot understand a passage. At this point, it is best to consult with a peer, someone who does understand the poem, sort of like having a science paper peer-reviewed by other scientists.

Like an extremely complicated equation, The Faerie Queene takes a lot of effort to read or understand, and you may not even want to read it. If you do, however, these tips can help you enjoy and comprehend the poem a little bit better.

-Kashyap Saxena

It’s no “Questionable Content” or “Penny Arcade”, but…

Breon W. Guarino

(Wolfgang is not my middle name at all.)

 

“I’ve enjoyed this greatly. In all seriousness, I am thrilled with the prospect of continuing the process of pulling out the awkward (to my untrained mind), deeply-embedded, and persistent allegories of Spenser’s work. It is deep reading, almost as though one was slogging through a marsh made of candy and deliciousness that one must work for. It is like reading Shakespeare while under the influence of morphine, so utterly beautiful in its Middle English verbosity that it presents a massive buffet of purely enjoyable poetry, the likes of which that has not been seen in centuries, at the least.”

I wish I could say that with a straight face, but it should not be assumed that the accompanying grin is one of mischief. I’m not sure why, but I find a great joy in reading The Faerie Queene. It would not be dishonest to say that I aspire to find a copy and set about reading it myself. It may be some sort of academic masochism that causes this, or perhaps I simply want to be able to hold that accomplishment over the heads of any other English majors that I meet. In any case, I view it in the same way I viewed leveling in LotRO or writing stories.

It is a challenge. After all, it’s pretty rough getting through the convoluted Middle English terminology. There are letter sequences that I do not recognize, but the work of others before me has paved the way towards a slightly more accessible understanding of the material. In a sense, working on The Faerie Queene is like using open-source software, in that the efforts of several people (at least hundreds if not thousands, in the case of The Faerie Queene) have come together to make the original basis more useful to an everyday user that happens across it. It would be a serious personal accomplishment to read through the entirety of it, and there is a certain pleasure to noticing the way that the spoken English language has changed in five hundred years. It’s akin to pillaging the archive of a long-running webcomic and watching as the author develops his or her skills, except that it is AN ENTIRE LANGUAGE that is being developed over the course of CENTURIES. Besides that, a reader can see the perspective of an entirely alien society within the pages. Things have changed since the time period in which the work was made, but the blunt allegory of the poetry was effective in its purposes during its original time, and it makes one wonder about situations and events that could have changed the perspectives of that day to become those of ours.

I would wager that, in the end, I’d say to an IT professional the same thing that I would say to anyone else interesting about reading this work (because I doubt strongly that we would be discussing it otherwise). It’s an interesting piece of work with its own rewards for reading it, it’s proving to be as challenging (or perhaps even more challenging) than I anticipated, and I heartily enjoy that fact to the point that I look forward to continuing it. It is a matter of perspective, and it requires a rather specialized mindset, but it has proven to be highly interesting for me, if nothing else.

RE: Spenser

This is addressed to all IT professionals who have expressed interest in reading Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene.  This work is recommended only for the most advanced English students, proceed with caution.  Please carefully review all proceeding points for best results.

(1) Don’t Panic

Prepare yourselves ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to see may be quite disturbing.  Roughly 90% of the words in Faerie Queene fail to conform to modern spelling conventions. You must resist the urge to copy and paste the text into a word processor and run spell check, the results would be incomprehensible.   Instead I suggest you use the “Clayton Method”, sounding out words in order to derive meaning.  Proceed extremely slowly, associating each word with its modern equivalent.  Reading Spenser is a lot like reading a new programming language.   It may seem baffling at first but you will get the hang of it soon enough.

(2) Get help!

Now you may technically be ‘reading’ Faerie Queene, but you probably don’t understand any of it.  A few hours in you may find yourself asking, “wait, what the **** is going on?” (Zack Goldman, 11/5/2009).  Lets face it, having a non-English major read Spenser is like putting a kindergartner in a graduate level Engineering course.  Don’t be afraid to get help.  Online review resources can be extremely helpful, but they are not a substitute for reading the actual text.  Reading a plot summary of a given Canto before delving into the text will serve to familiarize you with the unknown.  Bear with it!

(3) No. You aren’t going crazy.

So at this point you should be capable of reading Spenser, and maybe even following the plot.  Soon enough however, someone is going to ask you what it all means.  When this moment comes do not be surprised, you will realize that you have been slaving over a roughly 400 year-old poem for hours on end… and you have no idea what it all means.  This is the point at which most people give up, but if you’ve made it this far you have proven to be resilient.  Now is the time to seek the help of Renaissance poetry expert.  You can find one at most major universities.  Don’t be scared, they are just like you and I.  If you mention Fairie Queene to of one of these experts they may faint out of excitment.  Don’t worry; they will come around soon enough (smelling salts expedite this process).  When these individuals do come to they will regale you will all sorts of obscure knowledge, helping you to understand the ever so cryptic allusions.  Now you can drop this knowledge into every day conversations, paralyzing unsuspecting victims.  But remember, “With great power comes great responsibility”.

Armed with the “Clayton Method”, online resources, and a Renaissance poetry expert, you should be able to tackle Spenser’s Faeirie Queene in the next 7 to 10 years.  Enjoy!

 

-Zack Goldman

The Joy of Reading Spenser’s Poetry

- Matt Almeida

When first sitting down to write this blog I was asking myself, why am I telling Professor Hall about my experiences? I’m sure he knows more about English than I do  as he does indeed teach the class I am in, and did he not say having read Spenser’s The Faerie Queene  is like wearing badge of honor? Perhaps he should be telling me about reading The Faerie Queene, but regardless I shall discuss my experiences. I assume other IT professionals have much less interest in or knowledge of Spenser’s poetry. Also, sorry Professor but after reading just a few cantos I have no desire to acquire this badge of honor you spoke so highly of.  

Well what can I say? Reading parts of this complex, lengthy, ridiculous excuse for a poem was more or less like slamming my head into a wall. Repeatedly. I was debating whether or not it was less enjoyable than playing LOTRO, and I think I’ve made it clear through my blogs that I thoroughly do not enjoy LOTRO. It wasn’t even close. I would rather be locked in a room playing LOTRO for a weekend then read Spenser for an hour. At least I would be able to level my character up, and that’s always a plus as I don’t really see anything to gain from reading Spenser’s barely coherent poetry.

Spencer’s words are just so hard to read and the poem is very difficult to get through for a few reasons. From just looking at the poem you can see that the English is not quite what us 21st century folk are used to. We were told it was slightly more difficult than Shakespeare, but I’d say it’s a bit more than only slightly more difficult. Granted, I have seen some Old English such as that written in Beowulf, and Spenser is not nearly as difficult. The Old English barely even looks like letters, more like symbols, and at least Spenser uses normal English letters in his poetry. But regardless the words which he uses are often beyond my immediate comprehension. Spenser switches up certain letters and spells words in alternative forms that are not always instantly recognizable. This makes for not only a very slow read but also a very painful and un-enjoyable one. On top of that Spenser uses ridiculous words that sometimes don’t even make the slightest bit of sense. I weet (apparently this means know?) some words or can figure them out but even that is sometimes impossible which is why notes are often provided. It’s not even as if I can use dictionary.com or some other useful technology as these words seem to not exist anymore, only in Spenser’s fantastic world of poetry.

Spenser not only uses this complex and confusing version of the English language in his poetry, but he also writes in an incredibly complex manner and ties in deep meaning to all his cantos. He is writing poetry and he uses a specific rhyming scheme. I often felt when reading the poem some words were forced or altered in some way to make a rhyme, further adding to the confusion of the poem. Additionally, the poem seems to jump around a lot. There are a few different story lines going on and Spenser jumps back and forth between them, making the poetry not always easy to follow. Also, it appears that Spenser was a crazy smart guy who just couldn’t find enough things to tie into his poem. After going through all the various allegories today in class I felt as if my head was about to explode. We had such difficulty picking up on and noticing these allegories and I’m sure we didn’t even see half of them. As was noted in class each symbol in Spenser’s poetry has more than one meaning and has ties to more than one thing. All these allegories were pretty overwhelming and to think Spenser actually wrote this stuff with all those ideas in his head prior to actually writing them is almost unfathomable. To fully understand Spenser’s poetry, you must pick up on and explore these allegories as they provide a much deeper meaning to the poetry. This just further piles on to the agony and frustration that comes with reading The Faerie Queene. I think I’ll go play LOTRO now. Just kidding.

I’ll Take a Stab at It

Professor Hall!  How could you have missed this!  This exciting time!  This week of weeks!  For this week was no ordinary week; nay this week was the week I called off my War on Poetry.

I’m not an art guy.  I’m the guy that scoffs at the abstract stuff hanging on the walls of people’s homes. My friends who are into that sort of stuff tell me I have to find a specific art form and try to “feel” it.  I in turn tell them to put down the hippie lettuce and come back from the 60’s.  Then they tell me I’m not sophisticated.  Eh, so be it.

I tell you this because you need to know my reasons of originally going to battle.  I haven’t enjoyed a poem since Shel Silverstein’s masterpiece Where the Sidewalk Ends. So, assigning me Faerie Queene is like teaching my grandmother how to play middle linebacker.   Yeah, you could try.  Heck, she might even learn something.  But what would she do with that information?  How is it relevant?  I originally declared my War on Poetry because poetry, as a form of writing and an art, is one of the least efficient ways of expressing an idea.

Then, after our Tuesday class, I learned a little bit about Edmund Spenser.  I learned about his inspirations: the great thinkers of our past.  Me and Ed, we share the same literary heroes.  Maybe this guy ain’t so bad after all.  I gave it a try, but found I was shamefully incompetent.  Translating Spencer into modern English after years of not practicing was dreadful.  So I developed a fool-proof method of reading, and understanding his work. Oh, and I wrote it in Spenserian stanza.

First grab a drink, maybe something of strength

Chill, grab your snuggie, prepare for a ride

A poem of virtues, but above all: length

It’s free fr’all spelling, where u equals y

Britomart is Chaste, and a knight she lies

But her Beauty pales to Lady Florimell

Una is good, Duessa is the bad guy

A religious piece, it’s virtues or Hell

And if none of it makes sense, read again. Oh well.

Wow, that’s in the right meter and everything.  That wasn’t even that hard. Spenser isn’t so impressive after all.  The War is back on.

 

-Jake Karlsruher

Bloody Tears of Agony

by Calvin Patimeteeporn

 

Professor Hall:

Imagine you are playing the game Tetris. You’re playing along but you slowly begin to realize that the game is only giving you the awkward (and devastating) “Z” shaped blocks and you can never make a line. No matter how hard you try, the blocks fall down in unwanted patterns, creating tiny spaces that prevent you from your goal. Even though these “Z” blocks have the same number of blocks (4) as the other pieces you need, you are not able to win.

Now retain with this image but add bleeding tears of agony.

This, Professor Hall, is what reading Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser is like:

If you think this is bad, you should see me when I read Twilight.

-

Continuing with my Tetris metaphor, while the number of “blocks” of the “Z” shaped blocks are the same as the others, its the arrangement that throws you completely off. Spenser wrote this epic (epic in its actual definition, rather than the modern slang) in a time where spelling was just as set in stone and mature as Stephanie Meyers’s writing ability. Thus, words he used were spelled completely differently than that of today, resulting in eye-bleeding-worthy confusion. Misspellings and archaic diction both contribute to the verbal pandemonium that ensues when encountered with non-literature savvy people. Much like the scenario in the game above and with Spenser’s work, you can’t win.

 

As well as confusing words, the structure of Spenser’s writing brings grief and frustration as well. Last week in biology, I learned that only 3% of the billions of base pairs in our genome actually code for proteins. This is much like Faerie Queene where basically most of the words used are, for the lack of a better term, junk. There is a small percentage however that actually contribute to story. In Book III Cantos iii, Glauce, the nurse to warrior maiden Britomart, takes said maiden to Merlin to seek help, as Britomart has been struck and sickened by love. Merlin explains to her that she is falling for her destined husband, Arthegall. He could have done so in maybe a few stanzas. However, Spenser decides to switch the characteristics of the wizard Merlin out with that of the Twilight saga, boring and far too long.

Faerie Queene is filled with enough odd spellings to make anyone think they are as illiterate as R. Kelly, and enough unwanted material that Matthew McConnaughey would think he has competition for the next  new romantic comedy movie. So here I warn you Professor Hall, approach Faerie Queene with the caution you would use with a rabid bear. Now if you will excuse me, I feel like this eye bleeding problem has gone out of control.