/lit/ - Literature

That's my last Duchess
Hanging on the wall

Or at least, I think it was "hanging".

The whole damn thing's coming back to me now.

Hmmmn. I remember this one from school:

"Guess what? A bag of snot."

>>1471681
>>1471681

You bastard. *nostalgias*

"Fran Pandolf's hands worked busily" >> akways a hoot.

"Alms, alms, alms. Spare me a piece of bread, spare me your mercy. I am a child, so you, so thin and so ragged."

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who's dick was so long he could suck it
He said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin
If my ear was a Cunt I would fuck it

He clasps the crag with crooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
He watches from his mountain walls
And, like a thunderbolt, he falls.

Still in my head 5 years after reading it. That's proper poetry.

Я помню чудное мгновенье:
Передо мной явилась ты,
Как мимолетное виденье,
Как гений чистой красоты

OK, it's the whole poem, not a snippet but I remember this one:

this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date

It's such a beautiful sonnet, unfortunately this is all I've committed to memory.

>>1471793
AQA anthology...

>>1471799

The very same! Thorn in every 14-16 year old's paw for many years.

Le dormeur du val by Rimbaud; I had to learn this by heart age 14 but I like it even if it's slightly depressing. This line sticks in mind, 'cause I still don't know how to pronounce glaïeuls.

Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme/ Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme:/ Nature, berce-le chaudement: il a froid.

>>1471810
Never bothered studying Baudelaire properly, but À Celle qui est trop gaie has a line I can't forget:

"Et faire à ton flanc étonné
Une blessure large et creuse"

An immature reading of "flanks, venom and his sister" creates the impression that CB approved of WINcest.

"I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

>>1471799

God damn that anthology, and everyone who featured in it.

Except Thomas Hardy. He was pretty good.

>>1471840
More depressing than learning from that anthology is teaching from it.

>>1471850

I pity you.

>>1471850
I could see how that monotony could get to you... shame state schools have no imagination/can't afford to be imaginative with the curriculum.

>>1471872
The problem with all state school literature teaching is that the teachers are too afraid/ bored/stupid to be creative with suggesting alternatives to the curriculum. After all, their responses to the TUC and government help to shape it.

Also, if they wanted to teach better lit. they should cf. their prescribed rubbish with better texts.

E.g. Girl asks to study Shakespeare Sonnet 130 *snore*. I give her Milton Sonnet XIV to cf. and to pay more attention to.

>>1471882

One of my English Lit teachers is going to be quitting in a year or two and he basically doesn't give a fuck. It's awesome.

The other one, yeah, all curriculum all the time.

>>1471882
If you completely ignore the fact that a lot of state schools are run by dicks who are only interesting in lining their own pockets and teachers get treated badly if they try to be inventive.

Plus, y'know, the whole thing about teaching the kids what the tedious exam board papers are going to ask them about.

The only imaginative English teachers in my school quit after being treated horrendously by senior staff and bullied into teaching us boring shite. They tried though, they really did. Think one of them quit teaching altogether after not more than 5 years.

B"eauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats was on my curriculum, but the class didn't study it because he was widely predicted not to appear on the final paper. I used to read through the poetry book sometimes and that line always stuck with me.

Yeats' September 1913 has been the only poem that's nearly fully stuck in my mind though. Especially the beginning:

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone
For men were born to pray and save
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Fire and Ice, and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.

What's US high school/ college teaching like?

"the slow, sad song of humanity"
From our dear Wordsworth

and

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags."
From Sassoon, I think.

>>1471677
>Probably because of "champ." What a verb.
I don't like it because every time I see it in print, I'm not sure how it's pronounced. Is it "champ" like in "champion," or "chomp?"

Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep
Far, Far beneath in the Abyssmal Sea
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep-
The Kraken sleepeth. Faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides. Above him swell
Huge sponges of Millenial growth and height
And Far away into the sickly light
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell,
unnumbered and enormous polypi
winnow with infinite arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."

Tennyson, 1830. I chose to remember that one in 7th grade, because it wasn't about flowers or starlight, it was about a freaking giant sea monster, fuck yea.

>>1472166
I've always thought it was said as "champ" (ae) - so as champion