I'm Getting There!

[intertext]

For those who I know are anxiously awaiting news... I've finished grading my 150s and have done those of the 280s that I promised I would early (Susan and Sarah, this means YOU - your grades are up in Camlink). I should have the rest done by tomorrow, I think. O boy this is a hard slog...

Comments

[gillo]

Oops. Teensy bit different. But, hey, it's all iambic pentameters, right?

*gg*

Sympathies to you - it's a tough time to be wading through so much marking. I get a huge batch in early december - 17 kids, each doing six and a half hours of exam writing. Oh well. It keeps us out of trouble.

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

Well, the Milton was in uhhh.. iambic hexameter? two more syllables at any rate. :)

Six and a half hours.. eek. Wouldn't want to write that exam..

Has shown up this morning, ty for considering my anxiety, D. :)

[gillo]

What Milton was that? I was thinking Paradise Lost mainly, I confess. Comus and Samson Agonistes are also blank verse or at least iambic...

Six and a half hours is spread into three separate exams, to be fair - they only have to do two and a bit hours at a stretch. And where I said December? I meant January of course. Still to come. Lucky me..

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

It was from Paradise Lost.. I didn't actually check at the time if it was iambic hexametre or not.. I just remembered counting extra syllables in the first two lines of the passage we had to identify. I may have just been pronouncing things especially carefully, however. Do do do.. looking over the passage now.. I still get 12 syllables for the first couple lines.. then it goes back to 10. That again, is presuming I'm pronouncing things right haha. :) (ln. 157ff)

[gillo]

PL is pretty much all in blank verse. Do you mean Book I? "Whereto with speedy words th'Arch Fiend replied"? I get 10 - elision in "th'Arch", of course, and "Fiend" as a single syllable. Pretty much iambic too, I'd say.

Heck, I teach English. I'm picky...
*g*

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

Well, I do defer to the expert. :) The part we read began immediately following that line: Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable... and so on. I do see how the first few lines could be read in pentameter.. I wasn't arguing the iambic part.. just my own uncertainty regarding the number of syllables. I was getting hung up on Fall'n, miserable, and suffering from the next line. :) That's what I meant by my not reading it properly. :)

At any rate.. not disagreeing with you. I didn't really examine it very carefully for meter to begin with.. we weren't going to get any points for identifying that, and the Fall'n Cherub line was a dead giveaway for me in identifying the work itself. :)

[gillo]

Did you have to identify it as part of the test? I think Milton chose to elide when it suited him, basically. He consciously chose blank verse as a "suitable" metre for his epic, equivalent to Virgil's dactylic hexameters. (Oh how I hated scanning those when I did Latin at school!)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm fond of the old "rec and com" type questions - passages they have to identify and then say relatively intelligent things about. lilyfriend is able to say very intelligent things :) Not everyone is. But I find it's a good way to separate the sheep from the lambs, so to speak. I don't usually bother much with meter unless it has artistic significance (as in "The Destruction of Senacherib" or the spondees in the final lines of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" And they have to know a "bob and wheel" when they see one in "Gawain and the Green Knight" - stuff like that. Some students will insist on giving me rhyme schemes and things - spinning their wheels, really.

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

Yea.. 50% of the test was identifying passages. We were given 12, and had to identify 10. We got a point for getting the work and the author, and had to point out relevant details (such as pointing out a kenning, a bob and wheel, or noting that it illustrated the comic setting, etc.) for the remaining 4 points.

[lilyfriend.livejournal.com]

Er.. I'm very good at repeating things too! Didn't see the other post. That's what I get for choosing to reply straight out of the email. lol