LLT 180 Lecture 11 1 Let's get done with this. This gets us through the first half today so we can have a test next time. We left -- we're in the northern areas. Again, we're still alternating chapters. And some of what's in here is extremely silly because part of it's extremely serious as we move Arthur toward resolution of what he's gonna try to accomplish. They explain again -- we were on 272. Isn't that where we were, 272? I think, in the middle of that chapter. Morgause, who has been kind of captivated by the three knights who showed up, has now decided that they're ridiculous and, as women are wont to do, is giving up on them at this point. And we see again this different order, the idea that this world -- you know, they keep being referred to as the old ones -- that this world, the world where these people are, where Gareth and his brothers come from, is somehow an older world, has secrets that the Norman world does not. They talk some about the fort. And when Gareth finds his brothers, it's the basic nature of the Orkey faction of the four brothers to not get along very well. And we get these stereotypical kinds of representations again that Gareth is the peacemaker, that Gawaine is the forceful one, and Agravaine is just kind of a pain; and that we can see a fight coming, and it's rather in the form of a tableau. We could probably get some people up here and -- you know, it's very theatrical. It almost sounds like a stage direction to a play as he describes the action -- we're over on page 275 -- the action of the little battle. And basically, again, to show the hostility of the brothers and something particular about three of them: Agravaine, Gawaine and Gareth.
LLT 180 Tape 11 2 This whole deal with the counterfeit beast is just silliness, but we do get some insightful statements. Part of what we're seeing is finally that Pellinore is growing up. That he, even with the counterfeit beast, doesn't seem to have much interest in pursuing the beast, even when they try to get him interested. They think this is what is wrong with him. He's not even particularly interested in talking about it. And so finally, over on 277, they say, "Hey, we saw the beast." He doesn't want to play word games. He just seems really into himself. The Questing Beast -- and, you know, I'm not sure exactly why this is -- Glatisant is a she. And so I don't know if somehow symbolically he's supposed to be striving after the ideal she, and it takes him all these years to find her, and then it's Miss Piggy, and so he doesn't need the Questing Beast. I don't know. Let's ask somebody in the Psychology Department. The king says what? In other words, if he's finally growing up, he's gonna leave. We get back to this childish -- I don't think my brain is connected to my hand today. We're leaving these childish things behind. And so now all of a sudden he says that this Questing Beast is stupid, whereas before it was pretty much the focus of his life. And he even says, at the bottom of 277, what? It's like his life hasn't been logical. Like, "Why am I doing this? Why have I been chasing this Questing Beast?" And so all of a sudden it's like he's saying the very nature of part of being a knight, of accepting any quest and pursuing it to its logical conclusion, is not logical. He's still thinking about Miss Piggy. He doesn't refer to her as Miss Piggy. That's the, you know, large, fat, pink thing coming to my mind. But rather just Piggy. Unfortunate. This was
LLT 180 Lecture 11 3 written obviously way before that, but I just can't get Miss Piggy out of my mind whenever -- and, you know, they don't give her a very kind description anyway. So it's like, "Miss Piggy. He's in love with Miss Piggy." I'll try to straighten up. So anyway, he talks about the Queen of Flanders' daughter and he really did love her, and so he really feels that because he had to accept this new quest, when the magic barge appeared, he missed out on this. That she really understood him, she was understanding of him, tolerant of him, and he even has had an idea he's gonna have four sons and he's already picked out names for 'em. And these names are important. These are gonna be important characters later in the work, especially two of them. The two -- the names are even on the bottom of page 278, about 10 lines up. And the two that are gonna be important are obviously Percivale who, in the original tradition, he is going to be the knight who finds the grail. He's very, very, very important. And Lamorak is very important for some other reason. And I don't want to ruin the story for you, but -- well, anyway. I just want to tell you so bad 'cause it's so weird. It belongs on daytime TV. Anyway, he's been chasing this beast forever and ever and they said -- well, you know, they're trying to get him interested. And he's not interested. He's interested in Piggy -- not Miss Piggy, but Piggy -- and he's in love and he's preoccupied. So they say, "Well, you know, we'll drive it toward you." They go dressed as the beast -- you're gonna read this. It's all very silly, obviously. It really gets good, though, over on page 282 -- really, you know, kind of comical, when they are dressed as the beast, trying to make their way toward Pellinore. And
LLT 180 Tape 11 4 unbeknownst to them, we find out later, Glatisant and Piggy have been picked up by the magic barge. They've been looking for Pellinore together and the magic barge has gone back and picked them up. So they're here. And so Glatisant sees them and he's in love. And so she starts kind of bumping him from the back and making amorous sounds, and the knights are kind of freaked -- as any sane person would be -- and so they run for it. This goes on and on. And finally, on page 283, the one knight feels for what's out there and he feels something cold and slippery. Does it move? "It moves, and--it snuffles!" "Snuffles?" "Snuffles." At this moment the moon came out. "Merciful powers!" And they run for it. So they try to run away. Pellinore -- and then we see this one little brief thing where they're talking about Pellinore, and Pellinore is totally not into it. He's thinking about Miss Piggy. And he finds them trapped by the Questing Beast. So we leave, then. So again, this serious, funny, comical, whatever, alternation of chapters by their content. As we go to Chapter 10, what our expectation would be: "Okay. We've been having fun. We're relaxed now. We're theoretically in a mood that we can read something serious and not throw the book away. We are ready as readers to learn something else."
LLT 180 Lecture 11 5 Merlyn -- and it's all the way at the very end of this. Merlyn keeps coming back to this -- "I forgot to tell Arthur something" -- and he just can't remember what it is. It's the night before the battle and he keeps asking, on 285, "Did I tell you this? Did I tell you that?" And, of course, Arthur says, "Yeah," or "I don't care," but he doesn't touch upon the key point. And Merlyn only can't remember what is important. He tells him he does remember that it's vital and it has to do with what happens at the very end, and that is who his mother is. He's told him Uther's his father but he's never told him who his mother is. So Arthur still doesn't know that Morgause, Morganda -- I'm sorry -- Morgause, Elaine and Morgan la Fay are his half-sisters. He tells him another parable -- and a parable, we all know, is a short piece of fiction that somehow reveals a moral attitude or a religious principle -- and this is a pretty simplistic little story. We start reading on 286: "In the East, perhaps in the same place which that Rabbi Jachanan came from, there was a certain man who was walking in the market of Damascus when he came face to face with Death. He noticed an expression of surprise on the spectre's horrid countenance, but they passed one another without speaking. The fellow was frightened [understandably], and went to a wise man to ask what should be done. The wise man told him that Death had probably come to Damascus to fetch him away next morning. The poor man was terrified at this, and asked however he could escape. The only way they could think of between them was that the victim should ride all night to Aleppo [however you pronounce that], thus eluding the skull and bloody bones.
LLT 180 Tape 11 6 "So this man did ride to Aleppo--it was a terrible ride which had never been done in one night before--and when he was there he walked in the market place, congratulating himself on having eluded Death. "Just then, Death came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but I have come for you.' 'Why,' exclaimed the terrified man, 'I thought I met you in Damascus yesterday!' 'Exactly,' said Death. 'That was why I looked surprised--for I had been told to meet you today, in Aleppo.'" And so the point here is, to Arthur is, we used these words before that he can't -- and I think in the book it does use the word destiny -- that you cannot avoid your destiny. Whatever you are allotted in life in a larger sense will happen. He also -- he's always taught Arthur stuff and he says, "We are both coming back" -- on the top of 287. I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back. Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone? [And he gives the Latin.] Do you remember your Latin? It means, the once and future king." "I am to come back as well as you?" "Some say from the vale of Avilion." The King thought about it in silence. It was full night outside, and there was stillness in the bright pavilion. The sentries, moving on the grass, could not be heard. [Asking, I think, an excellent question.] "I wonder," he said at last, "whether they will remember about our Table?"
LLT 180 Lecture 11 7 So always the question. It's almost like if we don't remember, we can't summon it back. And so someone -- and this is the point at the very end of the work, Candle in the Wind, that there has to be someone who carries the idea forward. And so when the idea is receptive, that it can be picked up and blossom again. We go back then to Lothian. Pellinore finds out about the traps. Knights are back to silliness again. The Beast, they figure out, has fallen in love with them, and discussion goes on and on about what they're supposed to do, until finally, on 290, Pellinore grabs it by its tail so the two can make a run for the castle. They make it there. They don't know what happened to Pellinore. And the Beast besieges the castle waiting for them to come out because the Beast is in love with them. So we're getting a little transference here from Pellinore to our other two knights. Sir Grummore -- remember Pellinore first jousted with him -- on the bottom of 292, talks above love. He says, "Love," said Sir Grummore uneasily, "is a pretty strong passion, when you come to think of it." And, of course, you know, that's important that he realizes that because that's where Pellinore is. Pellinore is gonna give up his Quest in Life, is gonna settle down and marry Piggy, and have his four sons of whom two will be very important for the plot. Pellinore and Piggy arrive and it's explained how they get there. And one of the things we see in here -- and again, I've had people write papers in this class before and some have chosen to write on -- and it'll become clearer when we get Cretian the role of women in the works. Here again, we can see that women are the strong characters.
LLT 180 Tape 11 8 Pellinore is a total flake. It's like can we depend on him to do anything? Would you count on him to go to the grocery store for you? He'll come back with ten carts full of cookies. I mean, he's just like out of it. He'd be the stereotypical freshman student and all their laundry turns pink. I mean, the guy is clueless. But how about Piggy? Man, she's tough. When -- you know, when the going gets tough. They all try to -- Piggy, Pellinore -- I always want to say Miss Piggy. Piggy -- I have to stop myself -- Pellinore and the Questing Beast all try to run the castle at once. In other words, Piggy and Pellinore get in the castle and they say, "Just put down the drawbridge," and the Questing Beast thinks, "Oh, cool. I'll run in too so I can get to my beloved." And so in the middle of 294 -- these two guys, they'll be hiding deep in the dungeon somewhere: The drawbridge reached the ground and Piggy was speeding across before it touched. King Pellinore, less agile or more bemused by the gentle passion, collided with her in the gateway. [Typical again] The Questing Beast ran into them behind, knocking the King flat. So who's taking charge? Piggy takes charge. She jumps up at the end of that section, just before the break: "Be off, you shameless hussy," she cried, bringing her hunting crop down on the creature's nose. The Questing Beast recoiled with the tears springing to its eyes [I really felt sorry for the Questing Beast at this point] and the portcullis [this is just the word for a gate, the gate that comes down in one of these castle
LLT 180 Lecture 11 9 entryways] crashed between them. I think finally we see again here that men -- you know, obviously this is fiction -- that men are little boys and it's difficult for them to ever grow up. I actually think that's reality. And women are grown up, and it's women who kind of, you know, whip men into shape and tell 'em to leave their games behind them. Sad but true. Where Whitson Tide -- which we talked about last time so you all know about Ascension Tide, Whit Sunday is the same as Pentecost and that's when this battle is taking place, on Whitson holiday at Pentecost. I don't think we need to talk about much of this. We might just highlight things. Obviously, the battle's different. Some of these things you wonder -- it makes you wonder what people have read who make movies. For example, in First Knight, if you saw First Knight, one of the things that happens in First Knight is Sean and his boys attack at night and that's very much in keeping with this. And so Arthur's been converted to the idea that knights should fight knights, peasants should fight peasants. And so to make things turn out right, he cannot follow some standard rules. Remember way back when he first saw the two knights fighting, when Arthur wanted to see knights in a joust, he saw Pellinore and Sir Grummore, his friend. And what'd they do? They had this little chat. And then they go back and all of a sudden they have to go through this forum kind of thing. Like, "My name is so-andso" and "My name is so-and-so. I live at --." So it's kind of like -- battle is like that, too. It's like you line up over there and we line up over here. We start assembling about 9:30 so that everybody can have
LLT 180 Tape 11 10 breakfast at 12:00. Since I'm challenging you, you come riding toward me and I'll respond. And Arthur realizes: one, he's badly outnumbered; he'd lose if he followed that rule. And two, that if he does that, that just the people who are unarmed are the ones who are gonna get hurt. And so he doesn't obey these rules for a lot of reasons. On top of 298, though, we read a couple of places here important little things. It says in line 5,... he knew for certain now [that is, Arthur knew for certain], it was to be the destiny of his life to deal with every way of twisting decency by threats of Power. So he's gonna still use power. But instead of just having power to get whatever he wants, he's gonna use power and try to improve things for the sake of decency. Some of this as you read -- I found myself referring back to earlier arguments. For example, at the bottom of 298, in trying to justify why Arthur can, you know, do this, why he can attack at night. Remember when Kay and Arthur and Merlyn had this discussion about what justifies war, how can it be justified? And it seems we're trying to get a justification here as much as we can, on the bottom of 298. And Arthur had not started the war. He was fighting in his own country, hundreds of miles within his own borders, against an aggression which he had not provoked. He had made a secret pact with two French kings. This has been kind of alluded to. It's one of the things if you had read the book before would be clear to you. Sometimes when you reread stuff you think, "Aw, they were talking about this before -- you know, our secret plan." And the secret plan is that there are two French kings, Ban
LLT 180 Lecture 11 11 and Bors, who are in cahoots with him. And King Ban is gonna be Lancelot's father. So kind of doubly important. And actually, Lancelot is gonna appear at the very end of this section at a wedding party and he's gonna be the kid who wins all the games, wins all the games. In 13, picking up Pellinore again, and now we have all the sons' names. We added Dornar -- which I don't know if that's supposed to be some play on Donar who is Thor in Germanic myth. I don't know. But again, the first and Dornar are not really important, but the middle two, Percivale and Lamorak, are important. Merlyn's up north. Remember, he said after the war he was gonna go on a hike, he was gonna go on a wander, and he's also supposed to meet up with some bimbo babe, Nimue. And she's out there somewhere, waiting for him. She's gonna sap all the magic out of him and the poor boy is not gonna be seen for centuries. It's his fate, his destiny. All the three Cornwall sisters -- Morgan le Fay, Elaine -- and we never really see Elaine at all. Now, there's gonna be another Elaine, Lancelot's, and Lancelot's gonna get together with Elaine later and have a baby whose name is Gallihad. Of course, Lancelot's original name was Gallihad, just to confuse you, but they only use so many names. So we have one, two, and then we have the third sister, Morgause, who is the mother of the kids. And so all of these are witches to some extent. And for -- it's kind of a variation on Sadie Hawkins Day. We have this magic Spancel -- it's pretty scary stuff. We read here on 305 -- and remember, the important thing that Merlyn hasn't told Arthur is who
LLT 180 Tape 11 12 his mother is, who his mother is. All the Queen hears about -- all she hears about after the war is how wonderful Arthur is. About 12 lines from the bottom of 305, The Queen drew herself silently out of bed, and went to her coffer [her trunk]. She had been told about Arthur since the army returned--about his strength, charm, innocence and generosity. At the end of that, what is she finding in there? The Queen opened the coffer in the darkness and stood near the moonlit patch from the window, holding a strip of something in her hands. It was like a tape. \ The strip was a less cruel piece of magic than the black cat had been, but more gruesome. It was called the Spancel. I don't know if I put that in the test. I should have. And what is it, on 306, about line 7: It was a tape of human skin, cut from the silhouette of the dead man. And they tell you exactly how you have to cut it, so you might want to keep this piece of information if you get really desperate sometime in your life. The way to use it. How do you use it? The way you use a Spancel was this. You had to find the man you loved while he was asleep. Then you had to throw it over his head without waking him, and tie it in a bow. [Tie it in a bow?] If he woke while you were doing this, he would be dead within the year. [Too bad.] If he did not wake until the operation was over, he would be bound to fall in love with you. [Grossed out, but in love with you.]
LLT 180 Lecture 11 13 So anyway, we need to know that 'cause she's gonna use it here shortly. We have this double wedding now. Weirdly, St. Toirdealbhach is gonna marry Mother Morlan. I don't know where that came from. And Piggy and Pellinore, the P's, are gonna get together. And Arthur is just so happy for Pellinore. He's gonna host the wedding, give him a big wedding, and he's even going to serve them. There's this big party and they even have games for kids. And again, as I just said, who wins all the games? Lancelot. So we see our next character who's gonna be the hero of the next book, which we're not gonna read. I'm gonna tell you about it. The big difference -- well, I guess it's pretty much like First Knight with Richard Gere. In here he's like totally ugly. That usually gets a rise out of someone. "Oh, I love Richard Gere." Well, whatever. So we're gonna see Lancelot and we're just -- I'm gonna tell you about the next part but it's not that critical that we read it. I'd rather read more of some other stuff. You know, we read in the middle of that page, 310: In these a small page of the King's household excelled. He was a son of Arthur's ally at Bedegraine--King Ban of Benwick--and his name was Lancelot. So again, rementioning Ban and Bors, the two kings, and also Lancelot, the son of King Ban. Very important. Merlyn -- he's up in North Humberland, a-walkin' around on his tour like he states he would do, and he wakes up. He wakes up now, like, while this is going on. This is supposed to happen at the same time. And he suddenly remembers this vital piece of information he forgot to tell Arthur. And we read that 5 lines after the break,
LLT 180 Tape 11 14 It was Arthur's mother's name which he had forgotten to mention in the confusion! He says at the end of the paragraph,... but he had forgotten the most important thing of all. Arthur's mother was Igraine--that very Igraine who had been captured at Tintagil, the one that the Orkney children had been talking about in the Round Tower [granny, huh?] at the beginning of this book. Arthur had been begotten on the night when Uther Pendragon burst into her castle. Since Uther naturally could not marry her until she was out of mourning for the earl, the boy had been born too soon. That was why Arthur had been sent away to be brought up by Sir Ector. Not a soul had known where he was sent, except for Merlyn and Uther-- and now Uther was dead. Even Igraine had not known. Merlyn -- and we've been set up for this early. Merlyn is often or usually confused. And so he doesn't know if he's supposed to tell this in the future, in the past, what's going on. And he's so confused and he already feels the influence of Nimue that he decides, "Well, I'll just go to sleep and take care of this tomorrow." Well, tomorrow's gonna be too late because Morgause is about ready to Spancel-ize poor Arthur. If you teach German literture long enough, you start inventing words. So you see Spancel -- she's gonna Spancel-ize the boy. Arthur, he's been served and he's been partying -- you know, wisdom for today. When you get old enough to drink, you know, what's the problem with effervescence
LLT 180 Lecture 11 15 with alcohol? Okay. You're drinking a bourbon and water, bourbon and 7, which -- would you feel the effect of one drink faster than the other? Which? [Student: The carbonation.] The carbonation. Carbonation makes alcohol absorb more quickly into your body. And so if you're like me -- which I'm not suggesting, but if you -- my brother's wedding in which I was the best man and I had to make a toast, and it was their favorite photo from that wedding was me making the toast 'cause I was obviously gone in la-la-land somewhere. And I'm not congratulating myself on that, but that was before I had such wisdom. And I'd been being a fairly good child. I'd just been drinking like bourbon and water or something, not knowing -- no one ever told me about what carbonation would do. I love champagne. I love champagne. So he broke out the champagne. I had two or three glasses of champagne. All that bourbon that was sloshing around in my body said, "Oh, cool. Let's jump on all those bubblies from the champagne." And so I went from being fine to being gone somewhere. And, you know, it's scary to see a photo of yourself when you're just kind of like glassy-eyed. It's like, "Hello." Anyway. So Arthur -- he's kind of glassy-eyed. He's gonna be starry-eyed here in a minute after Morgause Spancel-izes the boy. And he's bad, too. He's thinking of women -- you know, he's just a bad guy and he falls asleep thinking of women. This will probably get cut. I was reading an article two or three years ago and it was talking about how men dream. And they said up to a certain point in men's lives, their dreams are dominated by women and sex. And that's definitely true. And then after a certain point of their life, when they get to a certain age, they start dreaming
LLT 180 Tape 11 16 about money. And so one day I woke up and I realized I'd been dreaming about money and I go, "No, no, no. What's wrong with me. Oh, I'm depressed." You know, sometimes reading's really dangerous 'cause then you -- "Oh, no," you know. So anyway. So Arthur, he's bad, though. He's young. He's not dreaming about money anyway. He has money; he's King. So anyway, Morgause is there. She hasn't been around the wedding because she was waiting to jump Arthur's bones. What? I just tell it like it is. He woke with a start [oh, I'm all for equal opportunity, hey] to find a black-haired, blue-eyed beauty in front of him, who was wearing a crown [and nothing else -- no, don't say that. That's the movie version.] The four wild children from the north were standing behind their mother [no wonder they're messed up, you know? What're they doing there?], shy and defiant, and she was holding up a tape. [Uh-oh. That's not a measuring tape.] Queen Morgause of the Out Isles had stayed away from the feasting on purpose--had chosen her moment with the utmost care. This was the first time that the young King had seen her, and she knew that she was looking her best. Anyway, she has a baby by Arthur in 9 months -- how appropriate. On the top of 312, Whatever the explanation may have been [in other words, whether it was the Spancel, whether Arthur was just a bad boy, whatever the case is], the Queen of Air and Darkness [especially darkness] had a baby by her half-brother
LLT 180 Lecture 11 17 nine months later. It was called Mordred. And so now I told you we referred to this before on 312, you need to know this for the test. This is very important, this family tree. It's significant in what happens. And they tell you that this pedigree is a vital part, a vital part, a word he likes, of the tragedy of King Arthur. And we're skipping about 5 lines:... it deals with the reasons why the young man came to grief at the end. It is the tragedy, the Aristotelian and comprehensive tragedy, of sin coming home to roost. Now, when I read this the first time before I got all the way to the end so the author could refute what I was already thinking, I wrote down in the column next to it, "What sin?" I mean, what is Arthur guilty of, you know? He committed no active sin. He didn't know who Morgause was. And, you know, if he's enchanted. I mean, he has all kinds of convenient outs here that I can see somebody before some kind of campus tribunal would be saying, "No, no, I don't remember. I was bewitched. It's not my fault." It doesn't matter, is what our author says. You know, if something's wrong, even if you were innocent, if you had no fault in doing it, if you did it in ignorance, you're still guilty. I don't know. I have trouble with this. The king had slept with his own sister -- kkkkk, kkkk. He did not know he was doing so, and perhaps it may have been due to her. Well, of course it was due to her. Aren't women always to blame? But it seems -- I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Kidding, kidding, kidding. But it seemed in tragedy that innocence is not enough.
LLT 180 Tape 11 18 So even if you're innocent -- when I had the book here on the Grimm's fairy tales, there's one, The Girl with No Hands. And she has to do -- all kinds of terrible stuff happens to her, even though she's purer than driven snow. And, I mean, her hands are chopped off, all this horrible stuff. She goes off and suffers prodation more than one time. And then at one point after a king has married her and had silver hands made for her, she's sent off again with her baby and suffers another 14 years of prodation. The king comes back, finds out she's been driven away, and so he goes and looks for her for 14 years without eating or drinking. And finally they live happily ever after, after they've done penance. I'm thinking, penance. Penance for what? Neither one of 'em did anything wrong. But if we read the whole tale, it'd be a situation like this. In other words, they were involved in wrong through no fault of their own and they had to do penance to extract themselves. So Arthur is gonna have to do penance. And we see here, now that we know the Latin, it's the end of the second book. Test. Test next time. I think I might've mentioned before, my approach to testing is not to prove that I can be more clever or bizarre than you, or that I can tell you one thing and test you on another. You know, my view is I hope you learn certain things and if you all learn it, that's great because that's the goal of the course. There'll be four parts. They're in a little different order than I might've made them just so they'd fit more conveniently on the pages. The first part will be five identifications. I'll read you the directions. It just says, "Identify each of the following, who or what are they? Why is he/she/it important?" Actually, it was kind of funny that our first year German book has started going,
LLT 180 Lecture 11 19 to save some typo pages or something, I guess -- has started going to show she/he, he/she, going like this. And so I don't know why they just don't take it one step further and go -- you know, take your choice. It would seem like a logical extension. You know, I mean, if -- you know, doesn't your own brain concern you sometimes? It's like why do you see certain stuff? It's like, you know, I must've had a deranged childhood or -- Anyway. There'll be five IDs, why are they important. And remember what some of you are already convinced of: I know nothing. And so my assumption is, you know nothing. And so make sure your answers are sufficient to inform me that you do know something. The second part will look amazingly similar question based on that family tree. This is what we call in the trade a gift. I might even give you the names and you simply have to arrange them correctly. If I do so, it will be graded heartlessly 'cause it is a gift. Part three, I don't usually -- I don't like matchings particularly, but in this particular work there's so much trivia that it's kind of fun. So there'll be a 27 matching deal, obscure helps. In an advanced German course one time, there was a dog's name that was really actually important for the plot. It was a short novel, a novella, called The Blonde Ekbert, the story of the blonde Ekbert. And in there there was a dog that was very important because of the fact that somebody remembered this dog's name that the female protagonist could never remember, and the dog's name was Stromian, was crucial for the whole plot development because it provided a turn in the plot. She went nuts, you know, and all this stuff happened. And so I put the dog's name on the test
LLT 180 Tape 11 20 and a bunch of people complained. They said, "How --," you know, and I said, "Well, you know, it's important." So then it became a joke for the next several years whenever I had any of those students in a class. If there was ever a dog's name in any work, it always became an ID on a test. These are all ones you will probably know and it's a nice, clean matching. As I might of said before, you don't use one thing four times and something else not at all. Everything's used once. Then the fourth part will be two essays. You have no choice. I thought about giving you a choice and then I thought, "Naaah, it's too easy. Don't give 'em a choice." Without giving anything away, it seems that if we look at the two books that we've read, that basically there are two things going on. What's going on in the first book? Education. We have all these transformations. It would seem logical if I was just looking at stuff. Like, "Well, duh. He's gonna ask one question about education somehow." And what's the second book about? Besides Glatisant. Okay. He's starting to think. What is he thinking about? [Inaudible student response] Right. So, you know, the big point is made again and again about how society was when he came to power, you know -- when he became king. How Uther -- what chivalry had not been like -- we could say that -- or what constituted chivalry under Uther, all right, and what Arthur's about. So, you know, what -- where are we at the end of that? What is Arthur thinking? How might he change society? Isn't that what presidential campaigns are about? I mean, they lie about what they'll do. And, of course, the problem with our form of government is, as opposed to a parliamentary
LLT 180 Lecture 11 21 system, candidates for president can say anything they want. If the people don't propose that, they can't dispose that. They don't have the power to, you know, bring any of those policies through to fruition. You'll have a whole hour for that. You might want -- if you have Blue Books sitting around, you can bring 'em. I'll bring some extra white paper and a stapler so that if you want, you can just take some of your own paper, as long as it's not prewritten on, and we can staple 'em together. Questions about the test? [Inaudible student response] No, no, no. If I didn't tell you this before, my advisor in graduate school -- I really liked him. He was a medievalist folklorist and a Ph.D. from Chicago, University of Chicago. And he never assigned -- he never assigned a research paper of any particular length. People would always say, "Well, you know, how long does this have to be? Does it have to be 20 pages, 30 pages, 40 pages?" And he said, "You get your topic approved and it has to be long enough to do your topic." And he said, "If you want to tell me" -- and I'm not trying to scurry your question -- "but if you want to tell me the house is white, I don't care if it has green shutters; I don't care if it has a picket fence; I don't care what street it's on, if you want to tell me the house is white." So they can be as succinct as appropriate. At the same time, you know, the admonition that I don't know you know anything unless you tell me. We don't need to, you know, suffer from diarrhea penmanship. But, you know, it needs to be -- we're not trying to write -- when I was a little kid and the
LLT 180 Tape 11 22 breakfast -- the cereal industry was trying to grow, they'd have like little contests. Like, you could turn in things to win prizes. Like write the best jingle of Wheaties you can in 25 words or less. This is not such a contest. But at the same time, I had a professor -- I had a history professor in undergraduate school, undergraduate college -- and I had a double major -- and he -- this one professor was notorious for just wanting length. He would just like scan stuff and so seriously, people would soak their hand in like hot water before his tests to help them keep from cramping up. And people had developed, you know, bizarre stylistics for, like, Blue Books -- we always had to use Blue Books. And they'd write real big so they'd have like 5 words on a line. So they'd turn in, like, for one test, like, two or three Blue Books. Short is good. Short is good as long as it's thorough. I think the questions -- you know, as you all know. You know, I'm not saying anything you don't need to know. But always make sure you go back and look at the questions. I mean, there aren't any freshmen in here. But if it says, "Give at least three examples," you know, make sure you give at least three examples. I mean, I think it's more those type things that are gonna, you know, probably irritate you more. Because you'll look back and say, "Oh, my," you know, "I just didn't read the question well." 'Course you can always do -- I had a fraternity brother who has a Ph.D. from Hopkins in Political Science. I'm not picking on Political Science. But he -- he was a smart guy. And what he'd do is, before his tests, he'd write out his answers and memorize 'em. He'd memorize 'em. And I said, "Joe, it's wrong, you know." I mean, I
LLT 180 Lecture 11 23 said -- I'd figure out, you know, maybe ten questions the professor might ask on essay questions, and I'd kind of outline 'em and I usually could hit 'em. If we're gonna have six, I can get 'em into ten and I can use my charts. He said, "What I do is," he said, "whatever the questions are, I restate them at the beginning of my answer so I can use my answers." This must be a good thing to specialize in, you know. You can make your answer work, no matter what the question is. Both my daughters were Political Science majors and Economics majors. Questions? Most of this is going probably in the can. Have a nice weekend. It's only supposed to be in the '50s or something and rainy on Sunday, so it'll be good studying weather. See you on Monday.