What's in the cards?

What do newspapers, chewing gum, and the SATs have in common? They each raise a different perspective on the development of cards. And each medium highlights a different use of cards: to stack, flip, shuffle, and keep.

Cards have a prominent history in the early modern period. Nicholas Tosney writes in Historical Research that

By the sixteen-eighties over one million packs of playing cards were being produced every year.

 Tosney appears mostly interested in the ways that cards helped governments raise revenue. But the article raises other questions about the nature of playing cards. For instance, did balladeers like Autolycus sell playing cards? What is the purpose and design of playing cards?


"Wageman - Fawcett as Autolycus" by Thomas Charles Wageman (1768-1837) - Shakespeare Illustrated. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

1. Stack

The design of playing cards is especially relevant as people try to make digital substitutes. Like other early modern print genres--including newspapers, almanacs, and horoscopes--cards are adapting to the digital era. Ezra Klein's born-digital news platform, Vox, organizes content around "card stacks." AdAge explains the conceit:

 To better explain the news, Vox.com is trying a new way of presenting information on topics in what its calling Card Stacks. The card metaphor came after the founding team started playing with the idea of what it means to provide context to the news. "We had a cool idea that context is a consistent layer of where you are in the site, and card stacks pop up and are easy to flip through," said Vox Media's chief product officer Trei Brundrett.

For Vox, the "card stack" provides a physical model for historical and networked information.

Playing cards can be stacked in categories without losing their efficacy. Books benefit from bookshelves; paintings need wallspace; even newspapers come with their own tidy organization. But cards are the flat-packed, IKEA-approved, hyper-stackable medium. That's what we learn from the way that Vox uses card stacks, and other digital platforms highlight other characteristics of cards.

2. Flip

NPR reports that TOPPS developed an app to simulate baseball card collecting. And this app, like all things digital, has a twitter feed:

You knew @TOPPSMIKE wasn't going to do a World Series Winners set without the Yankees, right? http://t.co/y1fBN4zcgL pic.twitter.com/puAdi0jyL2
— Topps BUNT (@ToppsBUNT) January 2, 2015

Some of the BUNT's features are throwbacks to a dead medium--like their digital bubble gum. The app incorporates an animation of bubble gum that I would call a skeuomorph. And this skeuomorph recreates the process of revealing a card.

Baseball cards, playing cards, even tarot cards rely on the interplay of concealing and revealing. The conceal/reveal emerges from play between "recto" and "verso" sides. One side of the card can obsolesce, enhance, retrieve, or reverse the other side of the card. The other card that benefits from flipping is, of course, the flash card.

3. Shuffle

Whereas those other cards flip to shock, entrance, or delight, flash cards flip to instruct. As Slate reports, the educational flash card probably began with John  Stuart Mill:

One of the earliest recorded flashcard success stories appears in the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. In 1810, James Mill began teaching his three-year-old son Greek using what we would now call flashcards. "My earliest recollection on [learning Greek]," Mill writes, "is that of committing to memory what my father termed vocables, being lists of common Greek words, with their signification in English, which he wrote out for me on cards."

Predating Mill by a few decades was an even more precocious case of card learning, this time by a porcine pupil. In the 1780s, an animal trainer named Samuel Bissett toured Ireland with a pig that he had taught to do math problems and spell, using cards labeled with letters and numbers.

Of course I can't resist including Rowlandson's image of Bissett's larnd pig:


"Rowlandson, The Wonderful Pig, 1785" by Thomas Rowlandson - http://georgianaduchessofdevonshire.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The flash card combines the flip with the technique of the shuffle. According to Spaced Repetition or the Leitner system,the complex sortation of the cards works against the memory's normal systems of forgetting. In other words, flash cards mostly work because they're shuffled.

"Leitner system animation" by Zirguezi - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

4. Keep

Of course every other use of cards depends on the durability of cards. Cards were made of cardstock, and so were ideally conditioned for preservation and re-use. Therefore we have postcard preservation in Boston, Chicago, South Jersey, New York, and Illinois, just to name the first page of Google results. Likewise, we have playing card museums around the world, and too many baseball card collectors to name.

And the card itself is a miniature museum. A flash card promises that it can force an association between two ideas. A baseball card promises to distill a player's career into a set of facts that can fit into your pocket. A postcard or a greeting card resembles a fragment of a vacation: often nothing more than a collage of bright colors and strange sights, compounded into the shape of the word "WISCONSIN" or "HAWAII." And throughout these, the tarot deck offers to unveil the history of the cosmos to anyone with the patience to keep the deck, shuffle, stack, and flip the cards.

Early Modernity Today: 2 January

On this date, 2 January:

1596: Roger Goad reports William Covell for offense against nobility.

On 2 January 1596 Roger Goad, provost of King's and vice-chancellor of the university, reported to Lord Burghley and Archbishop Whitgift that Covell's remarks had been directed ‘offensively and extraordinarily, to charge the noblemen of this realm especially; and in sort also the bishops’ (Strype, Whitgift, 2.319–20). The furious archbishop sought to bring Covell before the ecclesiastical commissioners, but Goad, fearing that the college fellows would interpret this as a threat to their privileges, won Whitgift's consent to deal with the matter himself. Covell, however, was unimpressed by the rebukes of Goad and the other college heads, and seems to have refused to apologize or retract.     (Wright)

1618: Walter Raleigh arrives at San Thomé.

Ralegh was released on 19 March 1616, and at once set about planning his expedition. The planning was, of course, extensive, and little he said or did comforted those at court who were determined on a lasting peace with Spain. He discussed with Sir Francis Bacon, attorney-general, the possibility of seizing the silver fleet, brushing aside the latter's remarks that this would amount to an act of piracy: had Bacon, he asked rhetorically, ever heard ‘of men being pirates for millions?’ The Guiana fleet sailed from Plymouth on 12 June 1617, but storms and adverse winds detained it off the southern coast of Ireland for nearly two months. Finally, on 19 August, a fair wind allowed the ships to make their way south from Cork. It was to be a laborious voyage, with illness taking its usual toll. Never comfortable at sea, Ralegh himself succumbed to fever, and was unable to face solid food for nearly a month. The fleet did not arrive in harbour, at the mouth of the Cayenne River, until 14 November. An expedition under Lawrence Keymis, with Ralegh's nephew George Ralegh in command of the land forces, sailed up the Orinoco in five ships on 10 December. Carrying provisions for one month, the three vessels that survived the shoals of the delta battled against strong currents and arrived at the Spanish settlement San Thomé on 2 January 1618.     (Nicholls and Williams)

1624: Henry Herbert licenses Palsgrave's men to play The History of the Dutchess of Suffolk.

Though he appears to have given up acting after receiving his freedom [Thomas] Drewe stayed involved in the theatre by writing plays. On 2 January 1624 Sir Henry Herbert licensed a play for the Palsgrave's Men, called The History of the Dutchess of Suffolk, ‘written by Mr. Drew’. This play was entered in the Stationers' register on 13 November 1629, with a fuller attribution to ‘Thomas Drue’, and it was printed anonymously in 1631. Herbert noted in his licence that the play ‘being full of dangerous matter was much reformed’ (Bentley, 3.284) and it is difficult to tell, from the reasonably innocuous extant text, what that dangerous matter might have been. It concerns the popular story (also told by Hall, Holinshed, and balladeer Thomas Deloney) of Katherine, the sixteenth-century duchess of Suffolk, her flight from religious persecution, and her return to England under Queen Elizabeth.     (Kathman)

1646: George Thomason buys Poems of Mr John Milton.

In 1645 Milton decided to collect his youthful poems. The edition was published as Poems of Mr John Milton, both English and Latin; the edition is dated 1645, but may have been published on 2 January 1646, which is the date that George Thomason inscribed on his copy, which is now in the British Library. The English section was a miscellany consisting of early poems and translations, Milton's first ten sonnets (including the Italian sonnets), and Comus, which Milton had revised since its last publication. The Latin section (which included a few Greek poems) had a separate title-page, Joannis Miltoni Londoniensis poemata. Quorum pleraque intra annum aetatis vigesimum conscripsit (‘Poems by John Milton of London, most of which were Written before he was Twenty’); this section was paginated separately, and was divided into a book of poems in elegiac couplets (Elegiarum liber) and a collection of poems in various metres (Sylvarum liber). The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, commissioned a portrait of Milton from the engraver William Marshall. The portrait is unflattering, and when Milton was shown it, he sought a cruel revenge by composing a few lines of Greek verse, which the hapless (and Greekless) Marshall engraved beneath the portrait; the verses invite the reader to laugh at the portrait, which Milton says is not a picture of him but of the incompetence of the engraver. It seems possible that the cruel humour of the God of Paradise Lost has its origins in the personality of his creator.    (Campbell)

1649: The House of Lords rejects Commons' resolution for Charles I's trial.

The king's trial was the turning point for North. On 28 December 1648 he joined a delegation of several other peers to Cromwell pleading against such a drastic step, and was one of the peers present on 2 January 1649 when the Lords rejected the Commons' resolution for Charles's trial. He returned to Kirtling after the regicide, where he remained throughout the interregnum, living as ‘a retired old fantastical courtier’ and avoiding politics, pursuing his private interests (North, Lives, 3.67).     (Stater)

1660: George Monck's army crosses the River Coldstream.

It is possible, though hotly contested, that by 21 August 1659 Gumble had drafted for Monck a manifesto that supported the Cheshire rising of Sir George Booth. Only the spectacular collapse of the rebellion, so Gumble later claimed, prevented the document from becoming public. Accompanying the army on its decisive march south in January 1660, Gumble was at the crossing of the River Coldstream, on 2 January, and recorded that ‘the poor redcoats wad[ed] through the Snow knee-deep, and through the Ice and Waters’ (Gumble, 187–96).     (Callow)

1664: Edward Howard stages The Usurper at the Theatre Royal.

Howard's works suffered at the hands of contemporary critics. His heroic poemThe British Princes (1669) was ridiculed by the earl of Rochester among others; Howard himself was caricatured as Poet Ninny in Shadwell's Sullen Lovers(1668); and his plays proved rather unsuccessful. The Usurper, a tragedy probably first staged at the Theatre Royal on 2 January 1664, was a scarcely veiled attack on the regicides. Pepys, who went to see it on 2 December 1668, judged it ‘a pretty good play, in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly’ (Pepys, 9.381)    (Motten)

1711: The Tatler closes.

It was chiefly through Richard Steele that Addison was able to devote himself to periodical literature, the department of writing on which his fame has subsequently rested. Steele had founded The Tatler on 12 April 1709; it ran for 271 issues, appearing every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday until 2 January 1711... After the closure of The Tatler, a yawning gap in the market must have been as obvious to Addison and Steele as it was to the reading public at large. They responded by initiating The Spectator on 1 March 1711, thus embarking on one of the most triumphant literary projects of the age.     (Rogers)

Works Cited

Callow, John. “Gumble, Thomas (bap. 1626, d.1676).” John CallowOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/11735>.


Campbell, Gordon. “Milton, John (1608–1674).” Gordon CampbellOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2009. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/18800>.


Kathman, David. “Drewe , Thomas (c.1586–1627).” David KathmanOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/8060>.


Motten, J. P. Vander. “Howard, Edward (bap. 1624,d. 1712).” J. P. Vander MottenOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/13892>.


Nicholls, Mark and Penry Williams. “Ralegh, Sir Walter (1554–1618).” Mark NichollsOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/23039>.


Rogers, Pat. “Addison, Joseph (1672–1719).” Pat RogersOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/156>.


Stater, Victor. “North, Dudley, third Baron North (bap.1582, d. 1666).” Victor StaterOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, . 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/20295>.


Wright, Stephen. “Covell, William (d. 1613).” Stephen WrightOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, . 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/6472>.

Early Modernity Today: 1 January

On this date, 1 January:

1579: Gabriel Harvey is due to give Edmund Spenser four volumes of Lucian.

Gabriel Harvey records that he and Spenser met in London on 20 December 1578. Spenser presented Harvey with four ‘foolish bookes’ that he had to read before 1 January 1579 or give Spenser his four volumes of Lucian. The four volumes were Till Eulenspiegel's A Merye Jest of a Man that was called Howleglas (c.1528), Andrew Borde's Jests of Scoggin (c.1566), Merie Tales … by Master Skelton(1567), and The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes (trans. D. Rowland,c.1569). The outcome of the contest is not recorded. Harvey also noted in hisLetter Book that Spenser looked like a ‘young Italianate signor and French monsieur’, a description that gives a sense of the humorous banter established between the two friends.     (Hadfield)

1582: Richard Madox begins his diary and his voyage to Wolverhampton.

While Tudor diaries are rare, Madox's, for 1 January to 31 December 1582 (now in the British Library), is unusually informative. It chronicles part of Fenton's voyage, as do three other contemporary diaries; but Madox's superior status enabled him, while at sea, to go to other ships. Moreover, his diary shows his earlier movements, noting places he saw and persons he met. On 1 January 1582 he went to Wolverhampton to visit his brother Thomas, who was headmaster of the grammar school, when Thomas's wife, Anne, gave birth to a daughter, Katherine.     (Bennell)

1611: Ben Jonson's Oberon appears at court.

[In Jonson's masques] a rabble of threatening or grotesque antimasquers would miraculously vanish at the entry of the principal masquers; as vice, in an ideal world, might be conquered by the very sight of virtue. This glitteringly optimistic view of the power and majesty of the court was further elaborated in The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers (6 January 1610), Oberon (1 January 1611), and Love Restored(6 January 1612). It was a court superbly endowed—so the latter masque asserts—with the ten ornaments of Honour, Courtesy, Valour, Urbanity, Confidence, Alacrity, Promptness, Industry, Ability, and Reality.     (Donaldson)

1618: Francis Kynaston knighted by James.

Kynaston, Sir Francis (1586/7–1642), writer and founder of an academy of learning, was born in Oteley, Shropshire, the eldest son of Sir Edward Kynaston (d. after 1638), gentleman, and his wife, Isabel, daughter of Sir Nicholas Bagenall. He matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, on 11 December 1601, aged fourteen, and graduated BA from St Mary Hall on 14 June 1604. Admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 9 October 1604, he was called to the bar in 1611. He was awarded an MA degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609. His marriage in 1613 to Margaret, daughter of Sir Humphrey Lee, bt, produced one son. Knighted by James I on 1 January 1618, he represented Shropshire in the parliament of 1621. Named taxor of Cambridge University in 1623, he was proctor in 1634. In 1625 he became esquire of the body to Charles I.     (Smuts) 

1620: John Donne returns to London after a frustrated embassy to end the Thirty Years' War.

Having sought some form of diplomatic employment during the years before his ordination, Donne was finally sent in 1619 on an embassy in the capacity of chaplain to Viscount Doncaster... The embassy travelled from Calais to Antwerp, Brussels, and then Mariemont, where they met the archduke. After this they went on to Heidelberg to meet Frederick, the elector palatine, and Princess Elizabeth (James I's son-in-law and daughter), before whom Donne preached a sermon. Doncaster then proceeded to meetings with allies of the emperor, travelling to Ulm, Augsburg, and Munich, where he met the duke of Bavaria. In Salzburg he met Ferdinand himself, and attempted to put the case for treating with the Bohemians, but to little avail... . Finally, the party reached London on 1 January 1620: James's ambitions as peacebroker had been disappointed, and Donne and his companions had experienced the frustration of seeing their embassy exploited as a delaying tactic by the emperor while the protestant forces suffered and remained unassisted by the English.     (Colclough) 

1625: Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV performed at court.

The plays continued to be performed through the years before the theatres were closed in 1642... Sir Edward Dering's library contained an adaptation of the two parts of Henry IV into a single play, probably for a private performance. Some characters were already dominating their plays: a court performance of 1 Henry IV on 1 January 1625 was referred to as Sir John Falstaff.     (Holland)

1651: Charles II crowned at Scone in Perthshire.

The coronation sermon was given by Robert Douglas—the leading resolutioner minister and moderator of the commission of the kirk—who harangued the king over his personal sins and those of his father, grandfather, and other members of the royal family. It was [Archibald Campbell, first marquis of] Argyll, as leader of the kirk party regime, who placed the crown on Charles's head.     (Young)

1660: Samuel Pepys begins his diary.

It was certainly with some sense that his own life, as well as the nation's history, was at a pivotal point, that on 1 January 1660 Pepys began the diary which has made him famous. He opens with a self-conscious summary of his domestic circumstances and the political background; thereafter his writing takes on the structures and rhythms which are sustained for the nine and a half years which the diary fills. He had kept no previous journal, though his dispatches to Mountagu may have been his apprenticeship in reporting. A ‘Romance’ written at Cambridge (and destroyed along with other juvenilia in 1664) was the only previous literary effort he recalled (Pepys, Diary, 5.31). The extant manuscript of the diary is a fair copy, written up (in shorthand) every few days from a scribbled draft, collated with other private papers or printed sources to hand. Pepys undoubtedly improved on his text in this process, though without compromising the authenticity of the daily record. The result is properly acclaimed as an astonishingly vivid and disciplined exercise in self-analysis, a historical document of the first rank, and a literary classic. The diary is naturally the single most important source of knowledge about Pepys himself and his relationships, and his public reputation derives largely from the image he projects of himself during the diary years, 1660–69. As it happened these were all the years that remained of his married life, and the period in which his professional apprenticeship was completed.     (Knighton) 

1684: Daniel Defoe marries Mary Tuffley.

After leaving Morton's academy, Defoe established a home and business in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill, and became a wholesale hosier. On 1 January 1684 he married Mary Tuffley (1665–1732), who brought him a dowry of £3700; they had six daughters (Mary, Maria, Hannah, Henrietta, Sophia, and Martha) and two sons (Benjamin and Daniel), all but two of whom, Mary and Martha, lived into adulthood. Defoe shared the persecution of the nonconformists and was a lifelong supporter of freedom of religion and the press. He had joined Monmouth's revolt in June 1685, fought at Sedgemoor under the banner ‘Fear nothing but God’, and managed to escape capture after the defeat. In January 1686 he made bail for two widows arrested at a conventicle meeting and soon began to write political essays. He was pardoned for taking part in the uprising in May 1687     (Backscheider)

1695: Anthony Alsop graduates BA at Christ Church, Oxford.

Alsop must have begun to write Latin verse at school: the art was highly prized at both Westminster and Christ Church. At Oxford he established a reputation as one of the most accomplished of a group of poets. His long alcaic ode ‘Britannia’ was sung at the encaenia in 1693, and printed in the programme. He contributed to the university collection on the death of Queen Mary (1695; ode 1.2). These early poems focus on the horror of war, as does a hexameter dialogue for public recitation, ‘Givetta ardens’ (1696; poem 3.8), which also injects some black humour and exploding Frenchmen.     (Money)

Works Cited:

Backscheider, Paula R.. “Defoe, Daniel (1660?–1731).” Paula R. BackscheiderOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/7421>.

Bennell, John. “Madox, Richard (1546–1583).” John BennellOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/64595>.

Colclough, David. “Donne, John (1572–1631).” David ColcloughOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2011. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/7819>.


Donaldson, Ian. “Jonson, Benjamin (1572–1637).” Ian DonaldsonOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Sept. 2013. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/15116>.


Hadfield, Andrew. “Spenser, Edmund (1552?–1599).” Andrew HadfieldOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/26145>.


Holland, Peter. “Shakespeare, William (1564–1616).” Peter HollandOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2013. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/25200>.


Knighton, C. S.. “Pepys, Samuel (1633–1703).” C. S. KnightonOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/21906>


Money, D. K.. “Alsop, Anthony (bap. 1670, d. 1726).” D. K. MoneyOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/423>


Smuts, R. Malcolm. “Kynaston, Sir Francis (1586/7–1642).” R. Malcolm SmutsOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/article/15822>.


Young, John R.. “Kirk party (act. 1648–1651).” John R. Young Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, May 2014. 1 Jan. 2015 <http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/view/theme/98248>.

Biblical Bardolatry

Theories à la Mode

On Friday I talked to my friend K about the definition of "mode." If I understand her perspective, "mode" has three kinds of features: mode (a) emerges from the weighted majority of tropes (tropes of both content and form), (b) projects an idealized form, but exists solely in textual and material features, and (c) emerges from the intersection of content and form.

Just for the sake of argument, I started thinking about alternatives theories of mode. For starters, I might conjure up objections about (b) the nature of the idealized mode, or (c) the form-content distinction. More importantly, I wondered (a) what if mode is a fundamental channel of narrative, rather than an emergent effect? Since Aristotle is very sharp at distinguishing between substances and accidents, actualities and potentialities, I decided to look at the term "mode" in Poetics.

"Mode" may be the least-theorized term in Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle introduces Poetics mode in the ταξις (taxis, second paragraph): "Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one another in three respects- the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct" (Poetics 1.1). He goes on to define "mode" according to the narrative speaker. (NB: At the end of this paragraph, Aristotle demonstrates the proof by "notation and conjugates," one of his more obscure topics of invention.)

There is still a third difference- the manner in which each of these objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration- in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged- or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us. 

These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation- the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer- for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes- for both imitate persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of 'drama' is given to such poems, as representing action. For the same reason the Dorians claim the invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to Comedy is put forward by the Megarians- not only by those of Greece proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by the Megarians of Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they appeal to the evidence of language. The outlying villages, they say, are by them called komai, by the Athenians demoi: and they assume that comedians were so named not from komazein, 'to revel,' but because they wandered from village to village (kata komas), being excluded contemptuously from the city. They add also that the Dorian word for 'doing' is dran, and the Athenian, prattein. (Poetics 1.3) (emphasis added)

I think Aristotle also seems to agree with K insofar as the history of mode is material and social: the argument from notation and conjugates implies, at least, that the history and nomenclature of "tragedy," "comedy," &c., is determined by the etymology of various Achaian/Hellenic dialects. I would caution, however, that Aristotle's remarks are restricted to the nomenclature, and he doesn't make a proto-Stanley Fish move to define all textual effects by their interpretive communities.

Aristotle also agrees with K insofar as mode breaks the content-form division. "[T]he poet may imitate by narration," and thereby the poet may bring the represented character to the diegetic level of the representation. But Aristotle doesn't use anything analogous to the content-form division. I think the content-form distinction may be complicated with an unusual connection in Aristotle's works.

I like to relate Aristotle's Poetics to his De Anima, because the fictive beings of Poetics, such as characters, should resemble the organic beings of De Anima if Aristotle's general theories of mimesis should hold. And if Aristotle defines mode as "imitat[ion of character] by narration," then the mode of character narration is both a poetic and an animate concern.

So in De Anima, Aristotle lists four ways of defining an organic being: according to its material, its shape, its origins, or its ends. Aristotle thinks the best way to capture of this is through hylomorphism, which translates to something like matter-shape-ism. Once Aristotle understands the matter and the form of an organic being, he also understands its origins and its ends. I think K & I can generally agree on the origins of texts (human authors) and the ends (human audiences), so that just leaves the matter and the shape. I think K is absolutely right about the material of mode: mode is something that's materially assembled from text. And my principal objection concerns the shape of mode.

A hylomorphic compromise between K's perspective and my counter-arguments would describe mode as something an author makes out of text for an audience in some shape. That shape, I would posit from Poetics, is defined by the relationship it yields between authors, narrators, characters, narratees, and audiences.

Counterblog/Blog: The Arrangement of Intro. Poetry

Hey folks! In response to Evan's first blog post on his course design, I'll write a few words about how I've set up my introduction to poetry course. When Evan and I met at a cafe to discuss our syllabi with the introduction to poetry faculty course director, it became apparent that we were taking provocatively divergent paths to organizing our courses on—our introductions to—poetry. The differences in our course designs are particularly compelling in light of recent large-scale changes in Ohio State's undergraduate literature courses: from 40-student historical surveys (for example: American literature, colonial period to Civil War) taught by a graduate student or faculty instructor to 240-student lectures with graduate students assisting a faculty member; from an admittedly bloated, yet generous offering of literature courses to an asceticism brought on by, we were told, an impending drop in enrollment rates. To wit, I feel that Evan and I are working through some urgent questions in light of a sea change in how universities, colleges, and departments think about literary studies. The questions that Evan poses for me at the end of his post are more than sufficient for me to begin with here.

What's the organizing principle of your arrangement?

My course works in two halves separated by a midterm exam. After an initial class meeting meant to challenge students' understandings of what it is to "read" a poem (via Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation"), the first half of the semester focuses on what I'm calling "craft elements" of poetry. Class meetings focus on topics such as: words/meaning, connotation/denotation, voice/persona, sound/rhythm, figures of speech, closed forms, and open forms. After the midterm, class meetings use students' familiarity with craft elements to focus on thematic approaches to poetry (and these tend to span several class meetings while the craft elements tend to take a single class meeting): mythology/narrative, ekphrasis, personhood/identity, experiment/avant-garde, ars poetica, etc. For a complete look, see my syllabus.

I agree entirely with Evan in that the "key difference" between our course designs is that his "will emphasize narrative history as an organizing principle of comparison and contrast." While I don't mean to jettison history at all (class meetings will often engage focused historical narratives, for example: how the Victorian dramatic monologue responds to the Romantic lyric), I'm avoiding the chronology of literary history as an organizing principle for the chronology of our reading assignments. In my syllabus course description, I define the major goal of the course as a cultivation of "a critical appreciation of poetry," which "leads us to articulate our experience of a poem with an incisive understanding of what that poem attempts to do and how it attempts to do so: a connoisseurship, cleansed of the prejudice and pretension that haunt such a word." Comparison and contrast indeed presents useful ways for students to understand poems as unique artifacts; I assign various poems from various historical situations for a class meeting. For example, one of the class meetings on ekphrasis features readings from Homer, Wordsworth, Keats, the Rossettis, Williams, and Auden.

How does your arrangement direct students to engage with the texts?

Here I'd like to elaborate on what I mean by "unique artifacts." As a sort of sloppy philosophizing, I want students first and foremost to engage the thisness of poems as unique instances of art. The course is an introduction to poetry, and I take "introduction" seriously in the course design (not that Evan doesn't, of course). History, to me, is one of several major ways that we can understand and appreciate how a poem—indeed, how any art object—works. A huge part of my thought here has to do with audience. Scholars of literary history are invested in placing literary artifacts as both forces in and reflections of their historical moments. Historicism is our dominant theoretical perspective and research methodology. My students, though, aren't literary scholars. Only one or two are English majors, and most of them are not in the humanities. They come to the course with diverse wants and needs.

I certainly don't mean to imply that we ought to structure our classes based on what students want them to be. This sort of thinking presents a slippery slope down which we're already tumbling in our increasingly consumer-oriented postsecondary educational system. At the same time, I'm trying to keep in mind that what might be a meaningful way to engage with texts for me as a scholar of literary history might not be a meaningful way to engage with texts for a student in a sophomore-level, general education course called "introduction to poetry." Thus, while historical narratives still play an important role in my course, I don't foreground them as aggressively as I could. As I write in the prompt for the poetry event response assignment, "poetry is a living, breathing thing." I don't want to consign it to the mausoleums of history.

In full disclosure, I've been having a lot of doubt recently as to the usefulness of the undergraduate introductory survey course. I also did my Masters in creative writing (poetry), so I'm predisposed to approach poetry in ways beyond the historical, especially in terms of forms, modes, and themes.

How does your arrangement anticipate students' responses?

I have tried to arrange my readings in ways that establish and then challenge assumptions so that students are faced with conflicting understandings of how poetry works. For example, during the mini-unit on personhood and identity, we spend a class meeting thinking about how poetry and race intersect in the works of Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, and Terrence Hayes. However, the next class meeting challenges the lyric as an index of race with readings from Angels of the Americlypse, an anthology of Latin@ writing explicitly engaging the experimental and avant-garde traditions and rejecting the pigeonhole of romanticized racial otherness (not that Hughes, Lorde, or Hayes embrace this, of course). Or, after discussing closed form and its affordances, we leap into free verse with Whitman and Ginsberg and eventually land in some prose poetry. In other words, I want each class to say: "here's one way that poetry can be understood, but it certainly isn't the only way, and other ways might even disagree with it." This might not be what Evan means by response, especially considering that he'll be asking students to brainstorm alternate traditions towards the end of the semester, but it is the primary way that I considered reactions to ideas and texts.

Perhaps our next posts might detail our experiences teaching for the first few weeks? Who knows. Stay tuned!

Trey Conatser