Week 11 - April 23
Britomart
and the Blatant Beast
1. After the
relative austerity of the narratives of Books, 1 and 2,Book 3
presents us with what may seem at first a bewildering variety
and richness. this is partly due to the multiple narrative strands
which interlace throughout this book. (Heale 75)
2. …the
multiple interweaving narratives of Book 3 help to create, even
more than in book 1, the sense of our being in the midst of a
puzzling world in which people and places are often not what they
seem and where it is often difficult to interpret events fully
or accurately until they are passed. …(76)
3. Britomart's
emotions are handled with a degree of detail and humour which
is unusual. Unusual too is her role, a woman disguised as a man
in search of a lover she has merely glimpsed in a magic mirror.
(79)
4. The Blatant
Beast signifies the malice or spite of others that causes loss
of honour or reputation, but for the venom to work there must
be some relaxation of vigilance in the victim. (161)
Reading of
Book3, Canto 1
&
Book 6, Canto 1 and Canto 10
in small groups:
1. create your own Blatant Beast
2. explore possible places in your poems that might be ripe for
amplification
A Visit to
the Temple of Venus (Book 4, canto 10 & 11)
and the pleasures
of amplification
"help me to name all these floods"
create your
own Temple --- Temple of ________________?
and then amplify!
paradise as reconciliation of opposites
She syre and mother is her selfe alone
Begets and eke conceives, ne needeth other none. ( Book 4,
Canto x, 41
Read:
Wilner: Shekhinah
