Ljubljana statue of Slovenia’s national poet France Prešeren
Wednesday
Today I catch you up on my teaching experiences at the University of Ljubljana, where I’m spending six weeks visiting the classes of former colleagues. I’m also solidifying the St. Mary’s-Ljubljana student exchange program, which Julia and I set up in 2008 to commemorate our oldest son. So far I’ve taught classes on Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Midnight’s Children, and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Oh, and I visited Trieste over the weekend and got to put my arms around the James Joyce statue.
I taught in Ljubljana in987-88 and again in 1994-95 on Fulbright fellowships (the first time it was still Yugoslavia) and developed many enduring friendships. My children went to school here, and when our oldest son died, we used money that people donated to set up the program. We’ve had 22 Slovenian students spend a semester at St. Mary’s and 19 St. Mary’s MAT students do student teaching in Ljubljana. Although I’m now retired, I’m here to ensure that the program continues.
When I’m in Ljubljana, I volunteer my services, which is how I came to teach these classes. In my remaining weeks I will be teaching Henry IV, Part I, Twelfth Night and King Lear in a Shakespeare class and God of Small Things, Purple Hibiscus, and short stories by Nadine Gordimer and V. S. Naipaul in a post-colonial literature class. I will also be teaching The Wife of Bath (in a medieval lit class) and reader response theory (in a literary theory class).
I’d never taught Romeo and Juliet or Taming of the Shrew before, and as teaching always bring me new insights, I’ve gained a new appreciation of both plays. I hadn’t realized just how radical R&J is and how, from the street brawls on, testosterone and hormones are ready to blow everything apart. As Friar Lawrence observes,
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume…
In other words, it is not a sweet romance.
I also hadn’t realized how much Juliet dominates the second half. As much as she loves Romeo, she may love even more her newly discovered sense of power. No wonder she captures the imagination of high school girls.
Since there are many similarities between Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer, I asked the class which they thought was written first (scholars don’t know). One student speculated that, following the no-holds-barred, idolatrous passion of R&J, Shakespeare wrote his Pyramus and Thisbe spoof to calm down. She said it was like the Greeks following up a day of tragedies (three in a row) with a satyr play. After venturing into the refined realms of heightened emotion, psychologically one needs an earthy comedy.
For Taming of the Shrew, we discussed different ways to interpret Kate’s final declaration about wifely duty:
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
I had them vote on whether the passage is to be read as straight, ironic, a joint performance with her husband, or mere farce.
No one read the passage as straight, although one student wondered whether Kate has Stockholm Syndrome. Most read it either as ironic (perhaps she exchanges a wink with Bianca) or coordinated with Petruchio (she’s decided to join him in his extravagant behavior). Given Shakespeare’s immense sensitivity, none of us could believe he wants us to laugh at a woman’s humiliation.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, which I taught in a philosophy class on feminism, I explored Atwood’s mixed relationship with political feminists. Atwood has declared she is not a feminist, although she favors many things that feminists favor, and I discussed why this was an appropriate stance for a novelist. We need novelists to expand our horizons, including exploding sentimental or idealized versions of women. Activists, on the other hand, must focus their goals if they are to get things done. At their best, activism and literature coexist in a creative tension.
In the Anglophone class, at one point I had the students (half of whom were Slovenian, half from elsewhere) figure out which of the postcolonial theories about literature applied to their own country. Had they been colonizers, colonized, or both and what role did literature play in that national drama?
To cite one example, if poet France Prešeren is Slovenia’s national poet (a large statue of him stands in the center of Ljubljana), it’s because he showed the world that the Slovenian language could produce great poetry. This was vital if Slovenia was to establish a distinctive identity within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In other words, poetry isn’t just poetry.
Along with teaching, I’m putting the final touches on a collection of my blog essays, which I’m entitling Reading as Resistance in the Age of Trump: Fighting Back with Aeschylus, Blake, Chaucer, Dante, Eliot, Fielding, Goethe, Homer, Ibsen, Joyce, Kundera, Le Guin, Milton, Nye, Orwell, Pope, Rushdie, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Virgil, Warren, Yeats, Zamiatin and Others. I plan to have it available in December.
Stay tuned.