In the sixties, Glasgow University had an odd policy that every individual
miserable single honours student had to write at least one essay for the
titular professor, whether or not taught by him.
[No hers then.]
So I found myself at one point having to submit an essay to Peter Butter.
Being naive, I submitted an essay challenging his ideas on Yeats' early
lyric poetry.
(In the entire course of my undergraduate career, this was the only essay I
wrote for which I actually achieved a straight A -- and I'd been taught by
Eddie Morgan and Philip Hobsbaum, among others, neither of whom rated me
that highly.)
{Actually, I *amost once got an A mark from Philip Hobsbaum, but that was
over a series of notes I accidentally (true tale) submitted about Hero and
Leander as a comic poem, that I hadn't realised was a formal submission.}
But on the principle that if you're going to fuck up, let's fuck up quite
royally, the essay I submitted to Michael Samuels, Professor of English
Language at the time, was on alliterative verse, arguing not only that
Francis Berry was the heir to Wulfstan in a variant of the alliterative
tradition, but that Berry's edition of GGK in the Penguin History of English
Literature was more significant than the Tolkein&Gordon edition.
{Talk about fighting a war on five fronts!}
I actually (admittedly with deep head wounds) survived the post-essay
tutorial on that.
The point of this was that I thought that it might be possible to drag the
Yogh discussion around to the remit of poetryetc, vai "Hvalsey", but
apparently there are no texts of Francis Berry on-line.
Sad that, but.
:-(((
Robin
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