Lazy Sunday

On this lazy Sunday afternoon, I present another pretty word cloud, made possible by Worlde.  I find these word clouds fascinating, and I wanted to see how Hannah Griffitt’s poem, “An Essay on Friendship,” would rearrange itself.  The poem is available on this post, Happy Happy, Joy Joy.  The more frequent the word in the chosen text, the more prominent it will appear in the word cloud.  I wanted to see how often friend and friendship would appear, and what other words, such as soul or dear or hearts, would be large or small.  Check out the results for yourself.

 

[click for a larger image]

This is the word cloud that appeared with the maximum set to 175 words, which is far less than the 1,260 words included in the poem.  The program allows you to set the word maximum, and when I chose 200, the words in the cloud were too small and crowded.  I set the program to erase out common English words (think the, and, of).  


Do me a favor - keep in mind this is not exactly scientific and we’ll be all right.  The biggest word is, unsurprisingly, friend, followed by friendship and love, soul, joys, joy, and ever.  Ev’ry, dear, care, feel, nature, mind, find, grief, tender, known, sweet, and friend share the same font size.  I’ll let you linger over the word cloud to figure out the next set of words connected by font size.  If one were to conduct an analysis of “An Essay on Friendship” based solely on this word cloud, the themes of friendship, love, a connection between souls, tenderness, and grief are still visible and viable.     


I think it would be interesting to give this word cloud to students and ask them to create a poem, or short story, based on the words within (and using the words within).  If I had time, I would try it, but for now, the idea is shelved.  


Now, I’m off to continue my reading of Susan Stabile’s Memory’s Daughters.  Enjoy your Sunday!   

Say It Isn’t So

My math teacher from high school, Mrs. Deborah Costello, posted a link to the article “National Poetry Day: unlock the mathematical secrets of verse” on Facebook and stated, “Mathematicians and poets... its all good! :).”  Let me state for the record: I suck at math.  Sometimes you’ll find me using my fingers to count or frantically searching for a calculator to do what others think of as simple adding and/or subtracting.  So when I saw this article, I was intrigued – what is math doing messing around with poetry?


Here are two short excerpts from the article, which is available here.

Overblown as Erasmus Darwin's verses might seem nowadays, the point of poetry was pattern; to use a strict structure of rhythm and rhyme as a framework for words of passion or pedantry that would become fixed in a reader's brain. Robert Frost put it neatly when he wrote that "Poetry without rules is like tennis without a net".

Poetry, in other words, is mathematics. It is close to a particular branch of the subject known as combinatorics, the study of permutations – of how one can arrange particular groups of objects, numbers or letters according to stated laws (Jones).

I’m not quite sure that I completely agree that poetry is mathematics because it seems to leave out all the passion and creativity that is involved in the creation of said poetry.  And please note, I’m not excluding passion and creativity from mathematics, because I have plenty of friends who are passionate about math in the same manner that I am passionate about literature.  That being said, I did always enjoy writing poetry that was confined to strict patterns because it was like a puzzle; I knew I was on track when all the pieces (aka the words) of said puzzle fell into place.  In some ways, it was more freeing to write within a confined pattern, if that makes any sense.  Anyways, I hope you enjoy the article and Happy (Early) National Poetry Day!


Works Cited:

Jones, Steve. "National Poetry Day: Unlock the Mathematical Secrets of Verse." Telegraph. 5 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/steve-jones/8043205/National-Poetry-Day-unlock-the-mathematical-secrets-of-verse.html>.

Key Issues & Keywords

The assignment from Dr. Logan:

Using your reading so far, course notes, and other materials as appropriate, list key issues raised by your selected text that are relevant to the study of representations of unruly women in early American literature. These issues could include genre, sub-genre (i.e. novel, short story, memoir; gothic, seduction tale, biography, etc.), subject matter (character, education, religion, crime, history, curiosity, etc.), and apparent readership.

Make a list of “keywords” for MLA and other database searches.  Make your list as specific as possible, noting page numbers and specific language, metaphors, patterns, etc. (It might be helpful to consult the National Union Catalog Subject Heading list at the UCF Library reference desk.)

[Submitted 19 September 2010] 

This is the list of issues, in alphabetical order, that I came up with prior to searching through the Library of Congress Subject Headings book (the red books behind the reference desk at the UCF Library).

1. Commonplace book studies
2. Delaware Valley, PA (during American Revolutionary War)
3. Female homosocial
4. Female literacy pre-Revolution through post-Revolution
5. Feminist theory
6. Friendship
7. Lesbian continuum
8. Manuscript studies
9. Quaker definitions of partner, soul, bosom friend
10. Quakers
11. Queer theory
12. Reading habits of the eighteenth–century American woman
13. Trans-Atlantic communication, pre-Revolution, Revolution, post-Revolution
14. Use of poetry by Quakers, especially women

While this list isn’t too shabby, it could be better.  I decided to search through the Library of Congress Subject Headings, because after all, these are the headings used by all the database search engines.  You can search through the subject headings online here, but I prefer to look through the book in person, especially since experience has taught me I’ll find so much more than expected if I do so.

These are what the "red books" look like, by the way:

 

Rhetorical Analysis

The assignment from Dr. Logan:

Please write a brief (500-750 words) essay that performs a rhetorical analysis of the front materials and first chapter of the novel you have selected for your research project.  You will then use this rhetorical analysis to consider the novel as a whole.

See Trish Roberts-Miller’s “Understanding Misunderstandings: How to do a rhetorical analysis” for more information about rhetorical analysis.

[Submitted: 17 September 2010]


In approaching Milcah Martha Moore’s Book, certain facts have to be taken into consideration.  Milcah Martha Moore was the only transcriber of the text, yet she did not contribute any prose or poetry pieces to the work.  Moore functioned as the editor and compiler, and the entries include both original creations and transcriptions of popular prose and/or poetry by various authors.  How does one then speak about the intentions of the implied author when there are sixteen distinct authors plus thirteen unidentified authors?  Do I choose to focus on the implied editor/compiler because, as Catherine L. Blecki states, “…organizing transcriptions in a commonplace book reveals a transcriber’s habits of mind and emotion” (MMMB 62)?  Or look at themes or the purpose of the text from the viewpoint of the implied audience, whom I already know to be “…a relatively small audience of family and friends who were affectionate, literature, and tolerant of many points of view” (MMMB 60)?  The answer, I believe, lies within the text itself; this rhetorical analysis will focus on the themes presented on the title page and within the first informal section of the commonplace book, as defined by Blecki and Kari A. Wulf (entries 1-29).   

MMMB is not a published text; rather, it is a handwritten manuscript originally bound in calfskin and transcribed during the middle years of the American Revolution.  Mimicking a published book, there is a title page that precedes the 126 entries; this title page provides a brief glimpse into what a reader will encounter within the book.  The actual title of the text, Martha Moore’s Book, is centered vertically and horizontally on the page, and is accompanied by a horizontal flourish.  It is also the largest script on the title page.  The title is written in cursive, whereas the rest of the text is a mixture of print and cursive.  Below the title is information concerning the author of this work: “Milcah Martha Hill / born Madeira / Married / Charles Moore.”  Moore identifies herself as the editor of the book, without the apologies often present in women’s published works in early American literature.

The commonplace book served multiple functions for the contemporary reader – it was meant to invoke discussion, record relationships between the audience and authors, and even perhaps, induce them to scribble their notes in the margin, or title page, of the book.  Relationships, whether through marriage or religious affinity (Quakers), are a focus and theme of the text.  From the title page: “Fidelia’s sisTer was Sarah griffitts .d July 19, 176 [cut off]” and “Married / Charles Moore,” “{her MoT [cut off] / Deborah d? / -dT Richard [cut off] / Sept. 29. 1 [cut off].”  It appears that all the handwriting on the title page is Moore’s; if so, the scribbles on the title page could indicate additions Moore wished to incorporate to the text, or poetry and/or verse she wanted to read.  For example, “HSP – Has Poem To Exiles in Virginia by H. Grif [cut off]” is located near the top of the page, above the title of the book.  Thus another theme presents itself – the preservation of creative works by friends and family (Griffitts was Moore’s cousin).

The modern edition includes a table of contents, but it is not clear whether or not this was present in the original commonplace book.  The first informal section is comprised of twenty-nine entries, all composed by Susannah Wright except two entries from Hannah Griffitts, one “by a female,” one by “Samuel Clarke Jr.” and closing out the section, an entry by “Eugenio.”  Except the entry by Samuel Clarke Jr., all others are poetry, a “medium that brought women together in mutual support for writing” (MMMB 79).

The initial, and obvious, theme is the poetry of Wright.  A simple and swift perusal of the entry titles yields other obvious themes, those of friendship (“An Essay on Friendship,” “To a Friend.—On some Misunderstanding,” and “On Friendship”) and death (“On the Death of an Infant,” “On the Death of a little Girl,” “On Death,” “On the Death of two infant Nephews,” “To the Memory of Charles Norris,” and “Verses to the Memory of Rebecca Chapman”).  Taking a closer look at the entries reveals more complex allusions to struggles in faith, women’s relationship with God, the right of women to speak, the inevitability of Death, apocalyptic predictions, the unknowable future, womanly interpretations of the Bible, and issues of faith.

Though so many different themes appear throughout the first section, one does not feel overwhelmed and confused.  Despite five distinct authors, Wright’s contributions dominate and anchor the section.  Most of the themes appear to be instances within Wright’s life that prompted or compelled her to commit the memory or happenstance to writing.  These experiences, such as death of a loved one or interpretation of Biblical passages, would serve as a shared experience for the implied audience – Moore’s (and Wright’s) friends and family.  I expect to find, in the rest of MMMB, an expansion upon the already mentioned themes through the medium of shared experiences, expressed through poetry and prose.




Works Cited:

Blecki, Catherine L., and Karin A. Wulf, eds. Milcah Martha Moore's Book: a Commonplace
Book from Revolutionary America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997. Print.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy!

You can’t tell by reading this post, but earlier tonight, while reading the first entry in MMMB, I was doing my happy dance (theme music provided by Ren & Stimpy).  It was a silent version of my happy dance because I was in one of the graduate study rooms in the library, but you get the idea.  The first entry in MMMB is titled “An Essay on Friendship,” and I’ve typed out the whole thing, all 160 lines, below, so we can all be on the same page.

My immediate reaction was something along the lines of “heck yeah!” because as you’ll see from the poem below, there are many references to bonds of friendship these women formed with each other.  Key words and phrases struck me:

strong affections, hearts cemented, mutual love, tender tye, union of the soul, sacred bond, tender joy, divine friendship, bosom friend, sacred trust, fond partner of their soul, sweet bonds of friendship, and friendly souls.

That's just to name a few.  And while some might find the language of the poem a little hokey by today’s standards, especially because of the rhyming couplet format, I found it sweet and sincere.  There is real love, warmth, and tenderness present in these lines by Hannah Griffitts.  There is also, if I’m not mistaken, a tone of instruction on how to maintain this type of intimate relationship with other women.  There are also sections of the poem that deal with the death of women, and how it affects the friends left behind.  I think my hunch concerning MMMB as a concrete site of the lesbian continuum is not so far off, and that’s a relief to me. 

Enjoy the poem, after the jump.

Artifact Inventory

The assignment from Dr. Logan:
 
As early American scholars seeking to analyze the literary representations of unruly women, we must first understand the text as a material artifact, an object that circulated in and had meaning for specific readers who lived in a particular socio-cultural moment.  By considering the text as an artifact, we draw closer to understanding how the text functioned in its original context.  While we may be unable to travel to archives in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, we can look at digitized or microfilm images of the original objects and learn about how particular texts looked, felt, and circulated.  To that end, our initial research activities will introduce us to our chosen texts as material objects.

[Submitted: 3 September 2010]


Question 1:  When, where, and by whom was your text first printed?

Answer:  When: Because the common place book was unpublished, there is no publication date.  According to the scholars Blecki and Wulf, authors of the modern edition, the entries were compiled during the middle years of the American Revolution, between 1760 and 1770. 

That is not to say that the contents were necessarily written between this time frame.  Blecki notes the earliest poem is from 1704 and the latest, 1788.  Wulf notes that “[s]ignificant clusters of material are dated between 1764 and 1769 and from 1773 through 1776” (38). 

Where: Milcah Martha Moore resided in the Delaware Valley area in Pennsylvania, amongst Quakers (aka the Society of Friends).

By whom: Moore was the only known transcriber, but none of the entries were written by her.  The three main contributors were Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, and Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. 

There are 13 unidentified authors that are possibly men; the rest of the entries are by women.  There are at least 16 distinct authors. 

Not all of the content of the commonplace book is original prose and/or poetry.  Reprints of original content by “noted intellectuals and prominent colonials, Quaker and non-Quaker, and people from many sides of the debate over the American Revolution” (xiii) are scattered throughout.

Speculation:  The creation of a commonplace book speaks to me of commitment, passion for literary expression, creativity, generosity, and a keen mind. 

Moore’s commonplace book was a creation meant for sharing and delighting in the works of her friends and family, to showcase their talents and to preserve their work.  It’s a physical representation of her love for them (and their love for her).  It’s obvious this book was a long-term commitment, requiring careful thought in terms of editorship. 

Plus, the act of carefully handwriting 132 pages of prose and poetry, making sure it was legible for her intended audience, must have been exhausting.  I know my handwriting is terrible and it would have taken a great deal of concentration for me to accomplish her feat. 

I find it fascinating that the book was complied during the middle years of the American Revolution, perhaps when it felt to Moore and her friends and family that no end to the war or a happy solution was in sight.  I am eager to begin reading through the entries to see the war through the lens of Moore, a Quaker and Loyalist.

My previous experience has always been through men’s writing – Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, etc.  And most of those writings were strictly political.


Question 2: How often was your text reprinted?  List all of the reprints.  Do not confuse dates of publisher’s/printer’s birth and death with reprint dates.

Answer:  A modern edition was edited by scholars Catherine La Courreye Blecki and Karin A. Wulf and published in 1997.

Blecki, Catherine L., and Karin A. Wulf, eds. Milcah Martha Moore's Book: a Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997. Print.

The original commonplace book is located in the Edward Wanton Smith Collection, in the Quaker Collection Library at Haverford College, Pennsylvania.  Its current status is “in house only” and there are no digitized copies of the original manuscript.

Moore, Milcah Martha. MS 955. Edward Wanton Smith Collection, Haverford College.

Speculation:  What is most frustrating is the lack of a digitized copy of the actual manuscript.  I haven’t contacted the Edward Wanton Smith Collections yet, but I do want to find out if the text is even available for scanning, photocopying and/or photography.  Though Blecki and Wulf state that the text is in excellent condition, that doesn’t mean it will withstand the scanning or photocopying process.

The modern edition does contain a picture of the title page as well as a picture of two pages containing two poems, but it’s not the same as having an actual copy.

I should state though, that I am satisfied that Blecki and Wulf made an accurate and complete transcription based on the “Notes on the Text” section.  This section describes their textual methodology, which “maintains the eighteenth-century character of the text as Moore transcribed it with as few modifications as possible, while offering a readable text for twentieth-century students and scholars” (xxiii).