December 6th
Baylor English Doctoral students Melinda Creech and Michael Milburn will present in this semester’s Graduate Student Panel.
Melinda Creech will present “Grace Notes: The Provenance of a Fragment of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘The Loss of the Eurydice’.” On July 13, 1966, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas purchased materials from Lady Pooley, a niece of the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, which included manuscript copies of three of Hopkins’ poems, “Spring,” “In the Valley of Elwy,” “The Sacrifice,” and a fragment of “The Loss of the Eurydice,” as well as two letters from Hopkins to his sister Grace. The Ransom Center has no record of the purchase of the “Eurydice” fragment. Physical evidence surrounding the fragment and letter support a conjecture that the fragment was included in a letter to Grace dated June 8, 1884, consoling her in the loss of her fiance, Henry Weber.
Michael Milburn will present “Emerson’s Negative Capability and Keats’ Self-Reliance.” Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Keats, Romantics on different sides of the Atlantic held seemingly irreconcilable views on the role of identity in the creative process. Emerson’s “self-reliance” promises certainty through self-trust, whereas Keats’ “negative capability” challenges one to remain in uncertainty through self-negation. This talk argues that these ideas are better understood as interdependent, each one completing the other, with Emerson losing himself in negative capability and Keats finding a self on which to rely.
