Adventures with Students, Vol. 47

Today, because I was teaching Henry Vaughan in my Seventeenth-Century Poetry class, I thought it would be a great idea to bring in an image of the title page and explain the iconography at work. Once I had pulled it up, I pointed out that the full title includes the notion of "private ejaculations," a more or less specific generic term.  Well, in the course of explaining the difference between senses of that second word, I really thought about what "private ejaculations" could refer to if you're thinking that way, and well, I got a bit unglued.  I don't usually stammer or balk when it comes to talk about sexuality, but today I stammered, I lost my composure, and apparently turned several shades of crimson.  Oh my.

This will go down in infamy like the time I described this scene from the Faerie Queene Book 3:

But he, that neuer good nor maners knew,
Her sharpe rebuke full litle did esteeme;
Hard is to teach an old horse amble trew.
The inward smoke, that did before but steeme,
Broke into open fire and rage extreme,
And now he strength gan adde vnto his will,
Forcing to doe, that did him fowle misseeme:
Beastly he threw her downe, ne car'd to spill
Her garments gay with scales of fish, that all did fill.

The silly virgin stroue him to withstand,
All that she might, and him in vaine reuild:
She struggled strongly both with foot and hand,
To saue her honor from that villaine vild,
And cride to heauen, from humane helpe exild.
O ye braue knights, that boast this Ladies loue,
Where be ye now, when she is nigh defild
Of filthy wretch? well may shee you reproue
Of falshood or of slouth, when most it may behoue.

As the time when Florimell had to beat off the old man in the boat. Oh my.