A Grounds for Writers: Teaching the Greats We’ve Asked to Stay

Maybe before I’ve left the University I will be able to pass freshman English. 
- William Faulkner, speaking to an undergraduate English class
(March 11, 1957)

Had the Nobel Laureate enrolled in the introductory course of my design, his first test would have been to scrutinize prepositions: the syllabus advertised the course as “The Writers of the University of Virginia,” the course packet, “at.” This discrepancy was no casual mistake at the copy center; it sprang from my own ambivalence about the shape of the course. My initial plan had been to pack the syllabus with works by the most decorated literary visitors to Grounds (even if here for just a layover); in short, any prize-winner who’d been “at” the University. That syllabus, I explained to my students, would have included several more Nobel Laureates, including T. S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Seamus Heaney. At the eleventh hour, though, I revised the syllabus after realizing that it emphasized celebrity at the possible cost of relevance. With a class roster that consisted entirely of non-majors (mostly scientists) and undeclared first- and second-years, it seemed imperative to make the course material tangible, to make sure it spoke to their “real lives” at the University. The revised syllabus thus included only those writers whose names and/or images are conspicuous on grounds. Many writers have received invitations to visit, I told my students; our class would examine those who have been asked to stay, whether through built memorials, chapters in “official” University histories, student societies, or professorial chairs. Our syllabus would extend the length of the University’s life: from Jefferson to present faculty; our classroom would span the breadth of the “academical village” (the phrase itself a remnant of Jefferson’s quill).

Such an ambitious study of American literature — and primarily the literature of the American South — may seem like an odd and perhaps even hubristic choice for a student of Victorian England like me. (And I’ll be the first to admit that I am more at home in Dickens’ London than the Ragged Mountains of Poe’s tale or even the Charlottesville of Faulkner’s fiction.) The idea for the course was, in fact, sparked by conversations that I had had with former students about our department’s course offerings: they repeatedly expressed their disappointment that they had not studied the writers that the University touted, particularly Faulkner and Poe. The idea excited me in part because of the novelty of it (for Victorian London can get stuffy). Even more importantly, though, I was enticed by the prospect of further developing the “classroom without walls” philosophy that I have practiced during my previous semesters as an instructor at the University. This does not mean merely touring grounds, but also using new media to expand the purview of the classroom. And it is not merely a means to prevent boredom (for students or their teacher): the approach has appealed to me because it helps to answer the frequently heard remark that literary study is pleasant but impractical. In this particular class, I foresaw conversations about how literature is used to form communities, how it can be made to serve the interests of an institution, how writers — like other icons — can be used to serve political and economic ends.

Still, I anxiously awaited the student’s question that would expose my ignorance, and the tempest that was sure to follow. In my mind, I prepared my answer to the whirlwind: I understand the classes that I teach as events that take place within a scholarly community; while my knowledge may be limited, the knowledge of the community is nearly boundless. And, as several faculty members will testify, I haven’t been shy about knocking on doors when in need of help. Of course, no such question came, and so no descent into the maelstrom — at least, not when discussing the readings (see below). I’d like to think, though, that the tempest was averted thanks to all of the assistance that I received from mentors and peers in the department. George Garrett and Charles Wright deserve particular note here, in so far as they provided my class with real answers to that most fickle ground of academic speculation: authorial intention.

The Sturm und Drang, it turns out, was saved for our discussions of the University’s memorials to its chosen writers. In our first such discussion, I asked my students to join me in collecting University paraphernalia that depicts Jefferson as writer, this being one of the chief ways that the University memorializes its founder. The robustness of the return surprised me: students found statues that place Jefferson in literary poses; a few visited an exhibition at Special Collections dedicated to the Declaration of Independence; they heard Jefferson’s words in criminology lectures and peer education talks; and they read his words on plaques, picture frames, tiles, class day cups, fraternity t-shirts (promoting libations), the slabs of the “Poetry Walk” (on the hillside opposite the Corner), even on the walls of gymnasiums. To some, the practice was deemed fitting in light of the vastness of Jefferson’s intellect and experience; others appreciated the practice as a special language of the community; a sizable faction deemed it excessive to the point of ridiculousness. As discussion continued (and its volume rose), my voice was, to my delight, drowned out; the students had heard enough from me: they wanted to debate one another. Is Jefferson really a fitness guru? Does a passage from his “Act Establishing the University” belong on the “Poetry Walk”? Are his words demeaned by mass advertising? Was he a plagiarist? These and many other sharp questions were volleyed around the room. Unable to interject, I cut the lights to close the session: beaming an image of the epitaph on Jefferson’s tomb (another entry on the “Poetry Walk”) against the board, I asked who might have given us the idea to memorialize Jefferson as a writer.

Our later visit to No. 13, West Range sparked another animated debate. Many came with great expectations like these (found in the sonnet “Poe’s Room” that I asked them to read during our visit):

A hundred years are not enough to deaden
What listening ears hear in this musty room[:]
Eternally across the ancient floor
The ghostly footfalls of the Lost Lenore. (ll. 11-14)

Yet unlike the writer of those words, Ronald Walker Bain (in July 1930), my students found that they did not have ears to hear  “ghostly footfalls” or the Raven’s backtalk or a lover wailing for Ulalume. The old inscription above the doorway reads, “DOMVS PARVA MAGNI POETAE,” that is, “the small room of the great poet.” Almost all of my students were surprised by just how small — and spare — the room really was. Perhaps the last nails in the coffin for several who had not yet lost all faith, though, were the disclosures that the furnishings were not Poe’s and that there is scant evidence that Poe actually lived in No. 13. (Legend says that Poe threw his room’s furnishings into the fire before departing in 1826; No. 13 was given to the care of the Raven Society in 1907 and furnished with time period furniture in 1924.) In the conversation that ensued, the class divided fairly neatly, again, into three camps: those who wished the room to reflect the life of the typical student of 1826; those who wished it to celebrate the Poe of literary history; and those who thought a memorial to the dropout absurd. At the end of the hour, a stalemate was declared; however, I counted that session a success for the course on two fronts: first, all of my twenty-one students participated in the discussion; and, second, despite their differing conclusions, all of the students undertook to disregard their prejudices (rooted in blinding school pride) in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the claims that various University groups have made on Poe’s legacy. This searching stalemate seemed a fitting end for our discussion of such an unsettled, constantly questioning writer like Poe.

From the college dropout, our attention turned to the self proclaimed “old veteran sixth-grader” from Mississippi, who, ironically enough, inaugurated at the University the era in which we yet work and study, the era in which the creative writer has been pulled in to the academy. Here the tenor of the course changed. This happened, in part, because of alterations that I made to the structure of our conversation, including, for example, dividing the class into “reading groups” (each of seven members), with which I met separately on the last day of our discussions of the syllabus's two novels, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis. Perhaps more importantly, though, many students became less forgiving of the political and aesthetic faults they found in these writers whose influence was more tangible. While Jefferson’s ownership of slaves had been casually set aside earlier in the semester, Faulkner’s words to University students regarding the improvement of the “second-class citizenship” of southern African-Americans were alarming, particularly an unfortunate canine metaphor, of which Faulkner awkwardly recants later in his speech. A few weeks later, our close reading of one of Rita Dove’s challenging lyrics prompted a frustrated student to question whether such abstract contemporary poetry could be interpreted to mean “just about anything.” (Unfortunately, the primary antagonist in that debate was later absent when Charles Wright suggested to our class that all of his poems indeed do have “a (w)right reading.”) On a few such occasions, I felt the need to interject to prevent gross misunderstandings about literary criticism; for the most part, though, I tried to let the readings provide their own answers: Dove’s “Silos,” for example, uses a common feature of rural life to explore a community’s plurality of symbolic interpretations. And for good general advice about how to approach any literary work, ask George Garrett: “Art is long / And I am short” (from “Flashcards,” 12.1-2).

As for the anxious Victorianist: he weathered the semester quite well. I have relished this unique opportunity to rub elbows and swap stories with writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize and/or the National Book Award. Although I do not plan to forsake Victorian London, the University’s extraordinary tradition of creative writers has become a genuine academic interest; in fact, it has already produced new lines on my CV, including a conference paper on changes that Faulkner made to the manuscript of As I Lay Dying (which grew out of the class’s visit to Special Collections). I have discovered, too, enthusiasm about the course around Grounds, which has led me to consult with mentors and web-designers about how to share the experience with a broader audience. This article is a first effort toward that end.

Tradition dictates that I save a space for the words of the Founder; this quote well suits the graduate student’s life: “I cannot live without books.” It seems that his University cannot live without its writers.