Back to Reality.

You know you're back from your conference fun when you get 10 minutes into a discussion on "To Penshurst" in an upper-level undergraduate seminar before realizing that at least half the class believes the poem to be a literal description of some really bountiful place where eels actually jump into your hand when you want them to and partridges are totally excited to be killed and servants looooove being servants, because of how delicious the meat downstairs is. Of course, no one in the class has ever been a liveried servant or gone eeling. Nor have I, come to think of it. Maybe eels do that? And how do we know what partridges think? Perhaps their painted outsides are masking sad, sad partridge hearts, and they are excited to be killed. I suppose that would explain the depressive/obsessive pear-tree dwelling I've observed in other partridges. Anyway, I am forever surprised by all the things I shouldn't take for granted in the classroom. Like, that suicidal eels are a signpost of fantasy.