For Friday: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

REMEMBER, no class on Friday: instead, you could go to the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival which starts at 9:30 and continues at 11:00, 2:00, 3:00 and 7:00. Here is the entire schedule for Thursday-Saturday, so you can find a time that suits you: http://ecuscissortail.blogspot.com/2016/01/2016-scissortail-schedule-of-readings.html

If you attend a session, answer ALL FOUR of the questions below for an extra credit bonus. This can take the form of missed responses, missed classes, or simply extra points on your final grade. The amount of responses or absences I forgive is based on how detailed/engaged your answers are. For example, if you respond to each question with a 1-2 sentence response and I can't really tell if you even attended a session, I might not be able to give you any credit. But if I can see that you put some thought into it and really responded to what you observed at the reading, I can excuse up to 3 absences or 3 missed responses. So take notes as you watch so you can answer these questions with thought and detail. You can bring these responses to class on Tuesday. 

THE QUESTIONS (answer all 4):

Q1: Which of the authors interested you the most and why? Why did you respond their poems and/or story and why might you read more from this author?

Q2: Which piece (if any) did you find difficult to follow or understand and why? Is is simply not your kind of material, or was it too vulgar, or depressing, or confusing? If you liked all the pieces you heard by each writer, answer this instead: how did each author's reading work together as a whole? Why did these 3 (or 4) writers work well together? Was there any common themes or ideas that seemed to link them together?

Q3: Discuss briefly how the authors presented their material: their reading style, introductions, gestures, and other details that helped you appreciate the stories/poems. In other words, how did the authors help you understand their work through their performance?

Q4: How did the audience react to these authors/works? Did certain works get more response than others--and if so, why? Did people laugh? Were they completely silent. Did people seem to 'get' these writers, or did some leave them scratching their heads? How could you tell?

For Wednesday: The First Jungle Book (First 3 Stories)

For Wednesday: Kipling, The First Jungle Book

* “Mowgli’s Brothers”

* “Kaa’s Hunting”

* “Tiger, Tiger!”

Answer TWO of the following...

Q1: What do we learn about the Law of the Jungle in these stories? How might this contrast with the reality of British/English life, the very life that Kipling critiques in his poems? In other words, why might we read the Jungle-People and their laws as a response to Kipling’s world and its values?

Q2: Before Mowgli leaves the Wolf Pack for his own kind, his Wolf Mother tells him, “for, listen, child of man, I loved thee more than ever I loved my cubs” (23). Why do so many of the animals revere Mowgli—and others bitterly despise him? What power does a weak, naked child have among the Jungle-People?

Q3: Who are the “Bandar-log” and what kind of relationship do they have with the Jungle-People? Why does Bagheera fear Mowgli getting involved with them (and what might they represent in the ‘real’ world)?

Q4: Kipling sets these stories of fantasy and fable in a very real world, the India that he was born in and lived in for much of his early life. What does he want English readers to see and experience about this world? Where do we see Kipling's "India"? 

For Monday: Four Poems by Kipling (see below)

For Monday, read the following poems (on the handout):

* “The Widow at Windsor”

* “The White Man’s Burden”

* “If”

* “I keep six honest serving-men”

If you weren’t here on Friday, you can find many of these poems here: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: The poem “I keep six honest serving-men” is an example of his poetry for children, as it originally followed the story “The Elephant’s Child,” in his book Just So Stories, tales about how things came to be. What lesson do you think this poem is trying to teach children, particularly with its “serving-men”? Whom do these men serve and why? Who could the “person small” be who seems to ask so many questions?

Q2: At the end of “If,” the narrator proclaims that if the addressee—his actual son?—can do all the laundry list of things in the poem, “you’ll be a Man, my son!” What kind of advice is being offered in the poem? Is it practical, no-nonsense advice for a Victorian gentleman? Or is it something less valuable? Is this good advice for a young man even today?

Q3: The poem, “The White Man’s Burden” has become a familiar phrase in history books, and the poem itself has been attacked as racist propaganda for lines such as “Sloth and heathen Folly” and “The silent, sullen peoples.” Who do you imagine is speaking this poem? Is this poet—or a character? A reliable or unreliable narrator? Are we supposed to applaud these sentiments or find them ironic? What clues tell us how to read/interpret this poem?

Q4: “The Widow at Windsor” is a common soldier’s tribute to the “widow”—Queen Victoria, who runs the British empire. How does he view his Queen and his country? Is he patriotic—or pessimistic about his role in “the rank and file”?

For Wednesday: Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In Fitzgerald’s Introduction to the First Edition of the poem, he writes, “No doubt many of these Quatrains [four line verses] seem unaccountable unless mystically interpreted; but many more as unaccountable unless literally.” Discuss a passage which helps you decide how to read this work: as an extended metaphor for different stages of life, or as a literal “carpe diem” poem about the here and now.

Q2: In stanza XXIII, Fitzgerald writes, “Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,/Sans wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sand End.” This sentiment is echoed throughout the poem in different forms, but with the same general meaning. Is this message one of overwhelming fatalism and pessimism? Or is it another way of ignoring the “finger” for the “moon”?

Q3: Though this is a loose translation of an 11th century poem, it is also very much a 19th century English poem as well. Where do we hear echoes of the Romantics in the poem? How was Fitzgerald writing an ‘exotic’ poem that also responded to the works of Keats, Coleridge, and others?

Q4: Fitzgerald often plays verbal games in his poem, deliberately tricking the reader with sounds and syntax. Consider Stanza XXX for example,

What, without asking, hither hurried whence?

And, without asking, whither hurried hence!

    Another and another Cup to drown

The Memory of this Impertinence!

How can you translate the general meaning of this stanza? How do the sounds of this poem (esp. the alliteration) disguise and frustrate its literal meaning? Why does he often employ this strategy in the poem?

For Wednesday: Mid-Term Check In--a Few Questions

NOTE: No reading for Wednesday, since I want to wait until after Spring Break to resume our reading schedule (we'll be reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayaam starting the Wednesday after we return, so if you want to read some poetry over the break, start with that). Instead, I want to have a 'big picture' discussion about literature as a way of taking stock what we've learned this semester and where we intend to go from here.

Answer TWO of the following...

Q1: Even though you might not have read many (or any) of the works in this class before, why do you think they've remained literary classics since the early 19th century? Why do people keep reading Austen and Shelley's novels, as well as the poetry of the Romantics? Since many authors of the same period are completely forgotten, what keeps these works on college syllabi and in bookstores (or nowadays, just Amazon: and note that Frankenstein is ranked at #5 in Literature on Amazon currently). 

Q2: Many people object to using modern ideas and theories (such as feminism, or Marxism, etc.) to interpret older works. These critics say that literature must be read in terms of its own time, without recourse to anachronistic views and ideas. Even though Mary Shelley's mother was a proto-feminist, she was hardly the kind of feminist we find today, and might have rejected some of its implications. So what do you think: can we read literature of 1818 from the lens of 2016 ideas and aesthetics? Or do we need to forget what we know in order to read it 'correctly'?

Q3: There is an increasing trend in colleges and universities to do away with survey courses such as this one, as some scholars (both liberal and conservative) find them narrow, elitist, or irrelevant. These critics feel that the focus of college courses should be on topics more relevant to modern society, and more representative of the diversity of our students and culture. Quite honestly, classes full of "dead white males/females" leave out many voices and perspectives, and can make students feel that they are the only way to read literature. Is there a good argument for keeping with tradition and teaching surveys of British and American literature?

Q4: Thinking about modern bestsellers and works you regularly read for entertainment, what is most different about those works and the ones we read for class? Are books fundamentally still the same, though separated by older language and characters? Or have books (esp. fiction) fundamentally changed over the centuries? Does reading, say, The Hunger Games or Games of Thrones prepare  you to read these works...or do you need to learn how to read older works and work 'harder' to appreciate them? 

For Monday: Three Articles on Frankenstein

For Monday, read at least 2 of the following articles for our discussion. I'll ask you to respond in writing to an idea linking all three, so reading at least 2 should give you enough to work with.

The articles, on pages 328-368
* Gilbert and Gubar, "Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve"
* Poovey, "My Hideous Progeny: The Lady and the Monster"
* Mellor, "The Female in Frankenstein" 

ALSO: Keep thinking about Paper #2, which I've posted below:

Paper #2: The Women of 1818

The year 1818 isn’t the only thing Persuasion and Frankenstein have in common: both books also share many of the same themes, concerns, and values, even though Jane Austen was just past forty and Mary Shelley had only turned twenty. They represent two different generations, yet as women, they were part of the same world, and turned to the novel for much the same reasons...reasons Romanticism helped them voice for the first time in literature.

For your second paper, I want you to explore one of the following themes present in both books, and discuss how both women transform this theme through the novel. You can focus more on one book than the other, but make sure you do address both, even if you only use, say, Persuasion to support your overall reading of Frankenstein. Analyze each work using close reading and help us ‘see’ the ideas you find important. Don’t skim or summarize too much, and don’t give us the blow-by-blow of the story. Assume we’ve read it, though we might not read it the way you did (which is why you need to discuss significant passages). The themes are as follows:

The Romantic Novel

Male Companionship

The Education of Men and/or Women

Fictional Autobiography

Letters as Storytelling

Fathers and Children

Class and Wealth

Narrators—Reliable and Unreliable

SOURCES: I want you to use at least 2 sources (you can use more) from the supplemental materials from each Norton edition. You can use either the ones assigned in class or any additional readings that look interesting to you. Don’t find other, random sources or even other pertinent articles: use our books, since they have a wealth of material covering critical, cultural, and biographical perspectives. Read these first, since they’ll help you see ideas you might have missed, or they can help you express your own in a more succinct or analytical manner.

REQUIREMENTS

• 4-5 pages double spaced
• At least 2 secondary sources from the Norton Critical Editions
• Sources introduced and cited according to MLA guidelines
• Due Monday, March 21st by 5pm (Monday after Spring Break): note that I gave you an extra two weeks (counting Spring Break) to work on this!

For Friday: The Origins of Frankenstein

Read the following articles from the Supplementary Materials right after the text of Frankenstein:

* Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition (pp.165-169)
* Baldick, Assembling Frankenstein (pp.173-183)
* Robinson, Texts in Search of an Editor (pp.198-204)
* Mellor, Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach (pp.201-211)

Answer TWO of the following...

Q1: According to Melor, why is the 1818 version of Frankenstein superior to the 1831 revision? Why does she consider it "a stable and coherent conception of the character of Victor Frankenstein and of Mary Shelley's political and moral ideology?" (211). NOTE that we read the 1818 version.

Q2: In 1831, how does Mary Shelley try to 'sell' her novel to her readers, particularly now that the work had become popular, and her husband--as well as Byron--were both dead? Does this read like an accurate autobiographical account or an attempt to cash in on the past? 

Q3: Baldick claims that what makes Frankenstein so original--and shocking--in context with other early 19th century novels is "its starkly secular nature" (181). How does he support this, especially considering how often Shelley invokes allusion to Adam and Satan (and Paradise Lost) in her narrative. Why do you think she did this? 

Q4: According to many of these articles, can we call Mary Shelley the real author of Frankenstein? Is there compelling evidence that she had multiple co-authors, or, as people in 1818 believed, that Percy Shelley actually wrote it himself? How does authorship become a tricky proposition in terms of the multiple texts of Frankenstein?