British Literature from 1800, "The Mythmakers"

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 y...

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 se...

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-nonsen...

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 Fitzgeral...

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 p...

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 ...

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 ...