For Monday: Fowles, The Collector, pages 3-75 (or so)

Eye in Eye by Edvard Munch

NOTE: The Final Project assignment is the post BELOW this one, in case you missed class on Friday. We'll talk about it much more in class, and I'll post resources for it very soon! Otherwise, read the opening of The Collector, which is in 2 parts: Part 1 is from Frederick (the "collector's") perspective, while Part 2 is from Miranda's perspective. The brief Part 3 returns to Frederick for the Epilogue. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Frederick claims that "a lot of people...would do what I did or similar things if they had the money and the time" (20). Do you think he was planning to abduct Miranda even before he came into the money, or was it, as he suggests, the power of money that lured him into such an evil act? 

Q2: Somewhat related to the above, do we think Frederick is a reliable narrator so far in the story? He is very honest, and he lays all his cards on the table, so to speak. But do we see any cracks in his story? Odd equivocations? 

Q3: Frederick is obsessed with taking photos, especially of Miranda, but as he reminds us, "Nothing nasty. Just couples" (18). Miranda says to him, "I don't know why you want all these photos...You can see me every day" (65). Why might he want to see her both ways, as a captive and through a picture? How might this also relate to his butterfly collecting? 

Q4: One of the initial attractions of Miranda for Frederick is that despite her being educated, she "didn't have any class feeling. She spoke as she walked, you might say" (13). Why is Frederick so sensitive to class and education? How does the presence of class come up between them despite his obvious power of her in the basement? 

Final Project Assignment: Judging a Book By Its Cover

 

“A book cover demands our initial engagement with a work. You may not think a cover reflects your own thoughts of a book, but it evokes a response and inspires a reader’s imagination to begin building the world within the pages created by the author…A book cover is a key with which we open a world of storytelling…one page at a time, cover to cover.” (Elda Rotor, Classic Penguins: Cover to Cover)

PROMPT: For your final project, I want you to find new cover art for each of the books in class. The cover art should have a ‘conversation’ with the text, meaning they should evoke one or more of the following themes:

• A reference to a theme or symbol in the work
• An evocation of the historical moment—the art, ideas of the time
• A reference to the biography of the author
• An illustration of a specific passage or setting

To do this, I want you to find six works of art that can evoke one or more of the above aspects, so we can think about each book in a new context. A cover is the key to opening a book and believing in that world. Sometimes, a painting from the period is enough to help us understand where we are; at other times, we need more than that to help capture the mixture of styles and ideas we encounter within. The works you chose are entirely up to you, but of course you can draw from the works/artists we’ve discussed in class, and I’ll give you a link to many 19^th and 20^th century artists on the blog. But you can use ANYTHING that you feel captures the feel and spirit of a work (and if you’re an artist yourself,  you could even make your own art—but don’t feel pressured to do that!).

FLIPGRID: Instead of writing a paper, I want you to create a Flipgrid presentation that showcases your new works of art. Flipgrid is a very easy site where you can create a 10 minute video of slides with narration (I’ll show you how do to this). Our class will have a Flipgrid site which will be linked to the blog, and all you have to do is make a series of six slides, each one with the following:

• The Work of Art, along with Artist, Title, and Date
• The Title and Author of the Book
• A Passage from the Work that somehow communicates with the Cover Art (you can explain this in your narration)

I’ll provide links and videos that show you how easy Flipgrid is to use, and I’ll make my own video as an example. Don’t stress out about this, but try to find interesting and new ways to showcase the works and ‘seduce’ the reader into opening the cover.

DUE NO LATER THAN THE LAST DAY OF FINAL EXAM WEEK: FRIDAY DECEMBER 10^th BY 5pm

For Monday: Hardy, Selected Poems, pp.49-70

Read all or as many of the poems that remain in the book, and answer only ONE question using 1-2 poems in your response:

Q1: Most of the poems in this section were written and published between 1914-1917, just a little over 100 years ago. That means these poems are the first poems written squarely in the 20th century, and were written in the context of the first cars, planes, and modern warfare (WWI). What makes this poems seem more 'modern' than others, or suggests that Hardy is expressing or saying something new in his poetry? Obviously many of his themes echo earlier Romantic ones (Wordsworth, Keats, Browning), but where do we see ideas, scenarios, or expressions that could never have been written earlier? In other words, which of these poems incontestably carry the stamp of 20th century poetry?

For Friday: Hardy, Selected Poems, pp.27-49

Remember that you don't have to read every poem in this series, but do try to read as many as you can, or at least read several of them more than once, to really investigate some of the trickier meanings and connections between poems. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How is a poem like "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?" a comical twist on the earlier poem, "Friends Beyond" (p.12)? Why is it especially ironic that the dead wife is having a conversation with what turns out to be her dog?

Q2: There are three poems entitled "In Tenebris" (in darkness): how do you read this trio of works? Is each one basically a variation on the one before? Does each one offer a progression of the theme into new and darker territory? Does one of them contradict or refute the other? Does III mean the same as I? 

Q3: Several of these poems are elegies or laments, which are songs of extreme sorrow of people and things dead and past. What are Hardy's characters in these poems have trouble accepting or making sense of about the inevitable passing of life? What seems to them unfair or cruel besides the loss of the life itself? Why might they insist on seeing the hand of a malicious force behind it? 

Q4: Whereas the earlier poems often personified God as "Doom and She" or other imaginary, impassive forces, in many of these poems Hardy actually makes God a comic character and has him speak. What kind of character is he, and what is Hardy's point with this perverse personification? 

For Wednesday: Hardy, Selected Poems, pp.1-26 (see below)

NOTE: In the Dover edition I ordered for our class, read the first 26 pages of poems, either all of them or whichever ones catch your fancy. Hardy's poems are easier to read than most, since they almost always tell stories and are told from a specific character's point of view, like Browning's. However, Hardy also likes to use strange turns of phrase and rustic-sounding words, befitting the background of many of his speakers. Here are three things to keep in mind when reading him:

1. Look up unfamiliar words such as "fervourless," "illiited," "blast-beruffled," etc., since they can change the meaning of a line (or a poem!). Don't skim over the strange words.

2. As always, read poetry out loud whenever you can, for two reasons: Hardy's poetry is very musical, but it can be hard to 'hear' this when you read it silently; and two, Hardy's poetry is usually dramatic, meaning someone is speaking each one to the audience, and often, to another person. So it helps to give this character a voice.

3. Hardy has a few themes that he likes to vary and repeat in different ways and through different characters. Once you pick up on these themes, it can be exciting to see how he finds new ways to express them (the questions below will help you identify some of them).

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: We read "Hap" in class today, and in many ways, "Hap" is the prototypical Hardy poem, from which many others spring. How does the main theme of Hap--that "Purblind Doomsters" control our fate--appear in another poem, though in a different way? How else does he translate the experience of "hap"?

Q2: Many poets and writers in this class have discussed the concept of immortality, which is usually only created through death (remember "Porphyria's Lover"?). Hardy writes several poems about immortality and the dead who hope to live forever through "art." How does this shake out in the real world? What ultimately keeps the dead "alive" in spirit?

Q3: In many ways, Hardy has a lot in common with Wordsworth, who believes that nature unlocks the secrets of the sublime. What "secrets" do Hardy's characters find in nature and the natural world? What do they seem to understand (or see) that we don't? 

Q4: In the poem, "The Burghers," a man secretly allows his wife and her lover escape without killing them as he planned. Yet when his friend asks if the blow he dealt them was mortal, he replies, "Remorseful--worse" (7). What do you think he means by this, and why might remorse be the most painful "blow" of all?

For Monday: The Invisible Man, Appendix A, B & C from the Broadview Edition

NOTE: Remember that we do have class on Monday, because I gave you an extra class day to write Paper #2. We won't have class on Wednesday instead, and we'll just count that as the beginning of Fall Break.

Read Appendix A, B & C from our version of The Invisible Man on pages 173-195, then answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Which of the four endings of the novel do you think is the most appropriate and satisfying and why? Also, how does this version differ most from the other three? What does he add or subtract to make this ending more effective?

Q2: In Appendix B, which of the five works do you think Wells most borrows (or plagiarizes, if you want to go there) from? What idea or aspects of this work probably most influenced Wells' own work? Do you think Wells improved on these originals? If so, how?

Q3: Interestingly, of the four stories in Appendix B (not counting the silly ballad by Gilbert), two approach invisibility from a fantasy perspective, and two approach it from a science-fiction perspective. Given that invisibility was a scientific impossibility for the 19th century, do you think the the fantasy stories are more successful? Do they make the stories more uncanny and/or sublime? Or does the attempt to explain the uncanny make it more effective?

Q4: In Wells' reply to Bennet's review of 1897 (Appendix C, No.3), he responds to the idea of invisibility being impossible because of the uselessness of transparent eyelids. He writes, "You raise the point of transparent eyelids in your review, but there is another difficulty behind that which makes the whole story impossible. I believe it to be insurmountable...On these lines [the scientific complications of being invisible] you would get a very effective short story but nothing more" (191). How might this explain Wells' overall 'theory' for science-fiction and his aim in writing it?

Q5: Which of the reviews do you most agree with, and/or think is still relevant over a hundred years later? Did one reviewer see the book more clearly (and unbiasedly) than the others? Or do you feel they're all limited by the narrow lens of the 1890's? 

For Friday: Finish The Invisible Man! And, Revised Paper #2 due Date!

 No questions this time, just be sure to finish the novel for Friday's class. I'll give you an in-class response and we'll take it from there. Boy, wait till you read the end of the novel! It's crazier than I remembered! :) 

ALSO: I'm pushing the paper due date to WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th. Why? Because I want to wrap-up our class on Monday (with the readings below), and give you Wednesday off to work on your paper and to leave the class for Fall Break. Sorry--I forgot to mention this in class today! 

If you finish the book early, you might be interested in reading Appendixes A, B & C, which we'll discuss on Monday. These focus on the four alternative endings for the novel, other works on invisibility in the 19th century, and the early reviews of the book. I'll post questions for these on Friday. 

Take care! 

For Wednesday: Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapters 11-23 (pp.88-147)

 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In class on Monday, I suggested that The Invisible Man/Griffin is split between his super ego and his id: the "super ego" is the higher, more rational/ideal self while the "id" is the animalistic self of desires and hungers. As the novel progresses, which one of the two seems more in dominance? Is he evolving or progressing as this new race of being? And is he aware of this transformation himself?

Q2: Earlier in Chapter III, one of the villagers decides that their guest must be a "piebald...Black here and white there--in patches" (61). This betrays the racial fear at the heart of English society at the time, that someone not "pure" could mix in polite society. Where else do we see racist views expressed by the characters of the novel (on both sides)? What might be Wells' point in bringing these topics to light in the 1890s?

Q3: When Marvel is talking to the mariner in Chapter XIV, the latter is remarking about the amazing stories in the newspaper, such as a tale about an Invisible Man. Marvel replies, playing dumb, "What will they be writing next?...Ostria [Austria] or America?" And the mariner, all excitement, replies, "Neither...Here" (99). How might this exchange capture something of the confusion and wonder of the common man at the turn of the last century? And why might it mirror something that might be said, and felt, today?

Q4: Unlike Frankenstein, Griffin tells Kemp something of how the science of invisibility, or at least about the nature of his 'accident.' Why do you think Wells thought it important to include this in the story? How does it change the nature of Griffin's crime and/or character? Does it make him more or less like Victor...or are they very different super villains? 

For Monday: Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapters I-X (1-10), pp. 47-88)

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: The narration of this novel is very odd: while it doesn’t have a frame narrative, it does have a narrator who seems to be omniscient, but then reduces themselves by saying in the beginning of Chapter IV, “I have told the circumstances of the stranger’s arrival in Iping with a certain fullness of detail…” (61). Why do you think the story has a nameless “I” narrator and is limited to what people can see and observe of the stranger?

Q2: What do you feel makes the Invisible Man “snap” and become what we might call today a super villain?  While he doesn’t seem necessarily evil or malicious at the beginning of the novel, he clearly becomes so by Chapter V.  Does Wells let us see the psychology of a super villain in these opening chapters?  Or is his personality, like his appearance, a mystery? 

Q3: Once the stranger becomes famous in the village, the locals begin hatching ideas as to who he is and what’s wrong with him. What are some of their theories? How might they suggest some of the fears and biases of late 19th century English society, especially considering all of these speculations prove to be wrong by the end of the novel?

Q4: It’s almost a cliché of super villainy that the mastermind has a bumbling sidekick to assist him in his nefarious schemes. Mr. Marvel was one of the first in a long line of sidekicks in this fashion. Why do you think the Invisible Man—who in Chapter IX becomes the ominous-sounding “The Voice”—chooses to recruit him? What makes him different than the other people in the village? And what does he betray to Marvel about his newfound identity?

Supplemental Reading: Browning, Caliban Upon Setebos

Caliban and Prospero, from The Tempest 

NOTE: You don't have to read this poem, since I ended up cutting it from the schedule to start The Invisible Man next week. It's a very tough poem, but it has some great ideas that support the 'supervillain' theme we discussed on Friday. Here are some notes about the poem if you want to read it and possibly use it in your paper--or if you're just interested in reading more Browning.

Caliban Upon Setebos

Caliban: in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban is a native of the island that Prospero, a wizard, conquers to plot his revenge against his brother, the Duke of Naples. Caliban is a half-man, half-beast, and Prospero initially takes him in, treats him nicely, and teaches him to speak. But he later confines him in a cell when Caliban tries to take advantage of his daughter, Miranda. But all of this happens before the play starts, and it's hinted at that Prospero (who loves stagecraft and often acts like a stage manager) actually set his 'crime' up in order to punish him and hold it over his head. Caliban vows revenge and tries to kill Prospero later in the play along with some foolish Italians who wash up on the shore (an enterprise that is doomed to fail). 

Setebos: Caliban's god, whose existence was taught to him by his late mother, the witch Sycorax. She died before the play starts, and possibly before Prospero found him. Throughout the poem, he's trying to learn the nature of Setebos and whether or not his God is good and just. 

The poem opens with parenthesis, even though Caliban is the only one talking. This might be read as an aside, before he officially 'speaks' his monologue. When he says: 'Will sprawl, or 'Thinketh, the apostrophe before the word implies "he," so this should be read, "He sprawls" or "He thinketh." "He" meaning Caliban, who speaks of himself in the third-person. He ends each stanza "So He," meaning "so Caliban." 

Basically, Caliban sees Setebos as a prisoner like himself, someone with great but limited power, who suffers from having a greater 'god' above him, which he calls the Quiet. This mirrors Caliban's own position with Prospero on the island. Setebos cannot create a new island or even create new life, though he can alter or aid it. However, his aid is rarely good or even well-intentioned, and ends up causing suffering--as in the fish he tries to help escape to warmer water, but the fish ends up sickened by it, yet when it returns to its colder clime, can only bitterly miss the warm water. This is like Caliban who hates Prospero's customs and language, but now that he's been cast out of Prospero's sight, he longs to return and is speaking the language he's been taught to keep it in use, and to make things with it (like a God making new life). 

But he also imagines that Setebos, though he can't create life, can create things--just like Caliban creates things. Yet his things torment him, because they're more beautiful and perfect than he is. He uses the example of a bird caller which can make sounds and attract birds which his "great round mouth" cannot. In spite he destroys the bird caller, as he destroys all his creations. He later builds things just for the sake of building them, but ends up destroying them, too, since they only mock him with the beauty he lacks (like the Creature looking at himself in the water in Frankenstein). 

He ultimately feels that Setebos is cruel and unknowable, since you can't appease him or do anything right--his will is changeable, and he likes to watch you guess wrong and suffer. Here he's talking more about Prospero than his god, as Prospero is becoming his father/god, again, like the Creature/Victor. Setebos/Prospero will never outright kill him, but remove obstacles and give him a reward to keep him hopeful and happy...only so he can be tormented later on. 

At the end of the poem, another aside tells us that Prospero is working magic and poor Caliban is terrified, going into hiding and cursing his silly little poem. He will merely lie flat and worship Setebos and hope that better days follow. The entire poem is a terrifying portrait of someone who is abused and deprived by the only father figure he has, and is suggests that monster are made by the cruelty of their fathers--just like in Frankenstein.