For Next Week: Work on Flipgrid Presentation!

 REMEMBER: no more classes for Brit from 1800! Instead, all you have to work on is your book cover presentations on Flipgrid. The post about the presentation, along with detailed instructions about using Flipgrid, can be found here: http://grassobrit2.blogspot.com/2021/11/flipgrid-presentations-and-resources.html

Be sure you can log onto the Flipgrid site before you try to post your presentation. I added everyone to the site, but sometimes things don't work, as you know! Remember, too, that you will record the presentation on Flipgrid, so all you need is a completed powerpoint presentation (or something similar) open on your desktop. Again, the instructions are above.

If you have any problems finding appropriate art, please let me know. I know a lot of art and can give you a lot of ideas! Also, look back through our blog posts, where I've posted tons of art over the semester with this assignment in mind (hint, hint)! You can use anything you find on the blog, of course, or anything we discussed in class, or any of the related artists. 

Again, let me know if you have any questions. You can post your presentation at any time before the due date. I'll respond with short comments to your presentation, so stay tuned! It's been a pleasure to teach you this semester, and hope to see some of you next semester in World Literature from 1700, British Literature: The Worlds of Tolkien, or this Intercession in Superheroes as Literature! 

For Wednesday: Never Let Me Go, Part 2

 

If you missed class on Monday, we started watching the film Never Let Me Go (2010), based on Ishiguro's novel of the same name (2005). This was the book I almost taught instead of The Collector, but decided it was to much of a time jump from Hardy. However, I think it's a great way to conclude the class, so we're going to watch the excellent adaptation of it this week, finishing up on Wednesday. We'll do an in-class writing on Friday based on it, so try to watch it at least on Wednesday, or feel free to rent it yourself (it's on Amazon Prime, and possibly elsewhere, too). 

ALSO, don't forget the post below which has the Flipgrid information and links to sources about art: http://grassobrit2.blogspot.com/2021/11/flipgrid-presentations-and-resources.html

Let me know if you have any questions about the presentation! 

For Wednesday: Fowles, The Collector, pp.200-253

NOTE: Remember that the post about Flipgrid and art sources is in the post below this one. 

ALSO, this are your very last response questions for the class! On Friday, we'll have an in-class writing over the end of the book, so enjoy answering TWO of the following questions for the last time this semester...

Q1: Toward the end of her life, Miranda records the following in her diary: "uncreative men plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men" (252). What does she mean by this? Does this echo Frederick's earlier statement that "a lot of people...would do what I did or similar things if they had the money and the time" (20)? Is evil simply what happens when morons become artists? :) 

Q2: What does Miranda mean by "He is the New People and I am the Few" (249)? Why might this be a problematic definition of the two of them, and how does she often acknowledge its unsuitability to them both?

Q3: Throughout her diaries, Miranda is constantly trying Frederick in terms of characters from literature: Caliban, The Old Man of the Sea (Tales from the 1,001 Nights: Sinbad the Sailor), Mr. Elton (Emma), Holden Caufield (Catcher in the Rye) and Arthur Seaton (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning--a novel about working-class life in London). Do you think this is more for the reader's benefit, or her own? Why don't any of these characterizations (except perhaps Caliban) ultimately stick? 

Q4: Fowles wrote a book on Thomas Hardy, and many of Hardy's themes seem to dance around the characters and situations of this novel, notably Miranda's comments about God on November 19th. How might the following comments echo some of Hardy's poems: "As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It's obvious...There must be a God and he can't know anything about us" (239). 

Flipgrid Presentations and Resources!

NOTE: The questions for The Collector are in the post BELOW this one.

Everyone should have received an e-mail inviting you to sign onto our class' Flipgrid site, "British Literature: Monsters and Madmen." If not, you can find the site here: https://flipgrid.com/4ae4c72a. To join, enter this code: 4ae4c72a. 

Once you're in, there is only one topic: Final Presentations. Click on this and you'll see the instructions. I've already posted a sample video, showing my own presentation, which you can watch to give you a sense of how you might do this (it's 8 minutes long). Remember that YOU ONLY HAVE TEN MINUTES. If you go over, you'll have to re-record it and make it shorter! Ten minutes should be ample time to discuss all six slides, but you do have to keep it brief. You might give it a trial run and time yourself just to make sure.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR RECORDING:

1. Click on "Add Response" when you're ready to record your video response. Make sure you already have a Powerpoint (or other presentation) open on your desktop.

2. You'll now see the camera come on. Click on "Options" in the lower right-hand corner. 

3. Click "Record Screen," then "Start Screen Recording." But don't worry, it won't start yet. When the options come up, choose "Entire Screen."

4. Click "Share" when you're ready to start recording. It will give you a 3-2-1 countdown. Start talking immediately afterwards, or you'll have dead air. But you'll have to open the Powerpoint as you're talking and start sharing it manually. 

I show you most of this on the video, so be sure to watch the video if you have any questions. 

ART RESOURCES (a few places to click on if you don't know where to go to find paintings):

Start with Wikiart, a wikipedia of art images, and a great place to find paintings by your favorite artists. Here's the link: https://www.wikiart.org/. Some painters you might look for that we've examined in class are: Turner, Goya, Bronzino, Magritte, Burne-Jones, Whistler, and Munch.

Or, you can search 19th and 20th century painters at Wikiart, too: https://www.wikiart.org/en/artists-by-century/19#!#resultType:masonry 

and https://www.wikiart.org/en/artists-by-century/20#!#resultType:masonry

When you click on an artist's page, you'll not only get a number of their paintings, but also subcategories that they appear in (which could lead to similar paintings and artists), but also related painters from the same period/country. Check out Goya's page to see what I mean: https://www.wikiart.org/en/francisco-goya

For Monday: Fowles, The Collector, pp. 140-200 (or so)

NOTE: Keep reading and get as close to 200 as you can, but you'll have plenty of time to catch up as the readings get shorter next week (since we're close to the end!). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: According to Miranda's diary, what kind of relationship does she begin to have with Frederick? Though not a friendship or any kind of love affair, how does she attempt to explain the way they talk to one another, and their daily conversations? Consider, too, her comment, "knowing someone automatically makes you feel close to him" (148). You might also consider whether this in part of Frederick's plan all along, or if it's more human nature.

Q2: Why might she be interested in Frederick in the same way she's interested in G.P.? Note that she's not attracted to either of them, and both of them try to 'collect' her in their own way. What about them fascinates her, even as they both (in different ways) repel her?

Q3: Miranda writes about Frederick that, "I know he's the Devil showing me the world that can be mine. So I don't sell myself to him...he wants me to ask for something big. He's dying to make me grateful. But he shan't" (180-181). Do you think Miranda properly understands his intentions and motives? Does she read him too much through men she's known (such as G.P.)? Or has her greater knowledge of people actually helped her see through him? 

Q4: She also writes that "I think and think down here. I understand things I haven't really thought about before" (150). In a strange way, is Frederick a better teacher than G.P.? Is he teaching her to sift out G.P.s rules and biases and come to her own thinking at last? And can we really credit this to Frederick, or simply to her total isolation? 

For Friday: Fowles, The Collector, pp.75-144 (or so)

Munch, Vampire (1895)

REMEMBER: no class on Wednesday! I have to run the English table at Senior Day for High School students, so I can't be at class with you. So take some extra time to read The Collector! 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: When Miranda is passed out after her escape attempt, Frederick takes the opportunity to take her clothes off and take pictures of her, which he says was the "chance I had been waiting for" (91). He calls these photos "not artistic, but interesting." Why doesn't he attempt to rape her at this point? Or is the camera its own kind of rape? Consider, too, that he admits, "I thought I would go down and give her the pad again and take other photos, it was as bad as that" (92).

Q2: After their aborted attempt to have sex, Frederick claims that "All I did later was because of that night" (109). He also claims that "she didn't see how to love me in the right way. There were a lot of ways she could have pleased me" (109). Is he simply lying to himself--or to us--here? Is there anything she could have done to reach him? Or was he inevitably going to be betrayed by a woman once he realized who she 'really' was?

Q3: Throughout Part 2, Miranda tries to educate and humanize Frederick by seeing him as Caliban, and her, Miranda (allusions to Shakespeare's play, The Tempest). What does she try to teach him, and why does it ultimately go astray? Does class get in the way, as Frederick claims it always does? Can she ultimately not see him as her equal? (besides the obvious fact that he's abducted her and is a monster!) 

Q4: According to her diary, what events or aspects of her captivity does she see/record quite differently than Frederick? What would have shocked or surprised him to read--and what might he have tried to suppress us from reading if he could?