For Thursday: Finish Frankenstein! Last questions rescheduled

NOTE: These questions will be due for Thursday instead, since we missed class this Tuesday. So if you haven't turned them yet, no worries. The questions are always due on the day we discuss a work, so if class is cancelled, it gets pushed back. 

Answer two of the following: 

Q1:Why do you think Victor is so unwilling to believe that the Creature could ever intend to kill Elizabeth? As he says, "if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself for ever from my native country, and wandered a miserable outcast over the earth" (185). Is he really this naive, or is this a narrative feint for Walton's approval? (or, did Walton add it himself)? 

Q2: When Victor finds Elizabeth slain by the Creature, he “rushed toward her, and embraced her with ardour” (189). This is the only time he embraces her in the novel! Her also spends quite some time in describing her body as left flung lifelessly across the bed. Why might Shelley add this detail to the novel? How does it compare to the dream of his mother when he gives life to the Creature?

Q3: Victor claims that his narrative is a warning for Walton, so that “the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been." However, the end of the novel seems to contradict his aim in telling his story, especially when he says, "swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape; that you will seek him, and satisfy my vengeance in his death" (202). Why is he suddenly bequeathing his doomed quest to Walton? Is there another way to read his seemingly contradictory intentions? 

Q4: Why does the book end with Walton confronting the Creature himself on his ship, and watching him disappear into the Arctic wasteland? Is it merely to prove that the Creature did indeed exist? Or could this also be a cleverly contrived fiction? Other reasons that Shelley might have included this in the book? 

Tuesday's class cancelled for weather!

 Since the weather looks iffy, I'll cancel today (Tuesday's) class and we'll reschedule everything for Thursday. The reading and in-class writing ideas are in the post below this one. You didn't have any questions due, so don't worry about missing work. Just be sure you're caught up on reading so we can hit the ground running on Thursday. We'll be a day behind, but I'll adjust the calendar to reflect that and post the revisions on the blog later.

Enjoy the day, and see you on Thursday! 

For Tuesday: Frankenstein, Chapters VII to Book 3, Chapter IV (118-178)

Goya, A Way of Flying (etching, 1819)

Since we have the weekend, I encourage you to read a little more of the book, and to help you do that, I won't give you any questions to answer. When you come to class next week, we'll have an in-class response based on some big idea that occurs in these chapters. Below are some ideas you might want to consider as you read, since we'll probably write about one of them (and that will count for your Tuesday Reading Response). 

IDEAS TO CONSIDER (don't answer--we'll write about some of this on Tuesday): 

* How is the Creature's education shaped by his reading in the cottager's hut? What other works might shape his future character? You might also consider why Shelley chose these specific works for the Creature to read (it's more than a coincidence)...and maybe Victor/Walton chose them, too?

* How does Shelley make us empathize with the Creature, even as he commits murder and mayhem? Why might she try to make a murderer full of sensibility (think of the Goya portrait of the young woman)?

* Consider Victor's arguments against creating a mate for the Creature: are they sound and moral? Or simply selfish and vain? What makes him finally acquiesce? 

* Similarly, what makes him destroy it at the last minute? By destroying the mate is he potentially saving the world?

* Victor continues to quote Romantic poems in his story, though one of them, "Mutability" is a poem published by Percy Shelley in 1816(!). Why do you think Shelley continues to include out-of-place poems in this narrative? Is it a meta moment for the reader, almost like a movie soundtrack, which often uses 21st century means to evoke ancient times? Or is it meant to hopelessly confuse the narrative integrity? 

* If the Creature starts out more like Elizabeth, how does he become more like Victor by the end? What makes it harder to distinguish between the two, especially when they're speaking? 

* Why does Victor appear guilty before the Irish villagers? How might he inadvertently admit his own guilt in these pages (Chapter IV especially)? 

For Thursday: Frankenstein, Chapters 6 to Book 2, Chapter 6 (pp.60-118)

Witches' Sabbath by Goya 

As always, try to read carefully and with detail rather than skimming to the end. Reading a book is never about the finish line, but what you find and encounter along the way. But try to get as close to page 118 as possible for our next class.

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: In Book 1, Chapter 7, Victor and Elizabeth interview Justine in prison, and learn of her false confession, made in danger of eternal torment. Why doesn't Victor, who knows the truth, tell the court what he knows? And why might this passage be consistent with other passages of abandonment in the novel?

Q2: How does Elizabeth change over the course of these chapters? Victor notes that "She was no longer that happy creature," and that she had "become grave." Is it just the death of her loved ones that causes this change? As one of the few women in the novel, why might her character be significant to the novel, and not just a footnote? You might also consider what she does say when she’s actually allowed to speak.

Q3: One of the great debates of the 18th century was about the inner nature of men and women: were they a 'blank slate,' which was simply imprinted with their immediate surroundings? Or did they come into this world fully formed, with morals, values, and inclinations toward good or evil? How is the Creature a way of testing this theory in a dramatic way? As a truly blank slate (reanimated body parts), what does Shelley feel is the intrinsic nature of men and women?

Q4: How does the Creature's narrative compare and/or differ from Victor's? Does it sound like a completely new voice and a new perspective? Given that Victor is his 'father,' do they share certain traits and mannerisms? Is there anything suspicious about the Creature's story, which again is told completely by Victor through Walton's dictation? 

Q5: At the end of Volume 1, Victor claims that “I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.” How literally should we take this statement? Is this Victor’s subconscious admission that the Creature is part of him, or an expression of his own inner nature? What clues or inconsistencies seem to support this reading? Do you think Shelley wanted to leave this possibility open in the novel?

Art and Literature Reading Assignments (3): Note the Due Dates!

 

INTRO: For each book we read, I’ll begin our discussion with an examination of a pivotal artist whose works I feel are in dialogue with the book in question. We will always do an in-class writing to get us thinking about the work, and then we’ll continue to use the artists’ work and ideas as a frame for our class discussions. Ideally, this will help you see the many of the themes of the novel visually, which will also remind you that different forms of art aren’t created in a vacuum. Writers are looking at paintings and listening to music and living in a world that continually inspires them. It quickly becomes a ‘chicken or the egg’ situation: who dreamed it up first? Who inspired whom?

PROMPT: To help you explore the connections between literature and art, I want you to write THREE “Art and Literature” readings, based on ANY THREE of the novels in class. To do this, I want you to use a work from the artist we discuss in class to examine a specific passage in the book. This paper should be short, no more than 2-3 pages long double-spaced, and should use the artwork as a lens to ‘read’ some of the ideas/characters/themes of the book. But be specific: focus on only a specific scene or aspect of the novel, and QUOTE from it so we can see the literal connections from image to text. You DO NOT have to make it literal: that is, if you’re doing Goya’s Third of May, 1808, you don’t have to find a corresponding moment in the novel with a firing squad. Think more figuratively, and consider how the ideas and images of the painting complement similar passages in the novel.

SCHEDULE: You CHOOSE which of the three Art and Literature papers you want to do, since you have six choices. Each one is due NO LATER than the day we start discussing a new work of art. The deadlines for each paper are below:

Goya/Frankenstein: Tuesday, January 31^st

Munch/Sherlock Holmes: Thursday, February 16^th

Magrittte/Alice in Wonderland: Tuesday, March 23^th

Burne-Jones/Peter Pan: TBA

Kandinsky/The Time Machine: TBA

Hopper/Nineteen Eighty-Four: TBA

REMEMBER that if you skip the first three, you MUST do the last three to get three assignments turned in! Otherwise, you’ll lose points, and each assignment is worth 10 points out of 100. So be careful! You can also revise these assignments for a higher grade if you slightly miss the point. Keep your in-class writings so you can use them again in the paper for ideas/inspiration.

For Tuesday: Shelley, Frankenstein, Opening Letters & Chapters 1-5 (pp.7-59)

 

NOTE: Try to read as much of the first FIVE chapters of Frankenstein for Tuesday's class. There's SO MUCH to discuss here, so we can't possibly be through it all. The questions below are a kind of 'wish list' of what I hope to discuss, and where you might focus your reading as you wade through the opening chapters. Use the questions as a kind of guide if you find yourself lost and aren't sure what to look for and/or think about. But you only have to answer any TWO of them. Bring them to class on Tuesday if possible, but you have until 5pm on Tuesday to turn them in. 

 Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: Most first-time readers of Frankenstein are surprised to find that the novel begins with a frame narrative: that of Walton, the arctic explorer, who is writing home to his sister, Mrs. Saville. Why do you think Shelley found this a necessary intro to the story? Why not simply open up with Frankenstein’s story? Also, why is a narrator like Walton a horror (or Gothic) convention even in films and books today? 

Q2: According to the story of his early education that Victor gives to Walton, what set him on the path of creating new life? How did he go from an earnest, naive young man to a “modern Prometheus” who would “pour a torrent of light into our dark world”? In other words, what went ‘wrong’ in his life, considering he had a good family, wealth, and the support of his parents? 

Q3: Immediately after he creates his “monster,” Victor ends up falling asleep and has a nightmare of Elizabeth, where as soon as he kisses her, “her lips...became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms" (84). How do you read this strange dream in relation to the events of the story? What might this say about his mission or his motives? 

Q4: How does Frankenstein react to his first meeting with his Creature? Since he created it to be beautiful and powerful, why is he so horrified by it? And related to that, shouldn't he have known what it looked like all along? What else is unusual about the appearance and disappearance of his Creation in Chapter 4? 

Q5: In the movies of Frankenstein, we always see the way the Creature is created: through scientific gadgets and lightning, etc. Here, we get a single sentence at most about the science of making life, and then it's never referred to again. Why do you think Shelley largely sidesteps how the Creature was made? Does this undermine the believability of Frankenstein's narrative (remember--he's telling this story to Walton)? Did Walton simply leave that part out of the story? Or might there be another reason for the lack of science in such a scientific narrative?                      

Welcome to the Course!

 Welcome to the Course! 

In this British literature survey, I want to focus on the literary myths authors created between 1800-1940 that have become a cultural shorthand on both sides of the pond. England was a virtual laboratory of new ideas in this era, giving birth to some of the most disturbing, provocative, and prophetic characters in the entire history of English literature (or any other!). From Frankenstein’s Monster to 1984’s Big Brother, we are constantly revisiting and re-writing these myths in an attempt to understand their attraction, or perhaps to exorcise their influence. Just think about how many songs and movies reference the books on this syllabus! What would pop culture be without Alice in Wonderland (Jefferson Airplane and The Matrix!), and where would the genre of True Crime be without Sherlock Holmes? I think we can all agree we live in a better world thanks to these Victorian and Edwardian nightmares…so the question is, how did they dream them up? What gave this era the combination to the vaults of our collective consciousness?

Be sure to buy the books for the course as soon as possible--we start with Frankenstein next week! :)