British Literature from 1800, "The Mythmakers"

The first part of this assignment is the Book Cover Presentation, which is worth 10 of 30 points. Remember, you don’t have to turn in a paper for this part of the assignment—it’s completely oral. However, the remaining 20 points requires you to complete the assignment below which goes hand-in-hand with your cover conception. As an English major/scholar, you have been commissioned to write a Student’s Introduction to the book from your cover assignment. The goal of this introduction is write an essay geared for students, like you, encountering this book for the first time. What do they need to know about the ideas, themes, and characters of this book? How does it relate to other Gothic literature—or modern literature/films? What did you most learn to appreciate about this book? What are its main difficulties, and why are they difficult for the modern reader? Don’t summarize the plot (beyond the basics, if necessary) or give us exhaustive detail about the characters, which the...

Odilon Redon, The Grinning Spider  [Note: I realize you were supposed to read to Ch.20 last time, but I want to cover it again since we didn't make it that far in Monday's class]  Answer TWO of the following: Q1: In the beginning of the book, Stoker suggests a Jekyll and Hyde relationship between Seward and Renfield. But how might these chapters complicate this relationship—or suggest that seeing Renfield as “Hyde” is problematic?   Also, you might discuss how Renfield helps expose Seward’s unreliable narration. Q2: Examine the passage in Chapter 21 where they find Dracula assaulting Mina: why is this a disturbing image then and now? How does Stoker make it resonate with other readings besides a vampire attacking its victim (remember, Stoker largely invented the vampire’s manner of assault)? Why does Mina later lament that she is “unclean”? Q3: Van Helsing and the Vampire Hunters are constantly making distinctions between the idea of adults/men and c...

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Marie Botkin (1900) Answer TWO of the following: Q1: Discuss how Lucy is described by Seward as they gradually accept that she must be killed, and is not Lucy—at least the Lucy they once knew. Remember that we have to take this with a grain of salt, since Seward is the narrator, not an omniscient narrator; these are his biased and passion-addled diary entries. How does he see the new Lucy, and/or how does Van Helsing help him ‘translate’ her new appearance? You might consider the passage where he reflects, “I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this Un-Dead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it” (188). Q2: While there is a definite theme of English vs. “Oriental” (that is, of the world beyond the British Empire ), many readers also read this book as also Christian vs. Pagan, or science vs. superstition (even faith vs. magic). How does Stoker complicate this reading through the characters of Van Helsing an...

No questions for Friday, but be sure to read Chapters 10-14 and consider some of the following ideas. We'll have an in-class response when you arrive on Friday. * Just as Dracula seems like he's emerged from the distant past, how is Van Helsing also uncanny and "primitive" compared to the genteel society of London? What makes his person and his approach somewhat taboo, and certainly shocks Arthur and the others? * Stoker enjoys employing dialect, slang, and low-class speech in the novel, most of which is incomprehensible to a modern American reader. Of course, it would have been tricky even for a well-to-do reader of the time. Why do you think he includes this, when it might alienate some of his audience? What does it add to his story? * Who do you think is the least reliable narrator in the book so far? What makes his or her narration seem suspect? Do you detect passages where he/she seems to be hiding information or not being quite straight with the reader,...

  Odilon Redon, Angel in Chains (1875) Answer TWO of the following: Q1: How do the passages from Dr. Seward’s Diary play into discussions begun by Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ? Who is more of a specimen for study—Renfield or Seward himself? You might consider the passage, “Am I to take it that I have anything in common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together; or has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well-being is needful to him?” (102). Q2: Which of the “outside” stories (the log from the Varna , etc.) adds the most to the overall narrative? Why do you think Mina decided to add this into her journal? What ‘story’ is it helping her tell to her readers? (and how might we read this differently when we remember that she is the one arranging it)? Q3: If you remember Coleridge’s Cristabel , how might the story of Lucy resemble that poem in its story, characters, and imagery? Consider a line such as “”there, on our favouri...

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Violette Heymann (1910) Answer TWO of the following: Q1: Dracula has no single narrator binding the entire novel together from either an omniscient or an unreliable point of view. Rather, the book is cobbled together from several different narrators, some consciously narrating (Harker's diary, Mina and Lucy's letters, etc.), while others are forced into the role unknowingly (newspaper reports, phonograph recordings, shipping receipts). How does this affect how we read the work and understand even the simplest ideas of plot, characterization, and narration? Is the entire work 'unreliable'? Or does the factual nature of the sources make it more reliable than our previous works? Q2: How does Stoker's characterization of Dracula differ from modern versions of Dracula and of vampires in general? Though Dracula is not the first literary vampire in England (he is preceded by Polidori's Lord Ruthven by several decades), he cr...

Answer TWO of the following: Q1: Is the Time Traveler a reliable narrator? How might his own biases and beliefs color his narrative, particularly when describing the Eloi and the Morlocks? Is there anywhere we can tell that Wells might be critiquing the Traveler himself? Q2: In Marina Warner’s Introduction to the Penguin version of The Time Machine , she notes that in many of Wells’ fictions, “He show an almost anorexic fascination with feeding, hunger, and abstemiousness.” Why do you think Wells (and the Time Traveler), as a late Victorian, is so drawn to the idea of eating in the novel? What might food—and the choice of food—have to do with taboos and the evolution of man? Q3: Why does the narrator decide to take Weena back to his own time? Is he romantically interested in her? Or does she represent something important and ‘scientific’ to the Time Traveler? (you might also consider why she dies; why doesn’t he protect her?) Q4: Toward the end of the novel...