Short Essay #1

Short Essay #1; Due Thursday, March 27

For the first short essay, you will write a 3-4 page critical paper on one of the short stories from either The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales or the online stories. You may choose any of the assigned stories on the syllabus, whether or not we have read it yet.

This short essay will focus specifically on a critical issue*, will be organized around your topic, and will include an introduction that clearly sets up your intention for the paper. Your main goal is to create a literary argument that provides a framework for interpreting the text. In this argument, you are advocating a specific and non-obvious “reading of the text”- an argument about how the story can be read and understood. Make sure that your argument is grounded in the evidence from the text and incorporate a discussion of specific literary elements pertinent to your argument-- pay attention to the details of the story's construction. Your discussion of the literary elements will not be an end unto itself, but will ultimately prove their significance to the critical issue you identify. Your essay should also incorporate textual evidence and a discussion of this evidence, including integrated direct quotations to support your claims (in MLA format).

Additional guidelines: Use MLA style for paper formatting, works cited, and direct citations. Your essay is due as an email submission to me by 8 p.m. You will name your file in the following format: Last Name-SE1.docx. 

* The critical issue: A problem (ambiguity) your essay resolves through careful interpretation of the literary text. The more focused your problem, the better your chance of writing a successful essay.

Three stage process for defining the critical issue:

1. Organize your general response notes into an area of investigation (such as point of view, style, imagery, etc or a theme); 
2.  Find a specific topic within that area, such as how point of view, imagery, etc. contribute to your interpretation of the story; and 
3.  Decide on a thesis- what you intend to prove by exploring your topic.

Reading Schedule: February 25 - March 11

Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)                                                    

February 25, Tuesday:           

• "Clytie" catch-up.
• pp. 1-100.

February 27, Thursday:         

• pp. 101-156. 
• From Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs

March 4, Tuesday:                

• Short Assignment #2 Due: Close Reading
• pp. 157-195

March 6, Thursday:               

• pp. 196-252.

March 11, Tuesday:               

• pp. 253- end.

Short Assignment #2

SA2: Close Reading
Due: Tuesday, March 4th

For your second short assignment, you will be writing a 1-2 page response based on a close reading of a paragraph or section from the short story you will be writing on for the Short Essay #1 assignment.

Assignment Description:

You will choose a substantial paragraph or section (group of a few short paragraphs) from the story you have decided to write about in your SE1. You will perform a close reading of the chosen passage and write a 1-2 page response which details, in an organized presentation, your findings. You may have a general idea of the larger argument you want to make in you first short essay, or this argument may still be developing. Either way, this exercise will help you clarify, substantiate, or redirect your argument, feeding into your short essay. For this reason, I recommend choosing a passage that you think will be important to the argument you are forming. Type out the passage that you are using for your close reading at the beginning of your assignment, single spaced. You may directly use work from this assignment in your short essay.

What is a close reading?

Close reading is the practice of carefully analyzing a passage, word by word, in order to draw implications from the text. Close reading means not only understanding the meaning of individual words, it also means familiarizing yourself with the nuances and connotations of language used by skilled writers. This includes vocabulary, sentence construction, imagery, themes, the way in which the story is told, and the world view offered in the text. 

Identify the context in which the passage appears and analyze its significance.Where exactly does the passage appear in the piece and why is its placement important? 

Analyze the implications of the language in the passage. Explore the subtler connotations of the words, allusions, and expressions used. Consult the Oxford English Dictionary on words you are unfamiliar with. Remember also that the meaning and connotations of words change over time and it is important to understand what specific words meant to the author in their historical-linguistic context. What kinds of metaphors and other figures of speech does the passage employ? How does the style and word choice tie into larger issues in the story? 

Draw a few comparisons or conclusions about the passage in relationship to the rest of the story. How has your close reading illuminated the subtler meanings of the passage? Why might these be important to the story as a whole?

Formatting Requirements:

Use MLA formatting guidelines, which include 1-inch margins, a standard 12 point font, such as Times, double spacing (except for passage), page numbers in the upper right corner with your last name as a running header, and the appropriate initial header information in upper left hand corner of the first page:

Name 

Course and Section Number

Date (Example- 1 March 2014)

Submission:

You will email your completed assignment to me as a word attachment (.doc or .docx). Name the document based on the following format: Last Name-SA2.docx. Remember, all email communication should be professional and include a subject and salutations. 

American Gothic

Characteristics of the 19th-Century American Gothic: 

"Without a feudal past and those relics so convenient for the European Gothicist, castles and monasteries and legends, the American landscape seemed an unlikely place for such fictions. Yet four indigenous features were to prove decisive in producing a powerful and long-lasting American variant of the Gothic: the frontier, the Puritan legacy, race, and political utopianism." (109) 

In Gothic sensationalism "there is a dark impulse beyond understanding which wreaks havoc, operating in complete contradiction to the normative assumption of the early United States polity, that individuals will always seek to act in their own best interests (and therefore can be trusted with democratic self-government and capitalist enterprise." (114-115) 

"The shadow of patriarchy, slavery and racism, as of Puritan extremes of the imagination and the political horror of a failed utopianism, fall across these works of American Gothic and direct its shape towards a concern with social and political issues as well as towards an agonised introspection concerning the evil that lies within the self." (120) 

-- Allan Lloyd-Smith, from "Nineteenth-Century American Gothic" in the Blackwell Companion to the Gothic.

Clytie: An Orphaned Story

Eudora Welty had difficulty finding "Clytie" a home in a publication and it came to be known as her orphaned story. Publishers didn't want to include the story in her collection of short works, neither did magazine editors want to publish it individually. Rejection of the story was based on a common complaint among editors-- they thought there was too much left unexplained, particularly concerning Clytie's suicide and the identity of the obscured face that haunts her. Eventually it was accepted for publication in the Southern Review in 1941, and was afterwards revised and included in her collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green. 

Excerpt from a letter to Eudora Welty from her publishing agent Darmuid Russell:

"I like it but I don’t think it is as good as others of yours that I have seen. There seems to me to be some obscurity about it that makes it difficult to understand. The face of love that you refer to is obviously some dream or imagination that has haunted Clytie…. But I think that that dream or imagination is hardly made clear enough to the reader to [explain why] Clytie commit[s] suicide."

Welty's Response:

“The face Clytie was seeking would have been more definite, except that Clytie could not ever concentrate. Perhaps the events were not strong enough to justify her sticking her head down the rain barrel, but I felt sorry for her.”

Setting Analysis Exercise

"A Rose for Emily" is an example of Southern Gothic literature in which the plot, characters, and themes are inextricably tied with the environment and history of the American South. What particular thematic issues are connected to Faulkner's Jefferson, Mississippi in "A Rose"? What kinds of gender, racial, and class issues are featured in this southern setting that might have less relevance in Northern or British gothic texts? How do the main characters react to their settings? Specifically, how does the progress towards modernity impact Emily as a character who belongs psychologically to the past?

Exercise: 
In this passage, the narrator focuses on setting, describing the street where the dead Miss Emily used to live. However, this description is full of details that extend beyond the appearance of the street. What else do we learn about the town, about Miss Emily and her family, and the potential themes of this short story from this early setting-focused paragraph?

"It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson" (Faulkner, "A Rose" 322). 

Irony

Irony-A literary device that uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true. It is ironic for a firehouse to burn down, or for a police station to be burglarized. 

Different types of Irony:

• Verbal irony is a figure of speech that occurs when a person says one thing but means the opposite. Sarcasm is a strong form of verbal irony that is calculated to hurt someone through, for example, false praise. 
• Dramatic irony creates a discrepancy between what a character believes or says and what the reader or audience member knows to be true. 
• Tragic irony is a form of dramatic irony found in tragedies such as Oedipus the King, in which Oedipus searches for the person responsible for the plague that ravishes his city and ironically ends up hunting himself. 
• Situational irony exists when there is an incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens due to forces beyond human comprehension or control. 
• Cosmic irony occurs when a writer uses God, destiny, or fate to dash the hopes and expectations of a character or of humankind in general. In cosmic irony, a discrepancy exists between what a character aspires to and what universal forces provide. 

Which of these types of irony have we seen in the texts so far? Do specific types of irony appear more in Gothic literature than others? 

Literary Terms Test

Literary Terms Test Date: Thursday, February 20th

The Lit Terms Test will consist of three sections:

1) In the first section, you will communicate your knowledge of Gothic fiction as a genre from our class discussions and your own observations and conclusions about the genre based on the body of texts read so far in the course. This section will consist of one question- What is Gothic fiction? You will answer in short essay format. Your answer should include an understanding of the classical features of the genre, common themes and dualities found across gothic stories, and changes or shifts in the genre over time and considering regional focus.

The last two sections will test your ability to identify and analyze literary devices within the contexts of the assigned course texts. The midterm will consist of the literary terms we have used in class discussion, including imagery, metaphor, personification  simile, ambiguity, characterization, setting, allusion, atmosphere, foreshadowing, style, tone, point of view, structure, intertextuality, symbolism, diction, emphasis and dialogue.

2) In the second section of the exam, you will identify the underlined literary element in a given sentence in short answer form.

Example: "It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage" (Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart").

3) In the third section of the test, you will write short essay responses analyzing the function of a literary element in a paragraph length passage. A set of literary elements that apply to the passage will accompany each entry; however, you will only focus on one literary element per question*. For each entry, you will clearly identify the literary element and discuss the significance of the device within the entire excerpt. You will need to keep in mind the context of the story that the excerpt is from when considering the significance.

*Often, literary elements blend together to create a comprehensive meaning. While only one literary element will be the focus of your response, you can discuss the ways the combination of elements in the passage helps contribute to the meaning.

Sample Questions:

From H.P Lovecraft's "The Outsider"

"Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me-- to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken. And yet I am strangely content and cling desperately to those sere memories, when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other."

 Atmosphere, emphasis, alliteration, setting


From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"

"From its appearance, he judged it to be one of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once have been the pleasure-place of an opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so woefully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man's window, and made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one century embodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and, in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine."

 Imagery, symbolism, point of view

Revised Reading Schedule and Literary Terms Test Date

American Gothic

February 13, Thursday:         Finish The Hound of the Baskervilles

                                              “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe; pp. 85-101. GT            

 February 18, Tuesday:          “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne; pp. 133-157. GT
                                              “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner; pp. 322-331. GT

                                              “Clytie,” Welty; pp. 424-35. GT

February 20, Thursday:        Literary Terms Test      

Edgar Allan Poe Resources

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore has an excellent website for examining Nineteenth Century documents about and written by Poe, including his own short autobiography, obituaries, correspondences, photographs and illustrations, official documents, etc. 

Often when discussing Poe's fiction and poetry, questions arise inquiring how his personal life, beliefs, and habits may have influenced his work. Poe is an excellent example of the difficulty of trying to discover a definitive meaning in a text based on clues from the author's personal life; he was often involved in spreading false rumors about himself, and even obscuring accurate biographical information in published documents. For example, in his own autobiography, which appeared at the beginning of a collection of his works, he provided the wrong birth year, along with several other inaccurate details.

"Edgar Allan Poe's Problematic Biography" is a short essay on the EAP Society site that details some of the larger myths about Poe, but there are resources across the site that show widespread misrepresentations about the infamous author. Debated still are the personal characteristics that inflect his writing: Was he a lifetime drunk or an occasional binger? Was he difficult to work with in the publishing industry, or a humble professional? Was he addicted to gambling? What really caused his death? The site has resources for exploring Poe's mysterious life and death.

The Poe Museum website also contains valuable resources for looking further into Poe's life and works. The site features biographical information and an online image collection of many of the museum's contents, including illustrations, personal correspondances, and other artifacts from his life. 

Stetson and Women's Rights

Charlotte Perkins Stetson, also known as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was a fiction writer, but also a social activist for women in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Her nonfiction social theory works include Women and Economics, The Home: Its Work and Influence, and Does a Man Support His Wife? She also founded and contributed to a women's magazine titled, The Forerunner. In a middle-class American society which promoted separate spheres for men and women, the public for men and the domestic for women, Stetson alternately advocated financial independence for women and encouraged people to consider an individual not in terms of gender characteristics, but common human qualities.

Presentation Schedule: Section 033

Presentation Sign-Up Sheet- 033

Date	Text	Name
2/4, Tuesday:	Poe, “The Black Cat”	Amanda Ruppert
	Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
2/6, Thursday:	Doyle, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”
	Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ch. 1-5	Allison Kowalczyk
2/11, Tuesday:	Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ch. 6-10	Joyce Chiu
	Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ch. 11-15	Jason Kilhoffer
2/13, Thursday	Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” Now 2/18	Harvey Mutz
	Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”	Robin Duffee
2/18, Tuesday	Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”	Kollin Meadows
	Welty, “Clytie” -	Kendall Welfel
2/25, Tuesday	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 1-50	Tyler Marion
	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 51-100	Makenna Scott
2/27, Thursday	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 101-124	Victoria Vu
	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 125-156	Brittany Brown
3/4, Tuesday	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 157- 173	Tashika Curlee
	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 174-195
3/6, Thursday	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 196-235
	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 236-252	Angela Kambaga
3/11, Tuesday	Morrison, Beloved, pp.253-278
	Morrison, Beloved, pp. 279-324	Amy Dedmon
3/13, Thursday	Stoker, Dracula, Ch. 1-6	Hartemeza Martinez
3/25, Tuesday	Stoker, Dracula, Ch. 7-18	John Parent
3/27, Thursday	Stoker, Dracula, Ch. 19-23	Britt Simpson
4/1, Tuesday	Stoker, Dracula, Ch. 24-27	Joe Damian
	Carter, “The Lady of the House of Love”	Michelle Riedel
4/3, Thursday	Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Ch. 1-5	Jamie Blount
4/8, Tuesday	Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Ch. 7-18	Fabian Borunda
4/10, Thursday	Le Fanu, “A Chapter in the History of the Tyrone Family”	Blake Reiner
4/15, Tuesday	Hardy, “Barbara of the House of Grebe”	Trevor Hill
4/17, Thursday	King, The Shining, Ch. 1-15	Matthew Hanson
4/22, Tuesday	King, The Shining, Ch. 16-30	Dalton Pipkin
4/24, Thursday	King, The Shining, Ch. 31-40	Daniel Rabkin
4/29, Tuesday	King, The Shining, Ch. 41-50	Madison Cress
5/1, Thursday	King, The Shining, Ch. 51-58	Dylan Lewis

*Remember if you are presenting on a novel, you must clear your article or chapter choice with me in advance to avoid repeat article/chapter summaries. I recommend selecting your article or chapter as soon as possible. Article/chapter preference will be given in the order you contact me.