.

POSTSCRIPT: 24 October 2006
--FROM FOLK TALE TO TRAGEDY.  In lieu of a lecture, I distributed a handout, "Reading Shakespeare: A Few Notes & Tips (Scene I)."  Before Thursday's class, please read the handout, and let me know if you have any questions about the following: (1) recognizing prose, rhymed verse, and blank verse in Lear (and in other Shakespeare plays); (2) understanding how the opening lines spoken by Kent and Gloucester (pronounced "gloster") foreshadow, however, obliquely, major themes and motifs in King Lear; (3) recognizing how critical disagreements about the end of the play may point us back to the conflicting responses that may be evoked by Scene I; (4) and (5) appreciating how linguistic and semantic knowledge (in this case, the grammar and vocabulary of English in the early 17th century) should inform our applications of diverse critical theories (see note below re. the OED); (6) recognizing motifs that are introduced in Scene I and developed throughout the play; (7) understanding how the historical information concerning anti-enclosure riots in Shakespeare's day might lead us to apply Marxist critical theories and/or new historicism to a play that begins with the division of a kingdom; and (8) considering how Dundes' application of Freudian theories may lead us to more profound applications of psychoanalytic criticism--especially if we're prepared to question the critic's methods of argument and challenge his conclusions. 
--Oxford English Dictionary (popularly known as the OED). One of the key reference works for literary studies, the OED provides historical definitions of words, showing how words have changed their meanings over the centuries.  Though the notes to the Oxford World's Classics edition of King Lear do a pretty good job of pointing out significant shifts in the meanings of key words in Shakespeare's text, we still need to go to the OED to get the full story.  For example, to appreciate the full weight of Cordelia's response to her father that she loves "According to [her] bond," we should check out the historical definitions of "bond" in the OED.  
--TWO VERSIONS OF SCENE ONE of Lear.  The first version that we looked at (intermittently) was Laurence's Olivier's Lear (Olivier was 76 years old at the time--1983); the second was Ian Holm's 1997 production (Holm was 66).  We'll be looking at different versions of various scenes from the play (and its adaptations) over the next two weeks, but I strongly encourage you to reserve time to watch any one of the film versions from start to finish without interruption.  (This weekend would be a good time.)  Videos of King Lear are available at Lane Library, and you're also welcome to borrow one of my videos.
--DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.  Now that you've seen two different dramatizations of Scene I, revisit the second question that you considered at the beginning of today's class: viewing the characters and events in Scene I independently from what follows, which characters do you perceive to be the protagonists in the play, and which characters appear to be the antagonists?  We'll begin Thursday's class with your responses to this question.


PREVIEW: 24 & 26 October 2006
--Oxford World Classics edition of King Lear.  First, let's make sure that we're all reading the same play.  If you mistakenly purchased the Harold Bloom edition of Lear instead of the Oxford World Classics edition (i.e., our edition: see syllabus), please exchange it at the bookstore.  My interest in relying on a common edition of the play should become clearer to you in a week or so when we examine the play in the context of textual studies (see, for instance, pages 81-88 in the Oxford edition).  Just in case you're late exchanging your books, you can go online to read Scene I in the 1608 Quarto (with original spellings and without notes).

Next, if you've never read, seen, or listened to King Lear before, you may want to preface your studies by equipping yourself with some of the basic knowledge that a typical playgoer in Shakespeare's time would have had even before stepping into the theatre: familiarity with the story (or stories, to be accurate) and with some of the conventions of Elizabethan theatre.
* First-time readers should find it helpful to begin by reading the assigned article "Enjoying King Lear."  In addition, it wouldn't hurt at all to read a quick plot summary of Lear before studying the play itself in detail.  (A version of Lear's story intended for children appears at Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.)  Again, be warned: there are multiple versions of Shakespeare's text (with differences in action and character as well as in language), and we'll be focusing on the version in the Oxford World's Classics edition.)
* In class today, we'll compare different productions of the opening scene involving Lear's division of his kingdom--a scene which has strong echoes of ancient folk tales (specifically, "Cap o' Rushes").   Among other things, we'll consider (1) which daughter deserves the award for eloquence--and which for arrogance; (2) how to distinguish Goneril from Regan and Edmund from Edgar; (3) and how something can come from "nothing." 
*  If you're unfamiliar with the way that Elizabethan plays were staged, I encourage you to read this short article on the Globe Theatre.  
*  Two concepts from the medieval era that might sharpen our understanding of King Lear include the wheel of fortune (the medieval concept of fortune was personified as Dame Fortune, a blindfolded woman who turned a wheel at whim; people were stationed at various places on the wheel--the top of the wheel represented the best fortune, being under the wheel the worst fortune.  However, the wheel could turn suddenly, and the person on top could suddenly be under the wheel, without warning) and the Great Chain of Being (referred to last Thursday in the context of Milton's sonnet "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"). 
* I'm presuming that you're familiar with the basic characteristics of tragedy and the terms associated with it.  If not, check out this short, simple encyclopedia article. 
* Additional notes and articles on King Lear (along with related works such as Ran, A Thousand Acres, and King of Texas) are posted at our RESOURCES page.
LOOKING BACK. As we make the transition to Lear, textual studies, rhetorical theory, and literary research, you might want to take time to make sure that you're familiar with all that's been covered so far in the course: the literary theories and forms of criticism that you studied in Barry's book and in the casebook on "The Dead," along with old and new historicism, archetypal/myth studies, narratology, biographical criticism, and reader-response theories.  (Btw, I'm less interested in your familiarity with the "father figures" attached to various schools of criticism than I am with your ability to apply and effectively combine those critical approaches.  One important exception is the "mother figure" of Louise Rosenblatt, who--unlike Freud, Derrida, Jung, and Foucault, for instance--deserves more credit [for her contributions to reader-response theories], not less.)  You should also have a basic understanding of cultural criticism and its relationship to the field of comparative literature (as we've seen in our study of folk tales from diverse cultures and different eras), and recognize the extent to which literary studies crosses over into many other disciplinary fields, including psychology, gender and women's studies, sociology, history, folklore, linguistics, rhetoric, and anthropology.  You should recognize that literature has its roots in oral story-telling traditions, and understand how vestiges of oral narratives can still be found in contemporary texts--especially as we find our society moving into a period that has been defined as "post-literate" in a culture marked by "secondary orality."  Finally, you should be familiar with the basic literary terms associated with study of drama, fiction, and poetry as well as the critical and theoretical terms introduced in our texts.  Why do I encourage review now?   Because (1) much of what you've studied so far in the course will reappear (and be reapplied) in our work with King Lear, and (2) you'll have to know this material for the final exam.  I encourage you to review using the NOTES and RESOURCES on this web site along with your class notes and course texts and handouts.  Please let me know if you have questions about any of the topics I've just mentioned.


POSTSCRIPT: 19 October 2006
--ADVISEMENT for spring 2007 begins on November 1.  If you don't yet have an advisor (that is, a sober faculty member who will actually sit down with you and discuss your degree and career objectives as well as your course schedule), please visit Ms. Leona Avey in Gamble 210A and ask her to match you up with an advisor.  Alternatively, if you have worked with a faculty member who has proved to be helpful in the past, feel free to approach that person directly and invite her or him to serve as your advisor.  (If you're spurned, don't take it personally.) 
--QUICK QUIZ REVISITED: The answers, again, to today's quiz: 1 A; 2 A; 3 A; 4 A; 5 D; 6 D; 7 D; 8 A; 9 A; 10 A; 11 A.   Grade distribution: 9 A's, 1 B, 3 F's.  I'll count only the higher of the two quiz grades you received this week.  (According to social scientists, life offers us, on average, only 13.7 bona fide second chances.  You've just used one of them.)  Remember: Know every word.  That's where literary study begins.  If we don't know the words (i.e., the details of texts), our "critical views" are worthless: we're like some tedious windbag on a barstool, spouting uninformed opinions and reformulating cliches.  If we don't know every word after reading a text once, we need to read it again.  And again.  Thus endeth the day's lesson.
--FROM THEORIES TO PRACTICE. By turning the critical glass and examining the three assigned texts from multiple perspectives, you raised plenty of sharp observations this afternoon, demonstrating how a combination of theoretical views may provide deeper insights into a text than an unswerving allegiance to just one school of thought.   A few points that came up . . . 

Biographical criticism (as demonstrated by an excerpt from Jackie Wullschlager's biography of Andersen) may tempt us either to work backwards, presuming that an author's fictional text "explains" an author's life ("Gee, Edgar Allan Poe must have been crazy"), or to engage in another kind of reductive criticism, one that shrinks a text only to those details that can be interpreted through the prism of one aspect of an author's life ("Gee, Emily Dickinson must be writing about how broken-up she was after losing the love of her life") .  That's gossip, not criticism.

On the other hand, as we saw in our reading of Milton's sonnet and Hemingway's short story, biographical information (like historical information) may lead us more productively to reconsider our first impressions of a text: pathos, for instance,   may be reinterpreted as self-pity or self-ridicule (or both).  Likewise, by comparing our different (reader-)responses to the same text, we may come to a clearer recognition of textual gaps--gaps that invite serious reconsiderations of a character's motives, for instance, or a story's themes.  Can we ever be sure of an author's intentions?   Probably not.  But in any case, as it turns out, we can trust neither the tale nor the teller.  Like the ad for that sad $39 replica of Hemingway's long-billed phallic cap, texts may well be delivering metaphorically contrary messages: "Buy me," and "Don't buy me."  (Purely optional, of course, but for a superior example of gender criticism matched with deconstruction, check out the eminently readable and jargon-free study by Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes, Hemingway's Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text, Yale UP, 1994.)

As to just how we might use biography effectively as a critical approach, consider these principles offered by Professor Davey: "I want to propose the following tentative list of principles for answering these questions about how best to link text to biography -- for in effect deciding when a biographical reading might be most justified. These principles take the form of questions we should ask ourselves as readers and as critics. First, does the text invite the reader to do so explicitly? I am thinking here of a roman a clef in particular but would also include any text which either throughout its progression or at certain moments explicitly invokes the reader's knowledge of the author's life.  . . . Second, can readers justify reading biographically in spite of the author's attempts to get them to read otherwise, simply because the author has not provided sufficient disguise? . . . Finally, however, I would add this stipulation, and one that is meant to take precedence over the others. Namely, is the reading we arrive at by reading beyond convention more compelling than the reading provided by the author?" (Michael Davey, "Convention and the Limits of Biography for Literary Criticism: Fathers, Daughters, and Sentiment in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans," 2000).

The Hemingway story led us to consider ways that new historicism might be applied (say by viewing the narrator's paraphrase of Luz's letter in the context of Dear John letters written in wartime) along with archetypal criticism (including archetypal characters--the wounded soldier, the comforting nurse, the approving chums, the senior officer, the "sales girl" with STD--and the familiar motif of the dump), genre criticism (as the story moves from conventions of romance to what at the end may be interpreted as realism), and certainly gender theory and deconstruction as we fill textual gaps with what we imagine might be Luz's point of view, perhaps radically different from the soldier's.

In regard to Milton's sonnet, both old historicism (including Milton's own role in the end to the reign of Charles I) and new (say, textual evidence of the social role of a day laborer in the 17th century) as well as cultural and Marxist criticism (e.g., the social implications of the widespread belief in the Great Chain of Being) and gender and feminist criticism (particularly when allied with some biographical background) all invited fresh ways of exploring this familiar text.  In addition, we might have considered how religious studies (Milton's "dark world" view was shaded by his firm Puritan beliefs), biblical studies (the allusions to Matthew 25: 14-30 [the parable of the talent] and to Matthew 11:30 ["Take my yoke upon you," Jesus says, "and learn from me . . . and you will find rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"]), genre studies (the conventions of the sonnet), archetypal criticism (the personified Patience comes straight out of medieval morality plays), and even medical studies (Milton suffered from glaucoma) could also enrich our understanding of Milton's poem. 

PREVIEW: 19 October 2006
--FROM THEORIES TO PRACTICE.  Read, study, and analyze the three assigned texts (all extremely short) before coming to today's class.  And please remember to bring along your printouts of those texts.  You might find this to be an appropriate time to revisit our RESOURCES page and review the materials on reader-response criticism, deconstruction, feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, new historicism, and post-colonial criticism and cultural studies.  I'll be calling on you today: be prepared.

POSTSCRIPT: 17 October 2006
--QUICK QUIZ: The answers, again, to today's quiz: 1 D; 2 B; 3 D; 4 A; 5 B; 6 E; 7 D; 8 A; 9 D; 10 C; 11 A.   Grade distribution: 2 A's, 1 C, 6 D's, 5 F's (and zeros, of course, to those who missed the quiz altogether).  For information on class quizzes and quiz grades, see the preview for Oct. 3 and 5.  Any form of literary study begins, of course, with careful reading (and re-reading).  For Thursday's class, make sure that you're familiar with all of the texts assigned for this week.
--DARKER SIDE OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM.  The short tale we listened to today was "The Willful Child." Purely optional:
If you have an interest in reading some of the grimmer (and far less frequently anthologized) tales from the Brothers Grimm, here are a couple of short ones: "The Boy in the Grave" (a reminder, perhaps, that what we now call "child abuse" was not so long ago a fairly common, even acceptable way of disciplining children--especially those who had been born with physical or mental"defects");  "The Castle of Murder" (a Bluebeard tale, expansively retold from a feminist perspective by British author Angela Carter in the short story "The Bloody Chamber" [1979]).
--STORYTELLING WITH THE MAGIC OF THREES.  

PREVIEW: 17 October 2006
--CINDERELLA TALES and CULTURAL STUDIES. 
Put way too simply, the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies focuses on the meaning and practices of everyday life in a given culture--or (in comparative cultural studies) in multiple cultures.  Cultural criticism intersects literary studies through the examination of texts, focusing on the historical as well as social, political, and economic contexts of a work.  Cultural critics use diverse strategies--such as new historicism, psychology, gender studies, and deconstruction-- to analyze not only literary texts but everything from radio talk shows, comic strips, and commercials to travel guides and baseball cards.  The following diagram (developed by English faculty at Goucher College) highlights the general theoretical principles of cultural criticism.

Note, however, that cultural critics do not necessarily view all readers (or, more broadly, citizens) as passive "consumers."  By considering the different ways that we read, receive, and interpret cultural texts, we see how people can variously appropriate, actively reject, or challenge the intended meaning of a text (or "product").  After all, not all of us dream of a Prince (or Princess) Charming, wear Nikes, subscribe to the same religious beliefs, or drink Coca Cola. 

Reading a few Cinderella tales from distant countries may perhaps help us to achieve a degree of perspective--a multi-cultural perspective--and to grow beyond the reductionist "good dog, bad dog" school of criticism.  Here are a few things to consider as you read the assigned tales and articles:
-"A Javanese Cinderella Tale and Its Pedagogical Value":  After reading this Javanese (or, more broadly, Indonesian) version of Cinderella and the author's explanation of how it indoctrinates children into a world view characterized by emotional stability, detachment from worldly things, and "acceptance of the inevitable with grace," return to the tale and consider what other cultural and ethical values it may be promoting, whether deliberately or not.
-"Cinderella in Africa": Focus your reading on the details of the tale itself ("The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief's Son") and on Bascom's brief analysis of key motifs in the tale (156-157); skim the rest of the article simply to get the gist of his thesis.  What elements of this tale strike you as distinctive, and what might those elements suggest about the nature and values of the culture(s) that produced it?  
-"The Beautiful Wassilissa":  Please spend some serious time with this reading: the introductory comments on Jung, the Russian folktale "The Beautiful Wassilissa," and Marie-Louise von Franz's archetypal analysis of the tale.  Most western critics would likely characterize "The Beautiful Wassilissa" as "literary" because of its comparative complexities of detail, character, and structure.  (Note, btw, that Baba Yaga is a familiar character in Russian folklore.)  After you've read the tale once, go back and and locate specific points where you found yourself surprised--in regard to the appearance of particular details or the direction taken by the plot, or both.  In what ways besides the distinctive features of the plot does "The Beautiful Wassilissa" differ from the versions of the Cinderella tale that most of us grew up with? 
--STUDENT SELECTIONS.  As you read the five tales selected by your classmates and their six short pieces of criticism, think about what other forms of literary criticism might be usefully applied to the stories.  We'll be using these works, in part, to review literary theories studied earlier in the term.
--QUICK QUIZ.  At the start of Tuesday's class, there will be a quick content-review quiz on the articles and tales assigned for today. 

POSTSCRIPT: 10 October 2006
--READER RESPONSE THEORIES.  Whether or not we deliberately apply reader-response theories in our criticism or even acknowledge their value, the basic premise of reader response theory is inescapable: how we respond to texts (or to elements in texts) is in part determined by our individual experiences, concerns, anxieties, passions, and enthusiasms--as well as by our cultural and textual conditioning. 

We demonstrated this point today in class by testing our own varied responses to details in two father-and-son poems, Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" (see also this short "deconstructionist reading" of the poem) and Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" (see also David Biespiel's short article on Hayden's poem).  Please read Professor Trevor Parris's cogent essay on "My Papa's Waltz", a study that both employs reader-response criticism and critiques it. 

You'll find additional information about reader response theory and criticism at our RESOURCES page.  Reader-response criticism is also discussed and illustrated in your casebook on Joyce's "The Dead," pp. 125-149.  Finally, if you've grown a little weary of all the father figures (especially French father figures) associated with 20th-century literary criticism, you may be interested to learn that many of the key concepts of reader-response theory were first articulated in 1938 by a young English professor named Louise Rosenblatt (in Literature as Exploration).  Dr. Rosenblatt was born in New Jersey, studied at Barnard College (where she roomed with anthropologist-to-be Margaret Mead), received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the Sorbonne, and remained an active reader, writer, and educator until her death, at age 100, in 2004.  Here is Rosenblatt responding to an interviewer's question at the University of Miami in 1999:

I suppose I can continue what I was describing as the reading process because once you have this relationship between the reader and the text then you see it becomes very important to realize what each of us brings to that text.  We bring a knowledge of the language. We have to have the same code as the person who wrote the squiggles on the page, the text.  When I use the word text, I mean just the signs on the page. I was very much influenced also by my work in Anthropology and Psychology to realize that each of us only brings a part of a segment of the language, no matter how much we know.  In other words, the dictionary has so-called literal meanings, which is what most people would link with it, but then it has all sorts of special meanings that words take on in special context or in special vocabularies and so on.  Each of us brings to the text the sum total of our past experiences with that word.  In that I'm summarizing Vygotsky.  Now, Vygotsky understood and emphasized very much the social character of language.  But at the same time he recognized that each of us has only this personal experience which is the language for us at that moment.  When I say our experience with those words in particular contexts, that means that not only had we acquired an understanding of a literal meaning but it had been in some special circumstance, and we have various associations with that word. Or, if the same word has been encountered in different contexts, we might have had different associations with it. That means that when the reader approaches the text and brings to it this reservoir of past experience of language and life, things get stirred up from this reservoir into our consciousness. We are selecting for attention what is relevant to our particular needs or interests or purposes at the time. And we are pushing into the background or ignoring what is irrelevant.

In reading, the reader is selecting out from what is being stirred up by the perception of the signs on the page. The reader has to select out from past experiences with those particular squiggles on the page what is relevant to that particular context. The selective activity of the reader, with particular assumptions, attitudes, and knowledge, becomes very important.
(Louise Rosenblatt Interview, March 14, 1999)
--GROUP ANALYSES OF CINDERELLA TALES and RED RIDING HOOD TALES.  Using the critical-theory cheat sheets handed out in class, we began work today on combining different critical approaches to clusters of related tales.  To borrow Louise Rosenblatt's phrase (that old journey metaphor again), we approached critical reading as a process of exploration--one that may lead us to more questions than answers.   Though the two folk tales obviously invite feminist readings (of various kinds), some of you also ventured into psychoanalytic criticism (both old school and new), Marxist criticism (which we're linking to cultural criticism, fairly or not), and even deconstruction (noting in particular how the explicit morals tacked on to the ends of certain tales may be at odds with the narratives they follow).  What you all seem to be avoiding is structuralism in any of its forms, including narratology, which was supposed to be our main focus today.  So next week, in addition to considering comparative literary studies, we'll revisit structuralism and narratology.
--HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Elizabeth and Ashley.  Previews of next week's classes will be posted by this weekend. 


Previews and postscripts for Sep. 19-Oct. 10 have been moved to NOTES Archive A.

English 3010 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Solms Hall 211C
11935 Abercorn Street
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912/921 5991

e-mail:  metaphors@inbox.com  

                                       

26 October 2006