Onward and upward!

There is an astonishing and horrifying article in the Dec. 24 New Yorker that explains two things:

1. We are reading far less than we were fifty years ago
2. The neurology of reading suggests that regular readers are simply better thinkers

We get in this Pavlovian habit of thinking that because reading happens at school, we should read only when books are assigned to us. If this is the way you think, here is your assignment for this break: read as much as you can.

Ah, but what to read? Here are a few possibilities:

If you liked A Midsummer Night's Dream, try...

• Much Ado About Nothing
• Twelfth Night, which is appropriately Christmas-themed
• As You Like It, which is a bit more cerebral a comedy than MSND or Much Ado, and is hence something of a darling among academics

If you liked Henry V, then try...

• The prequels, 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV
• Richard II, which is something like the pre-prequel (H4 deposes R2)

If you liked Macbeth, then try...

• Hamlet
• Othello

If you liked The Tempest, then try...

• A Winter's Tale

If you liked Slaughterhouse V, try...

• Cat's Cradle, a Vonnegut novel which is at once apocalyptic and optimistic
• The Sirens of Titan, which features the return of the Tralfamadorians

If you're interested in reading about Shakespeare, try...

• Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World, which is currently the most prominent biography
• Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage (which I haven't read but have heard generally good things about)

But perhaps you have had enough with Shakespeare for a while, and would like to try something a little less 400-year-old-ish. Here are some books I heartily, heartily commend to you:

• The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon (Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) is one of the funniest and most satisfying books I read this summer
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, is a snarky and thoughtful murder mystery, and an unrelenting delight of a read
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel, is a perfectly-paced story set in a future that looks more or less like our own world
• On that genre-fiction note, if you are a science fiction sort of person and have not yet read Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, you should probably set aside an afternoon this break to do that
• The next book on my to-read list is Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- read it with me and we can talk about it next week

Discussion Questions (week 14)

Welcome to the end! This week there are several short questions to think through in preparation for the final exam.

1. Read through the preliminary exam instructions (which might soon be replaced by the official exam instructions) and the final exam study guide carefully. What questions do you have?
2. Look over your lecture notes from the last half of the semester. What questions do you have about
   1. Terms?
   2. Themes?
   3. Main ideas?
   4. Historical contexts?
   5. Other arguments and ideas Prof. Dubrow has shared in lecture?
3. There are four sample questions posted in the study guide. Although these questions will not appear on the final exam, they will get you started thinking about the broader topics that will appear. Pick one of the sample questions and answer it with reference to The Tempest.
4. To conclude our literary analytical work for the semester, develop a close reading of the last lines of The Tempest. How does Prospero's epilogue differ from Puck's epilogue in MSND? How does it differ from the Chorus's epilogue in H5?
   
5. Think ahead to the evaluations I will ask you to fill out at the end of discussion. What do you feel were some of the strengths of discussion? More importantly, what do you feel were its weaknesses? I tried to address some of the feedback you gave me after the midterm evaluations, but how well did I actually do? Next semester I will probably be teaching a section of English 100, which is an introductory composition class. If you have any thoughts about how writing can be taught most effectively I would love to hear them.

Extra office hours for week 14: Essay 2 conference sign-up sheet

I have scheduled some extra office hours for next week on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. If you would like to sign up for one of these slots, please send me an email. I will try to keep this post updated, but you might want to send me 2 or 3 times that will work for you in case your first choice has been taken.

If these times do not work for you please send me an email and suggest a couple of times that will -- I'm happy to arrange a meeting at your convenience.

Tuesday 12/11, Fair Trade Coffee House

• 3:30 pm - Carl
• 3:50 - Lucas
• 4:10 -
• 4:30 - Leah
• 4:50 -
• 5:10 -

Wednesday 12/12, Open Book Cafe

• 3:30 pm - Christie
• 3:50 - Todd
• 4:10 - Kathy
• 4:30 - Nina
• 4:50 -
• 5:10 - Elise

Thursday 12/13, Open Book Cafe

• Noon - Kaylin
• 12:20 pm - Morgan
• 12:40 - Jack
• 1:00 - Tim
• 1:20 - Shannon
• 1:40 - Benton

Reviewing the rhetorical terms

I've been putting together a handout on some of the terms we've encountered this semester, and in trying to remember the meaning of all the rhetorical terms we've learned this semester (commutatio, etc.) I've found this website -- the Silva Rhetoricae -- enormously helpful. You might find it useful in your studying for the final exam...

Discussion questions (week 13)

We have two goals for this week, best articulated through lame puns:

• Finalizing the rules and expectations of close reading
• Essaying to simplify the rules for finding and articulating a thesis statement

To which end, here are two discussion questions:

1. In lecture this week we have looked at multiple ways of reading Prospero and Caliban, first by looking at images from productions to see how they are presented as characters (Druid or Bishop; monster or victim) and then by looking at the sorts of speech acts they use.

   Do the same thing with Miranda, in the following order:

   1. Google for images of Miranda from productions of The Tempest -- you might want to print out one or two to bring to class so you can make your point
   2. Identify the different ways we can read Miranda's character: we know that Prospero can be read as manipulative or as gentle, and that Caliban can be read as monstrous and as victimized. What are two options for our reading of Miranda?
   3. Read Miranda's first speech -- I.ii.1ff (1662a)
   4. Identify the sorts of speech acts she uses (commands? curses? storytelling?)
   5. Close read her speech in at least two ways you identified as being possible approaches to her character

2. When Prof. Dubrow was talking about her own recent analytical work, she explained, first, that the topic she was interested in was the relationship between space and storytelling. Then she defined that relationship a bit more specifically: How does storytelling create or control space? This process is fairly straightforward: Prof. Dubrow chose two topics* that we have tackled this semester -- space and storytelling -- and asked a question that tried to articulate the relationship between them.

   Now you try! Pick two topics that pertain to The Tempest and formulate a question that asks about the relationship between these topics. Does one topic control or shape the other? Are they interdependent?

   * Note that a "topic" is not necessarily the same thing as a theme. A theme can certainly be a topic, but we've never really thought about space as a theme, or closure. Also, you should not feel tied down to the themes Prof. Dubrow has put on the board in lecture.

Discussion questions (week 12)

1. [This question is more or less a repeat of question 3 from our last discussion. You are welcome to recycle your notes.] Look back at your notes from Prof. Dubrow’s lecture about soliloquies from two weeks ago, and particularly the way she connects the soliloquy to a specific function—the creation of sympathy between character and audience. Do the same with a different form: the list. What is the function of the list? Why are there so many in this play? Answer this question by looking closely at one list, e.g.
   • II.iii.28
   • III.i.91ff
   • IV.i passim
2. I am interested in seeing if we can use the form of discourse that seems to be at the heart of Macbeth to better understand its characters. How do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth soliloquize differently? How can we see the way they soliloquize as representative of differences in their characters?

   Look at four soliloquies: Lady Macbeth's "Unsex me here..." (I.v.38-54), Macbeth's "If it were done..." (I.vii.1-28) and his "Is this a dagger which I see before me..." (II.i.33-64), and Lady Macbeth's "Out, damn'd spot" (V.i.35-68). Here are some specific questions to work through:

   • How do the contexts of these soliloquies differ? Are they -- like the "Two truths are told" soliloquy -- just vocalizations of what the character is thinking? Are they spoken out loud? What do these differences mean?
   • What are the purposes of these soliloquies -- answering questions, a là the Senecan monologue? Giving the audience insight into characters' psychologies?
   • How do they use metaphors (and other figurative language) differently?
   • How do they refer to the physical world differently?

Lecture notes and videos, 11/27

Here are the lecture slides from 11/27 in a variety of formats:

• PPT (1.8 MB)
• PDF (14.1 MB)
• RTF (40 KB, no images)

...and here are a couple of the clips that we looked at in lecture:

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow"

"Unsex me here"

Revisiting extra credit

Many of you have fulfilled your performance requirement and are beginning to accrue extra credit by watching more performances. Here's a quick reminder about how this works:

Performances seen	Effect on your final grade
0	-16
1	-12
2	-8
3	-4
4	0
5	+2
6	+4
7	+5

Watching more than 7 performances is perfectly wonderful, and might improve your grade by giving you that much better a handle on the texts; however, you will not receive extra credit for them.

I'm sorry that extra credit is distributed kind of awkwardly -- I thought the 2/2/1 system was slightly more elegant than giving 5/3rds of a point for each of three movies.

The online discussion begins!

Carl (307) has posted a comment about the supernatural and the state of nature as a response to comments that came up in discussion on Friday.

Feel free to follow Carl's lead! As he notes at the top of his post, you can earn up to 5 points toward your participation grade by posting thoughtful, substantive responses (like Carl's) to questions, ideas, and problems that were raised in discussion. You are also welcome to respond to ideas, etc., raised by other posters.

Note that you will need a use or create a Blogger account. (I think you are already signed up for Blogger if you have a Gmail or other Google-based account, though I could be wrong about that.) You are welcome to post pseudonymously if you would rather avoid posting your full name, just email me to be sure that I know who you are so that I can give you credit.

Discussion questions (week 11)

Our focus in discussion this Friday will be IV.i, the show of kings scene. You might answer the following questions in reference to this specific scene, but I urge you to think about the relationship between the way these images and techniques appear not only in IV.i but everywhere in Macbeth...

1. Last week, we spent some time discussing the relationship between power and the supernatural. We talked specifically about the way Billy Pilgrim, in Slaughterhouse V, uses the supernatural (or at least unnatural) power of time travel to escape the forces of history. How, though, do we see characters in Macbeth succumbing to or escaping supernatural powers? By looking closely at IV.i, think about the specific powers of the supernatural in Macbeth. What can the three witches do? To what extent can characters in Macbeth escape this power? What is the category crisis here?
   
   
2. What categories of gender does Macbeth set up? How does the play throw these categories into crisis? Think both about the larger structure of the play -- particularly its emphasis on inheritance and succession -- but focus on one or two speeches that taclke the suggestions and ambiguities of gender. There are many moments you might think about; here is a smattering of lines:
   • I.v.40ff: "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here..."
   • II.iii.83ff: "O gentle lady, / 'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak: / The repetition in a woman's ear / Would murther as it fell"
   • III.iv57: "Are you a man?"
     
   • IV.i.79ff: "laugh to scorn / The pow'r of man; for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth"
   • V.viii.17f: "Accursed be the tongue that tells me so, / For it hath cow'd my better part of man!"
     
     
3. Prof. Dubrow has spoken about the significance of naming and predication as rhetorical systems in Macbeth. Think about a third (but related) system: lists. How do lists relate to naming and predication? How do they work as speech acts -- what are their direct and indirect effects? IV.i is rich with lists, but look also at lists elsewhere in the play, e.g. III.i.91ff.
   
   

Vonnegut reading Slaughterhouse V

If you are interested in listening to the rest of Vonnegut's five-minute reading of ch. 4 of Slaughterhouse V, it is posted here. (There is also a reading of the beginning of Breakfast of Champions.)

Incidentally, if you liked SV and are interested in picking up some more Vonnegut, I highly, highly recommend the following:

• Cat's Cradle
• The Sirens of Titan
• Bluebeard (a later and calmer novel, and perhaps a little less frenetic and scifi than SV or the other two listed here)
  

Discussion questions (week 10)

Remember to type out your answers to these questions if you want to get credit for ideas that you don't have a chance to share in discussion!

1. Our discussions of Shakespeare often return to his discussion of power -- perhaps the power sought by monarchs (Theseus, Henry, Macbeth) or the power sought by private citizens (Hermia and Lysander, Shylock, Pistol). But how does Kurt Vonnegut discuss power and the powerful in Slaughterhouse V? How is this discussion of power different from and similar to the discussion of power in the Shakespeare plays (and sonnets) we have read -- particularly Henry V and Macbeth? Why is Vonnegut treating power similarly to the way Shakespeare treats it? Why is he treating it differently?
   
   
2. [This question might be rewritten later this week if I can think of a better way to phrase it.] In what ways does Shakespeare's narrative technique in Henry V and in Macbeth seem similar to Vonnegut's narrative technique in Slaughterhouse V? Think, here, about the order in which the two writers put their plots together: the use of the Chorus in H5, say, or of the problematic narrator in S5. You might think about how all three texts move between the supernatural (God in H5, the Tralfamadorians in S5, the witches/Fates in M) and the ordinary.
   

Shylock's skull-cap...

...should be spelled "yarmulke." This is a transliteration from Yiddish, hence the occasional variation in spellings.

Upcoming movies

Here are the movies that TAs will be showing over the next five weeks:

• Tue. Nov. 27: Scotland, PA (2001)
  
• Wed. Nov. 28: Macbeth (1948)
  
• Wed. Dec. 5: Henry V (1944)
  
• Wed. Dec. 12: Macbeth (1979)
  
• Thur. Dec. 13: Prospero's Books (1991)

All movies begin at 6:30 in Humanities 1101. Be sure to sign in before you leave!

Discussion questions (week 9)

Discussion questions are back! In case you have forgotten their rules, my expectations are as follows:

• Before discussion you will spend about an hour reviewing your notes, rereading portions of the play, and thinking through answers to these questions.
• You will type and print your answers so that, in theory, I might be able to call on you in discussion on Friday and you will be ready with an answer. (Historically, I haven't called on people; still, I like having this as a threat.)

There are two questions for this week:

1. Take any speech in H5 as your own -- it doesn't have to be as long as the Archbishop's speech that we looked at on Friday, but it should be at least 30 lines. Look at the speech for four things:
   1. How and why does it use repetition?
   2. How does it try to persuade its audience?
      
   3. In a more general sense, how does it suggest the techniques by which language asserts power?
   4. How does the speech respond to, create, and transform metaphors that exist elsewhere in the scene or the play?
      
   
   
   
2. Put together an outline of Henry V by act, noting the setting, main characters and main action for each scene. This should take about ten minutes. Spend fifteen or twenty minutes thinking about the logic of this organization. Why does Shakespeare fly us around so much? Why do we jump to the French side when we do? Why do we get scenes with the barfolk when we do? Why do we get scenes with Katherine and Alice when we do?
   

Essay 2 assignment

Here, in case you wanted it, is a PDF of the assignment for the second mini-essay and the second essay.

Following the plot

I realize that our discussion on Friday was more than a bit fragmented. If you are baffled by Henry V, let me suggest three techniques that might help you tackle the text a bit more easily:

1. Read a summary of the play before or at the same time that you read the script. Prof. Dubrow has written study guides for each of the plays we are tackling this semester, which are all online here. If you are interested in detailed scene-by-scene summaries there are, obviously, dozens of options out there. After a quick survey of the options, I have to say that I prefer the Cliffs Notes scene-by-scene summaries of Henry V, available for free online, which seem generally more accurate and articulate than other versions I could easily find. (Ignore their pedantic "commentary," of course.)
   
   
2. It is usually ideal to read the script before watching a movie adaptation of the play so that your reading isn't influenced by any one interpretation of the text. Still, if you are having trouble understanding the characters, arguments, or plots of Henry V it might be worth watching a movie version before you have finished reading, so that the play seems like more than page after page of dull political speeches.
   
   
3. I know I've been advocating this every week, but I'm serious: if you get the audiobook versions of these plays and listen to them either when you're just walking around campus or if you sit down and listen to the audio while you follow along in the script you will become far, far more comfortable with the content of the plays.

It goes without saying, I hope, that the single best way to master any of these plays is to reread them -- twice, if that's possible. Remember that you will be responsible at 7:30 pm on Dec. 21st for every line of Henry V. Unless you have an eidetic memory you won't be remembering every line after one quick reading.

Germaine Greer on Shakespeare's wife

If you are into podcasts and what we know about the biography of Shakespeare, you might want to check out Germaine Greer's aggressive defense of Anne Hathaway in this podcast from the Guardian Unlimited Book Club. As with any Shakespeare biography -- and Greer acknowledges this in the podcast -- we have to be more than a little suspicious of claims that cannot, ultimately, be rooted in any sort of evidence. Still, this is worth a listen if you have the time and inclination.

Office hours this week

To clarify the 800 emails I've been sending out in the last few days, my office hours for this week (and this week only) are

• Noon to 2 pm on Tuesday in the Open Book Cafe (on the first floor of College Library)
  
• 3:30 to 5:30 pm on Thursday at the Fair Trade Coffee House
  

Reviewing for the midterm

The midterm that is coming up this Thursday is going to be fairly difficult. Prof. Dubrow and I have done what we can to prepare you for it, but the rest of the work lies with you: we expect your exam essay to prove that you have taken the time to master the texts we have covered so far. How, though, do you prepare for an essay exam?

Here, loyal blog readers, is how I would prepare:

1. Begin by reviewing your notes. Type up a list of terms and a list of themes that have come up in regard to MSND, MoV, and the sonnets. Don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions about terms or themes.
   
2. Look in your notes for hints about how to read passages from these texts: in what ways, for example, has Prof. Dubrow discussed the theme of time in the sonnets?
3. Next, review the texts themselves. This doesn't have to be time-consuming if you approach the rereading process carefully:
   • Don't reread everything -- you won't pick up much that way; instead, spend your time on one or two carefully-chosen scenes for each play, and maybe on three sonnets.
     
   • Choose scenes that seem like they could be useful for answering any sort of question about the play, and, if you can, choose scenes that haven't yet been covered in class and that you think will distinguish you from your peers.
     
   • Really get to know those scenes and those sonnets inside and out: how can you use that theme to discuss substitution? protection? exchange? time? desire? the performance of gender? the problems and advantages of the theatre? of comedy? of lyric?
   • If you are the sort of person who can, memorize a line or two from each scene. There's nothing more impressive than seeing a well-used quotation in an essay exam -- as long as you're not just tossing it in there because, dammit, you've memorized the thing, but because it has some real value for your argument.
     
4. Once you've done this, get together with one or two classmates. (If you want to form a study group but don't have any likely partners on whom to call, let me know and I can send an email out to both discussions.)
   • With your study group, hash out as many thematic connections as you can between the texts.
     
   • Make up essay questions -- How does X relate to Y? is a good format, where X and Y are themes -- and trying to find the most interesting ways to answer them with reference to the details (NOT THE PLOT) of the two plays and the sonnets.
   • Talk through a list of details -- metaphors and other imagery, rhythmic styles (e.g. the chant-like meter of the fairies in MSND), symbols, famous ("If you prick us, do we not bleed?" etc.) and not-so-famous lines, etc. -- from the plays and sonnets that you might be able to use for a whole range of essay questions.
   • Then sit down and write out a whole essay. Give yourselves 40 minutes, with 5 minutes for planning an outline, and share the results with the group. What are some strong tactics that you used? How might you organize your time more effectively?