Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Spectacular hebdomadals

Last week's hebdomadals were generally fantastic: some of the strongest work I've seen from you guys so far this semester. I wanted to share a couple particularly exciting hebdomadals with you here.

One student wrote this lovely appreciation of Hacker and postmodernism:
I must admit that, at first glance, all poetry kind of blends into one large genre of writing by which I am easily confused. I did, however, find that upon closer inspection of the poetry covered in the first half of the semester, many differences could be discerned between them and the new, postmodern poetry of Marilyn Hacker. In comparing section three of Stevens’ “Sunday Morning” with Hacker’s “Lesbian Ethics, or: Live Girl-Girl Sex Acts”, the most glaring quality which differed between the two was their range in accessibility. Hacker’s rhyme structure is clean and repetitive which allows for the reader to rhythmically work through the meaning. Stevens keeps away from rhyming altogether and instead floods the reader with alliteration which leads to an almost tongue-tying series of lines like “Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind”. The language Hacker uses is also much easier to relate to. She talks of Fiats, planes and jeans; all relatively every day objects compared to Stevens’ “Jove in the clouds”. Differences in philosophical content were also apparent. Stevens writes of a crisis of his certainty of the existence of a heaven and Hacker recounts her stifled homosexual affair due to her involvement in a previously existing relationship. Where I did begin to see a similarity was where I started thinking of modernism’s cynicism. Just as Stevens is troubled believing in a “muttering king”, Hacker is left stuck in a rut “wasting precious spring”. To sum it all up, while perhaps postmodernism still grapples with certain crises such as faith or homosexuality, it does so without all the confusing rhetoric. By making her poetry more accessible, Hacker allows the reader to better and more easily understand its meaning.

Well I must (again) admit I am a little embarrassed. Basically nothing I have said related to what Professor Woolfe laid out on Tuesday. He did mention the complexities of modernist literature but didn’t necessarily say that Postmodernism was any less difficult. I also wouldn’t necessarily say that I have found anything original either. What I would say is that Hacker’s adherence to structuring her rhymes and straying away from modernism’s grandiose and abstract language did make it easier for me to grasp the feeling of the poem. I feel that this speaks to a possible modernist downfall which is that while, yes, the human mind is complicated and can very easily be expressed as such; there are crises and problems which can often be expressed simply. A Simplicity of expression which can allow for a more meaningful connection with the reader.
Notice the textual details at the center of this analysis, and in particular how it directly compares lines from from Hacker and Stevens within a single sentence ("jeans" vs. "Jove"; "precocious spring" vs. "muttering king").

Keith (313) volunteers this subtle, sensitive comparison of Morrison and Hacker:
Toni Morrison and her work Beloved explore many of the same themes as Marilyn Hacker's poem "Lesbian Ethics, or: Live Girl-Girl Sex Acts" using very different characters and settings.

Most obviously is the fact that Beloved explores its problems and themes using a specific "sex" scene (if we can even call it that) between a man and a woman. Morrison explores the idea that one thing can, in fact, be two very different thing at the same time. Like Professor Wolfe pointed out, the computer that I am typing on right now is both solid and porous at the same exact time. The paradox is explored in this scene in Beloved. Morrison begins the scene by having Sethe recount her most horrific story and then Paul D., who is known to have the ability to comfort women so much by his sheer presence, literally holds her breasts. This, as Morrison states, was as if finally, if only for a moment, somebody took responsibility for something of hers. Paul D. rubs his cheek along her back, her "tree", and seems to connect directly into her fears. "He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches." (18) However, this deep connection is followed by "Raising his fingers to the hooks of her dress" (18). This raises the question, is this act an act of long lost love and yearning, or a simple fulfillment of desire. To Sethe it seems to be an act of love, or perhaps its just her fulfilling her needs. Finally somebody had "touched every ridge and leaf of it" (18). Paul D., however, seems almost to be taking advantage of her. Either way, when they finally do consummate their love, "it was over before they could get their clothes off." (21) This yearning, love, whatever you want to call it is really satisfied before they ever have sex. The sex is almost a formality that they go through, neither of them really knowing what they are doing. Following this awkward encounter, both of their dreams about each other, the longing they felt from Sweet Home, cannot be satisfied since it has been built up so much. Morrison clearly displays how what can look like love from one angle looks a lot like desire and lust from another.

Likewise, Hacker deals with nearly the same issue as Morrison, just in a very different situation. Instead of post Civil War ex-slaves in a hetero relationship, Hacker describes a relationship between lesbians that could exist even today. Hacker has the speaker describing a fairly graphic scene in an airplane, and disclaimers it with "It's not that I'm inimical to sleaze." (1) This is an interesting word choice, as even the sentence has two different perspectives, one very fancy with a word like "inimical", yet it ends very colloquially with "sleaze". She continues with a description that the speaker felt as she watched from under trees. This is like the longing felt in Beloved by both Paul D. and Sethe. She continues with the best line(s) of the poem "…except that infidelity's/the kind of bad taste that leaves a bad taste/worse that mousebreath of a hangover" (8-10). The infidelity that Hacker has the speaker so badly yearn for is in fact a horrible taste. Not only that, but it leaves a horrible taste, perhaps an unsatisfied taste, like one experienced after a night of drinking. So much time is wasted on waiting, yet the speaker seems not to mind. The speaker experiences the same type of double reality as Sethe and Paul D. do in Beloved.

The double reality that Professor Wolfe discussed in lecture is clearly seen in both of these postmodernist works.
Notice how Keith is here doing exactly what Beth advised us all to do: he works first at the level of characters and psychology, but he immediately uses that level of reading to ask questions about the authors' larger aesthetic programs.

Hebdomadal 9

To build off Beth's lovely lecture this morning, I wanted to invite you to consider her last two questions in some depth.

Topic 1: Storytelling, bodies, and (re)memory
Develop a sophisticated, clear reading of Beloved that builds off Beth's claim that Morrison sees the process of recovering memory and history as inherently bodily.

There are a number of sub-questions you might want to consider here:
  • What is rememory and how does it differ from simple memory?
  • How are bodies like history?
  • How do bodies and (re)memories help both individuals and nations work through the problems of history?
  • You might also want to think in broader terms about why postmodernism embodies history?
Topic 2: Re-/dis-membering the community
Beth hinted that the piecing-together of Sethe's body is, in some way, iterated in the piecing-together of the community. How is the community like the body in Beloved? What do we learn about national attempts to cope with slavery from the dissolution and reconstitution of the community?

This morning Beth looked specifically at the scene of Baby Suggs in the Clearing (page 98 or 93 depending on your edition), but you should go on to look at the banquet scene (page 142 in my edition) or the first chapter of the third section (the relevant part begins on page 269 of my edition).

Our grading scale

I've been receiving quite a few questions about the grading scale, which I reproduce below. Remember, however, that I record your grades numerically; this means that there are no letter grades involved until the very end of the semester, when I transform your total numerical grade into a letter.
A 100 to 93
AB 92 to 88
B 87 to 83
BC 82 to 78
C 77 to 70
D 69 to 60
F 59 to 0

Friday, March 24, 2006

Two midterm essays that worked perfectly

It's one thing to talk generally about close reading and the exams; it's another to show you examples of close reading and argumentation in action. Here are two essays -- one long essay, one short essay -- that earned full credit.

First, Jim (314), has been generous enough to share his essay on Hemingway on Woolf. He here offers a clear argument about Hemingway and Woolf that hits all three marks we were looking for:
  1. It reads the passages provided closely and well,
  2. It compares the texts directly with one another within paragraphs and even within sentences,
  3. And, perhaps most rarely, it directly answers the question.
Here is his essay:
The story “On the Quai at Smyrna” by Hemingway and the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf both utilize a grand mythic method in order to convey their views on contemporary society. The tone with which they communicate their views of universal truth and human nature illustrates both their trust in our own natures, and their distance for them.

Hemingway immediately draws us into the vast subconscious of the mythic world by discussing the Greeks during a period of modern war. Mentioning the Greeks takes us back to ancient mythology and the origins of the first stories that probe human nature. The scene we see is an abysmal, apocalyptic vision of modern culture in the context of war. Hemingway’s example is a perfect one to illustrate the “panorama of futility and anarchy” of the modern world. It draws parallels to the mythic story of Noah, saving mankind by building an arc and ordering all animals two by two. This optimistic outlook on human nature is starkly contrasted by the Greeks, our cradle of modern civilization, breaking the legs of the animals and killing them. This passage is a mythic, apocalyptic view of a story about blossoming human beauty; it takes a cynical view of what was once beautiful and destroys it, depicting early 20th century Modern culture.

Most notably, the tone by which Hemingway destroys the beauties of human nature is both cold and distant. His short, simple sentences convey feelings of indifference; we all feel numb to the grotesque nature of our Modern world.

We see a more optimistic appraisal of Modern culture in Virginia Woolf’s passage. The context of her novel, although still in Hemingway’s war-torn time, is one of emerging hope and caring to deal with and comfort the world around us. Like Hemingway, we see mention of the Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare and Darwin. This provides the mythic context needed to convey the depths of human truth. By mentioning these mythic, historical figures, her story is taken out of time and mind and is forever immortalized as Modern human truth.

Unlike Hemingway, Woolf speaks of the goodness of our race with the noble concepts of, “…no crime, next love, universal love…” Woolf sees something good in humanity, and a way out of the “panorama of futility and anarchy.” This way is metaphorically mentioned when she says, “…trees are alive…” She used this symbol because trees have a vast, complicated, inter-connected root system that represents the connectivity of everyone. She knows what truths we are capable of and she illustrates how to go about acquiring them: human relationships. Another important symbol of a tree is that it reaches toward the sky, every climbing closer to its one goal, like our culture and its quest.

This loft idea of human potential not only contrasts Hemingway’s views but also his language. As opposed to cold, dry, short sentences, she uses longer poetic language that parallels her views of a complex, beautiful world.

Hemingway and Woolf both utilize a mythic method to convey truths about human nature, but these views are radically different. By using mythic symbols along with well thought out language, they are able to convey their ideas, both good and bad, of Modern culture.
Second, Derek (313), agreed to let me share his close reading of "The Second Coming." Notice that this essay not only breaks down the symbols and ideas raised by the excerpt on the exam, but both identifies the larger themes of the poems and explains how those themes tie to the themes of other works.
The Second Coming is a response to the chaos and sadness of WWI. It echoes the confusion with a pessimistic take on the end of times as it nears. The rimary signal of the poem is communication breakdown and, like Mrs. Dalloway, asks us to question our communication and its relevance to our existence and survival.

The falcon is a symbol of communication disconnect, as it frantically circles in widening arches to find the falconer. The tempo of the poem gives it the feel of an accelerating spiral going down. This spiral, or gyre, signifies a rapid collapse of society as its foundation of communication has been kicked aside.

Yeats uses powerful imagery that shows us "fear in a handful of dust" as the mind imagines chaos _in_ movement. "Turning and turning", "fall apart", "loosed" -- all imply movement and uncontainable chaos spilling into the streets. The falcon itself represents a powerful creature in movement, but is revealed as being entirely dependent upon the falconer and falls victim to its own motion when communication is withheld from it. So too, Yeats argues, is our existence rattled and forgotten when our communication is removed, such as in the instance of post-war Europe.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Hebdomadal 7

Topic 1: Postmodernism vs. Modernism
Compare any Marilyn Hacker poem of your choice to any of the poems we read in the first half of the semester. (Suggestions: section III of "Sunday Morning"; nearly any stanza of "Prufrock" or the "young man carbuncular" section of "The Waste Land," ll. 220ff; the last two stanzas of "Long-legged Fly.")

Begin by forgetting what Prof. Wolfe said about postmodernism this morning. Using your own observations, write a paragraph identifying both the poetic and philosophic differences between these two poems. Look for subtle, nuanced, rich, strange differences: suggest comparisons that sound like they might be stretches. Take risks in your reading. (Think, here, of the message of "Who Goes With Fergus?": no more brood on fears and hopes, but, instead, devote all your emotional energies to penetrating the aesthetic mysteries of the world.

After you've written this brilliant, original comparison of the two poems, return to your notes from today's lecture. How does your analysis fit in with what Prof. Wolfe was saying? Or does it not fit in at all? -- have you seen something quite new in the difference between modern and postmodern literature?

Topic 1½: Postmodernism for mom
Pick a friend or a member of your family who might, conceivably, ask you one day to explain the difference between modernism and postmodernism. It's reasonable to assume that, for example, your parents read T. S. Eliot or maybe even Wallace Stevens when they were in college, so you might use them generally as jumping-off points. Then, using specific ideas and evidence from a Marilyn Hacker poem or from Beloved, explain in plain English how postmodernism differs from modernism both aesthetically and philosophically. In other words, what do postmodernists believe that might be different from what, say, T. S. Eliot believed? And, considering this difference in belief, how is postmodern literature different?
Topic 2: Postmodernism vs. postmodernism
Pick a Hacker poem of your choice, and any paragraph from Beloved. (Suggestion: "Lesbian Ethics, or: Live Girl-Girl Sex Acts" and the not-quite-a-sex-scene between Paul D and Sethe on p. 21.)

As we begin to descend into bleak postmodernity...

...cast your eyes upon a world-shatteringly adorable hamster.

Beloved may look like a short book, but, please, if this is your first time through read it with great care. Although this is a tactic I will not otherwise recommend, it might behoove you to skim through the SparkNotes for Beloved before reading the book itself, so that you can familiarize yourself with the plot before you begin to grapple with the text itself.

Beloved is the most important book of the second half of the 20th century, and it will be read in classrooms long after academics have forgotten T. S. Eliot and Marilyn Hacker; it is one of those books your children will ask you about in twenty or thirty years. Read it well.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Essay 1: A debriefing

I have to begin bluntly: this first round of essays wasn't up to my expectations of what you could achieve. Many of the essays I've been reading for the last two weeks offered facile glosses of texts rather than substantial and creative interrogations of these texts and their place in the modernist canon. With that as my umbrella remark, I would like to explore a few compositional and analytical problems that arose at least frequently if not universally in these essays:
  • Vague, uninteresting introductions. The introduction to a lit crit should (1) establish the question your essay will be answering, and (2) present a hint of why that question is interesting and/or important. Your introduction should cut directly to the text at the heart of your analysis and should focus your reader's attention on the textual crux you will be addressing. Here is an example of beautiful, direct opening sentences:
    In lecture, Professor Wolfe explained historical and political modernity in the context of the Communist Manifesto, expressing that “man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relationships with his kind.” Yeats embraces this modernist concept in the poem, “When You Are Old,” by reflecting on his relationship with Maude Gonne, an Irish nationalist, who he was in love with for the majority of his life.
    The writer here begins with a clear statement of a specific context (modernity; relationships), and, in her second sentence, immediately identifies the poem with which she will be working and situates it precisely in that context.

  • Three-headed monsters. The three-headed form is the deadly legacy of the five-paragraph essay, in which your three body paragraphs all grow out of your main thesis but have no real connection to one another. This structure is forgivable in exam essays, for which you have only 30 minutes to craft a response to difficult questions, but I expect essays which you have two weeks to put together to be a little more tightly integrated. That is to say, there should be a visible accumulation of information in your body paragraphs: your ideas should build off one another, and your topic sentences should reveal specific, interesting relationships between your readings.

    One unfortunately common manifestation of the three-headed monster in this essay was the line-by-line analysis of poetry. If you decide to go through a poem in order, you should be looking closely at the way the sequence of ideas in that poem adds to its meaning; usually, it is far more effective to prosecute a reading thematically -- beginning, say, with rhetoric and symobilsm, proceeding to formal idiosyncracies, and ending with an evaluation of the poem's ideological context and argument.

  • Stylistical clumsiness or laziness. Although I welcome conversational prose, I expect the structure and tone of your essay to reveal the care you have taken to think through the text you are reading and your own analysis of that text; essays that make it sound like you are first thinking through your argument at the exact moment you are writing it down don't impress me. I'm hesitant to suggest an exact way you might distribute the time you spend writing essays, but at a minimum you should spend an hour closely interrogating the stanza on which you will be writing, and then you should spend another hour brainstorming, mapping, or outlining the argument you will make about that stanza. If you do end up discovering new readings in the middle of writing your essay -- and you almost inevitably will -- work to integrate these new ideas smoothly into your larger argument by previewing them in your introduction and adding linking sentences to connect new ideas to older ones.

  • Don't listen to what we say, just listen to how we say it. Lecture and discussion aren't there to dump information into your brains: literary analysis isn't memorizable knowledge; it is a learned skill. Essays shouldn't echo the readings that Prof. Wolfe presents in lecture or that I suggest in discussion; if you decide to build your argument off of these readings, carefully position them as mere starting points and carry your argument far beyond their bounds.

    Some of the best essays I read this time around essentially said "This is how you / Prof. Wolfe read this text; I think you're wrong and here's why." One of the most fruitful things to practice when you are first learning literary analysis -- and perhaps this will be the next hebdomadal topic -- is how to argue with others' readings of texts.

  • Keeping things clear: apostrophes, commas, and paragraph breaks. I'm not a huge stickler for grammar, honestly, although it is generally to your advantage to pay attention to the mechanics of writing if only to be sure that your reader understands what you're saying. That said, I saw some of the most egregious offenses against apostrophes in these essays: if my link to Bob the Angry Flower's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe hasn't helped you out, you might want to grab a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style from the library and look at their section on apostrophes. And commas. And paragraph breaks.

  • Spelling authors' names correctly: really, this should be the easy part. Eliot. One L. Seriously. Maybe 75% of you spelled his name Elliot, and this is exactly what happened last semester when I was teaching George Eliot. Why does this happen? Is there some famous pop culture Elliot whom I should know about?

The first essay: a note on grading

I am beginning to send the first essays back to you right now; they should be in your inboxes in the next hour.

You might notice that I haven't included a grade on your essay. I find that even though I put hours and hours into writing comments, students are inclined to skip the comments and focus instead on the grade, although the grade isn't going to tell them anything they need to know to improve their writing or analysis.

So, if you want to see your grade alive, you just need to answer this little ransom note:
  1. What was your greatest strength in this essay?
  2. What was your principle weakness?
  3. What will you do in writing your second essay to capitalize on your strength and to avoid the problems presented by your weakness? Be as concrete as possible.
  4. What questions do you have for me? Do you have any responses to my comments?
Check back here later today for some general remarks on this batch of essays.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

When Times New Roman just won't cut it any more

What do I do when I'm done reading your essays for the day? I read about the conclusions drawn by someone else reading his own essays.

(And no, I haven't finished grading your essays yet. I have five left, which means I should get them done late tomorrow and out to you either tomorrow night or Tuesday morning.)

Thursday, March 09, 2006

It's over!

Congratulations, all, on having lived through a particularly difficult exam. I understand that what we are looking for from you in terms of literary analysis can seem foreign and incomprehensible at the best of times, and that in the fifty-minute format of an intense exam like this one it can be enormously difficult to know what to do.

I am honestly looking forward to reading through your answers this break, and you should expect to get these back at the end of class two weeks from tomorrow.

Enjoy your breaks and get enormous amounts of sleep!

If you're worried about the second half of the semester in this class, I do have one quick recommendation: thinking about reading Beloved this week -- it's a short book, and you will be doing yourself a massive favor to read it both over break and again when it comes up in class after break. If you've read Morrison before, you might instead consider pre-reading Coetzee's Disgrace.

And, of course, I hope to see some of you tomorrow during my office hours, from noon to 2:15 at Steep & Brew. Come to ask questions about the exam, about your essay, about forthcoming or past course material, or just to chat!

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

What a strong exam essay might look like

Jenna S. (313) has graciously permitted me to post her lovely answer to the crisis of intimacy hebdomadal topic from last week. In this essay, she compares the crises of intimacy in Hemingway and Woolf in exactly the sort of attentive, clear-spoken way I hope to see you all answer the comparison-and-contrast questions on the essay. I have annotated this essay a little bit to point out to you the stylistic features I like most here.
In both, "A Cat in the Rain," and "Mrs. Dalloway," there are a lot of moments filled with failed communication and lack of intimacy. These moments are similar in the character's inability to communicate effectively, but different in their means of doing so. [1]

In "A Cat in the Rain," the lack of intimacy and failure to communicate is a direct result of the husband's failure to listen. On page 93 the wife says to her husband, "I wanted it so much. I don't know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain." Her husband had no reponse to this and he continues to read his book. It was not the cat that she wanted, but rather the cat was a symbol of her desire for intimacy in her relationship with her husband. [2] She says with certainty, "it isn't any fun to be a poor kitty in the rain," because she knows what it's like. Just as the cat is forgotten about in the rain, she is forgotten about by her husband. Here Hemingway uses this symbolism to portray not only a lack of communication, but how the lack of it can leave one feeling forgotten and desperate.

Woolf uses symbolism to represent this conflict with intimacy as well. [3] Throughout the book we hear a lot of talk of windows and doors opening and closing. To me these doors and windows were suggesting Clarissa's ability, or lack there of, to communicate. [4] She happily recalls the squeak of the hinges as the french windows plunged open in Bourton. The opening of the windows represents a time in Clarissa's life when intimacy and effective communication were attainable, a time when she was merely 18 years old. Now in her 50's, that possibility of attaining the intimacy she has desired for so long, seems somewhat impossible. She can only remember what it is like to have that feeling when she talks with Peter, and when he leaves, the reality of her inabilities sets back in. She says as Peter is leaving, "Remember
my party tonight," but it sounded frail and thin and very far away as Peter shut the door. So here, not only do we have the closing of the door symbolically representing Clarissa's inability to communicate, but it literally drowns out her voice as well. To me Peter serves as the real doorway to Clarissa's two sides. [5] He allows her to remember the times when she was not so private, and she had hopes of becoming romantically and intimately involved; times before she married Richard Dalloway.

The difference between Hemingway and Woolf lies in their different points about communication. [6] In Hemingway's story, while it is evident that the wife wants to be intimate and has the ability to speak her mind, her husband does not listen; thus communication fails. On the other hand, in "Mrs. Dalloway," while Clarissa has Peter, someone who is more than willing to listen, she can no longer find the ability within herself to say the things she wants to, and feel the things she longs to feel. It seems as though Clarissa has become discouraged because everytime she is about to share her feelings or be intimate, she is interrupted. Hemingway and Woolf present two common things that lead to ineffective communication. Not only do you have to be able to say what you want in an appropriate manner, the person you are trying to communicate with must be attentive and want to listen. Communication is a two way street. [7]
[1] While this thesis isn't quite as specific as I would like -- it would have been ideal for Jenna to have indicated briefly how these authors' means of problematizing communication are similar -- it's not as important in hebdomadals or exam essays that your thesis thoroughly preview your larger argument.

[2] Reading and explaining symbols is extremely important in the sorts of speedy analytical work you need to do in hebdomadals and exam essays, but it's just as important to think briefly about the nuances of that symbol, as Jenna does here by describing both the cat and the wife as deprived of affection.

[3] Transition sentences like this one make my life a lot easier. Make it transparent exactly how you are linking up your readings of these two texts, and I'll be able to understand quickly and more successfully what larger point you are getting at.

[4] Again, a close reading of a symbol and an expansion on the multiple meanings of this symbol in the text. Furthermore, this symbol is closely related to the symbol (the window) that appears in the Hemingway text. Excellent, excellent stuff.

[5] The insertion of the personal voice ("To me...") and a complication of the original symbol. TAs lap this stuff up.

[6] A clear -- if vague -- topic sentences that reminds the reader that now Jenna will be wrapping up her analysis. Composition instructors often call sentences like this signposts, in that they help keep the reader oriented as to how each individual paragraph fits into the larger structure of the essay. Signposting is particularly important to make order out of the chaos of exam essays.

[7] The essay ends on a statement meaningfully connecting the two texts together. While a longer essay would go on to evaluate the significance of this connection and, indeed, of the broader theme in terms of modernism, for the purposes of short essays like hebdomadals or those on exams this sort of conclusion is strong, specific, and interesting.

Reviewing, reminding

  1. Remember that I'll be in Helen C. White Hall 6172 this evening (Tuesday) from 7 to 8:30 pm. I'm not preparing any sort of mini review lesson: bring with you questions about the exam and about the texts for which you will be responsible and we'll work our way through anything you like!
  2. Two quick requests
    1. Write your exam in pen! I have no objection to your crossing things out -- skip every other line if you think you will need to make a lot of revisions to your essay.
    2. Write as legibly as you can! If I can't understand what you're writing, your essays may not get as fair a shake as they deserve. Please, have pity on my poor eyes.
  3. If you want to practice the exam, you can find my attempts to imitate the longer essay questions in this week's hebdomadal topics (NB: these questions replicate only the style of the essay questions you will see on the exam -- a comparison between texts focused around topics central to modernism; they do not necessarily replicate the content or difficulty of the actual exam questions)
  4. You can find a mock-up of a list of twelve passages to be ID'd here: again, this only replicates the barest essence of what the actual ID section will look like; I honestly do not know whether the passages to be ID'd on the actual exam will be as long, as obvious, etc.
  5. How might you study for the exam, given that you have only these vague resources available? I highly recommend comparing texts: grab two passages randomly from that list of passages to ID and ask yourself "What do these passages have in common? How do they both address the central issues of modernism? How do they differ? How does their difference define the range of approaches modernists bring to the specific problems of modernity?"
  6. Be attentive to the exam instructions: please, please don't lose points due to missing some of the nuances of what we ask you to do. To be specific:
    1. Do not write on the same text on the exam that you wrote on for your first essay. For example, if you wrote your first essay on "The Waste Land" do not write on "The Waste Land" on the exam; you can, however, write on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
    2. This same flexibility is not available if you wrote your first essay on As I Lay Dying: even if the essay question on the exam doesn't deal with a part of the novel you wrote about in your first essay, you still can't write on it on the exam.
    3. Do not write on the same author on the longer and shorter essay questions on the exam. So if you answer a longer essay question dealing with, say, Yeats and Stevens, you can't write your shorter essay on either Yeats or Stevens, not even a different poem.
    4. You must write at least one essay about poetry. If your first essay was about a poem, you are home free. If your first essay was about Faulkner, however, you must write at least one of your essay questions on poetry. (Prof. Wolfe is a huge poetry geek, and he wants to make sure everyone struggles through at least one close reading of modern poetry.)
  7. Finally, remember that even though we don't have section on Friday, you are absolutely invited to come hang out with me at the Steep & Brew between noon and 2:15 pm -- during usual class hours -- to chat about the exam, the reading, modernism, or what's going to go on in the second half of the semester. I'd love to see you!!
  8. And, as always, email me any questions you have about the exam or anything else!

Saturday, March 04, 2006

A sample midterm

Part 2: ID’s; SHORT ESSAY RELATING PART to WHOLE (Suggested: 20 min.) 40 points

Directions: for ten of the twelve passages listed below, supply

A) the author’s first and last name, correctly spelled (1 point)
B) the title of the novel, poem, etc., correctly spelled (1 point)
Total: 20 points

Underline book titles. Put poem and short story titles in quotation marks.

C) Choose one of the ten passages. Write a short essay explaining how the style and/or content of the excerpt relates to the whole work. If a character is speaking a portion of dialogue, it would be wise to identify the character, and perhaps the dramatic situation within the novel/story/poem. You’re expected to know the whole work in a general way, and to offer concrete, specific insights about the excerpt.
Total: 20 points
  1. What need you, being come to sense,
    But fumble in a greasy till
    And add the halfpence to the pence
    And prayer to shivering prayer, until
    You have dried the marrow from the bone;
    For men were born to pray and save;
    Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
    It's with O'Leary in the grave.

  2. I made it on the bevel
    1. There is more surface for the nails to grip.
    2. There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam.
    3. The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across.
    4. In a house people are upright two thirds of the time. So the seams and joins are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up-and-down.

  3. Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
    Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
    Their boistrous devotion to the sun,
    Not as a god, but as a god might be,
    Naked among them, like a savage source.

  4. While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you'll only keep me from getting killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus.

  5. Then the theatre was changed
    To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
    It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
    It has to face the men of the time and to meet
    The women of the time. It has to think about war
    And it has to find what will suffice.

  6. Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop, raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out flutter behind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and wreathed upon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C was it? an E, then an L?

  7. That girls at puberty may find
    The first Adam in their thought,
    Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
    Keep those children out.
    There on the scaffolding reclines
    Michael Angelo.
    With no more sound than the mice make
    His hand moves to and fro.

  8. Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic. It was not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.

  9. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
    Am an attendant lord, one that will do
    To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
    Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
    Deferential, glad to be of use,
    Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
    Full of high sentence, almost ridiculous--
    Almost, at times, the Fool.

  10. So we set in the wagon, but the music wasn't playing now. I reckon it's a good thing we aint got ere one of them. I reckon I wouldn't never get no work done a-tall for listening to it. I dont know if a little music aint about the nicest thing a fellow can have. Seems like when he comes in tired of a night, it aint nothing could rest him like having a little music played and him resting.

  11. And no more turn aside and brood
    Upon love's bitter mystery;
    For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
    And rules the shadows of the wood,
    And the white breast of the dim sea
    And all dishevelled wandering stars.

  12. If there were water
    And no rock
    If there were rock
    And also water
    And water
    A spring
    A pool among the rock
    If there were the sound of water only
    Not the cicada
    And dry grass singing
    But sound of water over a rock
    Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
    Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
    But there is no water

Hebdomadal 6 (Updated 3/7)

You might find it helpful to practice answering a question of the sort you might find on the midterm. I've tried to suggest, with these topics, the style of questions you might see on Thursday. I honestly do not know how closely these essay questions resemble the essay questions you will see on the actual exam. The only thing I am sure is similar between these questions and the questions you will see on Thursday is that all of these questions ask you to make fairly deep comparisons between texts and to associate those comparisons with the basic problems of modernism.

I will try to respond to your hebdomadal before Thursday, although obviously if you send in your hebdomadal late Wednesday night my response might not get back to you in time. Plan accordingly.

A quick note: for those of you who have already written five hebdomadals, your response to this hebdomadal has the potential to earn you extra credit. Here's how this works: if you write a weak hebdomadal, you will earn 0.5 points of extra credit; if you write a good hebdomadal, you will earn 1 point; if you write a strong hebdomadal, you will earn 2 points. I reserve the right to award, in the case of exceptionally good work, up to 3 points of extra credit, although I imagine I will only do this rarely if at all. When I respond to your hebdomadal, I will tell you how many points you earned.

Try to follow the restrictions of the exam: if you wrote on one of these texts for your first essay, don't write on it for this hebdomadal.

Topic 1: The crisis of faith in modern poetry

One of the effects of the First World War was a widespread loss of faith, a loss which poets shared and to which they responded. Working closely with these passages from Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot, describe in specific terms how these two poets cast the crisis of faith differently, and explain in detail how that difference is significant to our understanding of modernism. From Stevens's "Sunday Morning":
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
From Eliot's "The Waste Land":
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Topic 2: What can we conclude from conclusions?
Modernist authors are forced to cope with the collapse of the usual narrative structure of pre-modern times, in which the novel leads conventionally from the introduction of an imporant problem at the beginning of a novel -- for example, the difficulty of marrying off young women of the middle classes to desireable bachelors -- to a neat and thorough solution: e.g. marriage. This breakdown of the logic of the novel and the novel's narrative is perhaps most visible as modern novelists struggle to conclude their texts.

Working closely with the conclusions of In Our Time and Mrs Dalloway, quoted below, consider and explain how both novels address the problems and themes modernism in their conclusions, and how the difference in the way these novels address these problems and themes suggests important divisions within modernism itself.

From Mrs Dalloway:

For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.

“Richard has improved. You are right,” said Sally. “I shall go and talk to him. I shall say goodnight. What does the brain matter,” said Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”

“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she was.
From In Our Time:
The king was working in the garden. He seemed very glad to see me. We walked through the garden. This is the queen, he said. She was clipping a rose bush. Oh how do you do, she said. We sat down at a table under a big tree and the king ordered whiskey and soda. We have good whiskey anyway, he said. The revolutionary committee, he told me, would not allow him to go outside the plaace grounds. Plastiras is a very good man I believe, he said, but frightfully difficult. I think he did right though shooting those chaps. If Kerensky had shot a few men things might have been altogether different. Of course the great thing in this sort of an affair is not to be shot oneself!

It was very jolly. We talked for a long time. Like all Greeks he wanted to go to America.

A quick word about apostrophes

Apostrophes, as you know, indicate possessives rather than plurals. Hence "the cat's" means "belonging to the cat" rather than "three or more cats." For some reason, this distinction is one of the first to fly out the window when we write papers: I have seen A papers with misused apostrophes.

When you are creating the possessive of a proper noun -- for instance, an author's name -- you always add 's, even if the name ends in an s already. Hence:
Yeats = The last name of William Butler Yeats
Yeats's = Belonging to Yeats
Yeats' = Utterly, utterly meaningless
Seriously, reading sentences like Yeats poem responds to the crisis of intimacy, etc., is a little... distressing.

(It's possible you were taught that names of Biblical figures can be given a possessive without adding an s after the apostrophe: Jesus' cross, Moses' tablets, etc. This is technically true, although this option has fallen into disuse. In any case, Yeats is not a Biblical figure, however much he might have seen himself as one.)

For further information on this topic, consult Bob the Angry Flower's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe.