Thursday, January 28, 2010

No Class Today (Thursday)

As the coming ice/snow storm is a lesson itself in the sublime, let's not risk coming to class today (especially for those traveling).  We'll pick up with Austen on Tuesday.  If you want to read ahead, now would be a good time, since Northanger Abbey, though short, qualifies more as a novel than Otranto does.  Stay safe and warm! 

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Close Reading Questions for Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818): Biographical Notice & Chs.1-8

(above: an image from the new BBC version of Northanger Abbey airing on PBS February 14th--check local listings!)

1. The “Biographical Notice” that opens the work was written by Austen’s brother, Henry, after her death. Though this “preface” does not seek to fictionalize Austen’s work, it does present a “fictional” portrayal of Austen to cater to pubic taste and sensibility. How is Henry selling Austen in this Preface, and how might this influence how we read or interpret the work itself? Cite a specific passage or two to support your reading.

2. How does the narrator (as opposed to the author) introduce and describe Catherine’s formative years? Related to this, how would you describe the narrator’s tone? Consider a passage such as this one, “…from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives” (I.17).

3. Many critics (among them the editor, Marilyn Butler) have noted that Northanger Abbey is a novel about novels written by a reader to other readers. In this sense, it can almost be read as a “fan” work that is contributing to the very genre it emulates. Where do we see these “fan” elements and what role do they play in the work itself? Consider comments the narrator makes as well as conversations between the characters themselves.

4. How does Austen characterize the society of Bath throughout the early pages of the novel? What role does dialogue, in particular, play in drawing this portrait? Related to this, what do you feel is her purpose in bringing Catherine to the relatively closed society of Bath (a resort town—people went there for the exclusive society and the healing waters).

Edmund Burke on the Sublime (handout from Tuesday's class)

From Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1754)

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer, are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy…”

“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the interior effects are admiration, reverence and respect…”

“To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings…In nature, dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate…”

“Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime…I am apt to imagine that height is less grand than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a precipice than at looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than when it is smooth and polished…Another source of the sublime is Infinity; if it does not rather belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime…”

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Small Change in Grade Breakdown in Syllabus

I edited the grade brakedown as listed in your syllabus to give more weight to the major components of class.  Basically, I removed the 15 points for your Blog Response, since that should simply be part of your Daily Participation grade (which I lowered from 20 to 15 points).  I have redistributed these points to the Weekly Repsonse Questions (from 50 to 60 points) and your papers (from 35 points each to 40 points each).  I just wanted to make sure you were aware of these changes (see below):

REQUIRED WORK (Total 200 points)
 Daily Participation/Interest: 15 points
 Weekly Response Questions: 60 points
 Two Papers: (40 each) 80 points
 Gothic Storytelling: 15 points
 Final Exam: 30 points

Let me know if you have any questions.  And be sure you read the questions for Tuesday (below).

Friday, January 22, 2010

Note about Chapter 3 Readings from The Gothic Tradition

I photocopied Chapter 3 for the class on Thursday, but if you didn't make it to class, you can find the copies in my box (336C).  They're important so you'll want to pick them up if you still don't have The Gothic Tradition.  See you on Tuesday...

Close Reading Questions for Stevens, Ch.3 (Beckford, Lewis, Radcliffe, Coleridge, Keats & Poe) and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan (1816)


Answer TWO of the following...

1. Which of the authors seems most indebted or inspired by Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto? Cite a specific example from the excerpt and point to its inspiration in Walpole’s original.

2. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) was a terrifically successful work—so much so, that his contemporaries called him Matthew “Monk” Lewis. It is also said to represent, even more than Otranto, the true hallmarks of the Gothic horror novel. Why do you think this is? What elements, ideas, or expressions seem to capture a more “modern” sense of the genre?

3. Consider the poems by Coleridge, Keats, and Poe: how does poetry (which is rarely narrative) inhabit the Gothic genre? What elements from Otranto are visible in these poems—and how might poetry develop Gothic themes in different ways/forms? (Hint: poetry can express one powerful precursor of the Gothic—see Stevens, Ch.1—that evades a prose novel).

4. In Coleridge’s Preface to “Kubla Khan,” he writes, “if [the poem] indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort” (Longman, 545). Why do you think he uses the word “things,” and how might this Preface change how we read/interpret the poem? Consider Walpole’s similar statements in his First and Second Prefaces.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Close Reading Questions for “Early Responses to The Castle of Otranto (pp.117-143)

NOTE: You don’t have to read all of the Appendix unless you are so inspired. The articles I want you to focus on are #’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15

Answer TWO of the following for Thursday...

1. A general question: which response do you most agree with as a reader? Does this response seem especially “modern” to you (in other words, is this how most people would read/view it today)? Explain why you are sympathetic to this critique of the book.

2. Many of the reviews decry the “unchristian” or “barbaric” moral of the novel. Consider Robert Jephson’s review of The Count of Narbonne (a play based on Otranto, Review #8): “What conclusion can be drawn from hence, but that oracles, divinations, and prophecies, should be believed and must always be fulfilled? Such notions can only tend to enslave the mind, and must bring us back to the long exploded errors of ignorance and barbarism” (127). Why do you think so many reviews focus on the “moral” of the work, and is this truly the “heart” of the book? Are they missing the point?

3. Sir Walter Scott (Review #12) defends the supernatural elements in Otranto (rather than dismissing them as farce), writing that the “moonlight vision of Alphonso dilated to immense magnitude, the astonished group of spectators in front, and the shattered ruins of the castle in the back-ground, is briefly and sublimely described. We know no passage of similar merit…” (139). Based on your reading of Romantic literature (esp. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, etc.), how are these elements “sublime,” and why might Scott defend them as essential to Walpole’s plan?

4. How does Clara Reeve (Review #7) position her own novel in relation to The Castle of Otranto? Reeve’s novel, The Old English Baron, is a reworking of Otranto in a more modern and English setting. She clearly meant to improve upon the book and make it more “sensible” and less likely to “excite laughter” (125). According to the Preface, what does she acknowledge, modify, or improve?

Friday, January 15, 2010

Close Reading Questions for Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (Chs.3-5)

 
(above: a possible portrait of Manfred (or how I imagine him to be) courtesy of Jean Fouquet's potrait of Charles VII of France, circa 1400's). 

Answer TWO of the following for Tuesday's class (if you choose to do these; otherwise wait for Thursday's questions)

1. In the Introduction to Otranto by Michael Gamer, he writes that many readers pick up on the “camp” qualities of the book. As he writes, “They occur in the book’s superfluous details (as when Bianca notes that no one has slept in the chamber below them ‘since the great astrologer that was your brother’s tutor drowned himself’ (p.38)), in its habit of setting conventions against one another (as when the chivalry-mad Theodore unchivalriously pledges himself both to Matilda and to Isabella because he cannot tell the two heroines apart), and in its crucial scenes (as when the statue of Alphonso the Good ludicrously bleeds from its nose)” (xxix). How do you read/interpret these moments of “camp” or seeming absurdity? Is he laughing at the characters, the gothic elements, or the novel itself? 

2. Toward the end of the work, Jerome (the friar) berates Manfred for his evil deeds, remarking: “behold the completion of woe fulfilled on thy impious and devoted head! The blood of Alfonso cried to heaven for vengeance; and heaven has permitted its altar to be polluted by assassination, that thou mightest shed thy own blood at the foot of that prince’s sepulcher!” (95-96). This view suggests that Manfred was merely a chess piece to be manipulated by God/Fate to atone for the sins of his ancestors (“the sins of the fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation”). Is Jerome the moral voice of the novel (and therefore is telling us how to "read" it)?  Was Manfred acted upon or did he create the evil that he must now atone for?

3. In his essay, The First English Gothic Novel: The Castle of Otranto, James Norton suggests that “Walpole, who was deeply involved in politics, uses Gothic discourse to critique the English political structure that was created and perpetuated a system of privilege that protected and sustained male corruption and oppression.” How might we read the novel as a political allegory—what passages or events might seem to underline this quality of “male corruption and oppression”?

4. Some contemporary reviews attacked Otranto for its “Gothic devilism,” finding it disturbingly atheistic (after all, the ghosts and spirits are real in the context of the book). However, most Gothic works invoke the spirituality of a distant age in order to contrast it with the Enlightenment ethos. What do you think was Walpole’s intention in Otranto—to satirize the church and its doctrines, or to reaffirm a more orthodox spirituality?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Note About Posting Comments

When you post a comment, clink on "comments" and paste your response into the box.  When you click on Post Comment, it will ask you to choose an identity from a scroll down menu: you can either choose "Anonymous," or you can sign in with a Google account or make one on the spot.  To save yourself trouble, just choose "anonymous"--but be sure to include your name with the questions.   Once you do that, it should save your comment.  If not, try again...and if that doesn't work, please e-mail me and I'll assist you.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Full E-Text of The Castle of Otantro



Follow the link below to read The Castle of Otranto on-line (a decent stopgap until the bookstore coughs up a few more copies): http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/walpole/horace/otranto/

Close Reading Questions for Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (pp.5-53—Prefaces and Chapters 1-2)


Answer TWO of the following...

1. In the Preface to the First Edition (1764), Walpole (pretending to be merely the translator of an obscure Italian work) writes, “Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times who should omit all mention of them” (6). What do you think he means by this statement, considering the work was not written in the Middle Ages, and is the product of his own fanciful imagination? What “manners” do you think he is trying to be faithful to in his work, and how might his Preface prepare us to read it?

2. In the Second Preface, Walpole writes that is trying “to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern” (9). In saying this, he is trying to reconcile the modern romance (the novel), which was about real people in domestic situations, and the ancient romance, which was about supernatural wonders and heroism. How do the first two chapters seem to balance the mundane and the supernatural? Does the novel retain any element of “reality” amidst all the gigantic helmets and weeping portraits? Cite a specific passage in your response.

3. Discuss the use of dialogue in the novel, which has been called both “accurate and elegant” (Appendix, 118) as well as hopelessly stilted. Why does he rely so much on the interaction between various characters (often master and servant) when this dialogue is often merely expository? What does the dialogue do for the story?

4. In what way might The Castle of Otranto be considered Shakespearean? For example, Shakespeare also modeled most of his plays on old histories or romances (Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, etc.), yet “modernized” them for his audience. How might Walpole be doing much the same—and what strikes you as Shakespearean about this work, whether in language or intent? Again, cite a specific example or two in your response.