Ode on a Grecian URL

I will keep all students' exams in my office--7134 Helen C. White--for at least a semester, until they catch my eye and I recycle them. (Chances are that I won't toss them until I switch offices or get a real professorial job in, say, four or five years. So if, four years hence, you want to see how you did on your final you're welcome to retrieve it.)

However, as I am rarely in my office, you should probably email me to let me know how you want to pick your exam up. I can pin your exam to the board outside my office, carry it with me to my office hours next year, meet you in a coffee shop at your convenience to talk through it with you, whatever you like.

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I doubt many of you are so dedicated to my lively posts to continue reading long after your grades have been delivered, but if you are still among my audience then you might expect at least a few more posts before I shutter this blog in two weeks or so--

• First, I want to give you a sense of the range of writing styles that earned full credit for the essay questions, so you have a sense of the kinds of "perfect" there are out there.
• Second, I want to give you a quick breakdown of the grades so you can get a sense of where you fit into the class in general and also a sense of how the class improved--or didn't--from essay to essay and from exam to exam. I have some graphs to share with you. Graphs, indeed!
• Third, I have a few notes on problems that recurred in the second essays, problems you might want to avoid when you write future essays.
• Fourth, I have some recommended reading for you if you're hankering for more books like Middlemarch or Frankenstein. Also on this list are some grammar books you might find amusing (amusing, I swear) and other books to flesh out the Best English-language Literature list that Middlemarch caps
• Finally, I think I'll probably point you toward my next class blog, because if you're reading my posts that far after the semester you might as well learn where to pick up for next semester.

While you probably won't be enduring another exam of the Romantic or Victorian variety, there's a chance you'll run into more ID and essay exams about literature in the future; hence, here are some strong answers to the passages we put to you on our final exam.

Once you make it past the basic identification of author and text, there are no strictly right or wrong answers to the significance of the passages we asked you to identify on the exam. These are simply some answers that received full credit for the passages.

Trends to notice include the generally close readings of the texts, concrete observations about how these passages fit into the larger argument of the texts from which they are excerpted, and an eagerness to analyze each text anew. For example, the answer to Passage 9, though brief, offers an impressive new analysis of the organization of the similes in the text.

Also notice how much these samples vary in length: the answer to Passage 5 is just as brilliant as the answer to Passage 3, but it's half as long.

1. a) Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
   b) This phrase occurs in the last stanza of the poem, Dover Beach where the speaker has finished addressing the sea as a sort of metaphor for the state of Victorian England. At this point, the speaker reflects on what he has observed based on the motions of the sea.
   c) Because this passage is in the last stanza, it gives meaning to the rest of the poem. The first 3 stanzas address the moonlight and the sea as metaphors for Victorian England. He emphasizes, in the beginning, the absence of light like he does in the end with words such as “darkling plain” and “armies clash by night.” The use of dark and night and the absence of light suggest uncertainty regarding the Victorian Age – specifically between tradition and reform. The last phrase, “ignorant armies clash by night,” suggests England fighting itself over this struggle between tradition and reform.
   
   
2. This passage is from Eliot’s Middlemarch. It occurs just after Dorothea has witnessed Rosamond & Will together, & immediately following when Will makes it known to Rosamond that she is nothing to him, & that Dorothea is the only woman who means anything to Will. Rosamond, used to always being considered the epitome of womanhood & the object of all men’s desire, is shocked beyond anything. She feels that she is “losing the sense of her identity” & “waking into some new terrible existence” because, in her shallowness, she always believed herself to be the center of all things. And it hurts. This new concept is being “burnt & bitten into her.” This is a representative (& extreme) demonstration of the themes of self-realization in the story. The characters all come a new understanding in the world, & in a sense, it is a symbol of what will happen in Middlemarch, that its people will one day realize that their small town is in fact not the center of existence. And it will be an unpleasant shock, just as it is to Rosamond & her “sensibility.”
   
   
3. Modern Painters by John Ruskin
   - Ruskin is here describing how to judge a piece of art. What he states here rids the reader of any thought that the greatest art is the most beautiful, most realistic, etc., which he explicitly mentioned in another part of the piece. Basically this passage is in conclusion to his premises that arts greatness cannot be measured against how beautiful, lifelike, etc., it is.
   - This passage is significant in that it summarizes a very main point in this piece, that art is great relative to the greatest number of greatest ideas it (the work of art) inspires. This idea is conducive to the theme that viewing, being inspired by and critiquing art are all highly individualistic in nature. According to this passage it can be implied that it depends on how the nature of the person how and how much they are given ideas by a piece of art. Further, it seems to me that Ruskin suggests even this concept is itself highly individualistic by using “I” a lot in order to remind the reader that these are his ideas, ideas which may or may not hold true for everyone or at least be true to varying degrees.
   
   
4. This is a passage from the beginning of the first act of Oscar Wilde’s “Importance of Being Earnest” in which Algy has found out that Jack is “Jack in the country” and “Ernest in town,” and is introducing the term “Bunburyist” to the audience. This is a significant passage because it employs the epigram (seen in Algy’s critique of Jack’s lack of ability in “literary criticsm”), which is one of the dominant style devices of the play, and affords the telling of many social truths (that the critics in the paper are rubbish) by outlandishly sarcastic claims.
   
   
5. This passage is from Walter Pater’s “The Renaissance.” It is at the very end of the essay + concludes his thoughts on the reason for and effects of art.
   The repetition of passion + the word fruit to describe I brings home Pater’s theory that art, which presents itself (ripens like fruit) is a different thing in each new moment, should be avidly “eaten” (so it doesn’t spoil) instead of being pinpointed + philosophized. It is there to “eat” and nourish (produce passion) and nothing else.
   
   
6. (A) Lady of Shallott, Tennyson
   (B) This is the very end of the poem after the lady ventures out of her tower and dies.
   (C) In her death the Lady of Shallott experiences all the things firsthand that she could not as an artist apart from her subject and nature and society. Before her death she hears occasional sounds through the window but is never around people. She is isolated from the community and really a myth to them more than an actual person. In her death those are all contrasted. She is now in nature surrounded by water and gardens. She is also surrounded by community, as she sails by the “knight and burgher, lord and dame” all come out to see her almost like she is a work of art in a museum, they crowd around to see her. Also how as she comes in it is “silent into Camelot.” It seems the tables have changed. She in life has been hiding, but observing these people of the town and now only in death do they look at her. And they finally know her name, The Lady of Shallott.
   
   
7. This passage comes from Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover.” It is right after Porphyria’s lover (the speaker) has strangled her with her hair, in order that she might “always” love him.
   The almost regular rhyme scheme contrasted with the morbid subject (strangling) gives off an ambiguous impression of whether the speaker is in his right mind or not. This frightful contrast is also perhaps Browning’s way of illustrating what can happen, the tension and uncertainty that can arise from individuals being made separate from the society. When Porphyria leaves society to join her lover, bad happens. It also expresses perhaps the kind of effect individuality can have on people - something which Browning makes fun of here.
   
   
8. 1) This is from Middlemarch, by George Eliot
   2) This passage takes place after Fred has been at the tavern (the Green Dragon?), and has observed Lydgate, still frantic over debt, betting wildly at billiards. Mr. Farebrother has just given Fred a pep talk, and told Fred that he (Farebrother) liked Mary but she likes Fred best and that Fred should “go for her” and be all that he can be. Book VI or VII?
   3) Once again, this deals with the theme of change and impermanence. Fred has gone through hard times, but felt a “regenerating shudder” at that moment. He was re-invented in Farebrother’s eyes. This also points to the theme of how our social peers shape and affect us. If Farebrother can re-invent Fred, maybe man can invent man, unlike in Frankenstein.
   
   
9. 1) Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
   2) The narrator is the poet and is describing Laura’s movements just as she is about to give in to the Goblins’ temptations
   3) This shows the significance of not being able to find allegory within the poem. The poet uses metaphor after metaphor yet still isn’t able to find one that works. This can also show how Laura is becoming less alive as she gives in, going from human to non-human as each metaphor progresses. The images of the swan, lily, branch, and vessel show this.

Let's see... Merry Christmas, of course, to those of you who participate in such things. And Happy Hanukkah--Happy pre-Hanukkah, I should say--for those of you who do that. Feliz Navidad, naturally, and a most reverential pre-Kwanzaa. And a glorious Yule.

No, your grades aren't in yet. However, as you can imagine, Prof. Ortiz-Robles wants them immediately. My goal is to get everything submitted to him before I go to sleep tonight--I'm pretty sure I couldn't possibly get away with turning them in even a day later, so this is one goal you can be reasonably sure I'm going to meet.

Your exams are completely graded; I'll post examples of strong answers tonight or tomorrow, but for now it might intrigue you to learn that the average exam grade was down 4.4 points from your midterm average. I feel that this was partly unfair--I become a harsher grader when my stress levels increase--so I have buffered all exam grades by 3 points. The other 1.4 points rest on your shoulders.

I'm halfway through the essays right now; the half of you whose essays have been graded have received commented copies of those essays; the half of you whose essay have not been graded will not receive copies of your essays until after your grades are in. The reason is that I will review and sprinkle initial comments on all your papers and then grade them; I will come back next week to fill in my comments and send the final drafts of everything back to you.

Uncovered whilst researching a claim about "Dover Beach" on an exam essay: "Dover Bitch," by former US Poet Laureate Anthony Hecht.

And as long as we're on the topic of nineteenth-century literary parodies, check (1) Wordsworth's The Leech-Gatherer; or, Resolution and Independence and (2) Lewis Carroll's The White Knight's Song (also available in p. 1668 of our Victorian anthology).

Dear Students,

If you ever want to see your final exam blue books again, just shoot me an email. Usually I won't mark them up too much and will just keep them in a filing cabinet in my office, but if you think you'll want to pick up your blue book next semester I'll do a better job marking Excellent! and Awful!, or whatever it is I do...

Part I. Identification of five passages. 30 mins. 30% (6 mins. per passage).

Write on five of the following nine passages. For each one,

1. identify the text in which the passage occurs and its author, (1 point)
2. write one or two sentences describing the context of the passage by identifying the speaker(s) or the character(s) involved; where in the plot the passage occurs; and what precisely is happening or being described, (2 points)
3. state briefly the significance of the passage for the themes of the text. In describing the significance, you should point to specific details - images, telling words, metaphors - to support your account. Without these details you will not get full credit for your answer. (3 points)

1.
You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them.


2.
Ernest. The highest Criticism, then, is more creative than creation, and the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not; that is your theory, I believe?
Gilbert. Yes, that is my theory. To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes. The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see…


3.
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight forever kneeled
To a lady in his shield…


4.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.


5.
And the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, to analyze, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced.


6.
Then joining hands to little hands
Would bid them cling together,
“For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”


7.
Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked. It was a strange reversal of attitudes: Fred’s blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes and retractile claws.


8.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


9.
She had no presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over her future action had relation to anything else than his work. But it was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition and the labour of her husband’s life. It was not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism.

• Each TA grades his or her students' exams, so you will be writing specifically to me. I'm not sure whether this makes much of a difference for you, but a lost of folks have been asking.
• Remember that these essays aren't asking you to write simple comparative analyses of texts; it is not enough to have a thesis that argues "Text A does one thing; Text B does something that is somewhat similar and somewhat different." You need to use both texts to defend a larger argument. You should, of course, address differences between these texts as a way of nuancing your analysis.
• (Update 12/18, 6 pm.) While you should not repeat readings that you use in either of your two papers, there's nothing the slightest bit untoward about using the ideas you put together in your hebdomadals.
• A quick hint: there is nothing unseemly in using the passages made available to you for Part I to answer questions that come up in Part II; indeed, it looks really good if you can take details from those passages to illuminate your argument.
• You can write on Middlemarch for both essay questions, if you like; however, you cannot write on the same storyline or section. For example, if you write on Dorothea's engagement to Will (which happens in Book 8) in your answer to question one, in question two you should address what happens to Rosamond, or the Garths, or Bulstrode in an earlier book.
• Question 7 seems to be implicitly relating permanence and impermanence to the relationship between artwork and artist. I've had some difficulty with this question, and it certainly is not the easiest on the exam. It is also one of the most interesting.
• In question 7, think of political in the broadest possible sense, something like of or relating to the governance of the public. If you want to connect this general evaluation to the specific politics in England - such as the controversy surrounding Reform - you should feel free to do so.
• As regards question 9: remember that irony doesn't only mean interruption. Even though you are not invited to analyze "Rime" in answering that question, it might be worth reminding yourself how Prof. Ortiz-Robles defined irony in that lecture.

Because there seemed to be widespread interest in having a Saturday afternoon review session, and because I will probably need the motivation to get to campus next weekend I'm happy to add a couple hours Saturday afternoon.

It's my expectation that you will come to these review sessions as to my office hours, with some work done beforehand thinking through exactly what questions you would like to ask and what texts you would like to review.

• Wednesday 12/14, 9 to 11 am, Steep & Brew
• Friday 12/16, 9 to 11 am, Steep & Brew
• Saturday 12/17, 2 to 4 pm, Helen C. White 7134 (my office)
• Sunday 12/18, 8 to 9:30 pm, College Library 1193D (through the Ethnic Studies room on the first floor)

Let me know if none of these times work for you and we can try to find some that will. My schedule is fairly flexible after this week.

I am nothing if not a Great Procrastinator. I meant these recommendations to be up at the beginning of winter break, but honestly there's no reason they can't go up now. I realize that you already have an enormous amount of work on your plates, but there's nothing to stop you from reading for fun on top of that. Indeed, there are many of us who survived our undergraduate careers more or less sane (though you might fairly critique the extent of that sanity) by reading for fun just a few hours a week. As an intellectual practice, free reading allows you to direct your own education and to reserve for yourself the right to investigate areas that your classes cannot adequately cover.

If you liked Middlemarch and are hankering for similarly powerful Victorian prose, Jane Austen's Persuasion and Charles Dickens's Bleak House are both powerful, beautiful novels that ask similar questions about community, family, custom, and love. They are not the lightest novels by those authors, so be forewarned that we're not talking here about the happy-go-lucky Austen of Pride & Prejudice or the adventure-story Dickens of Great Expectations.

Charles Flaubert's Madame Bovary, written just a few years before Middlemarch, is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century fiction: if Middlemarch in one of the greatest English-language prose works, Madame Bovary is one of the finest from across the Channel. It's also a bit spicier: think of Emma Bovary as a Rosamond Lydgate run amok.

The other direction to go after reading George Eliot is to read the works by slightly younger authors who were in awe of her and her accomplishment. Henry James, an American expatriate who spent nearly all his adult life in Britain and the Continent, took Eliot as one of his principle literary models. His early novels, particularly Portrait of a Lady, exhibit some of the same types of characters and relationships that we saw in Middlemarch. (We could argue that James's later works are even more Eliotic - particularly The Golden Bowl - but I hesitate to recommend them, as they are quite long and not generally thought as enjoyable as James's earlier writing. Frankly, I much prefer The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors to James's earlier stuff, but that might just be me.)

If you were particularly taken by the Dorothea/Celia/Casaubon/Chettam storyline, and particularly by the discussion of power and marriage, you might consider E. M. Forster's Howards End, which offers a fascinating take on a similar set of relationships--indeed, he seems to have had Middlemarch in mind when he set up the Schlegel sisters and the way they relate to the men in their lives. The differences between MM and HE would make for a fascinating study in the ways late Victorian literature transitioned into high Modernism.

Virginia Woolf, arguably the single most important British Modernist, admired Eliot enormously. Woolf's later works - particularly Mrs Dalloway (1925) - clearly respond to the kinds of characters and the styles of narration that we saw appearing in Middlemarch. Obviously Woolf's prose and plot differ from Eliot's enormously, but I think the threads of connection are fairly plain.

If you were into Frankenstein - and many of you seemed to be - you might tap into the world of thoughtful fantasy and science fiction writing it spawned. Mary Shelley's closest successor is probably Ursula K. Le Guin, whose A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequel, The Tombs of Atuan, wrestle with some of the exact socio-political problems Shelley was investigating. (Wizard is at least partly about race; Tombs mostly about gender.) On the science fiction side, writers like Kurt Vonnegut (whom we shouldn't think of as strictly scifi) and Philip K. Dick see genre writing not as an easy way to push out new volumes but rather as useful means by which to discuss modern society. Of Vonnegut, read Cat's Cradle, Sirens of Titan, and maybe Bluebeard and Galapagos; of Dick, read his short story collections. (Dick is a painfully bad writer, but he can construct a plot like few others.)

And here, at the end, are some recommendations for those of you who are thinking about majoring in English. If you're going to be serious about this major, you should study earnestly some of the significant antecedents to our literature: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are simple necessities; I read the former in the Lattimore translation and the later in the Fitzgerald, though there are some newer and slightly jazzier translations out. I hear mostly good things about the Fagles. Dante's Inferno is another essential, and his Purgatorio probably just as important--for some reason the Paradiso isn't well thought of. The Sinclair translation, in prose, is the old school word-for-word version; the Ciardi verse translation is virtuosic, though more than occasionally inaccurate. Less important, but perhaps more interesting, is Ovid's Metamorphosis and Virgil's Aeneid: Roman works, for whatever reason, haven't been quite as important as Greek or Italian in our literary history. I also recommend Madame Bovary as an important read for anyone interested in twentieth-century European literature: it's rarely taught in English classes, since it wasn't written in English, though most important Anglophone authors had read and deeply admired it.

And, of course, I'm happy to recommend books more particularly tailored to your interest; just shoot me an email!

Mary Sue left her notebook behind in our classroom and is trying to locate it. If any kind person picked it up, could you email me and let me know? Thanks!

For some reason, I'm always more nervous teaching the last day of class than teaching the first. Anyway, in my haste to get to the evaluations I skipped over one of the most important items on my lesson plan - and I did this in both sections. Here's the point, and I think it's an important one: I don't buy into the fast food model of education the University follows for its intro courses. This means that I would be delighted to continue working with you in future semesters - to talk with you about your writing, say, either via the Writing Center or casually over coffee.

I am always happy to suggest good courses (or at least good professors) in our department; and, if you plan on majoring in English, I'd be delighted to talk to you about your course distribution and the work you might think about doing over breaks in order to have a strong background for the classes you take.

For that matter, I'm always delighted to talk to you about literature. If you want any suggestions about great books to read over break, I am totally your guy.

And please feel free to contact me whenever you need a letter of recommendation written: because I keep your hebdomadals, papers and email correspondence pretty much indefinitely I can pretty easily review your work in this course and write a fairly detailed recommendation even years hence. (Of course, when you're applying to things after graduation you probably should rely on professors' recommendations. Anyway, I'm here.)

I'll be pursuing my Ph.D. here for at least the next three and a half years, during that time and probably even after you will be able to reach me at the same email address you've been using to reach me all semester.

Just to remind you, I will be available to help you think about the exam and review

Wednesday 12/14, 9 to 11 am, Steep & Brew,
Friday 12/16, 9 to 11 am, Steep & Brew,
Sunday 12/18, 7:30 to 9:30 pm, TBA

And, of course, if you have any questions about the texts that we've covered (or scarcely covered) in class this semester, I'm always available via email.

Now that we have the midterm as an example of how Prof. Ortiz-Robles puts exams together, it should be a little easier to review. I recommend going backward (starting with Wilde and heading back towards Tennyson and Mill), looking over the sections of texts that Prof. Ortiz-Robles discussed in class and thinking about how those sections reveal the larger aims of their texts. You should probably come into the exam with a sense of

1. The meaning(s) of each text,
2. The larger project(s) of each writer, and
3. The sorts of rhetorical and formal strategies each author uses.

Your answers to the essay questions (a list of which you will receive in class next week) should all tie tightly into your reading of these texts, so you are generally best off focusing on the questions and topics raised by the texts and only later thinking about the ways these texts help you answer the questions the essay topics ask.

Please, if you have any questions at all, contact me via email. I'm here to help you!

Chances are, if you've heard of The Importance of Being Earnest at all you've heard of it in connection to 2002 adaptation with Rupert Everett and Colin Firth in the title role. This is generally considered to be a Bad Adaptation, with its ridiculous implications about Algernon's debt and some roles filled for the sake of celebrity rather than comic intelligence. (To be fair, the director - Oliver Parker - did a perfectly respectable, celebrity-drenched version of Wilde's least-read play, An Ideal Husband, in 1999.)

The Good Adaptation was releasted in 1952. I have to confess that I don't recognize most of the actors' names, other than that of Michael Redgrave (famous mostly, I think, for fathering particularly competent actors) - but with that lack of celebrity seems to have come enormous comic genius. I have not, to this day, found a movie quite as funny as this version of Earnest (possible exception: Clueless).

Anyhow, if you find yourself particularly eager for an excuse to procrastinate in the next couple weeks, consider renting the '52 Earnest: you won't be disappointed.

...and if you do want to be disappointed, there's always the 1994 TV miniseries of Middlemarch, which I'm told is just wretched. (However, it stars Colin Firth's little brother as Fred Vincy, which must be amusing.)

The syllabus promises you the opportunity of writing a make-up hebdomadal if you've missed any of the hebdomadals over the course of the semester. You may write on either of the "Goblin Market" topics below, if you like. If I'm inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest next week I might also post a short Wilde question.

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So, in 302 this morning we were talking about how gossip about you helps form your character. Lindsay, who was particularly brilliant this morning, pointed out that it is gossip that goes against the grain of how you think of yourself - how you construct your self-image - that has the most power for change. I couldn't help but think, as an illustration of this phenomenon, of what happened to my teaching style when I discovered my Ratemyprofessor.com listing. Seriously, if you noticed a radical change in my teaching style about halfway through the semester that was the reason.