Ode on a Grecian URL

The one-page diagnostic paper which Prof. Ortiz-Robles has mentioned in lecture is the same thing as a hebdomadal. If you did not write a hebdomadal last week, you must write one this week in order to satisfy this requirement. (If you did write a hebdomadal last week, you do not have to but are welcome to write another this week.)

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Topic 1 (Cancelled because Prof. Ortiz-Robles did exactly this in class on Wednesday)

Read the first paragraph of Great Expectations in the way Prof. Ortiz-Robles read the first paragraph of Pride and Prejudice: use intensive reading of the form, language, and implications of the first paragraph to predict the broader themes of the text.

Topic 2

Perform a bit of spatial analysis on this first section of Great Expectations: what is the geography of Pip’s hometown, and what is Dickens trying to tell us through that geography? Begin with but build on the sorts of ideas Prof. Ortiz-Robles suggested about the role of space.

Topic 3

Find a symbol shared by both Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations. How does that symbol operate differently in these two texts? What does this difference tell us about the differences between Austen's and Dickens's goals?

(Here is a quick and dirty definition of symbol: a material object that appears in the narrative – a gate, a book, a mirror – but which has meaning external to its role in the plot.)