Ode on a Grecian URL

All hebdomadals are due before discussion. Next week's hebdomadal topic will be posted next week. Seriously.

Topic: Comparing concepts

In lecture today, Prof. Ortiz-Robles gave us a quick tour of how all four novels we have read so far addressed work to illustrate how Hardy was using this concept thematically.

Choose another concept that you feel is central to Tess of the D'Urbervilles and give a paragraph-long tour of how that concept is treated in the other three novels we have read.

In your second paragraph, develop a text-centered close reading of how this concept is used in one of these three earlier novels -- pick a passage in which your concept is mentioned by Austen, Dickens or Brontë and explain how that author is using that concept thematically.

In your third paragraph, pick a passage from Tess in which that concept arises and offer an interesting comparative close reading of Hardy's use of that concept.

This comparison, like all comparisons, should be pointed towards revealing something new about the text. How do we understand Hardy's point more clearly by comparing his use of this concept to the use of this concept in a different text?