Ode on a Grecian URL

This hebdomadal is due before discussion on Friday, December 1st.

Topic 1: The portraits of Portrait

Prof. Ortiz-Robles suggested in lecture this afternoon that the way characters are described in the novel's opening chapters models the characters themselves: Ralph Touchett is described from multiple points of view at the beginning of chapter 5, in the way that he himself understands topics from multiple points of view. Choose any portrait that Prof. Ortiz-Robles didn't touch on in class and examine how its style of description models the personality or mindset of that character. You might think about using this close reading and analysis to develop and support a larger claim about how Henry James treats interiority and exteriority.

I am finally caught up with grading hebdomadals. There is a hebdomadal topic posted for you to answer before this Friday, if you choose, and there will be more topics posted over the next three weeks. For some of you (I think I have emailed everyone whom this effects) this means you have just enough time to get all your required five hebdomadals in; for the rest of you, this means you have ample opportunities to rack up some extra credit before the final exam.

Let me know if you have any questions, and have an excellent Thanksgiving!

Hi, all! This hebdomadal is due at 11 am on the morning of Friday, November 24th.

Topic 1: Suspense and addiction in The Moonstone

For the last two lectures, Prof. Ortiz-Robles has been developing the connection between the suspenseful structure of The Moonstone and its physical effect on the reader. At the end of lecture today, he tantalizingly suggested that fiction -- or at least detective fiction -- could be understood in reference to opium.

Choose a meaty paragraph that describes in some detail the effect of opium either on Ezra Jennings or on Franklin Blake. How is this effect likened to the act of reading, or to the effect of Gabriel Betteredge's "detective-fever"?

Topic 2: How is reading detective work?

How does the novel describe the reading practice? Base your answer on a close reading of one of these four scenes:

• The "Oriental manuscript," pp. 196 and 198
• Rosanna Spearman's letter to Franklin Blake, pp. 309ff
• Ezra Jenning's transcription and translation of Thomas Candy's delerious ramblings, pp. 382f
• Gabriel Betteredge's final comments on Robinson Crusoe, p. 458

You might want to consider how these scenes enact detection, both deduction and induction.

Topic 3: Determining the effect of symbolic determination

How does the conclusion of the novel resolve or fail to resolve the problems of symbollic overdetermination that we discussed in class on Friday?

Topic 1: Narration and narrative in The Moonstone

In our conversation about The Moonstone last Friday, we noticed that the book -- or the first narrator, at any rate -- discussed at great length its own creation. Pick either a moment in which a narrator discusses his or her own narration or a moment in which a narrator comments on one of the other narrators and closely read that moment to develop a detailed answer to this question: Why is this novel so preoccupied with its own creation?

Topic 2: Asking questions of a detective story

The Moonstone is, we could say, a novel of questions. Still, there are questions asked by the novel and then there are questions we can ask of the novel. Look back at the first topic of the first hebdomadal and use its structure to develop a question that you would ask about the text that does not concern the plot, or at least doesn't concern the plot as plot.

Scroll down for the new hebdomadal topics, digital copies of the second essay assignment, and a conference sign-up sheet!

At the beginning of discussion next week there will be a short quiz on Tess of the d'Urbervilles, to motivate you to finish the reading. As with the last quiz we took, failure on this quiz will lower your final grade by 2 points while enormous success will count as a full hebdomadal -- it will count as an extra credit hebdomadal if you have already written the required 5.

Hi, all! As before, I am asking that you come to your conference with 15 minutes' worth of things to talk through. You're going to get the best ideas out of me if you come with as full a draft as possible -- aim for bringing at least a draft of your first paragraph and an outline of the rest. The more and the more specific questions you can bring me the more useful I will be to you. Shoot me an email if you want to sign up for a slot!

Also remember that the Writing Center can help you enormously as you work to develop your argument! (I'm happy to help you come up with your argument, but I am going to leave most of the development to you.) You can sign up for a conference with a Writing Center instructor by calling 263-1992 Monday through Friday during business hours. There is also walk-in writing instruction available in many dorms and in the west corridor of Memorial Library on certain evenings listed here. On Sunday through Tuesday nights there is also a new synchronous online service that works via IM, explained here.

All conferences are in Steep & Brew on State Street.

Monday 11/6
1:30 pm -
1:45 -
2:00 -
2:15 -
2:30 -
2:45 -
3:00 -
3:15 -

Monday 11/13
1:30 pm - Helen
1:45 - Tony
2:00 - Laura S.
2:15 - Kelsey M. & Laura G.
2:30 -
2:45 - Kelsey B.
3:00 - Scott
3:15 -

Tuesday 11/14
3:15 pm - Lydia
3:30 - Ellen
3:45 - Ben
4:00 - Jane
4:15 - Ben
4:30 - Laura S.

• .doc (39 kb)
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• .RTF (21 kb)

Topic 1: Abstracting your essay

Explain the thesis, evidence, analysis and conclusion of your second essay in a single 300-word paragraph-long abstract. This is not the same thing as an introductory paragraph: I'm asking you to give me a sense of what passages you will be closely reading, what your close readings will be, how you will analyze those close readings, and how you will suggest something about the significance of that close reading. Consequently, this hebdomadal should aggressively pursue the central argument of your essay.

If you are collaborating on your essay, then you may collaborate on this hebdomadal as well.

Topic 2: Finishing Tess of the d'Urbervilles

(Note: I have not yet finished Tess; I reserve the right to rewrite this prompt when I do. Any essays submitted before then will be perfectly valid, of course.)

What does it mean for a novel that emphasizes the importance of cycles to come to an ending? You might want to compare the end of Tess to the end of Great Expectations -- in discussing the end of GE, Prof. Ortiz-Robles asked what it meant for a novel about change and progress to come to an end. How does Tess, a novel also about change and progress, negotiate its cyclical argument and its truncated linear form?