Most of your writing will be on the blog. I will not be grading individual blog posts, but I will be tracking your participation. Blog posts fall into two major categories: literary criticism site reports. All blog posts should call attention to a specific thing that you notice, an eye-catching passage in a text, a particular object in a museum, etc. Ideally I want to see a an ongoing conversation about the texts we read and the sites we visit. I will give extra credit to anyone who goes beyond the basic requirements.
Litcrit Posts are due before the first class on which we are scheduled to discuss a text. Your post should respond to a question(s) about the text on the blog. Your initial post should be 150+/- words. You are also responsible for at least one thoughtful response to another student’s post. Those comments should be 75+/- words. The response posts should bring something new to the conversation — for example, a reference to another part of the text (or another text) that affirms or complicates a point your peer has offered.
When you post literary criticism, you will of course make general comments in response to the particular prompt. But whatever I ask you to think about, I expect you engage words and phrases from the passage. Here’s is an example:
In the beginning of Northanger Abbey, Austen represents Catherine as a sweet, gullible teenager who craves for excitement. She has been reading lots of Gothic novels. As a result, she and has come to perceive her own peaceful life as thoroughly boring. Austen’s narrator gently mocks Catherine for wanting all the drama, romance, and danger supplied by her beloved genre. The description of Catherine’s journey to Bath with the Allens offers a funny example. Before Catherine climbs into the carriage, her father gives her “only ten guineas” (9). That is a lot of money for the time, but she thinks of herself as a princess or countess. She is put out because her parents don’t give her a “hundred pound bank-bill” and generally show the “common feelings of common life” (9). Does she not deserve more? Worse, the journey itself is “common,” characterized by “suitable quietness” and “uneventful safety” (10). Such phrases reflect the hopes of the boring Allens. “Quietness” and “safety” sicken the imagination of their guest. The following sentence reflects Catherine’s very different perspective: “Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero” (9). In Catherine’s topsy-turvy fantasy, robbers and tempests are friends. Carriage crashes are lucky. Catherine’s imagination has been high-jacked by Gothic novels. She perceives herself not as a young woman who might be hurt or even killed by any of those friends. Rather, she is placing herself in a conventional plot. If the heroine meets danger, the dashing hero will appear to dry her tears.
Site Posts should present and discuss a particular artifact or piece of information that you encounter on a site visit. Like the litcrit, your post should be 150+/- words, but you don’t have to write a response to someone else’s post.
Keep an eye out for stuff that tell us something important about the Gothic or Victorian period or, more broadly, English culture. Look for striking images that capture what it was like to live in a different place and time. Treat those images just as you would treat a word in a text, finding out what you can about them and speculating on their meanings. The images that you post and write about might be an image — a painting, etching, print or photograph that you see on display in a museum or exhibit
When you present such an image, supply as much factual information as you can collect: who created it and when? where did it originally appear? what exactly does it depict? Then let us know why you think it is especially interesting. Does it illuminate a passage in the literature we are reading? Does it capture some crucial element of the cultural and historical context of those books? Try to describe as carefully as possible what you see and explain in detail why you find it intriguing. Here’s is an example:
I took this photo at the Museum of London. I wish that the museum provided much more information on this figure – especially a probable date. The figure immediately caught my eye, reminding me of the sort of racist caricatures that were part of the fabric of everyday life in the Victorian period.
The figure in the photo appears in a reconstructed tobacconist shop. It is similar to the American version of the tobacco store “Indian” figure that holds cigars. The humans represented in these statues are frozen in positions of servants, waiting on the white costumers. That, apparently, is an unquestioned assumption about dark-skinned people.
Note the physical features of the supposed African figure: jet black skin, exaggerated red lips, exaggerated staring eyes. He is dressed out to appear as “primitive” as possible. His only clothing is a sort of brightly feathered skirt which appears in inverted form as a headdress. He wears a necklace made from brightly colored beads of the same color and carries a roll of tobacco under one arm. The feathered skirt and necklace also might have had the effect of feminizing the dark African Other.
This demeaning caricature captures a crucial element of the Victorian international economy, which was based on buying raw products (tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco) from dark-skinned people in distant places and transforming them into luxury goods at home. Economic exploitation went hand in hand with racist caricature. Imagine the broad effect on the minds of those Victorians who passed such figures on a daily basis as they went on their shopping trips and errands. It seems to me that such people were being persuaded to think of themselves as civilized and enlightened subjects rather than primitive Africans.