Monday, February 6, 2006

  • How much experience have you had analyzing and writing about literature?
  • How familiar are you with literary terminology?
  • Explain generally how this unit will work, including conferencing.

Introduction to Reading Literature: 15 minutes

  • When reading a short story you should read very closely, developing an understanding and a reaction to it. Writing helps you to develop this understanding.
  • To fully understand a text you have to look closely, beyond the obvious. Sometimes it seems like critics are grasping at straws. Was Hemingway deliberately taking these things into account when he wrote the text? Yes, he was!
  • But it not just about what the author’s intentions were—what they “meant” to say. If you look closely you can often develop an interpretation of the text that is something it might be saying. You are a unique individual and your personal experiences affect how you interpret things. You can make any argument you want about short story, as long as you can support it. If you want to argue the exact opposite of what people normally say, that’s fine—but you have to prove it by close examination of the text.
  • Just like your other assignments, you begin with a question, explore possible answers, make judgments and interpretations, and offer evidence that supports or complicates your judgments.
  • Unlike other assignments, the text is always the most important thing in literary criticism. It is your primary source, and you want to read and examine the words as closely as you can when making your argument.

“The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin didn’t start writing until after her husband died. Her masterpiece, The Awakening, was published in 1899 and was a groundbreaking work of women’s fiction. In this novel, the main character abandons her duties as wife and mother in order to pursue her art and have an affair with another man. Realizing that she can never be free of the shackles of her family, Edna commits suicide at the end by drowning herself in the sea, an act of emancipation. The critical reception was so severe, that Kate Chopin stopped writing.

In a story this short, every single word matters. Consider the first line. Into the pot, already boiling. We get a wealth of information in the first paragraph, no superfluous detail.

Break up into groups and each write a response to one of the questions

(10 minutes)

The style and tone are matter of fact, direct. We are in Mrs. Mallard’s point of view for most of the story, although at the beginning the narrator sets things up for us a little. Mrs. Mallard can’t possibly know that Richards sent a telegram, etc.

Interestingly, the sister is not included in her revelry. Women, the story implies, have internalized things just as much as men.

Flannery O’Connor says that short story’s hinge on a moment of surprise—an event or revelation that is unexpected, but then when you look closely at the text, you realize it was there all along. Consider the imagery that leads up to “free, free, free!”

The husband isn’t characterized as particularly oppressive. It is the institution of marriage itself that is oppressive to women, and this provides much more biting social commentary than if the husband was just an asshole.

The end is a perfect ironic twist. Do you think it was better that she dies at the end? Do you think that that one second of freedom was so immense that she could not go back to oppression.

Kate Chopin portrays the wife’s secret wishes for freedom very sympathetically, and then sardonically reveals the smugness and assumptions that pervade men’s relationships with women.

Discuss the story and possible paper topics.

Homework: CW 329-333, 343-353, Inquiring into the Story #’s 2-4

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Briefly go over Elements of Fiction and characteristics of critical essays.

Discuss Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”

Characteristics of Critical Essays:

  • Just like your other assignments, you begin with a question, explore possible answers, make judgments and interpretations, and offer evidence that supports or complicates your judgments.
  • The text is the most important source of information. You might bring in an outside source of another critic, but the best material is drawn directly from the text—closely analyzing the words, metaphors, and lines for additional meaning.
  • Your essay will have an argument that is supported throughout.
  • You might incorporate outside sources, but this isn’t required. If you do, you must incorporate them meaningfully, not just adopting their argument and claiming it’s your own.
  • Most critical essays assume that readers are not familiar with the text; however, you can assume that since your class is the audience, we are familiar with it. We might just need a refresher as you go along. (The example essay on “Everyday Use,” pages 352-353 is a good representation of this)
  • Introductions don’t start with general statements we all know. For example, “Shakespeare is one of the greatest writer’s that’s ever lived,” or “Writing about literature is important because…”