With the exception of the whole dog incident, Tanner did a good job introducing Hardy. Unfortunately, so many people failed to read even a minimal amount that it would have been impossible to have any sort of meaningful class. If you do not do the reading, you might as well not bother coming to class.
Note well the schedule, which has changed, and note well the blog assignment due today, which has not changed (nor have any others).
The purpose of this blog assignment was (again) to work directly with a secondary source—in this case a contemporary review of Daisy Miller by The Man when it comes to Realism in the nineteenth century. In working with sources, as you know, you have to provide context for your sources. So, given “Howells” and “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” and “review,” it would have taken just a few clicks in the Google to evaluate and contextualize this piece—just as you should do with every secondary source you use, which will be incredibly important to your final papers.
When the assignment says then to take issue with or support something that Howells says, the natural move would be to contextualize the quote, state the quote, and then explain the quote—as you would any time you use sources—and move on to weaving Howells’s comments with your own as you either support his statement or work against his statement.
Very few people did that, even though this is the third different assignment that has asked for that type of work. So, as you are completing your for the next assignment(s) and especially the all-important final essay, be sure you read and understand what you are being asked to do, and do it.
[I would also note that Realism does not slide; that is to say, this Realist text of 140 years ago did accurately reflect the movements and actions of individuals 140 years ago. That it doesn't reflect the way people act and talk now (although plenty of people, myself included, do use the same words and speech patterns that some of these characters did) does not make it not a Realist text.]
I thought everyone did a good job with Daisy Miller today. After talking about Realism in general for a little bit, and James himself for a little bit, we rightly focused on the actual novella.
Key questions included the following:
That’s a lot for 75 minutes!
Read as much Hardy as you can for Thursday, to stay on schedule.
Thought I’d do a little update since the last team results roundup. I don’t know what the winning group will get by the end of the course. Something.
Blog assignments 0 through 9 gave each of you the opportunity to earn 46 total points toward the eventual total of 68 points for blogging. Blogging overall is worth 15% of your course grade.
Below are the current points earned by team for blogging, through assignment #9 and including any bonus points for individuals who did extra credit.
Team Dickens
124.75/138 possible points
participant range: 37.25 – 46
Team Cooper
178.25/230 possible points
participant range: 30.25 – 38
Team Howells
118/184 possible points
participant range: 13 – 39
Team Eliot
72.5/138 possible points
participant range: 16 – 32.5
I just realized that I didn’t write a post-class post last Tuesday. Sorry!
From what I remember, Adam did a great job with his Chesnutt fact sheet, and we all learned a lot about ham. Doesn’t that about sum it up?
For those who like Chesnutt and want some pointers to more of his stuff, here are some of my favorites:
Reminder: blog posts for Daisy Miller are due no later than Wednesday at 5pm. I know a bunch of you have done them already and they’re good, but I’m not going to do my little round-up until everyone else has the opportunity to theirs as well.
I don’t really have a lot of comments except to say these were all interesting posts—free-for-all day always brings out a range of responses. I’ll just provide links to all of them, here, for anyone who wants to circle back and read later:
This is just a note to confirm that the mid-term revision option deadline has passed. Per the instructions, I will not accept revisions after Friday, March 26th, which was yesterday.
I received one revision; if you think you sent me a revision, and you did not get a “got it” email from me, that means I did not get it. Send it again, and as long as the file properties match (last revision date March 26th), I’ll take it.
We were led into our discussion of New England regionalist fiction by Amy H. and Caitlin who talked about Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
We mostly spent the time talking about the stories themselves and the connections between what you see in the stories, women’s voices at the time, and previous intellectual eras. I mentioned that Freeman and Jewett were quite popular (as seen by the number of texts they were able to produce) and were influential as to the next generation of women authors. Among Freeman’s other texts, ones that are discussed quite a bit include “A New England Nun” and “A Church Mouse”. Jewett is also known for Deephaven (1877) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).
Welcome back from break!
Today we started to talk about local color and regionalist fiction. We started with the West, because that’s where we are; Amy J, Meredith, and Sara ably introduced us to Twain and Harte. I gave you the scoop on Mrs. W. W. Macomber and her single piece of published fiction (?).
On Thursday we’ll shift to the East with Jewett and Freeman. On that day we’ll spend some additional time with Mrs. Macomber’s “A Gossip of Gold Hill” and put it side by side with some of the New England texts (although they were written 20+ years later).
We will not leave out the South, as we will talk about Chesnutt on Tuesday (03/31). NOTE! the schedule change below (also reflected on the course calendar):
The purpose of blog assignment #8 was two-fold: first, to give you some more interesting background material about the mid-century wars and their media, and second, to give you some practice reading and responding to secondary sources such as this article—for this is exactly the sort of thing you must do in your final essays. I chose this article in particular because it is very clearly written (even if you don’t know anything about sonnets and what not, you can understand the points, and the article is not filled with jargon that makes it unintelligible) and it has long been one of my favorite critical essays (and it’s not even my field!).
I thought those of you who did this assignment did a good job of picking out some arguments; working with them ranged from not-so-good to perfectly fine. So, before moving on to recapping some of the content of your posts, I want to again point you to this handout on working with quotations (the mechanics of it), and also remind you of the analytical portion of these matters: analysis must be there. To reiterate: put the quote in context, introduce the quote, explain what the quote is doing.
Many of you picked up on the minimization of the hardships of the troops. Heather said that she understood that Fenton “couldn’t get a clear shot if people didn’t stand still, but the fact that a good chunk of the people in the photos are in clean, pressed uniforms doesn’t make it seem like there’s a war going on.” Amy H. continues this thread when she says that the lack of “a war scene in the background or any other action mak[es] it seem like nothing important is going on. Of course, war is more than nothing important, but these pictures don’t show this.” Both true; continuing on to discuss the reasons for this—both working with what Houston said as well as additional information you might know (including the interplay of the print media, including the printing of Tennyson’s poem) would have been a natural continuation of this analytical line of thought.
Terry mentioned not having thought about the souvenir aspect before, and Amy J. talked about the souvenir as well. The concept of the souvenir was perhaps the most important part of this article, as this was the first time any sort of collection could really happen in a managable way. Even portrait miniatures weren’t really the same, as they were expensive and took more time than a photograph (bviously!) to produce. But think how people collect baseball cards in the 20th century: as a connection to “an experience that is by definition shared yet individually possessed” (Houston 381). What is the impulse to collect? That’s actually a question based in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, but ther are very real answers. Is it, as Kristi notes, driven from our “naturally perverse sense of curiosity”? Perhaps so.
I would also like to give a shout-out to Terry for reminding us that, 10 years later, “the pictures of the Civil War do in fact show that war is and evil place to be in, and in some instances show that soldiers do die in war.” What is the difference between the Crimean War photography and the Civil War photography, in terms of technology, purpose, use, and the overall cultural context? That’s a good question (that I just asked). Feel free to ponder it.
