The Ancient Fantasies of Foreign Strangers

1)      Introduction to the Course

3)      Our Policy and Procedure Sheet

3)      Our Hub-Blog

4)      Our Syllabus

5)      A Brief Introduction to Blogging and Eh 241

6)      Who are you?

7)      Who am I?

Introduction to Marry Shelley and Frankenstein

Today’s Agenda:

Presentations

A: Albert: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

B: RadKliffe: The Knight’s Tale

Transition from Robinson Crusoe (1719) to Frankenstein (1818)

For our purposes, the two most significant transformations that occurred between the writing of Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein were the American and French Revolutions.

I’m going to presume that you know something about the former, as you were undoubtedly taught about the war for independence in High School. I think, for now, it would be enough to say that the war was, in general, a war against oppressive governance. But it was also founded in a philosophical presumption that we need to consider, namely, that the United States was to be something very different than the the theocratic monarchies that ruled Europe.

Let’s consider three quotes from three early presidents, all of whom were major players in the American Revolution:

John Adams

“The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on theChristian religion.”

Thomas Jefferson

“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not findin our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

James Madison

“What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyrrany. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.”

Now, one may be tempted to read these as simply indictments of religion, and you will often hear atheists uses these quotes as evidence the the founding fathers simply did not believe in God. Nothing could be further from the truth. These quotes express a weariness with orgnaized relgion: specifically with the long and by this time bloody battle between Protestants and Catholics that had upended England, and the long wars between various Christian, Jewish, and Islamic sects in Europe.

And it is this dissatisfaction with religiously inspired political conflict we need to consider today, as we approach Frankenstein.

Now let’s turn our attention to the French Revolution, which sought to reproduce in France a similar revolution against authory that occured in America. For a time, it unseated the monarchy and attempted to install governance based on enlightenment principals, but in the end deteriorated into chaos and mob rule and the emergence of a new olgarchy — as did the American Experiment, by the way.

Well, if you were in England at the time, you could look at these revolutions in one of two ways. You could see them as the natural failures of dissatisfied peasants, or you could perhaps hope to bring something like these revolutions into England itself. Mary Shelley’s parents were strongly aligned with people who wanted to bring this to kind of change to England.

Mary Shelley

Born: August 20 1797

Mother:               Mary Wollstonecraft

Father:                 William Godwin

Her parents belong to a group of radical thinkers and artists, including Thomas Paine. Their goal was to take the revolutionary ideas that had unsettled France and the US and bring them to England.

While one could teach a course on either Wollstonecraft or Godwin, for our purposes it is enough to know that both writers wrote very powerful works, that, in their essence, argued that if people could be somehow stripped of their superstitions and emotionalism, and their respect for custom and tradition, they would become free and virtuous and find total pleasure in their existence. This was a very radical notion that, in part, gave birth to the early United States.

Monday, April 13 2009

Today’s Agenda:

1)      Presentation

2)      Reading Response

a.       Journal

b.      Discussion

3)      Writing workshop

a.       Your groups are challenged to come up with answers to the following five questions

1) Explain one way in which an understanding of theory can help you understand the literary element you are focusing on?

2) Identify one source you think will be helpful to you as you compose your paper (name of author and title)

3) Identify one difficultly you are having with the current draft

4) Identify a source you have used to find out more about the theory that you will be using

5) Teach your group one interesting thing about the relationship between your selected element and theory that they might not be aware of right now.

Homework: Read to chapter 30, find and record 5 sources for yourself in MLA citation style.

Monday, April 27 2009

Today’s Agenda

Papers Due this Friday in class

Final Exam:         I believe it is Wednesday of Finals Week, 1250-250

The final examination will test your ability to apply the major concepts we have addressed this semester to several, if not all, of the major readings.  My primary goal in giving you this exam is to test your comprehension and retention of course material. While no one is going to have to be able to quote anything verbatim (though it is cool if you can), you will need to demonstrate a solid understanding of our readings and how they relate to the major concepts we have addressed this semester.

Last class, we began to think about how some of the concepts we addressed early in this class – the wheel of fortune and humanism – relate to Frankenstein and Jane Eyre. Today we are going to take some of the concepts we learned about near the end of the semester and apply them to some of the early texts we read in this course.

I asked you to come to class today with your copy of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It has been a while since we have read out of this text. Let’s open up to the Wife of Bath’s tale, and take a few moments to become familiar with it again. Let’s just focus on the prologue right now.

Journal: What kind of person is the Wife of Bath? Let’s identify five specific statements she makes in this portion of the narrative that you think reveal a lot about her personality.

Group Discussion

Okay, now what I want us to do is to consider what kind of questions these statements raise about her personality.

List questions

Okay, now I want us to think about how we might use the following theories we discussed in class to answer some of these questions.  Feminism/ Postcolonial theory/ Journal work/Group work/ Class Discussion.

Now let’s do the same with the Knights tale, specifically with one of the knights – you can choose which knight. We will be focusing on psychoanalytic and Marxist theory.

Can this also be done with Columbus? What is gained? What is lost by analyzing literature this way?

Homework:

I will begin accepting papers as early as Wednesday, if you want to submit earlier, but will of course take them on Friday as well, though no later than Friday.

For Wednesday, re-read and annotate the Columbus assigment — I want you to see how much it has changed now that you read so much more.

Friday, April 24 2009

Today’s Agenda

1)      Let’s begin today by getting out our papers, which have now been drafted. We are going to talk a little bit about MLA citation today, and how it works. MLA citation is a citation method that is used by certain branches of the humanities for the purpose of standardizing how we reference our sources, both our primary and secondary sources.

2)      There are two basic kinds of MLA citation, in-text and Works Cited citation.

3)      I want to take a few moments about talk about what in-text citation looks like.

a.       First though, we need to revisit a basic idea about how it is we use sources, namely: we do so by following a three-step process: we introduce the source, we present the source, and then we explain its significance to our argument.

b.      Let’s take a moment to review our work to see if we are following that basic pattern. If not, note when and where you break it.

c.       Okay, now let’s talk about in-text citation.

This is a good place to begin, if you do not have or otherwise own a writing manual:

http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/mla.html

Let’s look through a neighbors work to see if they are citing correctly, and offer corrections if they need them.

Okay,  now that we’ve done that, I want us to take a moment to think about our work’s cited citation. Now, as we discussed last time, there are programs and websites that will do this work for you, which means there is no excuse for not doing it.

Here’s a good page on that:

http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm

Let’s take a moment to see how our works cited pages stack up.

As we move towards the final exam, we need to begin revisiting some of the major ideas and concepts that we have considered this semester.

The Final exam will be:

Early on this semester, we began talking about two fundamental ideas: the wheel of fortune and humanism. Today we are going to think about how these various ideas may have been manifested in the works we have read this semester.

In terms of the wheel of fortune, we used it as a basic model for understanding the many and varied Christian sects that developed over the course of the 14, 15, and 16 centuries. The idea here was to remember that people were debating about different ways for approaching and considering God.

What I would like you to do now is get your journals and focus on the following topic for ten minutes:

What is the role of organized religion as you understand it in Jane Eyre? What function does it play? Is it a major or minor part of Jane’s life.  Defend your answer by referencing specific scenes in the text that prove your point. When you are done, I want you to spend two paragraphs considering another, related question: Where is God in Frankenstein? Why isn’t God mentioned, and what might this tell us about Shelley’s thoughts on the Wheel of Fortune?

Group Discussion: What, if anything, could Dante have learned from Mary Shelley? Also answer this question, what, if anything, could Chaucer have learned from Charlotte Bronte?  Be prepared to defend your answer.

Conversation on journal writing.

Robinson Crusoe Day 2: The Limits of Experience ?

Today’s Agenda

Presentations:

A Porter: King Henry

B Kennedy: Dante’s Inferno

For today, we were to read the next 50 pages of Robinson Crusoe.

Group Work:

What has stayed with you from the reading?

Discussion

Mini-lecture:

Last time, I talked about how little God appeared to factor into Crusoe’s early life. We could have equally have noted the total absence of any Greek or Roman references, which could be found in the writing of everyone we have read to at this point.

Why is this the case? Well, I think it’s important to think about the kind of human being Crusoe is supposed to be. When Chaucer’s middle-class characters open their mouths, what pours out is information and tales that would be generally understood and appreciated by educated classes of people. However, when Crusoe opens in his mouth, what pours out is something quite different.

I will argue today that, when Crusoe talks, he talks about trade-oriented experiences, which may or may not (probably not) have been understood or appreciated by the kinds of audiences that Chaucer and Milton were reaching for.

You may have noticed that the reading for today focused on two basic topics: 1)  The religious awakening of Crusoe, and 2) his physical labors. As to the first, we might notice how different his understanding of religion is from anything we have considered before. His articulation of God and reflection on God is totally understood through the context of his own experience. Indeed, he only sees and considers God as God supposedly acts through his life – as if God had a direct hand and interest in the minutia of his existence (his finding of tools and nails, for example.)

Many people who profess to be religious in a Western Christian context today share a similar view. Think of the football player or baseball player, of American Idol singer, who thanks Jesus and God for “helping them win.” This presumes, first and foremost, that God cares or that what is significant in your own life is also significant in His. This is not a wheel of fortune understanding of the divine. It is much more closer to the “Buddy Jesus” character than you may think.

This understanding of God is nowhere to be found in our earlier writing. Think of Dante. God does not take a direct hand in his salvation. Indeed, it is an angel, Beatrice, who intercedes through Virgil to save Dante. Columbus seeks to Bring Christianity to the “savages” because they have been overlooked by God, supposedly. Arcite and Palamon need to pray to the Gods to get what they want, the gods do not set them up to simply “have it.” The Wife of bath – well, that one is easy enough.

So Crusoe offers us a startling new view of God.

He also offers us a very weird idea of what it is we should do with our time.

Crusoe, left to his own devices, appears to have no idea how to spend his time, other than by spending it to construct the same basic goods that were fueling the British Empire’s marketplace around the world: tables, chairs, baskets. Mad proto-capitalist. He makes far more than he needs, and works, we are told, ceaselessly.

When the possibility of escape opens, he shuts it down right away — imagining that the far shore is teeming with cannibals.

What’s most striking here is what he isn’t talking about. While he does reflect on religion, there  is nothing here that one could take as direct evidence of how one might best live their life. Unlike the stories of Chaucer, that use the experience of individuals to suggest life lessons, Crusoe’s life appears to have no lesson, other than the lessons that are particular to the unique experience of his life. This is a speaker who tells us things in order to define his own world, and not so that we might better understand our own.

In short, it is an IMPERIAL voice, once which reflects only on itself, and the importance of its own agendas.

Homework for Wednesday:

Read the next 50, and write a 1.5 page blog post on your general assessment of how this story compares with the other stories we have read so far this semester.

A Timley Transformation

Today’s Agenda:

Discussion of Presentation Comments and Expectations (5-7 min)

Journal:

For the next ten minutes, I want you to write on the following subject:

Are you generally on time for events? Or are you chronically late? Describe to me what it is like for you to be someone who is either always, or mostly, on time, or someone who is never, or rarely, on time. Why are you the way you are?

Group Discussion:  (5-7)

Where do you see yourself in Five, Ten, and Twenty years? What kind of person will you be? Where will you live? What will you do for work? What are some of your personal goal during these periods?

Mini-Lecture:

• We talked about changes in language and how that affected daily life
• There was a bigger transformation though.

Last time, we talked about some of the important issues that began to develop during this period as a result of changing understandings of language, and the importance of language in daily life. Well, during this period there was an even bigger transformation, and that was a transformation in peoples’ understanding of time.

—

• This change relates to changing notions of time

• You may have noticed references in the Knight’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s tale, and Columbus’ Diary to time.

• When we see these things, we make assumptions that these authors would not have made.

In The Knight’s tale, you may remember that there were several references to time, people went away for a period of a year, or seven years. In The Wife of Bath’s tale, we also have  a year – the time that it takes the Knight to find the answer to the question, “What women want.” When we were reading Christopher Columbus’ diary, we also saw that he kept a calendar, and that this calendar appears to mark off the days of his time in North America. Well, when you or I read about these things, we make several assumptions that Dante, Chaucer, and Christopher Columbus – not to mention many, many people living during this time, would not have made.

–

• When we see references to time, we automatically presume the following: that it relates to a system of years, days, months, and seconds that is endlessly adding up.

When we see references to time, we assume that it corresponds to something like the following system: Years are 365 days long, and each day is made up of 24 hours, and each hour is made up of 60 minutes, and each minute is made up of 60 seconds. We also assume that we are all continually moving though time, that is, the seconds are always adding up, the minutes are always adding up, the days are always adding up, and so are the years.

–

• We have developed this time system to make sense of the endless physical and biological changes and cycles that define our world

• Hours carve up the day

• The week organizes work and rest

• Minutes help organize the minutia of our personal lives and help us plan

• It is a way to organize a universe that, itself, does not have an obvious time system of its own. We may no know why everything happens, but we ALWAYS know WHEN it happens.

For you and I, our movement through time is largely the produce of physics and biology: the world is full of physical and biological changes, and our way of marking time helps us order and understand these changes: For example, by carving the day out into 12 neat hours, we have a neat way of organizing and understanding the movement of the sun across our sky. By breaking the week into seven days, we have a neat and organized way of determining when the vast majority of people will work, and when they will rest. We use our time system as a way to organize and understand a natural world that, itself, does not have a time system.

–

• This understanding of time is useful not only because it also helps us understand things as they are happening, but also because it helps us understand how things happened, and how they will happen.

• Birthday’s

• Anniversaries

• Sept 11

• What we will do on days on the week, or will do

• This entire system is based on the notion that things change, and that we need a way to keep track of the changes.

This understanding of time, which is based on managing and ordering change in the world, is useful not only for helping us understand why things are happening, but also why they happened, and what may happen in the future: we can associate events with specific numbers: Sept 11 for example, or birthdays or anniversaries, and this helps us understand the past. Similarly, it is a useful way for predicting the future. We know that in the future there will be Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesday, and – as know generally what we do on such days — we can generally predict where we will go as time changes.

–

• Well, this understanding of time would have made NO SENSE to the authors we have read so far, and to the majority of the people living during the medieval period.

• True, they did have calendars, and even some hour-keeping devices, — however they felt that there was a very different reason for time that the physical changes and cycles that define our world.

Well, this understanding of time would have made no sense at all to the vast majority of people who lived during the medieval period. This is not to say that they did not have calendars – they did – or that they did not have rudimentary time-charting devices, the a compass – they did. However, unlike many of us, there felt that there was a very different reason for TIME than the simple physical and biological transformations we see endless occurring in our world.

–

• They did not, as we do, think of the world in terms of past, present, and future.

• This is because they believed that an unchanging God was the reason for time and everything that happens, and if time was a representation or extension of God, it did not change either, so there was no real reason to think of it as something that was constantly developing or needed to be kept track up (how many clocks in the room?).

• This intellectual presumption was born out in their daily lives: born into a station, live and die in that station: you life was charted out for you. Moreover, your life would be the same as that of your parents, and your children would have the same life you have. (one reason no one knew what to do with orphans)

As radical as this may  sound – they did not think in terms of the past/ present/ and future.  This is largely because they believed that God created Time, and, as God is always perfect and complete, and does not change, that no meaningful distinctions could be made or imagined between the past present and future. Moreover, and on a much more particle level – they simply did not look for change in their lives the same way we do: you were generally born into a particular station in life, and you held that station for your entire life: from cradle to grave, your life was pretty much charted out for you. As your life was going to be the same as your parents, there was no real reason to see much difference between the two events,

–

• Thus the past, present, future were basically the same

• However, as people began to travel they were confronted by the reality that there were different communities, and that these communities did change over time. Worse, when then came home, they saw that there own communities had changed in ways they had not expected. (Example of someone noticing that you have grown taller, when you have not noticed it yourself)

Thus, the past the present and the future were essentially the same, or presumed to be the same. If you believe this, there is no really pressing need for a clock or calendar. However, as people began to travel, then were confronted with a very difficult idea, which is that people and places and communities did change over time – when they left home and returned, they returned changed by their experience. Moreover, they saw their homes and their lives in different ways, and were aware of changes that OTHERS WERE NOT. For example, have you ever had the experience of someone who has not seen you for a long time saying, “My you have grown!” And you did not notice it before they mentioned it?

• If I understand the present differently than you, then I probably think about the past the future in different terms, too.

• So people during this period became increasingly dependent on the calendar and clock as a means for not simply marking time – as we see in Chaucer – but as a means for organizing time.

• With the clock, people living apart can find a common point to compare their lives with (it helps you imagine what your parents or brother and sisters or boyfriends and girlfriends are doing right now, even though they are not here with you).

This new understanding of the world and change was challenging people’s understanding of time. If I might understand the present differently from you, then that means that our understanding of the past, present, and future will also be different. It is out of this apparent chaos that we slowly turned to the calendar, and then the clock. The clock makes it so that – no matter where two people  are, and how different their experiences may be, they can associate one another with a common point in time: for example, you can probably imagine what your parents or brothers and sisters are doing right now.

–

• This lead to what was a huge religious issue:

• If the Past/Present/Future is the same, no need to wonder about the history behind the Bible or God (and we already know that they were starting to question their Bibles). As we begin to understand the world through the clock, we are forced to ask: how did things get the way there are?

Well, this leads us to a HUGE religions issue. Consider: if you believe that the past, present, and future are the same, and are a religious person, then the history behind the Bible is not much of a problem for you, as you presume the events in the bible are always eternal and always applicable. However, once you begin to use chronological time to understand the universe, you have to wonder: how did things develop and get to where they are today?

This question lead to some major – and bloody – debates between Christians in Europe, and raised a whole bunch of Questions that we are going to look at later in this course. For now, however, what we need to know is that a man named John Milton was getting ready to step forward to deliver what he truly believed was a divinely-inspired explanation – the back story, if you will — of  how it is the world got so confusing in the first place, and what God’s relationship to man was.

Class Discussion of Journal entry

Homework:

Read handout and work on your presentations.