When I got back my first draft last Thursday, I was dejected. I thought I had an argument, but when I read the paper again, there wasn't really anything there. It was just a bunch of plot summaries. My peer editors helped me pinpoint areas that I needed to work on, but what really helped were Natalia's comments. She asked me why I brought some examples up, why this and why that, etc. I thought about the answers, but I struggled and couldn't find any decent answer to her questions. It was a sign for me to change my argument altogether.
After days of pondering, I think I finally see an arguable connection in Sweet Cicely. I picked an entirely new passage, which is quite lengthy so I won't post it here. But here is my final thesis--or should I say, hypothesis:
"While the law may exercise power over the land, it is nowhere close to exercising power over the people. What truly governs them is the flame in their hearts."
I definitely plan to use Cicely and Samantha to develop the argument not only because they are the main featured characters in the story, but also because they are women. Butttt...what I'm more excited about is using Josiah, who is Samantha's husband, in the paper. I am excited because I realized a connection I can draw between him (a man, who had more rights back during that time) and the other two characters.
Good luck to everybody still working on their papers!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Some Research
I've been able to go to the library and found the annotated bibliography to Brook Farm by Joel Myerson. For those of you who don't know, Brook Farm is the real-life community that Hawthorne depicted in The Blithedale Romance. I flipped through the actual book that Myerson wrote about Brook Farm, but it wasn't very good for what I had in mind. However, the annotated bibliography was a better source of information because it was broken down into the members, the visitors, the histories, etc. Under each of these criteria, Myerson gave the citations for where he found those information with some notes as to how helpful it was. This will help me in narrowing down the individuals at Brook Farm and getting direct quotes from them. More importantly, it has a listing of almost everything that Hawthorne wrote about his stay at Brook Farm.
My next move now is to track down all of the interesting sources that Myerson has about Hawthorne and other people of interest like Margaret Fuller. On the other hand, it'll probably help if I formulate a research question so that I know what I should be looking for. So I guess I should say that my next move is to formulate a research question and then go find all of those sources that pertain to my question.
About the research question, I was thinking of extending the thesis from my reading paper. The thesis was that Hawthorne's narrator wasn't completely forthright in his descriptions of events and people. I guess I want to research into whether other writers at the time used the same method in their writings. Nonetheless, this idea seems weak to me and it'll probably undergo a lot of changes and "revisions" as I proceed further with the research.
P.S.: If any of you want to look at the annotated bibliography to Brook Farm, hit me up in the comments below and I'll get the book to you.
My next move now is to track down all of the interesting sources that Myerson has about Hawthorne and other people of interest like Margaret Fuller. On the other hand, it'll probably help if I formulate a research question so that I know what I should be looking for. So I guess I should say that my next move is to formulate a research question and then go find all of those sources that pertain to my question.
About the research question, I was thinking of extending the thesis from my reading paper. The thesis was that Hawthorne's narrator wasn't completely forthright in his descriptions of events and people. I guess I want to research into whether other writers at the time used the same method in their writings. Nonetheless, this idea seems weak to me and it'll probably undergo a lot of changes and "revisions" as I proceed further with the research.
P.S.: If any of you want to look at the annotated bibliography to Brook Farm, hit me up in the comments below and I'll get the book to you.
What did Hawthorne really mean?
Ugh, as I'm going back through my draft I'm realizing that my original argument - that the portrayal of Hollingsworth as a selfish, mutinous, misogynistic character elates to the selfishness of society as a whole - was too general and really didn't work. It doesn't help that my thesis/hypothesis only focused on his selfishness, when I discussed two other traits. Also, expanding Hollingsworth's character to Hawthorne's view on society just doesn't cut it.
Right now, then, I'm trying to figure out some new generalizations to make about what Hawthorne was trying to get across through his description of Hollingsworth. I keep asking myself the question, "Why would Hawthorne display a philanthropist in such a negative light?" So far, I'm starting to think that maybe Hawthorne is warning against the nature of people's hidden characters. Hollingsworth is a philanthropist on the outside, but on the inside he possesses traits contrary to that of a philanthropist. Also, it seems other characters are the same way - Coverdale's true character, as we see at the end, is just a hidden, passive shell. I'm leaning towards this as a new thesis - most of my essay actually talks about Hollingsworth's facade and how it is chipped away in the passage that I selected.
I'm also toying with a theme of ideal vs. reality, which is somewhat similar to the above theme. Ideally, Hollingsworth would build his reformation school and not completely betray Coverdale, Zenobia, and Priscilla. But, in reality, he accomplished nothing and lived the rest of his life in torment. Hawthorne's portrayal of Hollingsworth shows how even the most ideally noble people can turn out to be scum. Hmmm...kind of wrote a hypothesis right there.
I really just want to replace my old thesis, and then rewrite my last page so that it focuses on the generalization. I know I want to keep my analysis on Hollingsworth's character, so my first three-four pages are probably going to be kept the same, with a few revisions. I definitely did not expect revision to be this difficult =(.
Well, off to go figure out a thesis statement and clarify my paper!
Right now, then, I'm trying to figure out some new generalizations to make about what Hawthorne was trying to get across through his description of Hollingsworth. I keep asking myself the question, "Why would Hawthorne display a philanthropist in such a negative light?" So far, I'm starting to think that maybe Hawthorne is warning against the nature of people's hidden characters. Hollingsworth is a philanthropist on the outside, but on the inside he possesses traits contrary to that of a philanthropist. Also, it seems other characters are the same way - Coverdale's true character, as we see at the end, is just a hidden, passive shell. I'm leaning towards this as a new thesis - most of my essay actually talks about Hollingsworth's facade and how it is chipped away in the passage that I selected.
I'm also toying with a theme of ideal vs. reality, which is somewhat similar to the above theme. Ideally, Hollingsworth would build his reformation school and not completely betray Coverdale, Zenobia, and Priscilla. But, in reality, he accomplished nothing and lived the rest of his life in torment. Hawthorne's portrayal of Hollingsworth shows how even the most ideally noble people can turn out to be scum. Hmmm...kind of wrote a hypothesis right there.
I really just want to replace my old thesis, and then rewrite my last page so that it focuses on the generalization. I know I want to keep my analysis on Hollingsworth's character, so my first three-four pages are probably going to be kept the same, with a few revisions. I definitely did not expect revision to be this difficult =(.
Well, off to go figure out a thesis statement and clarify my paper!
Honing My Thesis Statement
One of the glaring flaws that exists in the rough draft of my paper about The Blithedale Romance is that my ideas are not fully-formed enough and are coming across as too vague. In working on the revisions to my paper, I have been trying to hone in on the key points that I am interested in tackling with my paper. To do this, I have been re-reading the text and reviewing the notes from my group. I am in the process of going through my paper with a focus on tightening up my thesis statement and building out the paper around that thesis.
The general idea that I was attempting to convey in my paper was that the author believes that utopian societies are not possible. I originally believed that he uses foreshadowing throughout the early passages of the novel to indicate that this is the underlying belief of the novel. In re-reading the text, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't quite accurate to say that the author uses the art of foreshadowing to epxress this idea. Instead, he offers the reader insight into the narrator's perspective in order to make a broader statement about humanity.
My goal in making these revisions is to more clearly explain how the early passages of the novel convey the book's underlying belief that a utopian society is not possible. I plan to shift my focus to the way that the author does this through the voice of the narrator instead of trying to make a vague statement about the use of foreshadowing. Ultimately, my goal is to come up with a single thesis sentence that sums this up succinctly and to use the passage I identified previously to support this.
The general idea that I was attempting to convey in my paper was that the author believes that utopian societies are not possible. I originally believed that he uses foreshadowing throughout the early passages of the novel to indicate that this is the underlying belief of the novel. In re-reading the text, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't quite accurate to say that the author uses the art of foreshadowing to epxress this idea. Instead, he offers the reader insight into the narrator's perspective in order to make a broader statement about humanity.
My goal in making these revisions is to more clearly explain how the early passages of the novel convey the book's underlying belief that a utopian society is not possible. I plan to shift my focus to the way that the author does this through the voice of the narrator instead of trying to make a vague statement about the use of foreshadowing. Ultimately, my goal is to come up with a single thesis sentence that sums this up succinctly and to use the passage I identified previously to support this.
Possible Research Questions
In trying to figure out what I want to research regarding The Blithedale Romance, I am considering the following questions:
- What was Hawthorne’s main purpose in writing The Blithedale Romance and how does the historical context of the novel aid in discovering it?
- How was The Blithedale Romance received? How does its reception reflect on America at different times in history? Was it immediately assumed a statement on socialism?
- Was Hawthorne truly trying to make a statement on socialism through his novel, as many literary critics have suggested, or was socialism merely a backdrop for some other purpose?
All three of these questions are largely related, dealing with whether Hawthorne’s purpose was to condemn / advocate for socialism or something else.
With the first question, I would consider the possible purposes of Hawthorne’s novel, including to condemn/advocate for socialism, to condemn Coverdale’s selfishness, to condemn/advocate for feminism, etc. By looking at what was going on in both Hawthorne’s life and the world at the time, I may be able to discover which of these purposes he intended and which was most likely the focus of his novel.
It appears Hawthorne has been criticized for years for his lack of direction in The Blithedale Romance, with Yvon Winters saying, “[Hawthorne] began as a novelist, but lost himself towards the close in an unsuccessful effort to achieve allegory” (http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9831(195705)29%3A2%3C147%3AANROTB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2). In this article, Frederic C. Crews insists other critics do not understand Hawthorne’s purpose because they have missed the novel’s most fundamental aspect, its plot, suggesting it has less to do with romance and more to do with the complex character of Coverdale. It seems I am not the only one confused as to what Hawthorne intended.
Thus, in order to get at Hawthorne’s true purpose, I will have to analyze socialism at the time, the Brook Farm experiment, his submissive wife Sophia, his purpose in The Scarlet Letter (published two years before), his personal letters and thoughts while writing the novel, and his opinion on the Salem Witch Trials.
In answering the second question, I could try to reveal how The Blithedale Romance has applied to America at different points in its history by viewing what people thought of the novel during the past 150 years. Or, as with the third question, I can focus the second question towards Hawthorne’s thoughts on socialism, by comparing how the novel was immediately received (as a condemnation or backing of socialism) with what I think Hawthorne purports in the novel.
Obviously, I am still trying to decide what I want to research, and probably even more questions will come to me in the next few days. But I am definitely interested in discovering what Hawthorne’s true intention was in writing The Blithedale Romance by looking at both its contents and historical context.
Ah, Reading Paper
I have been revising my reading paper for several days now. Everytime I look at the paper, I have new ideas developed, and I have to cross out one or two paragraphs and rewrite it. Now, I have completely changed my argument, and I have rewritten almost 80% of the paper.
This revising process is painful -- I keep searching for new evidence to support my claim, and I keep crossing out things I have put down on the paper, just to make my argument stronger. After several days struggling, my reading paper finally comes into a shape. Now I am about to finish my last body paragraph and conclusion.
I am going share a little bit about my paper. The passage I chose was about Coverdale's reaction to Zenobia's passionate speech on women's rights.
Now -- Though I could not well say so to Zenobia -- I had not smiled from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me, was the fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie on idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble, by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman against man. (120)
My original argument was that Coverdale's claim about Zenobia is right -- Zenobia is not always a reformer, she is only a reformer when something unfortunate happens to her. I then showed 3 examples to prove Zenobia's inconsistent commitment to women's rights. 1. She did not respond when Hollingsworth challenges her view on women's rights. (123) 2. She gives up her feminist goals and says "Women possess no rights" (141). 3. She picks up her goals again when she's rejected by Hollinsworth. (225)
However, these are all I was able to use to back up my point, which I felt was not convincing enough. Moreover, Natalia suggested that it sounds more like Zenobia has made a mistake when she gives up her goals, which makes me think that perhaps I should not claim that Zenobia is not a consistent woman reformer, basing only on Coverdale's thoughts about woman.
So I changed my argument. I am now saying that Coverdale's claim about women and Zenobia is false -- it is only his own assumption, and his underestimation of women. Moreover, Coverdale's false claim about Zenobia shows that their relationship is distant.
I listed several examples to show that Coverdale has possessed prejudiced opinions about women for a long time. Though he calls his idea about women a "fact," it is nevertheless only his assumption. I also showed several examples on how Coverdal makes different assumptions about Zenobia to demonstrate their distant relationship.
I am still working on it... hopefully I will get it done tonight!
Perhaps I will find some problems when I read my paper again tomorrow...
--------------oh, what a terrible thought!
OK good luck everyone! Am I going to see you guys next week?
probably not huh... if the strike happens tomorrow.
I support this strike though, because they really deserve more. Living on low wages is hard; living in one of the most expensive states makes it even harder. I hope they can get better contracts they deserve!
This revising process is painful -- I keep searching for new evidence to support my claim, and I keep crossing out things I have put down on the paper, just to make my argument stronger. After several days struggling, my reading paper finally comes into a shape. Now I am about to finish my last body paragraph and conclusion.
I am going share a little bit about my paper. The passage I chose was about Coverdale's reaction to Zenobia's passionate speech on women's rights.
Now -- Though I could not well say so to Zenobia -- I had not smiled from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me, was the fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie on idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble, by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman against man. (120)
My original argument was that Coverdale's claim about Zenobia is right -- Zenobia is not always a reformer, she is only a reformer when something unfortunate happens to her. I then showed 3 examples to prove Zenobia's inconsistent commitment to women's rights. 1. She did not respond when Hollingsworth challenges her view on women's rights. (123) 2. She gives up her feminist goals and says "Women possess no rights" (141). 3. She picks up her goals again when she's rejected by Hollinsworth. (225)
However, these are all I was able to use to back up my point, which I felt was not convincing enough. Moreover, Natalia suggested that it sounds more like Zenobia has made a mistake when she gives up her goals, which makes me think that perhaps I should not claim that Zenobia is not a consistent woman reformer, basing only on Coverdale's thoughts about woman.
So I changed my argument. I am now saying that Coverdale's claim about women and Zenobia is false -- it is only his own assumption, and his underestimation of women. Moreover, Coverdale's false claim about Zenobia shows that their relationship is distant.
I listed several examples to show that Coverdale has possessed prejudiced opinions about women for a long time. Though he calls his idea about women a "fact," it is nevertheless only his assumption. I also showed several examples on how Coverdal makes different assumptions about Zenobia to demonstrate their distant relationship.
I am still working on it... hopefully I will get it done tonight!
Perhaps I will find some problems when I read my paper again tomorrow...
--------------oh, what a terrible thought!
OK good luck everyone! Am I going to see you guys next week?
probably not huh... if the strike happens tomorrow.
I support this strike though, because they really deserve more. Living on low wages is hard; living in one of the most expensive states makes it even harder. I hope they can get better contracts they deserve!
Thinking about research projects
As you think about your research projects, I wanted to give you all an example of a research project that I’ve done. At first I thought it would make sense to tell you about the research I’m doing now, but a couple of things have stopped me from doing that.
First, my current project is a dissertation chapter on Émile Zola, so a lot of my source material is in French, which wouldn’t be very helpful for most of you.
Second, it’s a big project, about 50 pages. That’s a lot to read, just for a sample research project.
And third, it would require a little background in film theory to read it, which isn’t fair to expect of you at this point.
Instead, I’ll present you with a paper on Harry Potter that I delivered at the Modern Language Association in December, 2007. It has the advantages of being short, 100% in English, and concerned with familiar texts. This will be a series of posts; today I’ll write about how I arrived at a research question. Future posts will discuss my abstract, observations and close reading, research, drafting, and revision.
Without further ado...
This paper, like most papers, started with some observations that yielded a research question. When I began working on the project, Harry Potter was at the height of its popularity, and the seventh book had not yet been released.
Harry Potter and the book market. The series was being hailed by parents and teachers as the savior of childhood reading. The series was also transforming the children’s book market by focusing it on fantasy. In particular, the popularity of Harry Potter precipitated the re-release of older fantasy books (books by Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and others) and the publication of a host of new ones (by Garth Nix, Cornelia Funke, Angie Sage, Eoin Colfer, and the unfortunate Christopher Paolini, to name a few).
Harry Potter and the film market.At the same time, Hollywood started making, in addition to the Harry Potter films themselves, a number of big-budget fantasy films, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and installments of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (There was even a truly execrable adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, although that film fortunately died a quiet death.)
Many of these films were noted for their use of special effects; perhaps the culmination of this phenomenon was in the recent Beowulf film adaptation, which rendered an ur-text of Tolkien’s as a (very misogynistic) technological spectacle. In addition, most of these films were marketed along with video games.
Harry Potter and the critics. In addition to a widespread cultural love for Harry Potter, a few lone, cranky voices questioned whether it deserved to be so popular. The most famous of these criticisms were made by Harold Bloom, a prominent Yale literary critic. To give you some context, Bloom has written a number of major, extremely influential works of literary criticism; he’s also known for his conservatism and, in particular, a tendency to scorn efforts to open the canon to women and ethnic minorities. In some ways, he’s a symbol of old-guard literary criticism, the kind that considers cultural gate-keeping part of the job. The articles he wrote on Harry Potter were not academic articles, but public rants in mainstream newspapers.
Bloom’s July 11, 2000 article for the Wall Street Journal (then pre-Murdoch) was amusingly titled, “Can 35 Million Book-Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.” In the article, Bloom locates Rowling’s two main influences in Tom Brown’s School-Days, a nineteenth century British boy’s school story (Bloom claims that it is “still quite readable”; he is mistaken, however) and in “the magical mirror of Tolkien.” His main criticism of the series is that it is not very “literate,” although he doesn’t really explain what he means by that.
In his 2003 Boston Globe article, Bloom continues to argue that Harry Potter represents a “dumbing down” of American readership. His main fear seems to be that popularity will be mistaken for quality, a fear contextualized in Bloom’s feeling that the academic study of literature has been polluted by the study of authors who “just can't write.” (The authors he names, purely coincidentally I am sure, are all women.)
Although I disagreed with Bloom about a lot of things (and I especially disagree with his claim that the study of literature has been “debased” by a widened scope), I did feel that he was onto something. There was, I felt, something qualitatively different between Harry Potter and a lot of the texts he names, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Bloom argues that Rowling’s work, unlike Carroll’s, is not “literate,” a notion that ran directly counter to the widespread acclaim that Rowling was getting as the savior of literacy.
As a reader, I felt that this was in some way right, but the way that Bloom approached the argument seemed to me reductive. Bloom’s argument seemed to be based, above all, on his own implicitly superior literary sensibility, in contradistinction to that of the unwashed masses. He offered no rigorous explanation of what constituted “difficult,” “literate,” high-quality literature. In fact, the logic of Bloom’s argument was rather like that of Harry Potter itself – a good-against-evil model in which the forces of bad literature were threatening all that was sacred about good literature. Harry, Bloom seemed to be saying, was Voldemort.
I was not interested in establishing a good-versus-evil narrative. In my view, the popularity of Harry Potter is simply not a moral question. Instead, I decided to investigate what makes a fantasy novel “literate.” Hence my research question: How does the Harry Potter series participate in the models of literacy found in fantasy literature?
As you know, a research question generally suggests a research plan. Now, I had to narrow down my field a little bit; I wasn’t really interested in comparing Harry Potter to all fantasy works ever. In fact, I already had a subfield I was interested in. My sister Maria, who is also an English grad student, specializes in children’s literature and had identified a fantasy subgenre that she calls the “Oxford School,” due to the heavy influence of the University of Oxford as an institution. It seemed clear to me that Harry Potter was drawing on Oxford School fantasy – as Bloom put it, “the magical mirror of Tolkien.”
So my research plan was as follows: to try to understand literacy in Oxford School works, and compare it to the model of literacy that I found in Harry Potter. This meant reading several other novels in the genre and analyzing their treatment of reading.
In my next post, I’ll show you the abstract I sent to the panel organizer.
-----
Image sources:
http://harrypotterbooks.in/images/harry%20potter%20and%20the%20philosophers%20stone.jpg
http://www.filmposters.it/imgposter/grandi/gollum.jpg
http://www.saltpublishing.com/assets/authors/bloom_harold.jpg
First, my current project is a dissertation chapter on Émile Zola, so a lot of my source material is in French, which wouldn’t be very helpful for most of you.
Second, it’s a big project, about 50 pages. That’s a lot to read, just for a sample research project.
And third, it would require a little background in film theory to read it, which isn’t fair to expect of you at this point.
Instead, I’ll present you with a paper on Harry Potter that I delivered at the Modern Language Association in December, 2007. It has the advantages of being short, 100% in English, and concerned with familiar texts. This will be a series of posts; today I’ll write about how I arrived at a research question. Future posts will discuss my abstract, observations and close reading, research, drafting, and revision.
Without further ado...
This paper, like most papers, started with some observations that yielded a research question. When I began working on the project, Harry Potter was at the height of its popularity, and the seventh book had not yet been released.
Harry Potter and the book market. The series was being hailed by parents and teachers as the savior of childhood reading. The series was also transforming the children’s book market by focusing it on fantasy. In particular, the popularity of Harry Potter precipitated the re-release of older fantasy books (books by Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and others) and the publication of a host of new ones (by Garth Nix, Cornelia Funke, Angie Sage, Eoin Colfer, and the unfortunate Christopher Paolini, to name a few).
Harry Potter and the film market.At the same time, Hollywood started making, in addition to the Harry Potter films themselves, a number of big-budget fantasy films, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and installments of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (There was even a truly execrable adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, although that film fortunately died a quiet death.)
Many of these films were noted for their use of special effects; perhaps the culmination of this phenomenon was in the recent Beowulf film adaptation, which rendered an ur-text of Tolkien’s as a (very misogynistic) technological spectacle. In addition, most of these films were marketed along with video games.
Harry Potter and the critics. In addition to a widespread cultural love for Harry Potter, a few lone, cranky voices questioned whether it deserved to be so popular. The most famous of these criticisms were made by Harold Bloom, a prominent Yale literary critic. To give you some context, Bloom has written a number of major, extremely influential works of literary criticism; he’s also known for his conservatism and, in particular, a tendency to scorn efforts to open the canon to women and ethnic minorities. In some ways, he’s a symbol of old-guard literary criticism, the kind that considers cultural gate-keeping part of the job. The articles he wrote on Harry Potter were not academic articles, but public rants in mainstream newspapers.
Bloom’s July 11, 2000 article for the Wall Street Journal (then pre-Murdoch) was amusingly titled, “Can 35 Million Book-Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.” In the article, Bloom locates Rowling’s two main influences in Tom Brown’s School-Days, a nineteenth century British boy’s school story (Bloom claims that it is “still quite readable”; he is mistaken, however) and in “the magical mirror of Tolkien.” His main criticism of the series is that it is not very “literate,” although he doesn’t really explain what he means by that.
In his 2003 Boston Globe article, Bloom continues to argue that Harry Potter represents a “dumbing down” of American readership. His main fear seems to be that popularity will be mistaken for quality, a fear contextualized in Bloom’s feeling that the academic study of literature has been polluted by the study of authors who “just can't write.” (The authors he names, purely coincidentally I am sure, are all women.)
Although I disagreed with Bloom about a lot of things (and I especially disagree with his claim that the study of literature has been “debased” by a widened scope), I did feel that he was onto something. There was, I felt, something qualitatively different between Harry Potter and a lot of the texts he names, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Bloom argues that Rowling’s work, unlike Carroll’s, is not “literate,” a notion that ran directly counter to the widespread acclaim that Rowling was getting as the savior of literacy.
As a reader, I felt that this was in some way right, but the way that Bloom approached the argument seemed to me reductive. Bloom’s argument seemed to be based, above all, on his own implicitly superior literary sensibility, in contradistinction to that of the unwashed masses. He offered no rigorous explanation of what constituted “difficult,” “literate,” high-quality literature. In fact, the logic of Bloom’s argument was rather like that of Harry Potter itself – a good-against-evil model in which the forces of bad literature were threatening all that was sacred about good literature. Harry, Bloom seemed to be saying, was Voldemort.
I was not interested in establishing a good-versus-evil narrative. In my view, the popularity of Harry Potter is simply not a moral question. Instead, I decided to investigate what makes a fantasy novel “literate.” Hence my research question: How does the Harry Potter series participate in the models of literacy found in fantasy literature?
As you know, a research question generally suggests a research plan. Now, I had to narrow down my field a little bit; I wasn’t really interested in comparing Harry Potter to all fantasy works ever. In fact, I already had a subfield I was interested in. My sister Maria, who is also an English grad student, specializes in children’s literature and had identified a fantasy subgenre that she calls the “Oxford School,” due to the heavy influence of the University of Oxford as an institution. It seemed clear to me that Harry Potter was drawing on Oxford School fantasy – as Bloom put it, “the magical mirror of Tolkien.”
So my research plan was as follows: to try to understand literacy in Oxford School works, and compare it to the model of literacy that I found in Harry Potter. This meant reading several other novels in the genre and analyzing their treatment of reading.
In my next post, I’ll show you the abstract I sent to the panel organizer.
-----
Image sources:
http://harrypotterbooks.in/images/harry%20potter%20and%20the%20philosophers%20stone.jpg
http://www.filmposters.it/imgposter/grandi/gollum.jpg
http://www.saltpublishing.com/assets/authors/bloom_harold.jpg
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The AFSCME strike: points of view
Remember, everyone, the strike doesn't begin until Monday! Blog posts are still due.
If you are following the news, you know that UC has received a court order to suspend the strike. UC has also emailed its employeees to inform them that "Staff who do not report to work and are not authorized to be absent may be subject to disciplinary action."
You can see UC's press release here.
The union argues that the strike is still legal because advance notice was given, and is planning to carry on with the strike. Yesterday the union uploaded the ten-minute video below, entitled "Facing Poverty at UC."
Here are some related news articles:
-"Union plans to strike despite judge-ordered injunction" (Daily Cal)
-UC workers to strike despite judge's order (San Francisco Chronicle)
UC Human Resources has a number of documents pertaining to the strike, including the full text (.pdf) of yesterday's court order, located here.
Some questions:
-What kinds of arguments and persuasive tactics does each side use?
-How does each side communicate with the public?
-How is each side represented in the articles above?
-Consider the following statement by UC: "UC is offering $6.8 million in salary increases with an option to reopen wage negotiations once the State budget is passed." (source) Now consider how the same offer is represented by a newspaper article: "UC's latest offer to service care workers increases minimum hourly rates from $10.28 to $11.50 to $12 depending upon the location." What impressions do these figures give? What's the difference between representing workers' wages as a lump sum and as an hourly wage?
If you are following the news, you know that UC has received a court order to suspend the strike. UC has also emailed its employeees to inform them that "Staff who do not report to work and are not authorized to be absent may be subject to disciplinary action."
You can see UC's press release here.
The union argues that the strike is still legal because advance notice was given, and is planning to carry on with the strike. Yesterday the union uploaded the ten-minute video below, entitled "Facing Poverty at UC."
Here are some related news articles:
-"Union plans to strike despite judge-ordered injunction" (Daily Cal)
-UC workers to strike despite judge's order (San Francisco Chronicle)
UC Human Resources has a number of documents pertaining to the strike, including the full text (.pdf) of yesterday's court order, located here.
Some questions:
-What kinds of arguments and persuasive tactics does each side use?
-How does each side communicate with the public?
-How is each side represented in the articles above?
-Consider the following statement by UC: "UC is offering $6.8 million in salary increases with an option to reopen wage negotiations once the State budget is passed." (source) Now consider how the same offer is represented by a newspaper article: "UC's latest offer to service care workers increases minimum hourly rates from $10.28 to $11.50 to $12 depending upon the location." What impressions do these figures give? What's the difference between representing workers' wages as a lump sum and as an hourly wage?
Maybe all we need is a little motivation
I'll be the first to admit that after writing a paper, I'm not all too excited to rewrite it. I mean, you spend so much time creating something, and finally when you're done, you have to go back and change it. My own personal problem with rewriting the reading paper is having to let go of certain parts of the essay that I've grown attached to. However, I understand that sometimes you have to let certain parts go in order to make your paper stronger. Well, I've been hestitating the revision of my paper, so I looked up what other people have to say about revision and I found a couple helpful websites to perhaps help me along. The first site talks about what counts for revision. Some points may sound familiar to what we've talked about in class. The other site answers a few questions people may have as they begin the revision process. I especially love the one that says you don't necessarily have to rewrite the entire paper. So hopefully this will provide some motivation in the revision of you paper. Good luck!
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG315/revising.htm
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/revision.html
*Trupe, Alice L. "Revising Practices." 21, Sept 2007, 12, July 2008. <http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG315/revising.htm>
*The Writing Center, Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Revising Draft." 1998-2007. 12, July 2008. <http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/revision.html>
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG315/revising.htm
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/revision.html
*Trupe, Alice L. "Revising Practices." 21, Sept 2007, 12, July 2008. <http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ENG315/revising.htm>
*The Writing Center, Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Revising Draft." 1998-2007. 12, July 2008. <http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/revision.html>
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Oops
I forgot that we have these weekly blog postings. But anyways, my main research is on The Blithedale Romance. Doing a quick wikipedia search for Brook Farm, the actual community that the novel is based upon, I find that Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the original members of the community. The town was based on the Socialist ideas of Fourier who was mentioned in the book and by Dave earlier in the blog postings.
I guess one of the research topic could be on Fourier ideas, how they were implemented at Brook Farm, and further references to them in the novel. Another would be to look for any journal that Hawthorne might have kept while he was living on the farm. This could give us insight on some of the things that Miles Coverdale was complaining about. It might also reveal people who Hawthorne might based the other characters like Hollingsworth and Silas Foster. (Aside: I was really intrigued by the Westervelt character because we had hardly any interactions with him and he seemed to be pulling quite a few strings. Moreover, it would be really cool if Westervelt was a real person much like Margaret Fuller.) Similar to Mark Twain, I think the library will have Hawthorne's journal as well as some of his correspondence with other people.
It might also be worthwhile to look into the Utopian genre that came before and after The Blithedale Romance. We can see how people like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley followed in the footsteps of Hawthorne. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like every book that is written about a Utopian society always have the underlying message that it isn't such a good thing. The characters are either too perverse for out liking (Brave New World) or the society is so communistic that it takes away our freewill (1984). We see a little bit of this freewill issue in The Blithedale Romance when Coverdale decided to leave and go to the seashore. But that might have just been Coverdale being lazy.
I guess one of the research topic could be on Fourier ideas, how they were implemented at Brook Farm, and further references to them in the novel. Another would be to look for any journal that Hawthorne might have kept while he was living on the farm. This could give us insight on some of the things that Miles Coverdale was complaining about. It might also reveal people who Hawthorne might based the other characters like Hollingsworth and Silas Foster. (Aside: I was really intrigued by the Westervelt character because we had hardly any interactions with him and he seemed to be pulling quite a few strings. Moreover, it would be really cool if Westervelt was a real person much like Margaret Fuller.) Similar to Mark Twain, I think the library will have Hawthorne's journal as well as some of his correspondence with other people.
It might also be worthwhile to look into the Utopian genre that came before and after The Blithedale Romance. We can see how people like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley followed in the footsteps of Hawthorne. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like every book that is written about a Utopian society always have the underlying message that it isn't such a good thing. The characters are either too perverse for out liking (Brave New World) or the society is so communistic that it takes away our freewill (1984). We see a little bit of this freewill issue in The Blithedale Romance when Coverdale decided to leave and go to the seashore. But that might have just been Coverdale being lazy.
In other words...
Here's the example I wasn't able to project in class today. In this essay the author, Miriam Bratu Hansen, rephrases an idea, not once, but twice. When you find yourself doing that, backtrack and clarify!
Hansen, Miriam Bratu. "America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on Cinema and Modernity." Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Ed. Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.
Whether motivated by postmodern critique or the search for alternative traditions of modernity, this attack on hegemonic modernism runs the risk of unwittingly reproducing the same epistemic totalitarianism that it seeks to displace. For one thing, it reduces the contradictory and heterogeneous aspects of twentieth-century modernisms to the claims of one dominant paradigm or, rather, the positions of a particular, canonical set of modernist intellectuals. For another, this attack collapses the discourse of modernism with the discourses of modernity, however mediated the two may be. That is, the critical fixation on hegemonic modernism to some extent undercuts the effort to open up the discussion of modernism from the traditional preoccupation with artistic and intellectual movements and to understand the latter as inseparable from the political, economic, and social processes of modernity and modernization, including the development of mass and media culture. In other words, the attack on hegemonic modernism tends to occlude the material conditions of everyday modernity which distinguish living in the twentieth century from living in the nineteenth, at least for large populations in western Europe and the United States.
Hansen, Miriam Bratu. "America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on Cinema and Modernity." Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Ed. Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Charles Fourier
I found it curious that Hawthorne chose to put so much emphasis on Fourier toward the beginning of the novel. (He wasn't referring to the mathematician, but the socialist philosopher Charles Fourier).
Fourier is one of the more bizarre socialist thinkers in history. His ideas are so strange that I don't really see how anyone could take him seriously. The recounting of his ideas given in the book (that the oceans would turn to lemonade) is accurate. When I first heard of him a while back, I almost thought that he was satirizing some of the other socialist thinkers that came before him, but as far as I know he was, in fact, being serious.
I think it's significant that Hawthorne used Fourier as an example, because of what he wrote about sex. According to Wikipedia, "He had a touching concern for the sexually rejected - jilted suitors would be led away by a corps of 'fairies' who would soon cure them of their lovesickness, and visitors could consult the card-index of personality types for suitable partners for casual sex. He also defended homosexuality as a personal preference for some people."
The whole thing about fairies is just as bizarre as the idea of lemonade oceans, but the rest of his sexual morality stands out in stark contrast to the traditional Christian morality which was prevalent in the culture when he was writing. In my mind, this stands as a parallel to the major sexual themes in the book.
Fourier is one of the more bizarre socialist thinkers in history. His ideas are so strange that I don't really see how anyone could take him seriously. The recounting of his ideas given in the book (that the oceans would turn to lemonade) is accurate. When I first heard of him a while back, I almost thought that he was satirizing some of the other socialist thinkers that came before him, but as far as I know he was, in fact, being serious.
I think it's significant that Hawthorne used Fourier as an example, because of what he wrote about sex. According to Wikipedia, "He had a touching concern for the sexually rejected - jilted suitors would be led away by a corps of 'fairies' who would soon cure them of their lovesickness, and visitors could consult the card-index of personality types for suitable partners for casual sex. He also defended homosexuality as a personal preference for some people."
The whole thing about fairies is just as bizarre as the idea of lemonade oceans, but the rest of his sexual morality stands out in stark contrast to the traditional Christian morality which was prevalent in the culture when he was writing. In my mind, this stands as a parallel to the major sexual themes in the book.
Priscilla and Coverdale
The last part of The Blithedale Romance seems particularly perplexing in light of the narrator’s continued displays of detachment and lack of an active interest in the characters outside of the perspective of a detached observer. If he did love Priscilla, it does seem hard to find compelling evidence of this within the text. He describes the women warmly for the most part, but from the very beginning he praises Zenobia more than he does Priscilla, who is often described as being of a nervous character or almost childlike in her energetic demeanor.
Obviously we are left out of some of the narrator’s impressions at this point in time, but it stills seems odd that his affection does not come through in any obvious manner throughout the text. He even admits he is not very actively engaged in his friendship with her, and rarely do we see conversations take place between the two. In a physical sense he doesn’t display any more attraction to her than he does to Zenobia, and in fact is critical at times of her frail body. He only admits her attractiveness when she is wearing certain pieces of clothing that are particularly flattering, and even then the praise is not extensive. He displays far more interest in Zenobia’s curious appearance, often focusing in on details like the flower she customarily wears. Also worthy of note is the absence of courtship attempts by Coverdale throughout the novel. This may be a side effect of an attempt to turn himself into an objective narrator of the events that took place at Blithedale by the exclusion of events of personal significance, but it is a notable omission if he did in fact love her.
In short, the statement made at the end about this clarifying some things does not appear to be true based on my reading of the book. I don’t find substantial indications of an emotional or physical attraction to Priscilla. If I had any sense he was romantically interested in either of the two women, I would have assumed it was Zenobia. From the very beginning they align themselves philosophically where Priscilla is disinterested. For an obviously introspective and reflective character, it is odd that he became interested in someone who is so immature and childlike.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
My Reading Abilities Have Been "Goophered!"
Look at all the spoilers for The Blithedale Romance!
Apparently I’m the only person who chose The Conjure Woman as the main research text. I would guess most people steered away from this book because most of it was written in a heavy dialect. At first, it was definitely difficult to read because it wasn’t like typical academic English where one could associate the meaning of a word by the spelling. In fact, I actually needed to sound the words out, or at least pretend I’m speaking with such an accent in my mind, in order to understand what was written. However, after reading much into the text, many of the words begin to repeat and became much easier to read. Although it still requires some mouthing of the words, reading becomes much swifter.
Besides the difficulty in reading the text, the book actually consists of many fascinating short stories that are shared by an ex-slave, Julius. Almost all the stories have a mixture of reality and fantasy. Some of the stories are rather disgusting in what happens. Even though you know it’s not real, it still makes you cringe! Each chapter has its own little story. In the main part of the book, there is an overall story but is also filled with many short tales. In the second part of the book in the Related Tales section, there doesn’t seem to be a chronological flow, or at least not one that’s rather obvious. At least it makes me wonder whether it flows time-wise.
Don’t get discouraged by first impressions. You’ll be surprised how easy you’ll adapt your reading abilities.
Apparently I’m the only person who chose The Conjure Woman as the main research text. I would guess most people steered away from this book because most of it was written in a heavy dialect. At first, it was definitely difficult to read because it wasn’t like typical academic English where one could associate the meaning of a word by the spelling. In fact, I actually needed to sound the words out, or at least pretend I’m speaking with such an accent in my mind, in order to understand what was written. However, after reading much into the text, many of the words begin to repeat and became much easier to read. Although it still requires some mouthing of the words, reading becomes much swifter.
Besides the difficulty in reading the text, the book actually consists of many fascinating short stories that are shared by an ex-slave, Julius. Almost all the stories have a mixture of reality and fantasy. Some of the stories are rather disgusting in what happens. Even though you know it’s not real, it still makes you cringe! Each chapter has its own little story. In the main part of the book, there is an overall story but is also filled with many short tales. In the second part of the book in the Related Tales section, there doesn’t seem to be a chronological flow, or at least not one that’s rather obvious. At least it makes me wonder whether it flows time-wise.
Don’t get discouraged by first impressions. You’ll be surprised how easy you’ll adapt your reading abilities.
Sweet Cicely
I am reading Sweet Cicely for my primary text. The reason for the title is explained in context very early in the book. According to Samantha Allen, the narrator of the story, "Sweet Cicely is a plant that has a pretty white posy" (13). It is also the name of one of the primary characters in the story, whose personality and nature is described as "purer and sweeter than any posy that ever grew" (13).
As I was reading the other posts in the blog, I noticed there are several common themes in The Blithedale Romance and Sweet Cicely. One of the themes is gender roles. Both of the authors described how women typically behaved in society during the time the setting took place. I am not completely sure--because I did not read Hawthorne's novel yet--but it seems like the female characters in The Blithedale Romance are not as strong-willed as the main ones in Sweet Cicely. Unlike Zenobia, who some of you guys described as wavering in her belief of a woman's power, Cicely did everything in her power to try to vote for temperance. She was using her money freely towards any and every cause that aimed to get rid of saloons, alcohol, and other "bad temptations" in order for her son, and other mothers' sons, to not end up the same dreadful fate that her husband experienced.
I am sure we will talk about the other themes in class. See you guys then!
Source: Holley, Marietta. Sweet Cicely. South Carolina: BiblioBazaar, 2006.
As I was reading the other posts in the blog, I noticed there are several common themes in The Blithedale Romance and Sweet Cicely. One of the themes is gender roles. Both of the authors described how women typically behaved in society during the time the setting took place. I am not completely sure--because I did not read Hawthorne's novel yet--but it seems like the female characters in The Blithedale Romance are not as strong-willed as the main ones in Sweet Cicely. Unlike Zenobia, who some of you guys described as wavering in her belief of a woman's power, Cicely did everything in her power to try to vote for temperance. She was using her money freely towards any and every cause that aimed to get rid of saloons, alcohol, and other "bad temptations" in order for her son, and other mothers' sons, to not end up the same dreadful fate that her husband experienced.
I am sure we will talk about the other themes in class. See you guys then!
Source: Holley, Marietta. Sweet Cicely. South Carolina: BiblioBazaar, 2006.
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