OK - some of you have managed to get the Poe stories (sorry if you didn't get the book!) if any of you are having problems getting to the stories, come talk to me. They're linked to the website...Easily accessible. Brynne and Samantha and Liz identify very important trends in Poe--the primary character (usually the narrator) is crucial...not reliable at all, but deeply invested in the story he is telling.
Think about the ways in which "Cask" is different from the other stories...really rich...succint, but in many ways denser in detail and a perfect example of dramatic irony.
enjoy the stories! And get some rest this weekend...
Juliana is right. Imitation is very challenging because it forces us to fall into the thought patterns of another writer. It's useful because it helps us experience a mode of expression we might never use ourselves...syntactical patterns, rhetorical strategies...we all fall into certain patterns, and the imitation helps us break our habits, at least for a moment.
Great job on the blog this week. A note on "romance"...Hannah asked that someone clarify the term for her, and that's a tall order, especially given the fact that scholars of literature still write entire books on the subject and debate its history & scope.
Originally, the romance was distinguished from the epic in that it represented an age of civility, manners, courtly love rather than the heroic/tribal wars & adventures like those of Beowulf or Odysseus. M.H. Abrams...the author of a really fine guide called
A Glossary of Literary Terms points out that the romance also "delights in wonders and marvels"...the supernatural, spells, enchantment...this is the element we see most clearly in Hawthorne, Poe, Irving.
19th century American writers adopted the term romance in part to distinguish their work from pure "realism." The romance would project or depict a version of the "real" touched by or shifted toward the ideal, the dream-like, or even the magical. This could mean anything from a depiction of life in a utopian community to a ghost story.
As I wrote above, it is very difficult to define the term "romance" in a short paragraph or two. Henry James and Nathaniel Hawthorne, two writers we will read who took a real interest in the term, will help us develop a sharper sense of "romance" in its American contexts.
Hi Everyone - thanks for all the work you did while I was away. True...I did schedule a vocab quiz for Friday, F day...we'll switch it to Monday, A day.
I'll update future calendar entries to reflect the schedule more accurately.
See you on the 9th!
