Reading List

Here are the reading lists for my two fall courses:

World Masterpieces 2 (19th-Century to Contemporary--Sophomore level)

 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
 Fathers and Children by Turgenev (Norton Critical Edition, translated from the Russian by Michael R. Katz)
 A Doll's House by Ibsen (Oxford World Classics, translated from the Norwegian by Jame McFarlane)
 To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
 God's Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane (Heinemann, translated from the French by Francis Price)
 Maus, Volumes I and II, by Spiegelman (graphic novels)

From Empire to Wasteland (Victorian/Modern Literature--Senior level)

Norton Anthology of English Literature--The Victorian Age (I will list the readings here after I select them)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque (translated from the German by A.W. Wheen)
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (Norton Critical Edition)
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (translated from the Italian by Eric Bentley)

Happy reading!!
 
 
  

Frankenstein...2

Near the end of Book II of Frankenstein, the creature compares himself to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.  It is during his narration of his experiences since he first "awoke" and Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He says, "I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me" (Oxford World Classics edition, 111).  It refers to Satan's comment in Book Four, "Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell" (line 75). (See my post of June 10, 2011, "Evil Personified...Milton's Satan.")

This makes me think of another question:

Are there differences in emotions and motives between Milton's Satan and the Frankenstein creature?

A comparison/contrast would be fascinating....and, of course, means rereading Paradise Lost.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

 

In one of the courses I’ll be teaching in the fall (my last semester before I can retire full time!), we are reading Frankenstein, first published in 1818. We’re using this text as representative of the Romantic Period rather than the usual Romantic poetry. I’ve been having a great deal of fun with the novel. Here are some discussion questions that I’ve come up with so far:

1. Why is the novel subtitled “A Modern Prometheus”? (We’ll have to look at the Greek myth when considering answers.)

2. Is it Victor Frankenstein or his creature who is being referred to as Prometheus? (Melanie’s excellent comments brought up this question.)

3. This is an epistolary novel. What is the reason for the various narrative frames?

4. Is Victor Frankenstein a hero or a villain or something in between?

5. The creature doesn’t have a name but Shelley apparently referred to him as “Adam” and uses Adam’s question to God from Milton’s Paradise Lost as an epigraph. What is the significance of the epigraph?

I’ll have more questions and, hopefully, some answers before the semester starts.

What is a pronoun……

The other day in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip which I get on my igoogle page, Calvin is doing his homework and asks Hobbes what a pronoun is. Hobbes says, “A noun that lost its amateur status.” A reasonable answer it seems to me. (Calvin thinks that he might get credit for being original.) It made me start wondering about English names for the parts of speech.

“Pronoun” is from Middle French pronom, derived from Latin pronomen. Nomen translates to “name” and pro means “in place of.” As a prefix, “pro” indicates substitution. Thus, we get our meaning: A pronoun takes the place of a noun.

“Noun” is derived from the Latin for name, but what about “verb”? It is from the Latin verbum which means “word.” “Verbose” is word plus Latin ose meaning “full of.” And “adverb”? It’s from verbum with the Latin prefix “ad” meaning toward or about. Thus an adverb modifies (is about) a verb.

“Adjective” is from Late Latin adjectivum, from Latin jec (iacere—the “j” in Latin came about when “I” was used as a consonant) meaning throw and ad the prefix which also means attached or added. We get “project” (the verb not the noun which is pronounced differently but spelled the same in English) from the same root, with another meaning for the prefix pro meaning “to” (or “toward”). So an adjective modifies a noun, or is attached to it.

I’ve always known that language is “logical” (from the Greek meaning speech or reason).

Phrases…Cool and Collected

Gus and BooBear asked about this phrase. Both words “cool” and “collected” share the synonym “calm.” Cool in this sense has the connotation of clear judgment that is not influenced by emotion. Collected carries the sense of inner calm that has taken conscious effort.

The opposite of these terms is “distracted,” from Middle English, derived from Latin distractus, to draw apart. In other words, one has focus when one is “cool and collected” rather than having the focus drawn to something else. One is self-possessed rather than allowing something else to “possess” one. Interesting.

According to the OED, “collected” is used figuratively to mean having thoughts and feelings in order. In American usage, “collected” means self-possessed as the first definition. The OED shows that the first usage of collected as figurative is by Shakespeare in The Tempest (1610 or 1611 and possibly the last play he wrote): “Be collected. No more amazement” (I. ii. 13—Prospero to Miranda who is feeling distracted by the shipwreck, not knowing that Prospero has magically manipulated the entire situation).

It seems to me that the phrase is derived from a literally physical sensation. When one feels angry or emotional, one feels distracted and warm…hot under the collar, in fact. Now there’s another interesting phrase.

Fireworks

The summer that Brother put the stick of dynamite in the outhouse was the summer that came to be known as “The Drought of 1892.” It didn’t rain from May to September and it was so hot that the women left off wearing petticoats under their dresses—even Aunt Marie. I was ten and Brother was twelve and I told him that it was a stupid idea but he told me that I was just a kid and to stop pesterin’ him if I didn’t want to help. I had a proprietorial attitude toward Brother though and didn’t want him to think that I was afraid. He’d get that scornful look on his face that made his eyes darker and puckered up his chin and nose when he was mad at me. So I helped him.

I held the blue stick of dynamite tightly while he wound the specially waxed twine around one end of it. Then he carefully lowered it into the dark deep hole of the outhouse seat until it touched bottom. We trailed the twine twenty feet into the lilac bushes and I crouched down while he lit the match. We watched the smoldering sparks sizzle up the twine, making it look like a snake on fire. Suddenly Brother stood up and ran to the door of the outhouse. I hollered at him. “Wattya doin’?" I knew my voice was screeching.

“Hush. I wanna see what it looks like?”

“But you’ll be blown up!”

“The dynamite ain’t that strong.”

The smoldering sparks kept moving up the twine leaving a limp black tail of burnt dust. I watched with my mouth open as it neared the door. I held my breath. Brother followed it inside and stood over the hole looking down. Then there was a loud boom and I closed my eyes.

All the birds seemed to swoosh up in the air crying and fluttering around at once. The noise of the explosion seemed to go on and on, echoing with the birds’ cries. When it was still I began to smell the most awful stink. It seemed to come  in waves with the heat of the air. I turned around and ran through a gap in the bushes away from the smell. I looked over my shoulder and saw Brother running out the door, covered with brown slime, trying to wipe his eyes and his mouth but only managing to spread the muck around.

“Come on to the pond,” I yelled at him.

In a croaky voice he said that he couldn’t open his eyes so I ran back and grabbed him by the sleeve and raced to the pond in the field beyond the run-in-shed. As soon as I got the gate open he ran down to the edge and dove in, shoes and all. I could still smell the awful stench and, looking down, saw that the muck was all over the side of my dress so I dove in too.
The water was cool and sweet and I was barefoot so I could kick easily and get over to Brother in the middle of the pond.

“Wow! What a stink!”

He was laughing now and we started horsing around. Then we saw Daddy Brown running down the hill toward us. In the distance, with her skirts raised so high that her white knickers showed, Aunt Marie came in a sort of prancing run, lifting her knees up high. Behind her was Bingy, with her muslin dress bellowing so that it looked as if she were flying toward us on an umbrella.

Daddy Brown stood on the edge of the pond with his hands on his hips looking stern and puzzled at the same time. Aunt Marie and Bingy came up and stood on either side of him. “Come out of there this instant!” Aunt Marie’s voice was shrill with a sing-song elongation about the vowels that made the words wrap around our bobbing heads. It was her fiercest voice and signaled the amount of trouble we were in.

“I told you it was a stupid idea.”

Brother ignored me and we paddled toward the bank and our doom.