English 4500 critical responses, spring 2012

Note that critical response essays have a 250 word minimum and must be typed. Avoid plot summary or straightforward retelling of "what happens" in the work—see nugget 1.

Format your response according to MLA guidelines for margins, spacing, name, date, etc., headers, etc. as outlined on my "simple stuff" page. Works cited pages are unnecessary for critical responses. Even without works cited pages, do still follow the MLA conventions for documenting quotations as explained in QD1-4 on my quotes and documentation page.

1.1 Due Thursday, January 12: Analyze Hardy's pessimism in "On the Western Circuit" and any three of his poems in our Norton text. Compare and contrast: what similarities and what differences in attitude do you see in these four works? Include at least two quotations from the story and one from each poem in your response (total of five minimum), being careful to avoid plot summary (see nugget 1), and for the poems, following the MLA guidelines for citing poetry outlined in QD4 on my quotes and documentation page.

1.2 Due Tuesday, January 17: Explore the imagery and symbolism of light and darkness in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. How is the "darkness" particularly "modern"? Include at least three quotations to support your analysis.

1.3 Due Thursday, January 19: Open assignment: respond to whatever strikes you as interesting or significant in any three of the World War I poems (no more than two by the same poet), quoting each poem at least twice, following the guidelines for citing poetry outlined in QD4 on my quotes and documentation page.

1.4 Due Tuesday, January 24: Find and summarize an authoritative definition of modernism—use Galileo or MSC library print sources, not open-access web sources—and explain how any two of the readings in the "Modernist Manifestos" section in our Norton text illustrate or support or illuminate the definition of modernism you discovered. Include at least three quotations from the "manifestos" readings, and for this assignment only, include a works cited entry (see QD5) for the authoritative definition you tracked down.

1.5 Due Thursday, January 26: Examine either "September 1913" or "Easter, 1916" and any one or two other Yeats poems on pp. 2022-30 in thorough depth, attending especially to his poetic technique. What makes his poetry so technically brilliant? What specific poetic devices, elements, aspects of rhythm or meter, "sound effects," etc. does he use with consummate skill (or genius)? And how do these various elements work to support the meaning of each poem? Include at least three quotations from each poem you discuss, following carefully the guidelines for citing poetry outlined in QD4 on my quotes and documentation page.

1.6 Due Tuesday, January 31: Open assignment on any two or three Yeats poems from pp. 2034-52. Discuss whatever strikes you as interesting, significant, or intriguing in the poems, quoting each poem you address at least twice (see QD4).

1.7 Due Thursday, February 2: In (at least) three separate paragraphs, discuss different important insights into Stephen Dedalus's personality or character in the first three sections (or chapters) of Ulysses (pp. 3-22, 22-34, 34-47). Include quotations from all three sections/chapters to illustrate your assertions.

1.8 Due Tuesday, February 7: Look over the schema for the fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes of Ulysses (Calypso, Lotus-Eaters, and Hades), and treating each episode separately (i.e. in a paragraph of its own), comment on the presence of the noted organ, "art," color, symbol, or "technic" that you find most interesting for each. Note that you may choose a different feature for each chapter, as in focusing on the "art" in one, the "organ" in another, and the "technic" of the third. Include at least one quotation from each chapter, preferably at least two. . . .

1.9 Due Thursday, February 9: Open assignment on any of the next three episodes in Ulysses (Aeolus, Lestrygonians, Scylla and Charybdis). Comment on whatever strikes you as interesting, significant, or intriguing. Obvious topics would include stream of consciousness and elements of the schema as played out in the text. Include at least four quotations. You may focus on just one episode, or two, or three.

1.10 Due Tuesday, February 14: Choose one, do not address more than one:
a) Clive Hart notes that the "Wandering Rocks" episode "celebrates [Dublin's] solidity, its shapeliness, its liveliness, its organic nature; it also, however, emphasizes its malice, its treachery, its shabbiness" (Hart and Hayman, James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays 201-2). Taking any part of Hart's statement as your starting point, discuss the character of Dublin, the city, as it emerges for you in "Wandering Rocks" (pp. 219-55). Include at least four quotations to illustrate your observations.

b) Discuss any way(s) the Sirens episode (pp. 256-91) seems to represent music through language (rhythm, sound, development and iteration/reiteration of phrases and themes, patterns of repetitions, etc.).

c) Discuss Joyce's parodic exaggerations of style, his mockery of particular kinds of prose or of particular genres, in any portion(s) of the "Cyclops" episode (pp. 292-345).

1.11 Due Thursday, February 16: Discuss Joyce's parodic exaggerations of style, his mockery of particular kinds of prose or of particular genres, in any portion(s) of this day's reading (the 13th and 14th episodes, pp. 346-428).

1.12 Due Tuesday, February 21: Discuss any ways the "Circe" episode strikes you as "hallucinatory" (or nightmarish). Include at least four quotations to illustrate your claims.

1.13 Due Thursday, February 23: Open assignment on "Penelope": discuss anything in Molly's soliloquy that strikes you as interesting or significant in any fashion. Include at least three quotations to support your observations.

1.14 Due Tuesday, February 28: Discuss different ways Ulysses is the most thoroughly realistic novel ever written.

2.1 Due Thursday, March 1: Two parts (do both): a) In Lawrence's "Odour of Chrysanthemums," why does Elizabeth Bates say she denied her husband "what he was"? Why does she say she had "refused him as himself"? b) Open assignment on "The Horse Dealer's Daughter": respond however you like so long as you avoid plot summary, including at least two quotations from this second story to illustrate your observations.

2.2 Due Tuesday, March 6: T. S. Eliot reportedly once said The Waste Land is not so much "an important bit of social criticism [as it is] the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling." If we believe this assertion, what is it specifically about life that Eliot finds to grouse and grumble against? On the other hand, how might the poem be seen as important social criticism? Include quotations to support your claims. . . .

2.3 Due Thursday, March 8: Reread The Waste Land and choose one, do not address more than one:
a) Discuss Eliot's central concern with fertility and infertility, or barrenness, in The Waste Land, including at least four quotations to support your observations.

b) Give a thoroughly detailed, in-depth analysis of any section of the poem, with a minimum of eight lines, max. 40 or so. Any section at all, the field is wide open.

c) Open assignment on "The Hollow Men." Discuss whatever strikes you as interesting, significant, or intriguing in this poem. Include at least four quotations to illustrate your comments.

2.4 Due Tuesday, March 20:Open assignment on our readings of Virginia Woolf. In one or more of the different works, respond to whatever strikes you as interesting or significant, including at least four quotations to illustrate your claims. If you want specific guidance, you might consider how Woolf writes essays very much as a novelist, but anything analytical, avoiding straight summary, is fair game.

2.5 Due Thursday, March 22: How does Beckett's Happy Days offer significant commentary on the human condition? What fundamental statement(s) about life does the play make? Include at least four quotations from the play in your discussion.

2.6 Due Tuesday, March 27: Open assignment on any one of the Auden poems we're reading for Tuesday and any one of the Thomas poems. Avoid summary of the poetry, and include at least two quotations from each poem in your discussion.

2.7 Due Thursday, March 29:Choose one, do not address both:
a) Consider whether you think "To Room Nineteen" is a feminist story. Explain, including at least three quotes from the story to substantiate your claims;

b) open assignment on "The Moment before the Gun Went Off," including at least three quotes to support your observations.

2.8 Due Tuesday, April 3: Open assignment on any one of the Philip Larkin poems and any one of the Thom Gunn poems we're reading. Include at least two quotations from each poem in your response.

2.9 Due Thursday, April 5: Choose two particularly important speeches or exchanges of dialogue in Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and explain their thematic importance to the play as a whole.

2.10 Due Tuesday, April 10: Choose one—do not address both:
a) Explore Stoppard's commentary on knowledge in Arcadia. Discuss different aspects or facets of knowledge he brings to our attention, and include at least three quotations to support your observations.

b) Discuss Stoppard's use of two different time-frames in Arcadia: how are the two periods integral to any particular theme(s) of the play? Note that "theme" here means "a statement about life, society, the human condition, etc." Include at least three quotations to illustrate your claims.

2.11 Due Thursday, April 12: Open assignment on any two Heaney poems. Include at least two quotations from each poem you discuss.

2.12 Due Tuesday, April 17: Respond analytically to anything that strikes you as interesting or significant in the first chunk of Atonement, including at least three quotations to support your observations.

2.13 Due Thursday, April 19: Discuss McEwan's depth of realism in the psychology of any two or three characters in our second installment of Atonement, including at least three quotations to illustrate your claims.

2.14 Due Tuesday, April 24: Open assignment: discuss anything that strikes you as interesting or significant in our third installment of Atonement, including at least three quotations to illustrate your observations.

2.15 Due Thursday, April 26: Choose one; do not address both:
a) Read to the last page and then comment on what the novel says about truth and storytelling. Include at least four quotations, with at least two from the final "chapter" ("London, 1999").

b) Discuss the novel, as a whole, as a type of kunstlerroman, a "form of apprenticeship novel in which the protagonist is an artist struggling from childhood to maturity toward an understanding of his or her creative mission" (Harmon and Holman 278). That is, discuss Briony's growth as an artist over the course of the whole book, illustrating your observations with at least four quotations, with two or more coming from the novel's second half.

3.1 Due Tuesday, May 1: Which four writers or works from our schedule of readings do you think are most essential to demonstrating the defining developments or characteristics of twentieth-century British literature? In separate paragraphs, explain why you think each writer or work should be essential reading in any 20th-Century British course.