http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=HawYoun.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
Or go to Google and enter
Young Goodman Brown etext
click on the link to etext.virginia.edu
Then click on "entire work"
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
T of S quotations
" . . . one of [James's] most cruel effects: the ambiguity of innocence, of an innocence which is pure of the evil it contains; the art of perfect dissimulation which enables the children to conceal this evil from the honest folk amongst whom they live, an evil which is perhaps an innocence that becomes evil in the proximity of such folk, the incorruptible innocence they oppose to the true evil of adults; or again the riddle of the visions attributed to them, the uncertainty of a story which has perhaps been foisted upon them by the demented imagination of a governess who tortures them to death with her own hallucinations." --Maurice Blanchot (from The Siren's Song: Selected Essays by Maurice Blanchot; rpt from a 1959 essay)
"There is no question that the young woman sees the ghosts of Peter Quint and of Miss Jessel. We recognize also that she is making an extraordinary effort to keep calm in the face of the evil she fears. The evil, however, is in her own mind; when she has the 'certitude' that her ghosts have come for the children, the reader must decide whether she is stating a fact or enunciating a theory. Looking back over her story, we discover that her circumstantial account of the behavior of the children establishes them as 'normal.' Little Miles wants to know when he is going back to school; little Flora's escapade with the boar is perfectly in character for an eight-year-old. Yet the governess makes the behavior of the children seem sinister. The real 'turn of the screw'--the particular twist of pain in the tale--resides in what the governess is doing to the children. They, on their side, try constantly to accommodate themselves to her vision." --Leon Edel, from Henry James: Stories of the Supernatural
"Only make the reader's general vision of evil intense enough . . . and his own experience, his own imagination . . will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications." --Henry James
"The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient of modern. how Mr. James could, or how any man or woman could, choose to make such a study of infernal human debauchery, for it is nothing else, is unaccountable. . . . The study, while it exhibits Mr. James's genius in a powerful light, affects the reader with a disgust that is not to be expressed. The feeling after perusal of the horrible story is that one has been assisting in an outrage upon the holiest and sweetest fountain of human innocence, and helping to debauch--at least by helplessly standing by--the pure and trusting nature of children. Human imagination can go no further into infamy, literary art could not be used with more refined subtlety of spiritual defilement." --The Independent, 1899
"In 1934, Edmund Wilson for the first time suggests explicitly that The Turn of the Screw is not, in fact, a ghost story but a madness story, a study of a case of neurosis: the ghosts, accordingly, do not really exist; they are but figments of the governess's sick imagination, mere hallucinations and projections symptomatic of the frustration of her repressed sexual desires. This psychoanalytic interpretation will hit the critical scene like a bomb. Making its author into an overnight celebrity by arousing as much interest as James's text itself, Wilson's article will provoke a veritable barrage of indignant refutations, all closely argued and based on 'irrefutable' textual evidence." --Shoshana Felman, "Madness and the Risks of Practice (Turning the Screw of Interpretation)"
"Henry James's ghosts have nothing in common with the violent old ghosts__the blood-stained sea captains, the white horses, the headless ladies of dark lanes and windy commons. They have their origin within us. They are present whenever the significant overflows our powers of expressing it; whenever the ordinary appears ringed by the strange. The baffling things that are left over, the frightening ones that persist--these are the emotions that he takes, embodies, makes consoling and companionable. But how can we be afraid? . . . The beautiful urbane spirits are only not of this world because they are too fine for it. . . . We may feel clumsy in their presence, but we cannot feel afraid. What doe sit matter, then, if we do pick up 'The Turn of the Screw' an hour or so before bedtime?. . .
Perhaps it is the silence that first impresses us. . . . 'I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the gold sky, and the friendly hour lost for the unspeakable minute all its voice.' It is unspeakable. We know that the man who sands on the tower staring down at the governess beneath is evil. Some unutterable obscenity has come to the surface. It tries to get i; it tries to get at something. The exquisite little beings who lie innocently asleep must at all costs be protected. But the horror grows. Is it possible that the little girl, as she turns back from the window, has seen the woman outside? Has she been with Miss Jessel? Has Quint visited the boy? It is Quint who hangs about us in the dark; who is there in that corner and again there in that. It is Quint who must be reasoned away, and for all our reasoning returns. Can it be that we are afraid? But it is not a man with red hair and a white face whom we fear. We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves. In short, we turn on the light. If by its beams we examine the story in safety, note how masterly the telling is, how each sentence is stretched, each image filled, how the inner world gains from the robustness of the outer, how beauty and obscenity twined together worm their way to the depths--still we must own that something remains unaccounted for. We must admit that Henry James has conquered. That courtly, worldly, sentimental old gentleman can still make us afraid of the dark. --Virginia Woolf, "Henry James's Ghost Stories," 1921.
"There is no question that the young woman sees the ghosts of Peter Quint and of Miss Jessel. We recognize also that she is making an extraordinary effort to keep calm in the face of the evil she fears. The evil, however, is in her own mind; when she has the 'certitude' that her ghosts have come for the children, the reader must decide whether she is stating a fact or enunciating a theory. Looking back over her story, we discover that her circumstantial account of the behavior of the children establishes them as 'normal.' Little Miles wants to know when he is going back to school; little Flora's escapade with the boar is perfectly in character for an eight-year-old. Yet the governess makes the behavior of the children seem sinister. The real 'turn of the screw'--the particular twist of pain in the tale--resides in what the governess is doing to the children. They, on their side, try constantly to accommodate themselves to her vision." --Leon Edel, from Henry James: Stories of the Supernatural
"Only make the reader's general vision of evil intense enough . . . and his own experience, his own imagination . . will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications." --Henry James
"The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient of modern. how Mr. James could, or how any man or woman could, choose to make such a study of infernal human debauchery, for it is nothing else, is unaccountable. . . . The study, while it exhibits Mr. James's genius in a powerful light, affects the reader with a disgust that is not to be expressed. The feeling after perusal of the horrible story is that one has been assisting in an outrage upon the holiest and sweetest fountain of human innocence, and helping to debauch--at least by helplessly standing by--the pure and trusting nature of children. Human imagination can go no further into infamy, literary art could not be used with more refined subtlety of spiritual defilement." --The Independent, 1899
"In 1934, Edmund Wilson for the first time suggests explicitly that The Turn of the Screw is not, in fact, a ghost story but a madness story, a study of a case of neurosis: the ghosts, accordingly, do not really exist; they are but figments of the governess's sick imagination, mere hallucinations and projections symptomatic of the frustration of her repressed sexual desires. This psychoanalytic interpretation will hit the critical scene like a bomb. Making its author into an overnight celebrity by arousing as much interest as James's text itself, Wilson's article will provoke a veritable barrage of indignant refutations, all closely argued and based on 'irrefutable' textual evidence." --Shoshana Felman, "Madness and the Risks of Practice (Turning the Screw of Interpretation)"
"Henry James's ghosts have nothing in common with the violent old ghosts__the blood-stained sea captains, the white horses, the headless ladies of dark lanes and windy commons. They have their origin within us. They are present whenever the significant overflows our powers of expressing it; whenever the ordinary appears ringed by the strange. The baffling things that are left over, the frightening ones that persist--these are the emotions that he takes, embodies, makes consoling and companionable. But how can we be afraid? . . . The beautiful urbane spirits are only not of this world because they are too fine for it. . . . We may feel clumsy in their presence, but we cannot feel afraid. What doe sit matter, then, if we do pick up 'The Turn of the Screw' an hour or so before bedtime?. . .
Perhaps it is the silence that first impresses us. . . . 'I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the gold sky, and the friendly hour lost for the unspeakable minute all its voice.' It is unspeakable. We know that the man who sands on the tower staring down at the governess beneath is evil. Some unutterable obscenity has come to the surface. It tries to get i; it tries to get at something. The exquisite little beings who lie innocently asleep must at all costs be protected. But the horror grows. Is it possible that the little girl, as she turns back from the window, has seen the woman outside? Has she been with Miss Jessel? Has Quint visited the boy? It is Quint who hangs about us in the dark; who is there in that corner and again there in that. It is Quint who must be reasoned away, and for all our reasoning returns. Can it be that we are afraid? But it is not a man with red hair and a white face whom we fear. We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves. In short, we turn on the light. If by its beams we examine the story in safety, note how masterly the telling is, how each sentence is stretched, each image filled, how the inner world gains from the robustness of the outer, how beauty and obscenity twined together worm their way to the depths--still we must own that something remains unaccounted for. We must admit that Henry James has conquered. That courtly, worldly, sentimental old gentleman can still make us afraid of the dark. --Virginia Woolf, "Henry James's Ghost Stories," 1921.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Schedule
Feb. 22 "The Turn of the Screw," cont'd.
Feb. 24 Read "Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
--discuss, probably with "The Turn of the Screw" as well
Mar. 1, 3 The Bad Seed, Dir. Mervyn LeRoy
Mar. 8, 10 Discuss The Bad Seed
Mar. 15, 17 Spring Break
Mar. 22, 24, 29 The Omen (I think), screen and discuss
Mar. 31 No class. Choose an Arizona Quarterly Symposium paper to attend
Apr. 5 Paper #2 Selected papers read in class.
Feb. 24 Read "Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
--discuss, probably with "The Turn of the Screw" as well
Mar. 1, 3 The Bad Seed, Dir. Mervyn LeRoy
Mar. 8, 10 Discuss The Bad Seed
Mar. 15, 17 Spring Break
Mar. 22, 24, 29 The Omen (I think), screen and discuss
Mar. 31 No class. Choose an Arizona Quarterly Symposium paper to attend
Apr. 5 Paper #2 Selected papers read in class.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Paper#1 assignment
Choose from the following options:
1. Write an essay agreeing or disagreeing that the adage "Money is the root of all evil" helps us read our stories. Choose one text as your main text. Include a second text briefly, perhaps no more than a sentence or part of a sentence, but certainly less than a paragraph, to help make your argument. (The second text could be a counter-example if you like, rather than a second example.)
2. Write an essay on romantic love / heterosexuality in one of the texts (again, using a second text briefly as well).
3. Pick a quotation from those on this blog--there are a couple on the syllabus, and others in various posts--as an anchor for an essay in which you argue either that your main and secondary texts exemplify in some way or contradict in some way the gist of the comment. Do NOT type out the entire quotation--just refer to it, perhaps with a phrase, or with a word or two (or several) of summary.
4. Form and format directions for this paper are in a previous post.
5. Email me--before Monday night, please--if you have questions or problems.
Have fun!
1. Write an essay agreeing or disagreeing that the adage "Money is the root of all evil" helps us read our stories. Choose one text as your main text. Include a second text briefly, perhaps no more than a sentence or part of a sentence, but certainly less than a paragraph, to help make your argument. (The second text could be a counter-example if you like, rather than a second example.)
2. Write an essay on romantic love / heterosexuality in one of the texts (again, using a second text briefly as well).
3. Pick a quotation from those on this blog--there are a couple on the syllabus, and others in various posts--as an anchor for an essay in which you argue either that your main and secondary texts exemplify in some way or contradict in some way the gist of the comment. Do NOT type out the entire quotation--just refer to it, perhaps with a phrase, or with a word or two (or several) of summary.
4. Form and format directions for this paper are in a previous post.
5. Email me--before Monday night, please--if you have questions or problems.
Have fun!
Monday, February 7, 2011
some thoughts on our topic
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. --William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1950
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
— Flannery O'Connor
"Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look."
— Flannery O'Connor
"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.
I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)
"The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
— Flannery O'Connor
"Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look."
— Flannery O'Connor
"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.
I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
— Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose)
"The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. "
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Schedule Update
Segue-ing into "children and evil":
Feb. 8, 10 Discussion of The Night of the Hunter, GCP, RE
Feb. 15 Paper #1 due in class
Feb. 17 "The Turn of the Screw," Henry James.
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JamTurn.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
Feb. 22, 24 Discussion cont'd, "Turn of the Screw"; readings, TBA
Feb. 8, 10 Discussion of The Night of the Hunter, GCP, RE
Feb. 15 Paper #1 due in class
Feb. 17 "The Turn of the Screw," Henry James.
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JamTurn.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
Feb. 22, 24 Discussion cont'd, "Turn of the Screw"; readings, TBA
Paper instructions
You'll be getting topic directions and prompts in a future post. Meanwhile, here are the basic directions:
3. Write a one-page, single-spaced paper. Do not use any of the usual flourishes. That is, do not write an introductory paragraph, do not write a summarizing conclusion paragraph, do not do any plot summary (other than what is required to provide a context for a point you are making, e.g., “When Silas gets drunk at the dinner party, he……”). Do not write any sentences that begin with “I think” or “I believe.” (This is not because there’s some rule against using the first person pronoun; it is because I already know that it’s you, and you will need the space.)
4. Make a full and complete argument supported by reference to and quotations (short!) from the text(s) you are writing about.
5. Be succinct. Ruthlessly edit your words. All of us use “extra” words we don’t really need when we write papers. This is not going to be easier to write than a 3-5 page paper. Basically it’s going to be all the important stuff you’d put into a longer, more leisurely production. It will take the same amount of time as a much longer paper.
6. You do not need a “Works Cited” list or footnotes; this is not a research paper, and I am familiar with the texts you will be using. This is, however, a formal academic paper, so make sure your writing style conforms to that model.
7. Proofread your paper before turning it in. Read it aloud to yourself too—this is a good way to catch problems. Have someone else read it--it's not cheating, it's in fact good writing procedure.
1. Use the paper prompts to think about or against the text you are writing about. Do not retype the prompts into your paper; just refer to it/them using the authors’ last names) and quote only a phrase or two if necessary.
2. This is not a research essay, nor is it a journal entry: make a cogent, compact, textually-supported argument. Don't waste time with rhetorical circling ("I think," "I feel") or plot summary; just go for the jugular, as it were, right away, stay on point, and get the job done.
3. Write a one-page, single-spaced paper. Do not use any of the usual flourishes. That is, do not write an introductory paragraph, do not write a summarizing conclusion paragraph, do not do any plot summary (other than what is required to provide a context for a point you are making, e.g., “When Silas gets drunk at the dinner party, he……”). Do not write any sentences that begin with “I think” or “I believe.” (This is not because there’s some rule against using the first person pronoun; it is because I already know that it’s you, and you will need the space.)
4. Make a full and complete argument supported by reference to and quotations (short!) from the text(s) you are writing about.
5. Be succinct. Ruthlessly edit your words. All of us use “extra” words we don’t really need when we write papers. This is not going to be easier to write than a 3-5 page paper. Basically it’s going to be all the important stuff you’d put into a longer, more leisurely production. It will take the same amount of time as a much longer paper.
6. You do not need a “Works Cited” list or footnotes; this is not a research paper, and I am familiar with the texts you will be using. This is, however, a formal academic paper, so make sure your writing style conforms to that model.
7. Proofread your paper before turning it in. Read it aloud to yourself too—this is a good way to catch problems. Have someone else read it--it's not cheating, it's in fact good writing procedure.
8. Due at 9:30 pm in class, Tuesday, Feb. 15.
9. Some of you (volunteers I hope) will be reading your papers to the class (everyone will eventually get a turn).
10. Attendance is very important.
10. Attendance is very important.
*if you miss class for any reason, please do not email your paper--just bring it to the next class you make it to.
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