Elia's Site

Category: ENG 420 (Page 1 of 3)

Final CPB Reflection

December 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Part 1: Commonplacing Notes: 

"In our pursuit of knowledge, we often desire a traceable path in our growth. For our ancestors and a select few modern writers, commonplace books provided a way to look back through past developments and brainstorm new experiences. Where they pasted drawings and photographs, we pin images on Pinterest. Where they jotted down notes and clipped readings, we tweet short blurbs and recommended links. To keep a commonplace is instinctual to intellectual cultivation."

Kelsey McKinney, “Social Media: Nothing New? Commonplace Books as Precursors to Pinterest,” Ransom Center Magazine, June 9, 2015, https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine.
  • McKinney’s observation on the importance of commonplacing in finding connections and coming up with new ideas from the past holds very true for me. As I have gone through this course making entries on each novel, within each one, I always find myself thinking of a past class connection, another novel, or thinking of contemporary connections. I think that this concept of intellectual cultivation is also super interesting when we think about how we acquire knowledge in the first place, even before there were established institutions for learning, never mind the internet, people have longed to find a connection with what those who have gone before us. It is stimulating to think of what they thought or created, which I feel creates this loop of human connection. But at the same time, it raises new questions and new paths as each generation or even just an individual has something unique to bring.

  • The most significant point of growth that stemmed from my commonplace book differed from what I expected. Having spent time within previous courses that employ a feminist lens or with a particular interest in women’s role in authorship or within novels themselves, I expected those themes to dominate my commonplace book. While at the beginning, I did select items or quotes that had women’s roles at the forefront, such as noticing the unique connection Mary Shelley brings as her mother is Mary Wollstonecraft, or Jane Eyre’s recurring ideas about femininity, marriage, and women’s health, I started to shift around the middle of the term. With The Picture of Dorian Gray, I stumbled upon ideas that I had truly never thought about before and that were not associated with feminism in literature. I will delve into this idea later in my discussion of new ideas I hope to take from this course, thanks to commonplacing.

  • For my commonplace book, I chose to organize it by novels and then with each entry allowing for exploration into the text of the novel itself, historical connections via primary sources, criticism, reviews, etc., then contemporary criticism as well as visual sources to allow me to feel less limited thematically and find what I am interested in more organically as they emerged within each novel. Yet, I did try to stay on a particular theme for all the aspects of those mediums that I started to find limiting as I moved through our novels, and by the end, I had a variety of interests depicted in each section of my entries. I also chose to keep my commonplace book in an actual physical book, which felt more natural to me. I like the idea of writing out what interests me in a way that seems permanent and recursive to the practice of historical commonplacing. I definitely see aspects of McKinney’s argument within my commonplace book as I find threads that connect all my entries, even though they move from more specific interests stemming from the novel to later a broader branching out.

Commonplace Book Highlights – green links to each CPB entry page

  •  At the beginning of my entries, I aimed to stay on a theme within each entry, such as looking for similarities from the novel and then the secondary criticism, historical context, and visuals. For instance, my entries on Jane Eyre followed a theme with each entry. One of my favorites was my entry #4 on marriage and Jane’s newfound independence from her ‘recovery’ of her fortune/inheritance discussed in the novel(Brontë 536). Then I grabbed an article following up on marriage commentary but adding layers of doubling thinking of Bertha (Diedrich), and followed with some historical context with marriage laws at the time and Bodichon’s remarks on them, which stems from previous work in another English course, “Criminals, Idiots & Minors: Victorian Women & The Law.” I ended with a visual of Bertha as I was just interested in depicting the scene where she sees Jane the night before her wedding (Garrett “The Figure of Bertha Mason” British Library). This entry showcases how I leave breadcrumbs of sorts for myself to items I found connected with this theme of marriage and just what one piece of the entry stirred up that led me to the next.

  • Another entry that highlights this earlier organization for me was also with Jane Eyre. At the end of the novel, I became very interested in what Brontë accomplishes by ending the novel in entry #5 the way she does with a rundown of everyone’s story, but the final word being on St. John (Brontë 556). From that, I chose to look at some critical commentary from a podcast titled “On Eyre” from the Hot and Bothered series. I found a connection to the end of the novel, where they discuss death, who deserves a Christian ending versus who doesn’t, and the effect of even finishing someone’s story in a certain way (On Eyre). From this, I became super intrigued by Brontë’s own relationship with the colonial missionary endeavors of Britain at the time and found a letter she wrote to her good friend Ellen Nussey about her brother. Many say he resembles St. John, and I could look for similarities or themes in the novel surrounding St. John’s proposal to Jane versus Henry Nussey’s proposal to Emily Brontë (AnneBronte.org). As there was so much discussion of the missionaries’ work in class, we spent time on the idea of Jane’s domestic imperialism; I found a visual from the British Library of a Juvenile Missionary Magainze and found that to connect as well (British Library).

  • The last entry I want to highlight, later in the semester, I think, showcases how my thinking changed in what I wanted to put down in my entries and how much broader my connections were as opposed to these very text-specific on-theme entries at the beginning of the term. From Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I chose entry #7, where I was putting down items that I just simply liked; for instance, the quotes from the novel are not all necessarily connected or the later material I put down, but they struck me as interesting or just beautiful writing. As I will mention later, the critical commentary was one piece of content that led me to think even more about this idea of influence that wasn’t explicit in the novel but made me wonder more about our changes in what influence means today( Stern 763). Then, something different emerged when looking at the historical context of Punch magazine as well. I wanted to know more about how this novel was perceived by the public and not just how the legal world saw him and his work and, then, grabbed some images again, not necessarily related but just for me to get more context into the personas of Wilde, as we discussed in class how Wilde as a celebrity figure is different than how he as a person might identify. (UCLA Library)

A projection or sketch of further research, reading, or writing projects my commonplace book supports or inspires.

  • For me, one particular but fascinating topic has jumped out of my commonplace book from the novels – I think it can apply to all of them in a way, but specifically, The Picture of Dorian Gray – and that is the discourses surrounding influence. Looking at Wilde’s writing, I felt something interesting in this critique of the power of good and bad influence on a person’s self-development. Meaning, in the scope of the novel, realizing one’s own desires, needs, interests, etc. Here, we see an influential actor in Lord Henry, who puts forth this theory of influence yet deliberately influences Dorian and allows him to play out his own experience, thus barring him from truly developing his own character and life.
  • From this, I wish to explore further how this novel foreshadows the influencer culture of today – propelled to new heights by social media. If looking at Wilde’s work, we can find an avenue to combat this toxic grip of social media’s false influence over increasingly more susceptible generations, losing the ability to discern reality and show genuine tastes and commodified consumerism. Then, I can also bring my political science interests to the table by wondering how this take on influence today has political implications and why certain atmospheres created by social media/influence have already altered mainstream politics.

  1. Citarella, Joshua. “Are We Ready for Social Media Influencers Shaping Politics? .” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 24 Apr. 2021, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/24/social-media-influencers-shaping-politics.
    ↩︎
  2. Keating, Lydia. “I’m an Influencer, and I Think Social Media Is Toxic.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 1 Feb. 2022, slate.com/technology/2022/02/instagram-tiktok-influencer-social-media-dangers.html.
    ↩︎
  • Part II. Synthesizing & Applying:

2QSQ Connections

  • I do think that my commonplace book can connect with some of my 2QSQs which tend to be all textual and primarily from the novel itself. For example, my 2QSQ on Jane Eyre follows this interest in Jane’s feminism, and we can see in this case, I am questioning how the readers at the time felt she as a character was represented. These tend to be more focused on monster theory but I do see how her feminism comes back into my CPB with her marriage and new status and sense of autonomy.
2QSQ #5 – 10/2/23

With this other 2QSQ on Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I can see how early on I was interested in influence and this idea of monstrosity stemming from the inability to think for yourself or how important it is in who you surround yourself with. Again, with my 2QSQs, I did bring the discussion back around to monster characteristics, but I can see how these ideas of personhood and society begin to shape up with help from the novel.

2QSQ #9 – 10/30/23


Exploration of relevant contexts enhancing my reading of the novels

  • The type of relevant contexts I looked to in most of my entries for my CPB stemmed from either the British Library, the Victorian Web, or scholarly articles from the back section of novels. When we had more specific directions – such as our assignment of looking at Welcome Catalog artifacts- I enjoyed spending time with interesting primary sources that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. A more fun source that I also got really into was a podcast on Jane Eyre called On Eyre from Hot and Bothered. They went into sections by chapter to analyze if Jane Eyre is still relevant and important enough to continue reading for personal or academic purposes. I found this super helpful in adding to what I had picked up by reading the novel, and it brought my thinking to new places. For instance, like with my example from CPB entry #4, I thought more about the religious element of the ending and how each character had an interesting personal connection to religion. Another part of my entries usually came from contemporary pieces of scholarly criticism that I would look up and get a sense of what the professional writing community is noticing and raising about each novel. For the case of my idea that came from reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, these pieces of scholarly work were helpful in setting off new ideas for my own writing.

2QSQ #11 – 11/13/23

November 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

SOURCE IDEAS:

“The driver further states that all the way the Englishman inside, who was so ragged and dirty that he was reluctant to carry him, kept up a sort of wailing noise which so attracted his attention that he twice got off his bix to see what was the matter, and each time he said it was nothing. The cabman is of opinion that both the Englishmen were of weak intellect. We were of the same impression here”(291). 

“Marjorie Lindon still lives. The spark of life which was left in herm when she was extricated from among the débris of the wrecked express, was fanned again into flame. Her restoration, however, was not merely an affair of weeks or months, it was a matter of years. I believe that, even after her physical powers were completely restored — in itself a tedious task — she was for something like three years under medical supervision as a lunatic”(319). 

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

These two ideas seem to reinforce the idea of a remark on Englishness, masculinity, and this new woman era and its anxieties of gender uncertainties. First, we get these remarks from regular people, ordinary British citizens, on the ‘ragged and dirty’ state of Englishmen and their ‘weak intellect’ that must have something to do with their being in the company of the ‘Arab’ but also the idea that they are thus more susceptible to this outsider influence. We also know that Marjorie was dressed as a man and how that could add to the anxieties and threat of an unknown — relating to other works I’ve encountered within the ‘New Woman’ context, there is this interesting notion where some believed they would become an ‘unsexed woman.’ I think this idea relates to some of the remarks made in the second quote, where I sense a critique of how the trauma of her experience marked her as a ‘lunatic.’ Another potential read could be where this ideal of Britishness and womanness are under attack by new, progressive mentalities surrounding the role of governments and empires as we moved into the 20th century and also a redefining of women’s roles in relation to men and the misconstrued idea that if women gain access to traditionally masculine roles, then it somehow means a lessening of men’s masculinity and power. Similarly, other nations, peoples, etc., gaining access to more power and international standing was seen as a threat to Britain’s empire and previously unparalleled power and influence.

QUESTION:

I want to know more or maybe discuss some theories on why the end is left so open regarding the actual Beetle. We get this conclusion, not entirely dissimilar to Jane Eyre, where there is a recounting of all the characters — a where are they now kind of section, but the state of the “so-called Beetle” is given the very last thought and has no definitive answer/closure to if people even believed it was a thing or if it was still out there. What might there be to gain from a literary standpoint of ending the novel in this way when throughout the whole novel, efforts were made to classify, describe, and almost diagnose it to then this shift to ‘I do not propose to pronounce a confident opinion”(322)? Thinking back to Cohen, does this ending perhaps feel ominous as the monster always escapes and still defies categorization?

CPB Entry #9 (Hybrid day) 11/9/23

November 8, 2023 / / 5 Comments

Overview of Entry: These two quotes emphasize feelings that I am picking up from the context of the era surrounding imperialism and reverse colonization anxieties, as well as this interesting connection with gender and perhaps a critique on the ‘New Woman’ emerging at the end of the century. Influence both from within Britain and this displacement into a foreign entity, but in this case, complexities arise as Egyptians were not truly foreigners if under British rule but still make distinctions throughout where the characters distinguish a person such as if so and so is an ‘Englishman.’ This idea led to a piece of secondary criticism I found where Margree discusses the impact of Marsh’s choice to make a critique on both the type of idealist masculinity of Victorian England and the effect of control, influence, and potential domination from a governmental standpoint as the very person, Paul Lessingham, who is in danger is within Parliament and representative of the greater British empire. Again, this connects with the quote from the novel that I found interesting, where Lessingham wishes to be protected from a type of terrorism and something that threatens his all. I also found it compelling to look at the relationship between France at this time and found the image from Punch an interesting way to look at the context of other imperial powers and the power dynamics and how it feeds into this theme throughout of keeping in control of oneself…and subsequently one’s country. 

  • From the novel:

“Those eyes of hers! They were a devil’s. I can positively affirm that they had on me a diabolical effect. They robbed me of my consciousness, of my power of volition, of my capacity to think, – they made me wax in her hands”(240).

“In short, I want you to effectually protect me from the terrorism which threatens once more to overwhelm my mental and physical power, – which bids fair to destroy my intellect, my career, my life, my all” (251).

  • Critical Commentary: Margree, Victoria. “‘Both in Men’s Clothing’: Gender, Sovereignty and Insecurity in Richard Marsh’s ‘The Beetle.’” Critical Survey, vol. 19, no. 2, 2007, pp. 63–81. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41556581. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023.

“It is legitimate and necessary, however, to distinguish the older, statesmanlike Lessingham from the youth who was barely yet a man, since what the text is trying
to defend is specifically a version of mature, masculine subjectivity. The reason it is so important that none of the adult, establishment males succumb to mesmeric control is because, as Wolfreys has noted the text establishes that mesmeric control is also equivalent to colonial domination. The significance of the novel’s setting in the milieu of the British parliamentary system thus becomes clear: it is because what is at stake is no less than British sovereign”(68).

  • Historical Context/Visual: “Palmerston, the Imperialism of Free Trade, and the Inadvertant Destruction of Turkish and Egyptian Rulers.” Victorianweb.org, victorianweb.org/history/empire/egypt/13.html.

“Mr. Punch makes quite clear his views of the relative Egyptian roles of England and France by the relative size of fox and lion — and the lion holding the sack of money”(Punch, 21 July 1883)

Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (French, 1846-1920), 1879 from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA

2QSQ #10 – 11/6/23

November 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments

SOURCE IDEAS:

“Before I was able to replace them, the tin was sent flying, and, while I was still partially recumbent within eighteen inches of me, that beetle swelled and swelled, until it had assumed its former portentous dimensions, when, as it seemed, it was enveloped by a human shape, and in less time than no time, there stood in front of me, naked from top to toe, my truly versatile oriental friend. One startling fact nudity revealed, — that I had been egregiously mistaken on the question of sex. My visitor was not a man, but a woman, and, judging from the brief glimpse which I had of her body, by no means old or ill-shaped either” (152) 

“How Paul, suddenly returning home, had come upon Holt engaged in the very act of committing burglary, and how, on his hearing Holt make a cabalistic reference to some mysterious beetle, the manhood had gone out of him, and he had suffered the intruder to make good his escape without an effort to detain him”(211). 

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

These two comments pick up on this idea of the uncategorizable nature of the beetle, especially regarding gender, but also this recurring theme of its relation to making men, Paul mostly, lose their ‘manhood’ or in some way feminize them by the reactions to the beetle. In this first quote, the scenario is Sydney getting a close look for the first time at this transformation of the beetle into its (kind of) human form — we can call back the encounter Holt has with this figure and how he remarks his categories or descriptors to try and identify what exactly “it” is are failing him. In this scene, we do get a more concrete aspect of their gender, but it is still defying those norms of identification in a very interesting way. Later in the book, where Marjorie is narrating, she recalls hearing about Paul’s reaction to the name of the beetle being invoked and how his ‘manhood had gone out of him’ and while I am not entirely sure what to make of that, I am intrigued by this ability for the creature to inspire this gender confusion both in its actual physicality and in the notion of how these men who encounter it are supposed to behave and what they are labeled as when they don’t.

QUESTION: 

Is there more we could look to with this idea of monsters and their transgressive nature surrounding social norms, etc., that we could apply to gender and also maybe connect with the uncategorizable nature of the beetle regarding Egypt and its connection with the mixtures of traits and species of its gods/deities? What might this added layer of context about the uncategorizable nature of Egyptian historical figures mean when we apply that to Victorian society’s gothic monster culture with the idea of mixture and defying norms? 

CPB Entry #8 – 11/2/23

November 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fPf1_f5Dex_0xs4WQb4_xWTtL7zsAg-122Ozx2TzRIE/edit?usp=sharing

  • From the Novel:

“He made a movement with his hand, and, directly as he did so, it happened as on the previous evening, that a metamorphosis took place in the very abysses of my being. I wake from my topour, as he put it, I came out of death, and was alive again. I was far yet from being my own man; I realized that he exercised on me a degree of mesmeric force which I had never dreamed that one creature could exercise on another…”(Marsh 62)

Marsh, richard. “The Beetle”. 1897.
  • Critical Commentary:

“…I consider two oppositions that shape critical discussions of the fin-de-siecle Gothic-horror and terror, and entropy and energy – and I argue that critics’ exploration of the Victorian’s seeming preoccupation with the horrors of entropic decline has obsucred that culture’s persistant anxiety about the terrors of energy”

Jones, Anna. “Conservation of energy, INDIVIDUAL agency, and gothic terror in Richard marsh’s “the beetle”, or, whats scarier than an ancient, evil, shape-shifting bug?”. 2010. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41307851
  • Historical Context:

“Ancient history speaks of the mysterious doings, oracular sayings, prophetic forebodings, and apparently miraculous performances of the Egyptian Priests; of the Delphion oracle among the Greeks, and of the Sybils among the Romans…Mesmer’s theory is as follows “Animal magnetism is a fluid universally diffused: it is…mutual influence between the…bodies, the earthm and animated bodies…”(354)

https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.somnolismpsychei00hadd/?sp=5&r=-0.676,0.404,2.352,1.118,0
  • Visual:

Welcome Catalog .”The rise and fall of a medical mesmerist”. 2018.

https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WsT4Ex8AAHruGfXv

2QSQ #9 – 10/30/23

October 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

SOURCE IDEAS:

“England is bad enough, I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. I know you and Harry are inseparable” (183)

“Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood— his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that, of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him? (248).

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

These two passages, nearing the end of the novel, bring up themes of English society, corruption/influence, mirroring/doubling within Dorian and Harry, as well as this final hope/question of redemption and a correction of one’s past. The first quote I found interesting as it brings in a lot of commentary and critique of their society and the feelings at the turn of the century — also remembering ideas in the past chapters about corruption from books, which side of town was desirable or seedy and how people based their judgments off of one’s appearance and social actions. I liked the contrast to the first quote we see in this second excerpt, where Basil told all this to Dorian right before he saw the portrait, and only after Dorian murders does he begin to feel remorse and wish to atone. The questioning we see from Dorian and his rationale as he moves from the influences of Harry to Basil is intriguing. 

QUESTION: 

In terms of monsters, this shifting moment toward acknowledging his monstrous behaviors and deeds is something to think about further when we look for people to blame. I wonder what we, and readers at the time, could look to and grapple with regarding this idea of corruption and pleasures. Does Dorian perhaps represent this middle ground, swayed by both Basil and Harry…but which proved stronger and why? Dorian is his own person, unlike what we saw with Jekyll and Hyde; is Wilde’s choice to portray Dorian more as a blank slate, maybe reminiscent of critiques made way back in Frankenstein?

CPB Entry #7 – 10/26/23

October 25, 2023 / / 0 Comments
  • From the Novel:

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirros. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows tha the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics diagree, the artist is in accord with himelf. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensly. All art is quite useless”(Wilde 42)

Wilde, Oscar. “The Preface.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005, pp. 41–42.

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions…He becomes an echo of someone elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him”(Wilde 58).

“To Realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for”(Wilde 58).

“Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves” (Wilde 97)”

Wilde, Oscar.” The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Norman Page, Broadview Press, 2005.
  • Critical Commentary:

“…Caron then painted Dorian as a classic example of a young person ruined by corrupting influences, observing that the novel described “that boy’s life” from the time when “corruption [is] implanted in his mind from his conversation with Lord Henry Wanton” up to the point where Dorian has indulged in “all the vices that can be imagined.” Carson seems to have regarded this opening tableau as merely an instance of what we might call “The obsenity effect,” depicted within the story and capable of corrupting the reader in precisely the same way that Lord Henry corrupts Dorian”(763).

Stern, simon.”Wilde’s obscenity effect: influence and immorality in “the picture of dorian gray.” The review of english studies, vol. 68, no 286. 2017. pp. 756-772.
  • Historical Context:

“The luxuriously elaborate details of his “artistic hedonism” are too suggestive of South Kensington Museum and aesthetic Encyclopedias. A truer art would have avoided both the glittering conceits, which bedeck the body of the story, and the unavowing suggestiveness which lurks in its spirit. Poisonous! Yes.”

Punch Magazine, “our booking office” July 19, 1890. https://archive.org/details/punchvol98a99lemouoft/punchvol98a99lemouoft/page/340/mode/2up?q=wilde
  • Visual

“Iconography of Oscar Wilde.” Clark Library, 7 Apr. 2016, clarklibrary.ucla.edu/collections/oscar-wilde/iconography/.

« Older posts

© 2024 Elia's Site

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

css.php