As I said in class today, with papers due Monday, and The Castle of Otranto to prepare for next week, we will NOT be holding class on Friday; instead, I will add our usual Friday class meeting time to the line-up of office hours for the remainder of this week:
Thursday: 2:30 - 5:00
Friday: 2:00 - 5:00
In the absence of a Friday reading to blog about, please feel free to use the comments to this post as an opportunity to
- vent about the challenges posed by this paper,
- clarify your ideas,
- get help with sources,
- confirm your understanding of key topics or concepts
- or otherwise draw on the expertise of your classmates.
Bear in mind that the classmates who led discussion on a given topic are themselves familiar with the readings and the secondary material about them. It is also the case that a number of people are writing papers on similar topics, texts, and issues (children's literature, the sublime, and the theater have been of particular interest), so you may find that others in the class are wrestling with the same questions or concerns that you are. And I will of course be checking the blog to answer questions and offer ideas.
You may respone more than once to this thread for credit, though I will only credit responses that have some substance (i.e., not simply, "Yeah, me too!").
Deadline: Monday (4/25), start of class. Midnight Saturday distinguishes Week 13 posts from Week 14 posts.
14 comments:
Hi-- So, I'm doing my paper on children literature. But, I'm not sure how I want to narrow it down. That seemed to be the biggest confusion/advice on my feedback. I want to talk about gender differences/the difference between picture books vs. stories/ and possibly find some journal entries from 18th century people that recall how children books directly influenced their lives (the POV from the child and not the adult). As you can see, I'm having A LOT of trouble narrowing this down. Any suggestions about where to go and any good sources would be greatly appreciated. Pretty much just the entire concept of a subjective childhood is what mostly intrigues me, perceptions of childhood from the child vs. the adult. Again-- so much going on in my head...
I really thought this would be a great way to dive into a topic because each week we skim over a new topic. But, it's a lot more challenging than I anticipated because everything I know more-so than just shallow knowledge is on print culture, which I did the presentation-- so that crosses that off the list!
Lucky for you, PMV, I was part of the group that presented on children's literature, so I might be able to help you out! ;)
I'm actually kind of jealous of everyone that gets to write their papers on children's literature because it's such a fascinating topic, but anyway...there is a lot to think about when approaching it. There are a lot of different ways of approaching it. If it helps, you might want to think about the fact that in the C18, the middle class used children's literature as a way to impart the morals and societal ideals they felt were important for the next generation to possess. Think about the story "The Female Choice" we had you guys read--it definitely suggested ways in which the society at the time thought girls should be raised, etc. ("Rules for Behavior" does something similar.) So, maybe it's not so much as how children's literature "looked" to adults vs. children (because the adults clearly had a message in mind they wanted to get across to children, and they probably would've supplemented the readings with their own personal instruction), but HOW it was getting morals/messages across. Does that help at all? (I hope so!)
The book I actually closely worked with for the presentation was Andrew O'Malley's The Making of the Modern Child, and I loved it. It has a lot of really great (and fun) information in it, so that might help if you can find it (I actually had to order it from IShare, so I'm not sure how readily available it is). I do know though that EBSCO (through the UIUC online catalog) had some pretty good articles (type in variations of eighteenth century literature) that my group managed to get some good information from too. So don't stop looking! Hopefully this is useful!
Also--if anyone has any thoughts/ideas for sources on how the Gothic might relate to the sublime (if we can argue that it even does) please, please let me know. I'd really appreciate it! Thanks! (And good luck, all.)
Thanks, SMR!! (whoever you are..!) You've given me a lot to think about.
For Gothic lit, it would be awesome if you could explore the effects knights,heroism, and chivalry all had on little boys. This is a great way to focus and talk about Gothic lit, and sneak in a little bit of children lit in there too!
I too am doing my paper on children's literature. Much like PMV, I am having a great amount of trouble narrowing down my topic.I want to focus in on the issues of morality in the didactic versus fairytale texts of children's lit (ie. "Rule for Behaviour" versus "Dirty Boots"). The problem I am having is that I feel as though my topic is almost too generalized--there is not much of a question for me to explore. Can anyone offer any tips on how I can expand this into a more detailed topic?
I am also having terrible trouble finding research on the topic. Most of what I have found does not seem to be conducive on the issue or morality. Can anyone direct me to some websites or books that they used to help on this topic? Any direction would be greatly appreciated!!
Another thing about people who are working on children's literature and cannot find a topic that is too broad, one can maybe discuss the relationship between the topics of morality discussed in Children literature but also connect it with the moral issues discussed in Working Culture literature. Berquin's "Dirty boots" and Leapor's "Dorinda at the glass" have similar issues with lower and upper class relationships. Just and idea.
Hi all. I am looking at the theatre and how it portrays what was happening in government and the ruling class at the time. I am focusing on Golden Rump and trying to find sources to use that work with that particular primary source as well as theater and the political life together, but much of what I am finding seems to be strictly based on the history of either the theater or what was happening politically. Can anyone help me out with ideas of what to use or find or look for.
Molly - I was in the children's literature group, so there's a chance I might be able to help you out a little. In the two stories you are comparing, the moral of The Dirty Boots focuses more on how children should act and treat others who are not of their class while Rules for behavior is just that, how to act in different situations in general. Short stories tended to give morals and teachings that pertained to very specific events or focuses, such as how upper class people should treat their servants. Rules gives lessons for life entirely and they are different for the two sexes. Going with what I just wrote, fairytales were either for boys or girls but never meant to be read and taken to heart by both. The didactic writings contained many different topics and ways children should act in society - some of them working for both of the genders while some are for either one or the other. I do not know if this helps you out at all to try to narrow down your ideas, but I hope it might give you a little more information to lead you in a direction you want to head in.
Hi Westyn,
I was part of the theatre group. There is so much going on so I understand how you feel! I still have a book that you may like (it is easy to navigate) and I will return it tomorrow morning-early afternoon. It discusses women, but also about staging the nation and nationalism. It unified the audience as a nation, and remember how theater would compare it to parliament as well. It could also be considered satire: theres many angles you can work from in determining how theater portrays government Maybe you can find the book online- it is called "Women, Nationalism, and the Romantic Stage" by Besty Bolton. I hope this book and/or this ideas give you more keywords to search for. Search things like "stage politics"...."nationalism in theatre"..romancing the stage...
Now for me! I am writing a paper about the romantic sublime using Young's Night Thoughts. A critic claimed the sublime was romanticized in the 19th century using nature as a metaphor for consciousness but I find that happening with Young. So, I need more idea of how to add substance to my paper or arguments- I suppose I could use Burke as a means of saying Young does STILL fit in the 18th century, but it's necessary to recognize him as a pivotal author perhaps.....did the group find any criticism or reviews of Young and what the sublime meant to him? or about his use of nature? Another ideas are welcome..thanks!
An issue that I seem to be having is finding more recent sources for my paper. So far, I have journal articles from 1970, 1981, and 1990. Has anyone come across any more recent eighteenth century journals?
I'm (broadly) writing about gender issues in Tristram Shandy, so any directional advice would be helpful. Thanks!
217.
I am writing my paper on a similar topic, but what you can add, I believe, is that Young did not only use images of nature to describe the sublime but many forms of space and time are used to describe the sublime as well.
Sara, I too am writing about gender issues except in Mary Jone's Epistle to Lady Bowyer. I found a book that could be useful for your topic as well. It's called "The Trauma of Gender: A Feminist Theory of the English novel" by Helene Moglen, it was published in 2001 so that's pretty recent. You can find most of it on Google Books and if you do a search within the book for "Tristram Shandy" she has some interesting things to say about gender issues. Particularly look at page 171 of the book, Moglen even mentions some other texts dealing with feminism and gender issues in Tristram Shandy. However, there are some pages missing which is a bummer, but hope this helps!
Like a few of the above people, I'm writing about children's literature.
I feel like the requirement on the assignment to have it be about one of the "primary readings assigned for the course" is very limiting and, for some topics, stifles potential research. During my reading on children's literature, I stumbled upon a fascinating argument about a book of stories that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote and William Blake illustrated -- the stories were about two little girls and their (generally pro-feminist) adventures, but the article posited that Blake illustrated the stories in such a way as to discredit Wollstonecraft's arguments. I really wanted to explore that issue further (why did these great writers care about children's lit? What are the stakes?), but instead I'm trying to tackle the same issues through the lens of one of the stories we did during the children's lit unit.
Besides the problems described above about finding suitable secondary works (I think they're out there, they're just hard to find), my primary issue is narrowing my interest down into specific and useful questions.
Hey guys. For my paper, very broadly, I am exploring "An Address to Friendship" in respects to how it (/Yearsley)is torn between working class and the upper class (and sentimentality). If anyone found some sources that fit that general idea let me know. I found some, but always up to some better sources or general ideas to add to it.
Overall, this paper was interesting to start. It was very hard to narrow it down though. Once I picked a topic, there was still so much left to narrow down. The paper itself might be on the longer side, but getting the concept together was still difficult. Even after having a good portion of the paper done, I still find myself making sure I am going down the right avenue.
@RS
I was in the Children's Lit group and I would agree that you would have to go beyond the readings that we assigned to you guys. It only offers samples of the children's literature as it was read and produced to children in the 18th century; it doesn't offer any insight from a critical standpoint. If you need some help, we have a list of secondary sources that Kirstin shared with us. Some authors: Brian Alderson, Anja Muller, Andrew O'Malley, Samuel Pickering, Mary V. Jackson. But I'm sure you can just go to the library catalog and find shorter sources--these were longer works.
I think also, something that I keep reiterating on past blogs is that children's literature dealt a great deal with moral issues and didacticism. And while much of it can be interpreted as parents and adults wanting the best for their children, the didacticism was also very much about controlling children. Publishers of children's literature were very invested in the politics of control and perpetuating children as "the other" from adults.
On a separate note, my paper is on the relationship between Ann Yearsley and Hannah More. Kirstin has already given me really helpful instructions on how to see the piece of work from a literary eye, not a historical one--which, I guess, is what I'm being tempted to do. I guess for me, I'm still trying to think out the implications of Yearsley's poem "Address to Friendship" and how she viewed class mobility and also the inability to transcend into the upper class, while considering her popularity and her success. I don't know, is there anything I could add to this to make it more thought-provoking or is there something I'm missing that could be problematic to her own view of mobility? I'm open to any thoughts and/or comments!
217,
This probably won't help you for the first draft of our paper, but perhaps it is something to consider for the revision.
I too wrote on Night Thoughts, but with a different focus than your own. In my readings though, I came across an overwhelming abundance of imagery dealing with death as well as the natural process of human death and the emotions connected to that. While death perhaps isn't nature in the sense of plants and animals, it is a natural process of life. If this interests you, you might take a look at Night Four, in which Young discusses death in more detail, specifically how humans and other beings react to the natural order of death.
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