- Could the giant helmet that kills Conrad be a metaphor for the [unreadable] and almost doomed quality of the later C18?
- If you could have drinks with three writers studied this semester, who would they be and what would they drink?
- You're on a desert island, and you're out searching the landscape. During your search you stumble upon the carcass of a great white bear. Which part of the bear has survived?
- If working-class literature were printed on the stage in a sensible manner by a team of forged Jacobin children, would it be sublime? (for two extra credit points write every "s" in this exam ilke those goofy long s's that are in C18 texts).
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
For Credit: Awesome Exam Questions That Won't Be on the Exam
...but you can answer them here (they are all lifted from the responses to Monday's attendance question). If your answer has intellectual substance, it will get graded like any other blog response.
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18 comments:
Laurence Sterne drinks only tequila. Lots of tequila. By sunrise, you and Sterne are blacked-out in a rowboat in the Thames with two harpoons and a white bear to find and kill. When you finally come to in some back alley around 2 PM, you and Sterne just look at each other and say "What the eff was that?" Incidentally, this is the same reaction one has after reading Tristram Shandy.
James MacPherson drinks O'Doul's, the non-alcoholic beer. It's just a pale forgery of beer.
Samuel Johnson drank a bunch of wine. No joke there: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1033694/?page=1
I would choose Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edmund Burke and Laurence Sterne.
Forgive me, but the grand scheme for all of this is for entertainment purposes. After all, they say liquor brings out another side of you.
First, I chose Wollenstonecraft because of her notability for claiming the rights of women. I would order her a manly drink- a beer. Nothing too light or watery, so perhaps Guinness, Killian's Irish Red or Samuel Adams. I'd like to see if she's capable of "kicking it back" with the guys with a beer in her hand. I'd imagine would be trying to interact with the men and challenging them to have a drink with her as an equal.
Burke was picked because of his theory the sublime is experienced through observing. He talked about fear and terror, and I'd like to see if a drink conception overwhelms him. I wonder if he's easily scared- so perhaps an Irish car bomb. I will instruct him to drop the shot glass of Bailey's/Whiskey in the glass of Guinness. It has to be drank before the combination curdles. Maybe he'll shudder and be distracted because he's in awe of all the beers on tap (particularly if we went to Blind Pig) or the vast array of liquor bottles behind the bar.
Sterne. As we all know, he likes to ramble and lose his train of thought. I could imagine him as a drinker with ADD. He'd probably talk about engravings on the wall or eyeball people and speak his opinion. So, I'd order him a red bull and whiskey. The caffeine from the energy drink would fuel his energy and I'd bet he start speaking his random thoughts. The whiskey is a addition to open these gates to his mind!
Another one! I liked this question as well about the carcass of the white bear.
If I stumbled upon a white bear carcass, I'd find the head (and brain) intact. There are a few reasons why I chose this. First, the brain is probably the most complex organ because the central nervous system is located there, as well as all of our thoughts and emotions. Billions of nerve cells and neurons compose the brain to create thoughts, perceptions, actions, memory, etc. When I think of later 18th century literature, I think it's the most complex course I've taken for English during my time at the University. Not only that, but the most complex piece of work we studied was obviously, Tristam Shandy. This book reflects the intellect and the wide range of emotions and thoughts Strene was able to convey through the character's growth (starting from birth). Being able to express and create such ideas is pretty remarkable and shows the powerful ability of the mind to generate such thoughts.
Also, the white bear was supposed to symbolize our "intellectual journey". If it was a spiritual journey, maybe I would have chosen the heart (the obvious symbol of love and feelings) or eyes (they say the eyes express the soul...). This period of time was more about gaining and searching for knowledge by asking questions, which originate in our minds.
First of all, Ryan, I am kind of in love with your comment, but anyway...
We’ve learned that the 18th century gets the short end of the stick in terms of its literature rarely being taught in college courses today. With this in mind I do think that the helmet that kills Conrad can be a metaphor for C18 literature (minus the unreadable and doomed quality part of course). When Conrad gets crushed by the helmet we are stripped from the opportunity of finding out whether or not he would end up being a great prince or a failure like his father. Similarly, by not having C18 literature be part of the college curriculum students are also left with no opportunity to personally find out if C18 literature is something that they enjoy or not. Conrad's potential to be a great prince is destroyed by the helmet, while students' opportunity to experience the greatness of C18 literature is taken away by the education system.
Tristam Shandy would definitely be drinking jungle juice. Mush like his book and his narrative voice, you don't really know what's in it, but it's meant to get you intoxicated and then you don't have any idea what you're talking about (just like the feeling you have after reading Shandy).
If I was on an island and (hopefully I would be stranded with Shandy to keep me thoroughly entertained, or at least to dull the agony of isolation) found a white bear, hopefully it would look absolutely nothing like the Coca-Cola polar bear. To be cheesy, I'm going to say that the guts and heart survived because the guts and the heart are the core of the C18 and what keeps it going when there was not any really historical significant event to keep C18 locked in time. The guts and the heart most likely represent print culture and the working-class because those two categories drove the C18 and a lot of its subsequent activities. But, to be realistic, probably the fur is the only thing that survived because the gizzards and guts have been eaten by the malaria-carrying-flies that will soon also kill Shandy. But, no fear, I will survive because Sir Gawain will come find and rescue me. The fur can be a metaphor for gothic literature because it has survived and really taken form since its "invention" in the C18. It will carry on and always reinvent itself in upcoming years, just like the fur will be used by the islanders.
I don't think the helmet can be a metaphor for killing the C18. If it was, then we'd be saying that the C18 was a sickly, un-sexualized, decrepit, most likely infertile thing (like Conrad), and C18 has many aspects that live on (reproduction!) past its time. Print-culture, working-class literature, sublime and gothic literature have all made their debuts in C18 but have become very well-known and relied upon in later centuries. Unlike Conrad, they would be missed if they were stifled "by the helmet."
To begin my night of drinking with three authors from the 18th century, I would start of with Mondos with Berquin. He is a children's writer and therefore needs a children's drink. Next I would begin drinking beer with Thomas Jefferson. The reason for this is that I know he was a fan and that it would be very interesting to tell him that I am an American traveling to the past. I would describe our society today and when I traveled back to the present I would laugh at the butterfly effect. Then I would begin drinking Rumplemintz with Burke, while arguing about nothing, until we found it all futile and passed out.
With Anna Laetitia Barbauld I would drink long island iced teas in the evening in July. When she has a few cocktails she gets particularly deep, talking about the stars and planets as if they're the best thing since sliced bread. I can always entertain her by suggesting that long island iced tea is itself sublime, as the number and volume of various liquors within are difficult to communicate.
Edmund Burke, as I see it, would be a man worthy of straight whiskey. The way I see it, if I get him drunk enough, the next morning I'll be able to ask him if the pain he's feeling is the result of a deficiency in pleasure or if he still thinks that pain and pleasure are exclusive concepts. Then I'll give him a few aspirin and laugh in his face. Removal of pain is, in itself, pleasurable, and thus aspirin would discredit his theory of the sublime.
It would be quite the experience to have a few drinks with Laurence Sterne. I feel like the way it would play out (if our drinking styles mimic my interpretation of Tristram Shandy) would go something like this: Sterne would be drinking sips of fine wine, unlocking the subtleties of the blend and savoring each flavor individually. I would be drinking the same wine, but not at all in the way Sterne would like me to. That is, I would be drunk by the time he finished his first helping, at which point he would rebuke me for wasting it. I'll attempt to defend myself by rattling off wine traits off the top of my head, but he won't be fooled.
Also, I bet I could convince Jonathan Swift to indulge in a bloody mary (just on principle).
I think I'd travel back to the 18th Century and have drinks with Laurence Sterne, James Macpherson, and James Boswell. Sterne and Boswell seem to be the two writers on the syllabus who would be the most fun to be drinking with, and it'd be great to bring Macpherson around to start an impromptu argument with Boswell (channeling Johnson) about the authenticity of the Ossian poems. Clearly, if we're going back in time, the drinks would have to be beers from Sam Smith's Brewery, because it is in England and was actually founded during the 18th Century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smith_Brewery. However, with that group things would probably get a little crazy, so there would definitely be some shots of whiskey along the way, and the night would end either with a huge fight and/or complete reconciliation between Macpherson and Boswell. I think that if it was possible for Macpherson, Boswell, and Johnson to get together for a night of drinking back in the day, that situation might have ended better.
Time travelling and drinking? Sounds like a perfect combo. If I had to pick 3 of our writers, I would chose: Macpherson, Walpole, and Anne Yearsley.
I would start with Anne. She seems like the type of person that would be able to put a few back, if she didn't think polite society was keeping tabs on her then. A few beers just talking about what it was like to be trying to move upwards would be fun.
Next I would challenge Macpherson and Walpole to a drinking contest. After shots and bantering, I could get one of them to own up to forging. If not, it could be entertaining nonetheless.
The first author I would drink with is Edmund Burke. His texts on the sublime seem so radical that he must have been on some binge when writing it. So, if we were going to sit down and have a drink, it would probably be some absinthe. The second author I would like to drink with is Henry Walpole and we would probably drink something non-alcoholic because based on his writings, he's had enough to drink. Finally, I would also like to drink with Laurence Sterne because "Tristram Shandy" is such an interesting, unique text that the author must have countless entertaining stories to tell. I think the conversation would fit well with some glasses of red wine.
The three authors I would choose to have drinks with are Tristram Shandy, Edmund Burke, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
For Shandy, he would definitely be drinking Magic Dragons, consisting of Bacardi Dragonberry, a whole medley of other mixers, and cotton candy. It's a random drink, filled with a plethora of unexpected and random concoctions, much like his novel. It also produces a sort of uncomfortable feeling after drinking such a tart drink, much the way my mind feels about most of what Shandy writes.
For Burke--he would drink a scotch, probably Glenlivet. It's a strong, solid, and reasonable drink with a rich history and stately appeal.
Wollestonecraft, the sole lady in my evening out, would not want to drink something frilly or come off as too feminine. Since she is a woman who aims for equality with her male peers, I feel as though she would purchase the whole lot of us a round of Jameson shots to rip through. She would like to keep up with the boys and would prove it to be so through a rousing inclination towards hard liquor. In "Vindication," she satirizes the way women are treated, and would use this as an opportunity to show her peers her power, intelligence, and control.
I believe I would like to have drinks with Sterne, because he is one crazy dude. Gray, because we could talk about how things never really change much for the common man. And Wolstencraft because I would want the woman's perspective on the 18th cent. We would all drink Absinthe because after all we would be in search of the sublime.
Even though Ryan proves that Johnson had a wine problem and had to keep his hands off of it for the sake of his sobriety, I still imagine him throwing back something really stiff, like a killer brandy, and then going out for a rambling night on the town. I can imagine Johnson raging late into the night with his friends, bad-mouthing Macpherson over shot glasses, curing Ossian and Fingal until the morning.
Macpherson I bet was a fun guy to have a drink with and he certainly would have been throwing back some scottish whiskey. Even though we regard him more as a forgerer and perhaps some consider him less literary for that, but he had to have some major guts to publish something with a history he nearly fully fabricated. A guy like that would be a riot in a pub.
More than both of these men, I would rather have a chat about the inspiration of her poem, "Holt Waters," over mixed drinks crafted with some goldschlager because the lines "The liquor pure, as amber fine,/ But stock'd with particles saline" (99), remind me of the tiny gold flecks one can find floating in a bottle of this liqueur.
I think a happy hour with three classy 18C writers (Paine, Boswell, and Mary Jones) would be start of one classy evening. Paine and I would be enjoying nothing less than the finest scotch in the bar on the rocks while enjoying a a couple Cuban's to relax a bit more. The evening would develop to resemble a night out with Patrick McEnroe, where the crew assembled not only is guaranteed not to remember what happened, but become involved in a high profile police chase throughout the streets of London.
Boswell and I would head to the Silver Bullet establishment in Urbana, though mostly more for his entertainment value than for my benefit. The type of drink in this situation is less than important than the company available, but I might suggest a standard Budweiser because Boswell is, after all, quite the clydesdale.
Mary and I would be more classy. Anyone that can write about women pooping in public is bound to be a ball of super fun. Mary doesn't always drink beer, but when she does, she prefers Keystone Ice, mostly just to back up how tough a gal she really is.
When I approach the white bear I find him gone. He was a hallucination to my hopes, dreams, and efforts while on this island and his apparition now is consistent with his elusiveness thus far and is not surprising he would fail me now again.
I think the giant helmet that kills Conrad is the perfect metaphor for later-18th-century literature. Just as the helmet was said to be one hundred times larger than a regular helmet, our studies of print culture showed that way more people were able to print, creating a huge amount of literature compared to earlier times. Just as the helmet came out of nowhere, plenty of writing from disadvantaged groups, such as the working class, came out of seemingly nowhere. Just as the helmet serves as the fulfillment of some moral (or something), plenty of the writing at the time was done to push morals down people's throats. Much like a helmet is something you can wear on your head, you can take books written in the 18th-century and wear them on your head, if that's your kind of thing.
A better name for this blog might be "Tracking the Giant Helmet," which sacrifices a bit of aesthetic pleasure but gains the benefit of potentially being the very first thing you find on Google upon typing in those words.
I would have drinks with Leapor, Young and Sterne. Leapor would definitely be drinking gin, since it is the life-blood of the working-class. William Hogarth made some paintings in the 18th century depicting London’s love for alcohol and “Gin Lane” displayed just how much the liquor had permeated within society. Young would most likely be drinking absinthe, so as to induce many irrational and sublime-like thoughts. For Sterne, I would have an ice cold Busch Light. He’s had a rough life as it is and anything too hard would probably complicate it more.
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