English 2850 Fall 2022: Great Works of World Literature II

“Narrative of Fredrick Douglass” chapter VI paragraphs 1-2

In chapter 6 of “The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass” we learn more about Douglass is youth as a slave. Douglass was designated to new owners , that being Mr and Mrs Auld. When first arriving there Mrs Auld is described to be a kind soul , a woman whose appearance matched her actions. It was Mrs Auld’s first time owning a slave and she showed no signs of acting like other slave owners. She had the finest feelings according to Douglass and would go out of her way to begin teaching him how to read and write. However such kindness lasted a short time and she soon was influenced to start acting differently with Douglass. Mr Auld found out about Douglass’ learning and demanded his wife to stop teaching him. He claimed that teaching a slave would make them unmanagable and cause them to act up. Mrs Auld obliged and soon her cheerful face would become angry and menacing. To me this section of the chapter was rather intriguing because it proved that not everyone looked at just the skin tone of a person. It showed that slavery in america was largely influenced, everyone was being brainwashed to believe that what they were doing was right. This event is what also introduced Douglass into reality. He talks about how these words sunk deep and how it stirred up his mind as a child. It caused him to belittle himself and the way the text is written gives us no option but to feel sympathy. His way of setting the scene and describing all the emotions that were going through him at that time shows us how strong he was. Dealing with this as a child isn’t an easy task and the fact that Douglass would keep pushing soon after this shows how compelling he was. The question left in mind for me is was there such thing as good slave owners?

• Our reading this week is Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. You can find the text in Volume E of the anthology. We will be discussing it in class on Wed, so be sure you have your text with you.

• Choose a passage or quotation from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass that made a strong impression on you in your reading. Post the passage on our class blog and provide a brief (300 word) analysis of its significance. Some things to consider: What does this passage add to our understanding of slavery in America? What does it reveal about Frederick Douglass? What do Douglass’ diction, syntax, and literary style add to his story here? What questions are raised for you by the passage you’ve selected?  Please share your response as a “new post” (not as a comment on this post), and include your name in the title of the post.  Your post must be up by Wednesday, October 19th in order to receive full credit.  Please be prepared to share your passage during class on Wednesday.

• I will be holding office hours on Monday, October 17th. This is a great time to meet with me about your essays or anything else that is on your mind. Sign up HERE. If you can’t make it to office hours, but have questions about the essay, please feel free to reach out to me via email.

• Your essays are due on Friday, October 21st by midnight. Please give your file a name that includes Your Name and ENG2850 and share it as a Google Doc with [email protected]. Alternatively, you can email it as an attachment to [email protected].

First, my apologies for the late posting. Again, we have a strange week, since the college is closed on Monday, October 10th. Your work for this week is as follows:

• You should be beginning to work on planning and drafting your essays. Make sure you have read the assignment carefully and have added your comments or questions to the “Essay #1” post. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you are struggling with any aspect of this assignment or simply want to run your ideas by me!

• Submit your “plan” for your essay to me in writing by Wednesday, October 12th (I have pushed this back from the date I had originally suggested.). You may either hand your plan to me in class or send it to me in an email ([email protected]). The plan should include not only the text you are writing about and the topic you are exploring, but also a question you have formulated that brings the two together. (For example: “What does Moliere seem to be saying about lust or sexual attraction through the character of Tartuffe?” or “What does “The Chimney Sweeper” tell us about how appearances can be deceiving?”). Additionally, you can include in your “plan” any initial ideas you have about things you are hoping to explore in your essay. Make sure your question is a question that is open ended (not yes/no or either/or) and that can be answered through textual analysis.

• In class on Wednesday, we will be discussing the poems of William Wordsworth. Please read “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”, “The World is Too Much With Us”, and “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” and have the poems available with you in class. We will be focusing on “Tintern Abbey”, so please be sure to read it carefully and look up any unfamiliar words!

• In a separate post, I have shared a few questions about Wordsworth for discussion and reflection. Please respond to one of the questions no later than Friday, October 14th.

Please respond to one of the following questions:

–In what sense does “Tintern Abbey” offer readers a “religion of nature”? What are some of the specific ways in which nature works as a substitute for traditional religion?

–Why do you think Wordsworth gives “Tintern Abbey” such a precise and detailed sub-title? What is the significance of this poem’s full titile?

–In the final portion of “Tintern Abbey,” the speaker turns to his “dear friend.” Who is this friend and what role does he/she play in the poem?

–“Composed upon Westminster Bridge” and “The World Is Too Much with Us” are both sonnets. Why do you think a poet might choose to work with such a highly structured form?

–Describe some of the ways in which Wordsworth’s poetry conforms to some of the features of Romanticism that we’ve discussed. What evidence can you find to illustrate this?

Essays Due: October 21st by midnight.

Your essay should be submitted to me as a Google Doc.  Please share it with [email protected]. While your essay itself should have an engaging title, please give the file the generic title: Your Name. ENG2850 Essay 1.

3-5 pages – 12pt. type, double-spaced

In a thoughtful, well-organized analytical essay, grounding your response in a close, detailed reading of the text at hand, please address one of the following topics.  These topics pose general, theme-based questions.  In formulating your essay topic, you will want to articulate your topic in the form of a more specific question about the text you’ve chosen to work with.  You may use any of the texts we’ve read beginning with “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger” and continuing through the poems by William Blake.

1.Concentrating on any one of the readings we’ve done so far, consider the relationship between appearances and reality. In answering this question, you might want to consider: What is the difference between how things seem and how they actually are? How are appearances used to deceive or to manipulate? What does this text seem to be saying about the difference between what we think we perceive and what is actually true? How do characters use masks (real or figurative) to deceive those around them?

2.Discuss the theme of passion as it relates to any one of the texts we’ve read thus far. Here you can focus either on passion in the context of romantic love or on passion in the sense of any strong feeling or emotion. What does your text seem to be saying about passion, particularly when passion is in conflict with other more rational values?

3.Choose any one of the texts we’ve read thus far, and identify what you consider to be its central message with respect to human destiny. In several of the texts we’ve read, characters or authors appear to be struggling to determine their purpose in life or to chart their own course.   What does freedom look like in your text?  How does your text balance human agency with the idea of a pre-ordained fate.

4. Wild Card:  If none of these prompts is calling to you, you may create your own topic.  To to this, please submit a focused question to me for approval by Monday, October 10th.

5.  Even More Wild:  In lieu of an analytical essay, submit a creative work that responds directly to one of our readings.  If you go this route, your creation should share the same genre and thematic concerns as the text you’re responding to.  (i.e. if you’re responding to Tartuffe, your creative project would be take a dramatic form.)  Accompany your creative work with a brief introduction explaining it’s relation to the “source text”.

General Guidelines 

Please read these carefully! This list contains information that will be essential to you in writing this essay.

• All successful papers will illustrate their claims by quoting directly from the text. When you include a quotation, be sure to explain its significance.
• Quotations should include parenthetical citations, providing page or line number as necessary.
• Assume that your reader is familiar with the text and does not require any plot summary.
• Always use the present tense when writing about literature.
• Your essay should have a title. Use your title as an opportunity to let your reader know what your paper is about!
• As a general rule, the question that you find genuinely perplexing will yield a stronger paper than the question whose answer seems readily apparent to you, so resist the impulse to shy away from tough topics.
• My prompts are meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive. Use my questions as a guide to thinking about your subject, but don’t feel that you have to address every question I raise in an essay prompt.
• You should be able to articulate your paper topic in the form of a question. Be sure that the question will yield a thoughtful, complex response – rather than a yes or no answer.
• Test your main idea or central claim (a.k.a. your thesis) by asking the following: “Could a reasonable reader conceivably disagree?” If the answer is “No, no reasonable reader could conceivably disagree with what I’m saying in this paper,” then you need to do more work to refine your thesis. You want to be staking out an interpretive claim that someone else might disagree with; otherwise you’re simply articulating ideas that are readily available to any reader of the text.
• The opening paragraph of your paper should introduce your topic to the reader (i.e. what question are you asking?), and it should also tell the reader where you’re going to be going in order to answer your question. In that way, even without necessarily spelling out a thesis, your introduction acts as a road map for the rest of the paper. For this reason, you might find it useful to go back and rewrite your introduction after you’ve completed a first draft of the paper.
• Your introduction should lead the reader straight to your topic without resorting to any kind of sweeping generalizations or universal claims.
• Rather than simply restating your introduction, your conclusion should both summarize the important interpretive claim you’ve made in the paper and indicate how your analysis might help readers to understand the text in question.

As you know, this is another weird week. Baruch is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we will NOT be meeting in person. I haven’t assigned any new reading this week, so this is an opportunity to catch up on missing assignments. Your work for this week is as follows:

• William Blake: Poem Analysis – Following our discussion of Blake on Wednesday, I’d like you to choose one of the poems you were assigned to read (“The Lamb”, “The Tyger”, “The Chimney Sweeper” (I and II), and “London”) and perform a close analysis of the poem. To do this, please answer the questions on the assignment sheet I’ve linked to HERE. Submit your work by Wednesday, October 5th.
• Office Hours: I will be holding drop-in office hours on Monday, October 3rd from 3-4pm. Please feel free to come by if you’d like to discuss your upcoming essays or any other course-related issues. If you have not yet had a meeting with me, this is also an opportunity for that.
• Essay #1: I will be posting the details of your first formal essay of the semester in a separate post. Please read the assignment carefully and the “General Guidelines” carefully. In a comment on the “Essay #1” post, please share your initial thoughts and/or questions about this assignment. What would you like to understand more clearly? What questions do you have? What text are you thinking about exploring for this assignment? Please share these questions/observations by Friday, October 7th. Note that you will need to submit a “plan” for your essay by October 10th. The essay is due by Friday, October 21st.

Personally, I can still see this type of argument for God made to this very day. While we make discovery after discovery, we won’t be able to see what God sees. Ultimately, we won’t be able to comprehend everything, only God can. It’s not trying to debunk science, but instead, we are being put in our place in comparison to God. While reading the text alone, I wasn’t too sure about how well my understanding of the text was, but the discussion in class helped me better understand the text.

Please respond to any two of the following questions:

1.  What is the narrator’s purpose in writing these “confessions”?  How do you know?

2.  For Rousseau, what is the relationship between feeling and thinking?

3.  How does Rousseau describe his childhood?  What significance can we draw from this description?

4. What is going on with Rousseau’s description of his experience being spanked at boarding school? What is the significance of this “confession”?

5. Why do you think Rousseau chooses to include the anecdote about stealing from his employer?

6. Using your own language, how would you describe the narrator, given his self-presentation in The Confessions?

As you know, this is a weird week. The college will be closed on Monday and Tuesday; we meet as usual on Wednesday, and then Thursday is an institutional Monday! This week, for the first time this semester, I am asking you to read two different authors, Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Blake. We are also moving this week from The Enlightenment to Romanticism, the next major period in western intellectual history. In Wednesday’s class, I will give an overview of Romanticism, but we will primarily be working with Blake’s poetry, so be sure you have them available to you in class. This week’s reading’s are in Volume E of the Norton Anthology. Reach out to me if you have any questions. Happy Fall!

1. Rousseau, The Confessions (excerpt):. Read the short excerpt from Rousseau’s autobiography,  The Confessions.  This is in volume E of the Norton Anthology.  Please respond to any two of the Rousseau discussion questions (I am sharing these in a separate post.). Your responses should be posted by Wednesday, September 28th.

2. Foundational Documents of Democracy:   One expression of the Romantic spirit of the late 18th century is a changing vision of the meaning and function of government. Please read the preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence (pp.18-19 in Vol. E of the Norton Anthology – the paragraph that begins “We hold these truths to be self-evident….”) and The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (pp. 21-23).  Please identify one concept from either document that seems to you to be particularly noteworthy – either historically or in our own era – and share it below.  Be sure to explain why this idea stands out for you.  These observations should be shared by Friday, September 30th.  Then please read your classmates’ responses and comment on at least two of them by Sunday, October 2nd.

3. William Blake: In advance of Wednesday’s class, please read the following poems: “Introduction” (this is untitled), “The Lamb”, “The Tyger”, “Chimney Sweeper” (There are two poems with this name; please read both.). You can find these poems in Vol. E of the Norton Anthology. Look up any words that are unfamiliar to you, and be prepared to discuss these poems in class. Our work with William Blake will continue after Wednesday’s class, so expect a second Blake-related assignment to be posted as part of Week #6.

I hope that your understanding of Pope’s “Essay on Man” was deepened and enriched by our class on Wednesday, September 21st.  In a comment on this post, please share your most important “takeaways” from our exploration of the poem together.  What idea made the strongest impression on you?  What lingering questions are you left with?  What did you learn?  How did your view of the work change as a result of our discussion?  (These questions are just suggestions.  It’s up to you to decide what direction you’d like your response to take.). Please share your thoughts at any point after our class discussion on Wed., Sept. 21st, but no later than Friday, September 23rd.