Today:
·
Instructions for essays
·
Go over exam
·
Self-critiques
·
Course evaluations
Instructions for Essays
·
Include with your essay today’s self-critique. Staple all
materials, and use MLA manuscript format. (See “Paper-Writing Resources” in our
online class library, bottom of page.)
· Final versions of your
critical essays are due no later than
·
Slip essays in labeled
box just outside of the SE English Annex, #318, in my SE 318 or Minard mailbox,
or under my office door.
·
If you want your graded essay returned to
you, enclose in SASE. Essays turned in without this envelope will be kept for a
few weeks, then incinerated in the SE hallway to a
background of Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star Spangled
Banner.”
·
Early turn-ins are
welcome!
What I’ll look
for:
1) A clear understanding of
the critical lens you are applying.
2) A good essay on
literature. (See
“Basic Conventions for Writing Essays about Literature” in our online class
library.)
3) A good essay, period. (Like any analytical essay, the piece
should be coherent, focused, and organized with developed paragraphs and
helpful transitions; it should offer a clear thesis with plenty of clear claims
and specific evidence to support that thesis; etc.)
4) See “Evaluation Criteria”
on your assignment sheet for important additional information.
English
271 Exam
30
pts. possible (30% of semester grade)
1) Print out and read the eight “Exam Samples” under Course
Documents in Blackboard.
After reading each sample, identify what primary critical lens is being applied, with a brief (1 short paragraph)
rationale for your identification. I.e., explain why you believe the type of
criticism you identified is indeed the main
one, drawing on Tyson and class discussion. 1pt. each, 11 total:
Exam Sample 1: Feminist
Exam Sample 2: Psychoanalytic
Exam Sample 3: New Critical (firm)
Exam Sample 4: Culturalist
Exam Sample 5: Myth/Jungian, mixed with a
bit of Feminist
Exam Sample 6: Culturalist
Exam Sample 7: Structuralist
Exam Sample 8: Feminist
Exam Sample 9: Deconstructionist (firm)
Exam Sample 10: Culturalist (firm)
Exam Sample 11: Marxist (firm)
2) True or False (for whole
statement), 1 pt. each, 3 total:
__T__
Structuralism is a multidisciplinary enterprise that examines
the way in which surface phenomena such as literary genres, cultural norms, and
language conventions—however varied and chaotic—are governed by a
limited number of stable, universal underlying structures which are valid for
any time and place. Structural linguists look for structures which underlie language;
structural anthropologists look for structures which underlie cultures;
narratologists look for structures which underlie literary texts; and
myth critics look for structural patterns called archetypes.
__T__ Culturalists do not
believe that a stable system of any kind underlies all human productions or
that universal laws govern all human activities and artifacts. Rather, they
hold that human productions are particular to their specific time and place and
are governed instead by whatever socio-political discourses happen to be dominate in that
time and place.
__T__ For
the Culturalist, one of the ways in which dominant members of a culture remain
dominant is by explicitly or implicitly promoting the notion that their beliefs
are inevitable and “natural.” Much like Feminist or Marxist critics,
Culturalists hold that “universal laws” or “universals” of any sort are really
just provisional social constructs which can be changed. It might be argued that Marxism does hold to
certain “universals” regarding economics, “the historical imperative,” etc. But
contemporary Marxists are vary wary of totalist or univeralist claims or
metanarratives.
3) Review the “Feminist Criticism: Identity and Representation”
Power Point slide show which was presented in class a few weeks ago. 2 pts.:
a) Who, if anyone, is the “other” in Fight Club? Or who, if anyone, has been
“othered”? Discuss and support your response in a detailed paragraph. Be sure to make clear who is “othering” whom.
One of
the chief things to note about the phenomenon of “othering”
is that those who are othered are denied agency; i.e.,
they aren’t viewed as whole, independent selves which struggle, act, and
exercise choice in the world, but as objects who are acted upon.
For
instance, we could say that Tyler Durden “others” the
bourgeoisie or anyone with any power (e.g., Jack’s boss); such a claim would be
a little iffy, because people with power by definition can’t be “othered”;
however, if a student made an argument for such a claim, I
probably gave some credit, since the Project Mayhem guys victimize people with
power (bombs, pranks, etc.).
Or we
might say that everyone involved in fight club or project mayhem is othered by the culture at large; the reason they
join these events, in fact, is because they’ve been othered
by their own culture. This is probably a fairly valid point.
Or we
might claim that women are othered by the male
characters in the story insofar as the men primarily ignore the women, repress
their own feminine side, and reassert a new, merely updated, postmodern brand
of machismo which still excludes women; there might be some validity to this
argument, although I think there is some reference to women wanting in on fight
club, and we’d also have to recognize that many of the novel’s male characters
are suffering, alienated, and powerless.
Finally,
we might claim that the novel as a whole (or perhaps the author Palahniuk) others
women because the female characters are few and far between, mostly just react
to men, and
aren’t fully drawn, dynamic characters.
b) In your view, does Palahniuk’s book tend to promote
traditional binary thinking or does it subvert (challenge, confuse,
undermine) such thinking? Discuss and support your response in a detailed paragraph.
4) Choose one of the following and respond, 2 pts.:
a. Drawing on any one of Tyson’s questions on p.
65, write a one to three-paragraph summary or abstract of a
possible Marxist essay on Fight
Club. Be sure to include a thesis statement and supporting evidence for that
thesis.
b. Drawing on question #1 of Tyson’s questions on
p. 32, write a one to three-paragraph summary or abstract of
a possible Psychoanalytic essay on Fight Club. Be sure to include a thesis statement and supporting
evidence for that thesis.
5) True or False. 1 pt. each:
__F___The New Critical reader holds that literature, like
any cultural artifact, arises from and comments on the socioeconomic conditions
in which it is written.
__T___
The New Critic holds that her task is (among other things) to determine whether
a particular work qualifies as “great literature.”
__T___
New Criticism holds that a work of literature is an internally unified entity,
whose parts—characters, symbols, plot, structure, point of view, setting,
language, style—all work together in the articulation or enactment of a serious
theme.
__F___
The New Critical reader sees strong similarities between literature, popular
movies, TV commercials, and even football games because certain fundamental
patterns underlie and govern all human productions.
__T___
New Criticism is no longer widely favored, but some of its language and terms
are still useful for fundamental discussions of literature, and are even
sometimes useful on occasion in other critical approaches.
6) What are two questions which a Deconstructionist reader would
likely ask about a poem, novel, or film? 2 pts.
:
7) Print out and read Tony Hoagland’s “Adam and Eve” from a
culturalist perspective. (You can find the poem under “Course Documents” in Blackboard.) In
what ways does the poem participate in (reflect, subvert, affirm, or alter) the
discourse of American manhood at the turn of the millennium? Be sure to
provide a clear understanding of what “American manhood” means as a discourse—a
system of beliefs and values. Support your response with reasons and examples.
(One to three paragraphs.) 2 pts.: 2005: Clarity
issues with most student responses. Would have helped for each
to first clearly define “the discourse of manhood.”
8) The knowledge you’ve been gaining this semester about critical
approaches to literature easily transfers to other areas of life and education.
Discuss in about two paragraphs how your study of New Criticism, Psychoanalytic
Criticism, Marxism, Feminism, Structuralism, or Cultural Criticism might apply to
your other classes or to any area of your life. Be clear, specific, and
honest. 2 pts.:
9) Why are so many postmodern critical approaches skeptical about
the ability of any critic to objectively and straight-forwardly analyze a literary
work? What very generally has changed (what paradigm shift has occurred)
in the way we now understand all texts, readers, culture, language, or
perception? Draw especially on class discussion/lecture. 1 pt.:
Two main shifts:
1.
Traditionally
marginalized groups have become increasingly more visible and audible--a result
of ongoing diasporas, the civil rights movement of the 60s, second and third
wave Feminism of the 70s and 90s, globalization, and an ever-shrinking, culturally
hybrid and “wired” planet. These groups
have raised questions about the assumed “neutrality,” “objectivity,” and
“universality” of previous kinds of criticism because such criticism has come
almost exclusively from just one (socially, economically, and politically)
dominant group—a group whose world view, values, and assumptions may be very
different from their own.
The multicultural
movement has prompted or contributed to a paradigm shift; has forced the
dominant culture to recognize the contingency of nearly all our traditional
ideologies, discourses, institutions.
2.
The
advent of Deconstruction, a linguist and cultural turn in most theory, a postmodern loss of faith in meta-narratives,
and the advent of a corporate-capitalist, mass media-saturated environment have
led us to question whether or not there’s really a “there” there. The
predominant belief is that language, in one guise or another, mediates all
experience and perception; that all experience and perception, in fact, may be
nothing more than constructs of language.
For more
info.: look into PostColonial
theory, Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt,