Alex E. Blazer	Course Site	Syllabus
Virtual Office Hours	Listservice Response	Study Questions
Exam 1	Italo Calvino	Christine Brooke-Rose
Final Paper	Exam 2

Assignments

Reading, Writing, and Repression

English 261S (07975-5) Introduction to Fiction

Spring 2003, Saturday 8:30-12:18PM, Denney 250

Virtual Office Hours

Wednesdays 12:30-1:30 PM: WebCT Chatroom

1. Login to WebCT using your OSU username and password.
2. Click on "English 261S: Introduction to Fiction."
3. Click on "Chat."
4. Click on "General Chat for ENGLISH 261S: Introduction to Fiction."

Listservice Response

These listserv responses serve three goals:

1. to actively engage you in these texts,
2. to help your peers understand these texts even as they're reading them,
3. to broach issues for class discussion.

Thus, as a class, we're going to do a few for every text we read in order to generate a variety of readings and a well-rounded understanding of the works of fiction. Spend approximately 1/2 of your response summarizing the text and 1/2 tentatively analyzing, interpreting, and determining the meaning of the text. Conclude your response with two-three questions for class discussion.

 

Sign up for one slot. Use the response, of 300-500 words, as an opportunity to develop a preliminary interpretation of the text as well as steer class discussion in the direction of issues you want to work with. Submit your response to the listserv, listserv-blazer@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu,  no later than 8:00 PM on the Tuesday before the reading will be discussed (the first listserv on Joyce, due Thursday, 4-10 is the only exception).  This is especially important for your peers and I, who base class discussion on your responses, need time to read your responses.  Responses will be penalized one letter grade if they’re turned in after 8 PM Tuesday, two letter grades if turned in after 8 PM Wednesday, and so forth.  As this policy will be strictly enforced, I suggest submitting your response to the listserv well in advance of the deadline in order to make sure it goes through. Your message arriving back to you from the listserv constitutes your receipt.

A note about the listserv and viruses: Because of the recent epidemic of viruses that have plagued OSU listservs, I have closed the list to non-subscribers. This means that you must email the listserv from the address you provide on the listserv email address. Also, refrain from sending attachments to the listserv. Email your response in the body of the text.

Week 1	none	introductions
Week 2	due Thursday, 4-10	Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	Amy Springmeier Katiy Suminski
Week 3	due Tuesday, 4-15	Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse"	Yasmin Sheffy
		Gass, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country"
Week 4	due Tuesday, 4-22	Sartre, Nausea	Jerry Gay Jennifer Mueller
Week 5	due Tuesday, 4-29	Gass, "Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop's"	Angella Maulsby
		Poe, "The Purloined Letter"	Kate Anderson
Week 6	due Tuesday, 5-6	Calvino, If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler	Debora Hill Nathan Ross Todd Tabern
Week 7	due Tuesday, 5-13	Borges, "The Library of Babel"	Jason McCloud
		Süskind, "Amnesia in Litteris"	Dawn McPhie
Week 8	none	film
Week 9	due Tuesday, 5-27	Brooke-Rose, Textermination	Burl Braver Nikki Mefford Mike Palatas
Week 10	none	final exam
Finals	none	final paper due

Study Questions

1. Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"

• preliminary questions
• Why do you write letters to friends? What do you put in those letters?
• Define your relationship to your parents.
• How does that parental relationship define who you are, and how you correspond with your friends?
• thematic questions
• Why does Georg write to his friend, only to keep things from him? Why does Georg ask his father for advice on the letter?
• What is the conflict between Georg and his father?
• What is the significance of the story's title? What is the judgment and who's judging whom?

2. Barton Fink (Directed by Joel Coen)

• preliminary questions
  • What does a writer want out of life and existence?
  • What does writing do for and to the writer?
  • What is writer's block and what triggers it?
• element of fiction: conflict
  • What causes Barton to write the play about the common man for which he was discovered? What keeps him from writing the Hollywood screenplay about wrestling?
  • Describe the relationship between dream and reality in the film. How does the act of writing traverse the conflict between the two? How might the act of writing exacerbate the problem?
  • Describe Barton's relationship with Audrey Taylor. What is Barton's conflict regarding sexuality?
  • What conflict tears Charlie Meadows' psyche asunder?
• thematic analysis
• Compare and contrast the three motivations and versions of writing as evoked by Barton Fink, Bill Mayhew, and Jack Lipnick.
• What meaning does the film suggest about the relationship between the creation of art and the desire for love and sex
• Describe Barton's relationship with Charlie. What does Charlie Meadow's split personality suggest about Barton Fink, the writer's, split personality.
• How does the film, the story, end? Where is Barton, and what, if anything, has he learned?

3. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• preliminary questions
• What is the experience of childhood and adolescence like?
• How have your childhood and adolescent experiences (with your parents, with your friends, with sexuality) defined your current world view?
• How does the act of creation, be it writing or another art, work to express one's prior experiences and one's current world view?
• element of fiction: characterization
• What kind of boy is Stephen? How does he interact with and react to his parents, peers, priests, and women? How do they interact and react to him?
• How does he develop over time? In what ways do his primary character traits change as he reaches adolescence and manhood? What aspects of his personality remain the same? Chart over time his relationship with parents, with religion, with politics, with religion, with peers, with women.
• In what ways does Stephen set himself from his peers and parents and religious authority? Why does he do so?
• Do any discrepancies or disparities exist between the views he espouses to family and friends and priests and what he actually thinks?
• element of fiction: setting
• What is the significance of Stephen's charting of his place in the universe?
• How is Stephen's psyche molded (netted) by his place in society as a lower-middle class Irish boy raised by a devout mother, lackluster father, and intellectual and disciplinarian Jesuits in a country, colonized by England, full of religious tension between Catholics and Protestants as well as religious and political rivalries between religious leaders and nationalist leaders battle for power? What inspires Stephen to cast off the nets? How might such tensions allow or even encourage him to rebel?
• Does art afford the artist to transcend his time and place?
• thematic analysis
• What does the novel suggest about the relationship of art's and the artist's to childhood?
• How is art different from apology, confession, and admittance? How is it the same?
• Why does Stephen choose the life of an artist over the life of a priest?
• Why does Stephen refuse to serve? Given the final journal entry, is his refusal complete?

4. John Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse"

• preliminary questions
• What's the experience of puberty like?
• What about the experience of the family vacation?
• What are the connotations of amusement parks in general, and funhouses in particular?
• element of fiction: symbolism
  • Who is Fat May the Laughing Lady?
  • What extra meaning might reside in the fact that the family vacations in Ocean City? Why can't they swim?
  • What does the funhouse represent?
• element of fiction (redux): conflict
• In what historical conflict is the story set?
• What pubescent conflicts does Ambrose have? Compare and contrast his relationships with his brother and father with Magda and his mother.
• What deeper conflict might being lost in the funhouse represent?
• What is the purpose of the self-reflexive narration? Is there a conflict between the reader's expectations about Ambrose story and what the story actually provides? How might the story's reflexivity mirror Ambrose's experience in the funhouse?
• thematic analysis
• What does the story suggest about the effects of war on the adolescent psyche?
• What does the story imply about the sexual anxieties of boyhood?
• What is the story's message about the activity of reading stories?
• What does the story suggest about the ability of the boy to deal with his conflicts? Does Ambrose ever find his way out of the funhouse? Conversely, does he ever really find his way in?

5. William H. Gass, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country"

• preliminary questions
• How would you describe your hometown?
• How does the weather affect you?
• How does place in general affect the psyche? How does the Midwest compare with the West Coast, the South, or the Northeast?
• element of fiction: imagery
  • What mental pictures does the narrator use to describe the weather? What are the predominant colors of the town?
  • What image does the narrator use to describe where Billy Holsclaw live? How does that image become associated with Billy?
  • Are the narrator's images realistic or imaginary? Do they justly portray the town or do they justly portray his mind?
• element of fiction (redux): setting
• How does the narrator describe his Midwestern town, for instance, in terms of place, weather, education, business, and church; and what is his attitude toward it?
• How does the narrator's surrounding affect his psychic life? Compare and contrast the outer, external reality of the Midwestern town and the narrator's innerworldly existence.
• Is this a specifically Midwestern story, or do the narrator's attitudes about art and love, life and death transcend Indiana and touch universal concerns?
• thematic analysis
• Why does the narrator have difficulty creating art? What message does the story convey about Midwestern culture?
• What does the story suggest about the possibility of love?
• What is the story's message about death?

6. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

• preliminary questions
• What is your relationship with writing? What do you put in your private journal?
• What makes you sick to your stomach?
• Does the act of thinking and writing ever take hold of you? overwhelm you? How do you feel when the experience fades?
• element of fiction: plot and structure
• What is the outer frame narrative of the novel? What is the effect of presenting the novel in diary form?
• According to Roquentin, what is an adventure? Does Roquentin have an adventure?
• How does Antoine Roquentin's researching and writing of the historical book on the Marquis de Rollebon structure his character arc? What happens (literally and metaphorically) when he concludes the book?
• How might Roquentin's meeting with Anny serve as the climax to the diary/novel?
• thematic analysis
• Why does Roquentin hate the Self-Made Man? How does this play out Sartre's theories against humanism and for existentialism? Why does Roquentin try to help the Self-Made Man?
• Does the Nausea ever leave the narrator? Or, more importantly, does the narrator ever leave behind the Nausea?
• What is the narrator's relationship to writing (his book, his journal), to his past (Anny), to his very existence? Does this suggest anything about his future?

7. Edgar Allan Poe, "The Purloined Letter"

   • preliminary questions
     • Why do you write a love letter?
     • What happens to the psyches of sender and intended receiver when a love letter between lovers is intercepted?
     • How do you know what is in another's heart and mind?
   • element of fiction: point of view
     • Who's telling the outermost frame of the story? Why is it significant that neither the Prefect nor Dupin narrates?
     • Compare and contrast the attitudes and agendas of the narrator, the Prefect, and Dupin.
     • How does Dupin get inside the mind of (i.e., attain the point of view of) the Minister?
   • thematic analysis
     • From where does the letter gain its power? over the royal wife? over the Prefect? over the Minister? What does the letter represent for Dupin?
     • What does the Minister's ruse of hiding the letter in plain sight say about the nature of how we normally see the world?
     • What does Dupin's ruse of switching the letter say about his character in particular and his relationship with humanity in general?

8. William H. Gass, "Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop's"

• preliminary questions
• What happens to you when you read a good book or poem, view a work of art, or listen to a good piece of music?
• What was your home-life like? How do parents shape one's inner life—one's desires and one's fears?
• How do parental influence, body image, and sexuality converge in the psychic life of young girls?
• element of fiction: tone
  • What is Emma's father's attitude toward his daughter? toward his wife?
  • What is Emma's attitude toward her body?
  • What is Emma's relationship with the poet Elizabeth Bishop in particular and poetry in general?
• element of fiction (redux): imagery
• What is the first image that we see, even before we get to the story proper? How do the images of the inter-poem relate to the story and, more importantly, Emma's memories?
• What is the first image we see in Emma's mind proper? Why does Emma fear Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore?
• What do the images of the flies represent? Compare and contrast how flies operate in this story and "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country."
• thematic analysis
• What does the portrayal of the father and mother suggest about the effects of parents' desires and cruelties upon their children?
• More specifically, what is the message conveyed regarding feminine sexuality in relation to male parenting in general and abuse in particular?
• What does the story say about why we turn to literature? Given Emma's tragic "conclusion" what might the story be suggesting about an utter retreat into literature? How might literature embody a double-edged sword?

9. Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler [reading guide]

   • preliminary questions
   • Why do you read novels? What are you looking for?
   • What does the experience of reading give you, do for you, do to you?
   • What is your relationship with other readers?
   • element of fiction: theme (thematic analysis)
   • What are you, the Reader searching for among all these unfinished and apocryphal, fragmentary and fake stories? What does the novel imply about the possibility of finding the "true" novel?
   • What does the story suggest about the relationship between readers? How is reading akin to and how does reading inspire (sexual) communion?
   • Given Chapter Eleven's dialogue of readers, what does the story say about the goal of reading?

10. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"

• preliminary questions
• What are your connotations of libraries? What do libraries represent?
• When you enter a library, how do you feel? How do you feel in the stacks?
• What is your relationship with books, the place and presence of books?
• thematic analysis
• What does it mean that this narrator was born and will die in the library? What do the stalls for sleeping and shitting represent?
• Why does the knowledge that all knowledge lies in books give humanity hope and justification? Why does it depress?
• What are the limits of human understanding? What are the possibilities?

11. Patrick Süskind, "Amnesia in Litteris"

• preliminary questions
• What do you remember of what you read?
• Why can't you remember more?
• thematic analysis
• What is "amnesia in litteris"?
• If you can't remember a book, how does it change you?

12. The Neverending Story (Directed by Wolfgang Petersen)

• preliminary questions
• Why/How do you become caught up in a story?
• What happens when the reader's imagination stops working?
• What happens when readers stop reading?
• thematic analysis
• Why does Bastian turn to books? What kinds of books does he normally read, according to the bookseller?
• What is the nature of Atreyu's quest? What obstacles must he confront?
• What is the relationship between the nothing and Fantasia?

13. Christine Brooke-Rose, Textermination [reading guide]

• preliminary questions
• Why do you pray? To whom do you pray? What do you pray for?
• What do you read and why do you read what you do?
• Compare and contrast how you read with how you watch television and film? How do you feel about and react to literary characters versus television and film characters?
• thematic analysis
• What do the factions (the terrorists, the dead characters, the living characters, the film actors, the soap/serial actors) suggest about the nature of storytelling in our culture?
• What does the story say about the relationship between high and low culture, academic and popular culture?
• Why does the story end exactly as it begins? What does loop suggest about the nature of the convention, about the nature of reading, about the nature of the culture wars?

Take-Home Midterm Exam

1. Review

the texts

Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"

Joel Coen, Barton Fink

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

William H. Gass, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

the elements of fiction

conflict

characterization

setting

imagery

symbolism

plot and structure

point of view

tone

 

The listserv response asks for summary and tentative analysis. The reading journal requires active engagement with the stories. The exam compels you to build comparative interpretations among the stories using textual evidence and the elements of fiction. Showcase your analytical abilities by providing strong, thesis-driven readings of the texts. Use the text inasmuch as it fuels your ideas, your making sense of the texts.

 

Be prepared to discuss each author, and be prepared to make connections among multiple texts. There will be no questions that allow you to discuss the texts in isolation; rather, you will compare and contrast texts. You will be asked to write two or three essays from a set of four to six discussion questions. Each question will require you to discuss two or three texts, and you won't be able to discuss a text more than once on the exam.

2. The Exam

• Answer two of the four essay questions below.
• Essays should be approximately 500 words each.
• Do not use a particular author/story in more than one essay.
• Organize essays by argument and analysis. Have a controlling idea, an interpretation, a thesis that bridges the two stories. Support your points with textual evidence (quotes and explanation) when necessary and warranted; avoid plot summary. Make connections and distinctions between the texts, i.e., compare and contrast the authors and their world views.
• Monday, May 5 by 5:00 PM in either my mailbox in Denney 421 (you can ask the secretary for a time stamp) or my email, blazer.9@osu.edu (I'll email you a receipt).
• If you have questions, I'll check my email at 11AM Sunday and Monday; and I'll be in WebCT from 11:00AM-12:00PM on Sunday and Monday.

1. Writers
   In the first half of the course, we've encountered many writers and many reasons for writing. Applying the elements of fiction conflict and character to your discussion, compare and contrast two main characters' relationships with writing. Possible issues include, but are not limited to: What compels them to write? What do they write about? What is the relationship between writing and their core conflicts? Does writing help them flee or confront their issues? Does writing resolve or absolve anything?
2. Families
   So far, we've read of many families poised on the verge of breakdown, if not witnessed them go over the edge. Using the elements of fiction setting and symbolism, compare and contrast two parent-child relationships (from two different stories) in terms of how they function, or don't function, as it were. Possible issues include, but are not limited to: How does the child feel about the parent, and vice versa? How do they bond, and what, if anything, breaks that bond? What kind of authority does the parent wield of the child, and does the child internalize that authority?
3. Sexuality
   We've met a lot of boys (and men) with intimacy issues. Employing the elements of fiction point of viewand character, compare and contrast two main characters' relationships with the opposite sex in general and their sexuality in particular. Possible issues include, but are not limited to: How does the character feel when he's around a girl/woman? How does he think about women, and how does he treat women? What happens when he's intimate; or, alternatively, can he even be sexual with a woman?
4. You
   In our readings, I keep returning to three main issues: writing, family, and sex. What problem do you see arising again and again in these stories? Applying any two elements of fiction, compare and contrast how any two stories treat the problem you feel is endemic to the characters in our course. Possible issues include, but are not limited to (this is me brainstorming here, not you): neurosis and desire, repression and revelation, life and death, love of country and lack thereof, solitude and antisocialism.

The Elements of Fiction conflict character setting imagery symbolism plot and structure point of view tone

The Stories Franz Kafka, "The Judgment" Joel Coen, Barton Fink James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse William H. Gass, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country" Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Reading Guide:

Italo Calvino's

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

This reading guide provides the characters, conflict and narrative, and the thread between stories.

• characters
• conflict and narrative
• thread connecting the different levels/frames of the story

1

• The narrator is "you," the Reader.
• You are anxious to read Italo Calvino's new novel and are trying to find a quiet place to read it.
• Chapter One involves you, the Reader while If on a winter's night a traveler is the story you begin to read.

If on a winter’s night a traveler

• "You," are the reader of Calvino's novel.
  The narrator is "I," an unnamed traveler at a railway station.
  Chief Gorin, Dr. Marne, and Mrs. Marne are patrons of a betting bar at the railway station.
• "I" has missed his connection and is trapped at a railway station. He strikes up an enigmatic conversation with Mrs. Marne, Dr. Marne's ex-wife, who tells him that another stranger with an empty suitcase just like his has left. Chief Gorin says "Zeno of Elea" to the narrator and announces to all, "They've killed Jan. Clear out."
• Chapter One introduces the narrator of the outer frame tale, "You, the Reader." If on a winter's night a traveler purports to be the first chapter of the novel itself that you, the Reader, are reading. Chapter Two picks up when you, the Reader, stop reading.

2

• The narrator is you, the Reader.
  The Other Reader is a young lady at the bookstore with whom you flirt.
• You have become caught up in Calvino's book, but after 32 pages discovers that the novel repeats itself. He goes to the bookstore to exchange the defective book and learns that through a publishing mishap he was actually reading Outside the town of Malbork by the Polish author Tazio Bazakbal. He looks for that book in the shelves and strikes up a conversation with the Other Reader.
• The text within If on a winter's night a traveler is not Calvino's but Bazakbal's Outside the town of Malbork, which the you, the Reader, buy in Chapter Two.

Outside the town of Malbork

• "You" are the Reader of Bazakbal's novel.
  The narrator is "I," Gritzvi, who is packing to leave his home in Kudgiwa for the summer.
  mother, grandfather, Brigd, Hunder, Aunt Ugurd, Jan, and Ponko, Mr. Kauderer, Zwida Ozkart are inhabitants of the town Gritzvi is leaving.
• Gritzvi is leaving home for the summer and journeying to the town of Petkwo. He gets in a fight with his friend Ponko over a girl named Brigd, but he's really thinking about his past girlfriend Zwida Ozkart. After the fight and just as his buggy is ready to depart, Gritzvi learns that the blood feud between Ozkarts and Kauderers is arising again because Kauni and Pitto were killed.
• You are reading Bazakbal's Outside the town of Malbork, which you purchased in Chapter Two and are interrupted by a gap of blank pages in Chapter Three.

3

• The narrator is you, the Reader.
  Ludmilla is the Other Reader, the woman from the bookstore.
  Lotario is the critical reader, Ludmilla's sister.
  Irnerio is the Non-Reader, Ludmilla's friend.
  Uzzi-Tuzi, professor of Cimmerian literature.
• Your reading of Outside the Town of Malbork is interrupted by a gap of blank pages. When the story picks up again, the characters have changed and, after you do some research, seem to be Cimmerian rather than Polish. You want to find out what happens to Zwida and Gritzvi, so you call the Other Reader, Ludmilla, to see if her copy has the same problem. Her sister Lotario answers then puts Ludmilla on, who informs you that the novel is indeed Cimmerian and can be investigated by seeing Professor of Cimmerian Literature, Uzzi-Tuzii.
• In Chapter Three Bazakbal's Outside the town of Malbork seems to become the Cimmerian poet-novelist's Ukko Ahti's Leaning from the steep slope according to Professor Uzzi-Tuzzi, who reads his copy aloud to you.

Leaning from the steep slope

• The narrator is "I" who lives in Petkwo (perhaps in the prison, the asylum?), works at the metereological observatory, and pens the journal that you the Reader are reading.
  Zwida is an old flame staying at the Hotel of the Sea Lily who collects and draws seashells.
  Mr. Kauderer is the meteorologist.
• I am under the care of doctors at the Petkwo prison, but have freedom to move about the town; I might even have a job as a meteorologist. I learn that Zwida is staying in town and look her up. She asks for a grapnel to draw, which the meteorologist Mr. Kauderer gives me, although he thinks I will use it to escape. I meet a bearded man who has escaped.
• In Chapter Three Professor Uzzi-Tuzii begins reading aloud to you Leaning from the steep slopeuntil this novel too is interrupted.

4

• The narrator is you, the Reader.
  Galligani is Professor of Cimbrian Literature.
  Professor Uzzi-Tuzii, Ludmilla, and Lotario.
• Listening to Professor Uzzi-Tuzii's translation, you had entered Leanining from the steep slope until it broke off—the novel was merely a fragment. Lotario says that the novel isn't unfinished and isn't Cimmerian, but is instead finished, Cimbrian, retitled Without fear of wind or vertigo and signed with the pseudonym Vorts Viljandi. Professor Uzzi-Tuzii disagrees and argues that Without fear of wind or vertigo is a fake.
• Leaning from the steep slope was read to you by Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. In Chapter Four you discover it to be a fragment and then learn that it may or may not be a fake translation of Without fear of wind or vertigo by Cimbrian writer Vorts Viljandi, which may or may not be a pseudonym of Cimmerian writer Ukko Ahti.

Without fear of wind or vertigo

• The narrator is Alex Zinnober, an artillery man in the revolutionary military during a revolution who is on a secret mission to hunt the spy who has infiltrated the Revolutionary Committee.
  Valerian is Alex's friend and member of the Heavy Industry Commission.
  Irina Piperin is the girl on the Iron Bridge who has vertigo of the void below and has a strange influence over the men.
• Alex Zinnober is on a secret mission to discover the identity of the spy who has infiltrated the Revolutionary Committee. What he discovers is that his best friend, Valerian, has in his pocket Alex's signed death sentence for treason.
• In Chapter Four Lotario begins reading Without fear of wind or vertigo(by either Cimbrian writer Viljandi or Cimmerian writer Ahti, who might be one and the same person) and in Chapter Five Lotario stops her reading for discussion.

5

• You (the Reader), Lotario, Ludmilla.
  Mr. Cavedagna is an editor at the publishing house who printed the books you've been reading.
• Uninterested in discussing Without fear of wind or vertigo and interested in seeing how it ends, you and Ludmilla summarize the beginnings of the books you've read and decide to pursue the publisher. Cavedagna tells you that the source of the contagious confusion in the print shop is a translator named Ermes Marana who translated the Cimmerian Without fear of wind or vertigo into Cimbrian 1) without knowing a single word of Cimbrian and 2) from a completely different text, Belgium author Bertrand Vandervelde's French text Looks down in the gathering shadow.
• Without fear of wind or vertigo proves to be another dead end; and so in Chapter Five you track down another book, Looks down in the gathering shadow.

Looks down in the gathering shadow

• The narrator is Ruedi the Swiss, a man with a past (too many pasts) that he can't escape.
  Bernadette is a woman hired to follow Ruedi, but who becomes his accomplice.
  Jojo is dead, killed by Ruedi.
• Ruedi and Bernadette are trying to dispose of Jojo's body; Ruedi killed Jojo because Jojo has been pursuing him for years, even going so far as to hire Bernadette to find him. This effort gives Ruedi the time to contemplate his varied past of which he cannot dispose. Ruedi turns Bernadette, or so he thinks—it appears that Bernadette sells Ruedi out.
• In Chapter Five you are introduced to the supposed source of all of your readerly difficulties, Looks down in the gathering shadow, which proves another dead end because in Chapter Six you have read all of the photocopied pages.

6

• You, Mr. Cavedagna, Ermes Marana.
• In furtherance of your quest, Mr. Cavedagna allows you to read the publishers file on translator Ermes Marana. You read that Marana is author Silas Flannery's manager, founder of the Organization of Apocryphal Power, and consultant for the Organization for the Electronic Production of Homogenized Literary Works. In the latter capacity, he wrote a book of beginnings for a Sultan so the Sultan's wife, the Sultana, would never be out of reading material and would not have coded messages sent through her books. This Sultana seems to be Ludmilla.
• You only have a few photocopied pages of Looks down in the gathering shadow. Interested in pursuing this, Cavedagna gives you a file on translator Ermes Marana in Chapter Six, which mentions Irish author's Silas Flannery's In a network of lines which enlace.

In a network of lines that enlace

• The narrator is a visiting professor out for a jog.
  Marjorie is his student whom he may or may not have made a pass at.
• The professor is out for a jog (neglecting his class) and is paranoid of phones ringing. Phone rings follow him up the street of his jog. He answers one of the phones in a strange house, and the caller tells him to go to another house at a certain time. The professor goes, and discovers his tied up student, Marjorie, who calls him a bastard.
• In Chapter Six, you the reader were given a file mentioning Silas Flannery and In a network of lines that enlace is his book, which in Chapter Seven you stop reading to see Ludmilla at her home.

7

• You, Ludmilla, Irnerio.
• You go to Ludmilla's house to talk about the book by Flannery that you were reading. She's not yet home but she's left the door unlocked—you explore her books, reflecting that she is the object/reader of Marana's apocryphal pursuits, and are interrupted by Irnerio, the non-reader who, instead of reading, makes sculptures out of books. After Irnerio leaves, Ludmilla arrives and you two readers "read" each other.
• After intercourse in Chapter Seven, you want to talk with Ludmilla about the book you were reading, and so you go to look for your copy of Silas Flannery's In a network of lines that enlace, but instead find an apocryphal Ermes Marana translation entitled In a network of lines that intersect.

In a network of lines that intersect

• The narrator is a rich and utterly paranoid businessman who collected kaleidoscopes.
  Elfrida is the businessman's wife.
  Lorna is the businessman's mistress.
• The businessman wants to multiply himself via kaleidoscopic mirrors. Paranoid that he will be kidnapped, the businessman concocts layer upon layer of fake/decoy kidnapping. He is, however, kidnapped—by himself? by a real kidnapper?
• In Chapter Seven you found Ermes Marana's fake translation In a network of lines that intersect while you visit the author that Marana faked, Silas Flannery, in Chapter Eight (which is Flannery's diary).

8

• Silas Flannery, Ludmilla, You
• Silas Flannery writes in his diary about the woman he sees reading every morning on a deck chair, which compels him to contemplate the nature of his writing (most notably his desire to write a true book versus his feeling of being a copyist and his attraction to fake books), a short story about writers linguistically dueling over a female reader, and the urge to become a "total writer." Flannery writes that Ermes Marana visits him to tell him he is easily fake and has much potential for fakery himself; Lotaria and Ludmilla separately visit Flannery to espouse their ideals of reading (Lotaria's includes a reading machine that calculates the number of times a word is used in order to determine it's genre and meaning while Ludmilla's involves "natural processes" of meaning inside the work of literature); You the Reader visit as well, before You journey to South America in search of Ermes Marana.
• In a network of lines that intersect is stolen from You by a group of lunatics as you are on your way to meet it's fake original author, Silas Flannery. You're still interested in the story, and Flannery himself in Chapter Eight tells you that the source of the story is a Japenese novel by Takakumi Ikoka called On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon.

On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon

• The narrator is studying spirituality in Japan with Mr. Okeda.
  Mr. Okeda is the narrator's master, Miyagi is Okeda's wife, and Makiko is Okeda's youngest daughter.
• The narrator, who is studying under master Okeda, desires his master's daughter, Makiko, but has intercourse with his master's wife, Miyagi, "accidentally on purpose," all the while moaning Makiko's name. During the act, the object of the narrator's desire, Makiko, watches him and her father watches her watching the narrator and his wife, thus creating a chain of gazes which ultimately and forever subjects the narrator to the master.
• In Chapter Eight, Silas Flannery gives you to read Takakumi Ikoka's On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon, which you don't have time to read by the time your flight lands in Ataguitania in Chapter Nine, where it is confiscated.

9

• You
  Lotaria (aka Corinna-Gertrude-Ingrid-Alfonsina-Sheila-Alexandra) is a double-double agent working for both the secret service of the revolution and the secret service of the counterrevolution in Ataguitania.
• In search of Ermes Marana, you arrive in the land of banned books and false books where secret conspiracies revolution and counterrevolution prevail. You meet up with a secret service double, double agent with multiple names/identities who looks like Lotaria. You become embroiled in a revolution (or is it a counterrevolution?) and are forced to go on a mission to Ircania for the revolution (?) in order to be free.
• Your copy of On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon is confiscated in Chapter Nine, but a woman traveler named Corinna, who happens to resember Lotaria, gives you Around an empty grave by Calixto Bandera, which is really Ikoka's book because in Ataguitania books can only circulate with false dust jackets.

Around an empty grave

• The narrator is Nacho, son of Don Anastasio Zamora, is a man in search of his origins, namely his mother.
  Anacleta, Amaranta, and Faustino Higueras are mother, daughter and son servants.
  Jazmina and Jacinta are mother and daughter noblewomen.
• Upon his father's death, Nacho travels to Oquedal in search of his mother. He finds a servant woman, Anacleta Higueras whom he thinks might be his mother; however, when he tries to have sex with her daughter Amaranta, he is told by Amaranta that she is not his mother and to present himself to Dona Jazmina instead. He finds out from Jazmina that his father was a gambler and a cheat, and, again thinking that he is Jazmina's son, attempts to seduce her daughter Jacinta. Jazmina discovers them and tells him to stop and go back to the servants for Anacleta is his mother. The story ends with Nacho about to fight Faustino Higueras around the supposed grave of his father, who is defending his sister Amaranta.
• In Chapter Nine you are given Around an empty grave by Lotaria-Corinna-Gertrude-Ingrid-Alfonsina-Sheila-Alexandra, which is confiscated upon your entry into Ircania in Chapter Ten.

10

• You
  Arkadian Porphyrich is Director General of the State of Police Archives of Ircania.
• Having been sent to Ircania on a clandestine mission for and against the revolutionary forces in Ataguitania by Lotaria-Corinna-etc, you meet Ircania's Director General of book banning, Arkadian Porphyrich, who tells you his theory that the degree to which books are censured equates with the degree to which books are held in significant esteem. You also discuss the counterfeiter Marana, who Porphyrich says is the most dangerous because he does it not for money or ambition but for the love of a woman reader. You set up a covert meeting with author Anatoly Anatolin to receive his banned book What story down there awaits its end?
• In Chapter Ten Arkadian Porphyrich tells you of the most important banned author, Anatoly Anatolin whose What story down there awaits its end? is a version of Bandera's Around an empty grave set in Ircania.

What story down there awaits its end?

• The narrator is a man with the ability to think the world out of existence with his mind.
  Franziska is the woman the narrator loves.
  Section D is the secret government organization from which the narrator harkens and which now opposes him.
• The narrator's imagination dissolves the Prospect of the city away into an empty void, an abyss, until he remembers the woman he loves, Franziska. A fine crack in the world, which is rapidly spreading, separates him from her and so he seeks to reverse the process, i.e., to imagine the world back into existence, starting with a little cafe lined with mirrors in which they seek intimage refuge.
• In Chapter Ten you seek out and find Anatoly Anatolin's story What story down there awaits its end? but in Chapter Eleven you seek out the end of your own story—your relationship with Ludmilla.

11

• You and eight other readers in a library
• You go to the library in hopes of finding the ten novels which you began to read but which were interrupted. Eight other readers in the library tell you their theories of reading. One mentions the Arabian Nights, and this inspires you to write the phrase He asks, anxious to hear the story. A reader takes your list of titles and the phrase you just wrote and puts them all together: "If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grace—What story down there awaits its end?—he asks, anxious to hear the story." The reader explains that all novels used to begin that way, with a traveler. Another asserts that the ultimate meaning of all stories is life and death, to which you decide you want to marry Ludmilla.
• With no more pages of What story down there awaits its end? to read, in Chapter Eleven you go to the library to obtain the ten books you started, and in Chapter Twelve you discover that you have finished the first book you started.

12

Now you are man and wife, Reader and Reader. A great double bed receives your parallel readings.       Ludmilla closes her book, turns off her light, puts her head back against the pillow, and says, "Turn off your light, too. Aren't you tired of reading?"

      And you say, "Just a moment, I've almost finished If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino." (Calvino 260)

Informal Assignment

Christine Brooke-Rose's Textermination

The novel's main and minor characters are comprised of characters from other novels in literature. Your informal assignment is to research five (5) of Textermination's allusions.

 

Who are the characters? From what works of literature do they hail?

 

You can use either reference books from the library (who's who of literary characters) or the internet. Report your findings to the class via the course listserv by Thursday and I'll compile your list in time for class discussion on Saturday.

 

This list is compiled from Jennifer Mueller, Mike Palatas, Amy Springmeier, and Alex Blazer.

 

characters from previous works of literature who are characters in Textermination

• Emma Bovary is the main character in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Emma was not particularly happy with her life and married a loser of a man as a means of escape. No sooner does she escape than she becomes disenchanted with her current life-grass is always greener. Emma kills herself by way of arsenic(is this related to the Gass story?). What you need to know is Emma comes off as a pathetic character in that she refused to see the bright side of her life or to put it better make the best of things.

• Dorothea Brooke: the idealistic heroine of George Eliot's Middlemarch who marries the scholar Causaubon because she wants to learn from him but realizes that he doesn't believe in women's intellectual abilities.
• Jude Fawley: title character in Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Jude is a commoner who attempts to think and intellectualize his way up the social ladder from being a stone mason. However, his inability to conform to society (for instance, the moral insititutions of marriage and religion) is his downfall.
• Gibreel Farishta: one of two Indian actors in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Gibreel, who plays masked gods in his films while his friend Saladin does voiceovers, is a paranoid, delusional schizophrenic who can't tell the difference between dream and reality.
• Kassandra: Seer and daughter of Priam in Aeschylus's Agammennon (Brooke-Rose wrote a book of that title) who foretells Agammenon's assassination and the fall of Troy. Also heroine of Christa Wolf's Kassandra who ponders the destruction of Troy while awaiting her execution.
• Lady and Sir Leicester: Characters in Charles Dickins' Bleak House.
• Lotte: Character in both Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, based upon Goethe's real life idealized crush Charlotte Kestner and later in Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimer.
• Oedipa Maas: Paranoid character from Crying of Lot 49 who is the executrix of her former lover's, Pierce Inverity's, will and who also becomes obsessed with conspiracy theories like Tristero, an underground postal service.
• Clara Peggotty: is the devoted servant from Charles Dicken's David Copperfield
• Queen Padmavat: "Padmavat" is a poem written by Malik Muhammed Jaysi, about Queen Padmini.

• Rama is from the epic Hindu scripture Ramayana. Rama is an Avatar or incarnation of Vishnu. Along with other themes in the text the answer for what it takes to be the ideal man is addressed in the epic.

• Tiresias: the blind prophet who makes appearances in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as well as the poems "Tiresias" by Lord Tennyson and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot among others.

• Emma Woodhouse is from Jane Austen's Emma. Emma lives in high-society and wants to help the peons, but she's a meddler who is oblivious to some extent as to how her actions affect others. She wants to match Harriett Smith, an illegitimate orphan with the clergyman Mr. Elton, but Harriett likes Mr. Martin, a farmer and tenant of Mr. Knightley's.

real authors/people who are characters in Textermination

• King Felipe Segundo (King Philip II) of Spain: real king.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author of The Sorrows of Young Werther which includes the character Lotte whose story Thomas Mann takes up in his novel Lotte in Weimar, after writing numerous essays on Goethe himself
• Charlotte Kestner (ne Buff): Goethe's unrequited love who married his friend Johann George Christian Kestner; their relationship formed the basis of The Sorrows of Young Werther of which Charlotte was Lotte.

Final Paper

The goal of the annotated bibliography and final paper is to help you constitute a deeper and more complex understanding of a work of fiction using the modes of analysis exemplified throughout the quarter. All of the assignments have been leading up to this point. From listserv responses, you've practiced narrative summary and preliminary textual analysis; from class discussion, you've employed the various elements of fiction; and from the midterm exam, you've learned to compare and contrast literary works' general themes and world views. This cluster of assignments asks you to research what scholars in the field are saying about a story and then compels you to use the critics' argument to support your interpretation.

Preliminary Bibliography (ungraded)

Choose either a work of fiction that we've read in class or an outside work (subject to my approval) that you want to research. Make sure that there exists enough scholarly criticism in the field for you to complete an annotated bibliography on the work. Do not use web search engines. Instead, follow the research methodology for finding scholarly journal articles and books illustrated in this handout, Online Research Methods in the Literature Classroom. Using the previous handout, find at least 20 books, book chapters, and scholarly journal articles on your topic. If you can't find 20 sources, then you should change topics because you will not be able to complete the annotated bibliography. I strongly suggest that you physically obtain your sources from the library as you discover them, otherwise you might not have time to read the sources for the graded annotated bibliography.

• Length: 20 sources
• Format: MLA works cited (refer to handout on MLA Citation Format)
• Due: Saturday, May 17
• Media: Either hard copy print out or Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect file on disk or email attachment

Annotated Bibliography (graded)

The graded annotated bibliography is due Satursday, May 31, either as a hard copy or Word or WordPerfect for Windows file.

 

The following components are mandatory sections of your annotated bibliography. Click here for an example of an annotated bibliography.

• Search Strategy: Recapitulate where and how you went about your search for sources. Besides OSCAR, what library databases did you use to find print sources? Don’t put off obtaining print sources until the last minute.  You should request and check out materials from libraries a full two weeks before the assignment is due.  Once you have a critical article or book, check its works cited and reference pages for other books that might help your research.
• Summary of Findings: In at least 250 words, summarize the various ways critics are interpreting the story. For instance, point out where scholars fall into different camps of interpretation on certain points of the story.
• Secondary Sources
• number and type of sources: 10 sources culled from scholarly journals and books
• at least 3 sources must be scholarly journal articles
• do not use websites, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, book reviews or texts written by the author you're researching
• arrangement and citation format of sources: arrange sources alphabetically and format them according to MLA Citation Format
• annotations: summarize and evaluate the source in 75-100 words by
1. identifying the issue or question that the source is investigating,
2. defining the source’s thesis or main idea relevant to your story, and
3. explaining how the source helps your understanding of the story

Length: search strategy, 250 word summary of findings, ten annotations of 75-100 words each

Format: MLA works cited (refer to handout on MLA Citation Format); example Annotated Bibliography.

Due: Saturday, May 31

Media: Either hard copy print out or Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect file on disk or email attachment

Final Paper

Your final paper should develop a deep, rigorous, and analytical reading of a particular issue, an interpretive problem, or thematic point in one or two works of fiction. You may write your paper on either one or two works of fiction. You may choose texts not covered in class, but must conference with me first. If you write on two works, you should rigorously compare and contrast how the two works deal with one particular issue you're analyzing. Finally, your final paper should use at least three scholarly journal articles or book chapters to support your reading.

• Length: 2000 words
• Format: MLA (refer to the handout on MLA Style);
  • download document template for Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect)
• Due: Wednesday, June 11 by 5:00 PM in my hands in Denney 324, in my mailbox in 421, or my email
  • [For Graduating Seniors: Wednesday June 4 by 5:00 PM]
• Media: Either hard copy print out or Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect file on disk or email attachment

Here are the stories that the class is researching this quarter:

Kate Anderson: Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Burl Braver: Bernard Malamud, The Fixer

Jerry Gay: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

Angella Maulsby: John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Jason McCloud: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Dawn McPhie: Toni Morrison, Beloved

Nikki Mefford: Joyce Carol Oates, Where Have You Been, Where Are You Going?

Jennifer Mueller: Henry James, Daisy Miller

Mike Palatas: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Yasmin Sheffey: Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk

Amy Springmeier: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Katiy Suminski: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Todd Tabern: Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

In-Class Final Exam Review

the texts from the second half of the course

Edgar Allan Poe, "The Purloined Letter"

William H. Gass, "Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop's"

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night, a Traveler

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"

Patrick Süskind, "Amnesia in Litteris"

The Neverending Story (Directed by Wolfgang Petersen)

Christine Brooke-Rose, Textermination

the texts from the first half of the course

Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"

Joel Coen, Barton Fink

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

William H. Gass, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

 

The midterm exam asked you to interpret works of fiction by using specific elements and particular techniques like character, setting, and point of view. The annotated bibliography and final paper ask you to do an in-depth reading of a particular problem or issue in story. The final exam assumes you know how to apply the elements and focuses instead on simply making thematic connections and distinctions among the stories. As with the midterm, you will again be expected to write essays that compare and contrast themes and world views.

 

The final exam is cumulative, but the emphasis will be on the stories from the last half of the course. Be prepared to fully discuss each author from the last half of the course, and be ready to revisit your one or two favorite stories from the first half of the course. You will not be allowed to use your books or your notes; therefore, I suggest reviewing your notes, the study questions, and perhaps making flashcards for each story that list characters, conflicts, issues, and themes. Think about what conflicts we've seen appear again and again. Contemplate the thematic trajectory of the stories we've read.