(Archive) Queen Victoria Reads

"Final" Thanks

2008-04-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

My sincere thanks to all of you for an very enjoyable Term: I will remember this fondly.
Credit deserved also for good hard work on the Final. How many noticed that the first two sections were a bit of a 'gimmie'?

In Section One, five concepts were required .... and five choices there came straight from the lecture notes posted on-line;
In Section Two, three concepts were required ... and three choices there also came straight from the lecture notes posted on-line!

Best wishes to all, and please stay in touch if I can be of any future help.

Course Topics in Wider Community

2008-04-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you look today at the indispensible Arts & Letters Daily you will see under the 'Essays & Opinion' column links to a new article each on Kipling and Wilde which you will likely find informative....

Answers to Pt 1 - "What I don't understand is..."

2008-04-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Childe Roland can be read as an impressionist poem: the interpretation of the work can be from how the poem leaves its impressions -- perhaps sadness, fear, desolation, futility -- on your sensibilities.
John Ruskin was a writer at the heart of the nineteenth century: his ideas and publications were topics of discussion high and low. His significance tends to be difficult for our Age to comprehend, because Ruskin's subject was æsthetics; which for us is at best an 'optional extra' or even a frivolity. Historically, however, it is we who are eccentric: indeed, geographically we are eccentric: every previous century put beauty, form, appearance close to the foundation of understanding, and other civilisations today -- Japanese, African, for example -- still do. So, when reading Ruskin, look for the importance he gives to the æsthetic dimension; even the fact that a particular type of ugliness can be important, founded in an understanding of Gothic architecture, as presented in lecture
Look up 'succubus' (and every other unfamiliar word) in the OED. It's significance to the mysterious disappearance of, and female control over, men in Cranford.
The Victorian grandeur ended, in my opinion, because of the incalculable disaster of the First World War -- and of course because sic transit gloria mundi.
Via media -- the middle way -- is strictly the Anglican Church between the extremes of individualist chapel Christianity and the ecclesiastical Roman Catholic Church. More broadly, it is the English attitude of moderation and compromise.
All the assigned readings will be in play equally for the Final Exam.
Darwinism and Capitalism, considered formally, are the same idea: to wit, Individualism. Darwinism is Individualism applied to biology, where Capitalism is Individualism applied to economics. The identity between the two is perfectly understandable biographically: as discussed lecture, Darwin's wife's family, the Wedgewoods, were powerful Industrialists: indeed, they drove from the vanguard the social changes in the early nineteenth century which turned England into a Capitalist society. Darwin's own family were themselves wealthy and powerful upper bourgeois. [1.] Specifically, then, Darwin presented an explanation for the development of life where individual units act for their own survival: development of species is simply the aggregation of genetically-similar organisms who have survived in their particular environment. These individuals survive on their own fitness: there is, Darwin and Darwinists emphatically insist, absolutely no guidance, direction, plan or design from any higher agents, such as God. [2.] Likewise, mutatis mutandis, for Capitalism. In Capitalist theory, individuals make independent and free decisions on what to buy, what to sell, and if and when to make contracts to enter into groups (companies, labour unions, etc.) The larger economic system is (exactly like in Darwinism) simply the aggregation of these individual actions and decisions. There is, Capitalists emphatically insist, absolutely no guidance, directive, plan or design needed from any higher agents, such as the State. Adam Smith described the action of this aggregation metaphorically--an "Invisible Hand" -- a metaphor which, obviously, applies with equal effectiveness to Darwin's 'natural selection.' [SIDEBAR: We should note that within Darwinism, as a grand system of thought, there are competing sects and creeds, equivalent to what we see in other grand systems of thought: say, Christianity. Regarding Individualism, there are roughly three Darwinian sects or churches. One sect believes that Darwinian selection happens on individual groups -- such as tribes, or countries, for instance -- and we can call these the Darwinian Catholics. Another sect of Darwinists claim that selection occurs on individual genes within organisms (plants, people, pelicans, etc.) and we can call followers of this creed the Darwinian Fundamentalists. In between these two extremes, as a kind of via media is the church of Darwinian Anglicanism where the plain individual organisms themselves -- you and I, our cat and dog, our houseplant -- are the vital unit of selection. In all these Darwinian sects, however, you can see that they agree on the creed of Individualism.]
The 'Women Question' is a Victorian term -- a media term, in effect -- covering the changes in social function consequent upon Industrialisation, as they effected women.
The interesting aspect of the debate which our Longman Anthology picks up is the Victorian writers who re-conceive the debate on their own, gynocentric, terms. Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, for example, presents a closed matriarchal society where men mysteriously disappear or if, like Captain Brown, cross the matriarchy, die. The society at Cranford is emphatically domestic, and represents a direct rejection of the androcentic view of the domestic as being the lesser sphere of power in relation to the political and the commercial spheres. In Gaskell's conception, primary power is domestic power, and women control it, by their (learned) ability to recognise and use small and minute details: "I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities in Cranford." This position is powerful presented in Tolstoy's great War and Peace, Pt III, ch. 9. It is also given support by Conan Doyle's androgynous "A Scandal in Bohemia" (the text presents Sherlock Holmes in female terms and the female protagonist in male) where Holmes' genius and success comes from his supreme ability to observe minutiae ("You see [Watson], but you do not observe.")
The point of view here -- the power of the domestic sphere -- can be seen, perhaps, in several idiomatic instances. "The hand that rocks the cradle rule the world" is one. Its importance can be seen in the the fear that men have of it: "petticoat politics" is a belittling masculine phrase which speaks of an uneasy awareness of this real power. And a clear understanding of the phrase "old boys network" is also directly relevant. The phrase is not, or is not originally, describing a network of boys -- i.e. men -- who happen to be old (or, a 'good old' network of boys. The word boys is crucial. The phrase is British, and refers to the public (i.e. elite private) schools in England -- Eton & Harrow -- and of course, secondarily, Oxbridge. The phrase refers to a network of "old boys" -- i.e. Old Boys are graduates of these schools. In other words, the implicit domestic -- familial, personal, situational -- connections and links are far more basic and important than the explicit codes of business, government or organisational.

Class Projects

2008-04-05T10:00:00.001-07:00

There is a stunning and entirely breathtakingly high level of quality to the class projects that I have seen so far.

The blog Vintage Vivants is one such excellent case: a memorable and exquisite engagement. And there are many more avalible among us. Please consider sending me copies of your group's project: I intend to use these as a resource for students in future iterations of Engl. 206

Room Change

2008-03-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

For Mr. Stephenson's students, there is a room change for one of the Wednesday classes:the 12:30 seminar (107) will be moving to AQ 5026.

Course Reading Break

2008-03-25T00:29:00.001-07:00

A reminder to all that this week is the course reading break: there is no tutorial nor office hours this week, and there is no lecture on Wednesday. I am in Lille, France at the Third International George Gissing Conference.

E-mail should be answered on the customary schedule, of course. With this opportunity to compleat course reading (for the second time through) the lectures next week will be even more appreciable than usual.

Student Financial Aid & Awards

2008-03-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Follow the hotlink in this post's title for a list of the financial aid and awards available to undergraduates: the deadline is April 15th.

A list of SFU bursaries (a hidden help) is on-line here.

Stephenson on Stevenson

2008-03-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Wednesday's lecture, by our own R. Stephenson is on R. Stevenson, and it is a good idea to read the poems by then and bring the text to class (as always.)

"Crystal Garden" in Victoria

2008-03-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

There is a identical building in style to the Ninevah Court in London's Crystal Palace, shown on overhead in Mr. Zillwood's lecture, over in Victoria: the Crystal Garden.

A interior tour there will take you imaginatively back to the historical moment of Dante Rossetti's poetic muse. The website in the hotlink above has informative architectural information.

Essay Writing Assistance

2008-03-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

The W.A.C. Bennett Library offers the following practical assistance to undergraduates for writing essays:

How Do I... Integrate Sources in a Paper?
How Do I...?
A series of term-paper writing drop-ins organized by the Burnaby Student Learning Commons. Bring your draft, your assignment, or just your questions. Share experiences with other writers and learn about strategies and resources to help you further as that term-paper deadline looms!
All "How Do I" sessions are in room
2004, Bennett Library, Burnaby campus.

Coming up next--
How Do I...integrate quotes and sources?
Wed. March 12, 2:30 - 3:30
Mon. March
17, 11:30 - 12:30

How Do I...edit my own draft?
Wed. March 19, 12:30
- 1:30
Thurs. March 20, 3:00 - 4:00
Tues. March 25, 12:30 - 1:30

Free for all SFU students; no sign-ups necessary.

"What I Don't Understand is...."

2008-03-11T23:53:00.001-07:00

Here are the responses to Monday's 'gimmie-quiz' question:

"What I don’t understand here is…"

Why I bother coming to lecture?
Why the quizzes are at the beginning of class.
Why it is expected of me that I do not understand the course material or some small part of it.
Why anyone would have a difficult time understanding the course material in this class (not to be a jerk.)
If the Victorian Age was so prosperous and magnificent as it seems, why did it end? Or, what caused it to appear like it ended?
The cultural impact Victorian England has on the 20th Century.
What is Succubus? I didn’t catch the definition in lecture or its significance to the material in the week we looked at Cranford.
How to read poems like Childe Roland.
The significance of Childe Roland
The reoccurring significance of Arnold’s quote “sweetness and light”. Why is it brought up so often? Why does it hold such important connotations?
The significance of Ruskin in the course. What was the importance of talking about him?
John Ruskin, Gothic-ness
The significance of ‘gothic’ architecture in Ruskin’s work
Ruskin’s 5-rows exercise
The importance of architecture in the work of Ruskin
The concepts of via media and Ruskin. What is via media? I thought Ruskin’s ideas were of things being flawed, imperfect but apparently they are not? How did the in class “game” relate to Ruskin?
What I should focus on – in terms of the readings- that will pertain to the final exam. Will we have to know ALL the readings?
Why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is so dumb in your eyes?
Nothing’ everything has been clear and straight forward, to my understanding.
How domestic power was considered more powerful than non-domestic.
Via Media is a middle way of. It is a middle way between Roman Catholicism and what?
The concept of via media. If it is very important I would love to have it more precisely examined.
Victorian Sexuality. Is it or isn’t it present. (Pre-Gissing)
The importance and role of domestic powering Victorian England. What are the strong points and weak points of domestic power?
Is the “Sherlock Holmes” studying method mainly finding data before making a theory? Or is there more to it that I’m missing?
We’re supposed to let “the text talk to us” without incorporating our previously learned information.
Ruskin’s oppositional anatomy. Specific south vs. north what that represents
Need to further clarity the distinction between dialogic and didactic
Thomas Hardy’s “The Withered Arm”
The representation of gothic in John Ruskin’s work we have looked at.
Dialogic / dialectic’s relationship. Are these the same? Is one a necessary component of the other?
The whole Darwin and capitalism thing and the “sweetness and light” concept.
The connection between Darwinism and capitalism
How colonialism ties in to other Victorian principles like natural selection and industrialism.
The Capitalism / Darwinism connection
Why we cannot question Darwin. Please don’t tell any one that. I don’t want to get kicked out of SFU!
Gissing and Darwinism, what’s he think about it?
Who is a Darwinist of the authors we have read?
Why Darwin and his ideals were the beliefs of the majority of people in the time we’re studying.
Why you don’t like Mr. Darwin ?!?
The application of ‘social Darwinism in a capitalistic society.
Why Charles Darwin is the do all and end all, when there are so many opposing views.
The difference between John Henry Cardinal Newman’s theory and Darwin’s
Cardinal Newman’s points in both his essays.
Where did George Gissing think women fit in Victorian society?
What was the social position in Aurora Leigh?
The dialectic, didactic, dialogic -vs- polemic is still a little blurry
Dialectic and Didactic in the readings and how it is important.
How to determine if a piece is dialogic or didactic.
Why is didactic literature denigrated as being “lower brow”? For merely stylistic reasons?
Enough about the nature of the didactic vs. dialectic argument.
Dialogistic vs didactic.
What exactly Gissing wants to get across with the novel. And mainly, what’s the deal with the novel’s ending? I feel like it just ended and I am still wondering what he is really trying to get across with the novel and the way he left it.
The plot in the book In the Year of Jubilee.
The Pedagogical fallacy with respect to Matthew Arnold
How Elizabeth Gaskell’s view on domestic power applies to other aspects of Victorian Literature. I understand how it applies to Sherlock Holmes but not how it applies to other texts.
The Cranford / Holmes connection. [Dr.] Ogden showed that the women in Cranford observed small details, and then showed that Holmes also observed small details. This was said to show that Holmes was a male with a female mind. I don’t understand why male brains cannot observe small details.
How Hardy’s presentation of women can be seen as proof of domestic power being stronger than public power.
How paying attention to detail in the domestic sphere constitutes “real power” for women. You’re not powerful unless you have equal rights.
What exactly is the Woman Question?
What Nancy Lord represents in relation to the portrayal of Victorian women.
"The Woman Question” – what exactly does it encompass? Is it just about class? Domestic power? etc. Is there more I’m missing?
How the woman question pertains to every text. Was it really that big a deal?
The woman question. It’s very broad.
Why we have such strong preconceptions about lack of women’s power in the 19th century.
"our society” in Cranford
I didn’t really get the women issue we talked about in lecture
Class systems, the limits of each class and any overlapping or inter-mingling characteristics - generally and women’s roles
Why it is domestic power that has the greatest influence on society, how does it bring about change
Why is being interested in the Queen a lower class thing?
How we should get rid of an beliefs in order to understand a piece of literature.

Essay Grading

2008-03-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

After receiving your first course essay with complete marking this week, you might refer to the "Letter Grade Criteria for Essays" link in the Pertinent & Impertinent list here on the blog.

If you have any specific aspect for discussion about the grade that your essay has earned, relate the essay and the copy editing and comments from the TA to these objective criteria. Were you then to bring the essay to an TA's Office Hour for discussion, frame your remarks and questions directly to these criteria. This provides an independent standard and a common framework for understanding the expectations and requirements for a scholarly essay at the University level.

Pedagogical Fallacy

2008-03-11T10:32:00.001-07:00

À Propos the pedagocial fallacy discussed in relation to Matthew Arnold, this article featured on today's Arts & Letters Daily:

The arts won’t make you virtuous or make you smart, but they are Robert Fulford’s faith, firmly installed in his mind where other people put religion... more»

"Queen Victoria adopts a regal pose: Now that IS posh, Posh!"

2008-03-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

Fun from Britain's reliably monarchist tabloid press:

Now that IS posh, Posh! Queen Victoria adopts a regal pose
By TAHIRA YAQOOB - More by this author »
Last updated at 15:45pm on 7th March 2008
Of all the many adjectives applied to Victoria Beckham, 'sophisticated' has been one of the least used.
Until now. Posh Spice is at last living up to her nickname with a glamorous yet refined photoshoot for Vogue, including her first cover.
Posing in a series of flowing outfits accessorised with diamonds, the 33-year-old singer and fashion designer evokes memories of the young Princess Margaret, photographed for her 19th birthday by Cecil Beaton.

Citation Guide

2008-03-06T20:16:00.000-08:00

The SFU Library has a précis of the MLA Citation Guide available on-line. Click the hotlink, or this posts' title....

Copies are available at SFU library.
Call number: LB 2369 G53 2003
You might want to buy your own copy at the SFU Bookstore.
This guide is available in PDF format.

Mid-(-ish) Term Paper Research

2008-03-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

The BBC has a marvelous webpage on the Victorians, from a post-colonial point-of-view, and with several articles relevant to course lecture and, even, essay topics.

Mid-to-End-of-Term Essay Topics

2008-03-03T23:38:00.000-08:00

A twenty-five hundred word scholarly essay is due in lecture on March 31st on any one of the following three topics:

Where does George Gissing's In the Year of Jubilee stand on the issue of Culture? Does the novel favour the Nineteenth Century's mass education of the female middle-class as the means to spread "sweetness and light", on the model praised by Matthew Arnold? Does Gissing question the efficacy of this Utilitarian pedagogy; ultimately setting it up for ridicule? Or does the text refuse any final conclusion? Answer with quotations from In the Year of Jubilee and at least one other course reading.
Explain the extent of the influence of social class on writings by the bourgeois women authors on our course readings list. Include the specific determining features of the Victorian middle class as presented in lecture and, if you wish, in your choice of any academically-valid secondary source or sources. Use Florence Nightingale and a minimum of two other women writers in your analysis.
Engage any position that lecture has taken on any of the course reading material and argue a dialectical response. Your essay must show that you understand the precise nature and character of dialectic as it was presented and discussed during lecture.

Conform your essay to an established Style Guide -- the MLA is preferred -- and include a cover page and list of Works Cited.

"The Dismal Science"; Economics & Community

2008-03-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

A new book by Stephen A. Marglin, Walter Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, titled The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community puts in prosaic form some of the points that George Gissing is presenting vis a vis Nineteenth Century Darwinism-Capitalism.

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback--say the barn burned down--neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.
Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

On Journalism

2008-02-29T15:49:00.000-08:00

The nature of journalism, applied in lecture as a dialectic antinomy to scholarship, is succinctly and memorably expressed in this astonishing clip, from bloggingheads.tv, by none other than Wonkette.

"What is the great secret of journalism? Jon Fine and Wonkette both lift the veil."

For Monday.....

2008-02-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

Ponder, in an idle moment, two questions for Monday:

What concept, similar in name and idea, to "dialogism" has been used in (and even perhaps characterises) lecture?

On finding a corpse, a Detective looks for [blank]. That [blank] is a synonym for what other word, given great importance in lecture to academic studies of English?

Ahead of Graded Close Readings.....

2008-02-29T15:02:00.000-08:00

Ahead of receiving your graded Close Reading essays, why not take a few moments review the "Letter Grade Criteria for Essays" in the Pertinent & Impertinent list here on the blog....

(Properly adjusting, of course, the criterion covering thesis statements to the requirements native to close readings.)

Dialogic versus Didactic Fiction

2008-02-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

Additional on the distinction presented in lecture between dialagic and didactic works of literature by way of better understanding George Gissing's fictional method.

It is important to understand that the difference between these two types of novel is not a matter of literary merit. One can no more say that a didactic novel is worse than a dialogic novel (or vice versa) than say that fantasy fiction is worse than naturalist fiction. They are simply both different modes of art. (Although the originator of the terms 'dialogic" and "heteroglossic," Mikhail Bakhtin, did tend to write as if dialogism was an objectively superior artistic method, one is free to dissent from the maker--as I do, for instance.)

Examples of both dialogic and didactic modes can be found among the great world literature. Dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment, Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu's Tales of Genji are dialogic in form; Dickens' Hard Times, Emile Zola's Germinal, and Dante's majestic Divine Comedy are each intensely didactic. Indeed, Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost are arguably polemical (Dante's polemic, interestingly, is not theological but rather of the grubby partisan politics of his city-state of Florence.) Furthermore, an author can switch between didactic and dialogic modes: Shakespeare being supreme exemplar.

Regarding preferences between the two modes, didactic fiction tends to draw intense, and binary, reaction. Readers who have prior agreement with the position that the didactic author is impressing will praise the book's artistic merit; readers with prior disagreement will calumniate it. And with a didactic novel, moreover, when it is not done artistically well it is easy for it to be disastrous: a heavy-handed, unsubtle, inartistic bludgeoning of the point; mere journalism rather than art.

New Gissing Biography

2008-02-27T06:57:00.001-08:00

A "masterly new biography of Gissing" has just been published--George Gissing: A Life--through Weidenfeld & Nicolson by perhaps the greatest literary scholar to grace SFU, emeritus professor of English, Paul Delany.

Ruskinesque Cinema?

2008-02-23T07:20:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of classfellow J.W.

I rented "Manufactured Landscapes" a couple weeks ago and it is more than relevant to Ruskin's arguments about manufacturing and dehuminization (Eng 206). It is basically a decade long photographic/cinematic journal by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky about how man has completely changed natural landscapes into his own 'manufactured landscape'. Completely moving. The film opens with a ten minute (maybe longer) filmed traverse of a Chinese manufacturing plant. I strongly recommend it and it may be worth a quick mention in class if any students are interested....

Office-Plant Blogging

2008-02-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

It's always spring in hothouse environments....like my wonderful office.

AQ6094: office hours are always as scheduled.

Penny Dreadful

2008-02-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

As I suspected, there is excellent internet presence for Victorian penny dreadfuls, such as can be seen here. And also here.

These are, in my opinion, arguably the true origin of comics, an argument, indeed, I make in my recent lecture series on graphic novels. This, of course, is what a Englishman would say against the Americans' claim for genesis.

Course Reserves at the Library

2008-02-16T23:19:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder of the Reserves texts set aside for our class only at the Bennett Library; growing term-long for help with research and Exam preparation.

BBC Cranford Production

2008-02-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

As I said in lecture, I've been teaching Cranford for years, and ranting about how relevant it is, suddenly it is "hot." Or, perhaps, "cool." Or, if you are Marshall McLuhan, either hot or cool.
The BBC has just completed a BBC One television production of Cranford with a big-name cast.

Of course, there have been numerous versions of A Scandal in Bohemia (I happened to see one on State television two weeks ago.) Look for a motion picture of The Withered Arm in your lifetimes.....

Close Reading

2008-02-16T12:32:00.000-08:00

I hope all is well with your Close Reading assignment. We've had lectures that use the close reading method, and I know your weekley tutorials have given direct assistance.

Consider the famous line from "The Lady of Shalott,"

Four gray walls, and four gray towers

What does the first "four" give us? With "walls" we have a image of imprisonment. The four right angles implied invokes rationalism: closed rather than open, and associated with controlling masculinity (cf. Gaskell's Cranford.) This masculine element of the enclosure is strengthened by the phallic "four....towers": alluding perhaps to four levels of men (incl. lover) The "four" additionally suggests enclosure for the four points of the compass (hat-tip classfellow J.F.). It is also a sharply non-religious number: odd additional from the scacred number three. It is also the number of iambs in the line. The second word, "gray," denotes colourlessness, which is a direct contrast with the vivid colour-words in the stanzas immediately surrounding (e.g. "blue," "yellow," "red.") Gray also has a moral connotation of being neither openly good (white) nor openly bad (black.) "Gray" is the colour of ambiguity, which sets up the quality of the Lady's ambiguous action in leaving the tower.

That certainly is the beginning of a close reading of this line (the structure of the parallel clauses has an intriguing relevancy.) It is just to give another illustration of the level of detail that a close reading has. And of course your own close reading will likely differ from this: in tutorial this week, a classfellow pointed out that l.485 of bk.2 of Aurora Leigh--'life develops from within'--adds a maternal dimension to the passage: a reading which, you won't be surprised to hear, had hitherto evaded me.

Film of Victorian Lit Prof

2008-02-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

There is an upcoming movie, Smart People, in which the protagonist is a professor of Victorian Literature. This must mean that anti-cool is the new cool.

Notebook Computer Use in Lecture

2008-02-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

Wisdom received by e-mail from a student:

I was actually wondering if you would mind making a comment in class (or e-mail or whatever) about laptop use in class? I've found it really frustrating during a lot of our classes that classmates have been checking their facebook, e-mail, photos etc during class time. The scrolling and flashing on the screen is really distracting in my peripheral vision. It's so disrespectful, I just don't get it.

Again, Verbum sapienti satis est.

Final Exam-type Information

2008-02-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

A responsible & capable university lecturer, charged with providing students a survey-level understanding of nineteenth-century literature, devotes two lectures to prose sections from Charles Darwin, T.H. Huxley and John Henry Newman.

Ask yourselves the question, Why?

The "New Victorians"

2008-02-01T22:54:00.000-08:00

From The New York Observer online:

The New Victorians
They Fall in Love, Dear Reader, Buy Strollers, Hire Cooks—Heath, Michelle, Liv, Nicole Join Prissy New Bourgeoisie! ‘We’ve Leaped to Our Parents’ Level of Success Right Away’

More, from the London Times online:

The new Victorians

This will be the “Diner des Tsars”, a sumptuous banquet that will take place in London next month: tickets are £1,500 a pop before you even think about the Louis Roederer Cristal champagne at £1,200 a jeroboam. In the Great Hall guests will tuck into an eight-course banquet prepared by the Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens. Caviar with avocado purée, lobster and artichoke salad, poached turbot with langoustine sauce and chervil gnocchi and many more delicacies are on the menu.
It is a feast fit for a tsar — which is exactly what it was 140 years ago. The Guildhall event is a recreation of a gut-busting blow-out staged in 1867 by Tsar Alexander II, Tsarevich Alexander and Kaiser Wilhelm I in Paris.
It is also a sign of these extraordinary times. This is the elite of a new empire at play, and a solid gold bookmark in the annals of indulgence. Imperial fortunes are once again being made almost overnight, not in the mines of far-flung colonies, but on the trading screens of global banks and the boardrooms of private equity powerhouses. And the epicentre of this plutocracy is London.

Can You Survive Dickens' London?

2008-02-01T22:39:00.000-08:00

A brilliant Flash game from the BBC online: "SURVIVE DICKENS' LONDON"

Dodge through Victorian London, avoiding the gangs and villains and trials and tribulations of Dickensian London in order to seek out Charles Dickens in his chalet hideaway in Rochester. You'll face tasks and choices - you might have to pick pockets for Fagin, or rob bodies for Gaffer Hexham. Perform well and you'll be able to wend your way through dark alleyways and winding streets. Make the wrong choice and you could end up in jail, or worse... You'll need to keep your health up and you'll need to keep your eyes open in order to make money for your fare to Rochester. Be warned; time is short and the streets of London are not for the faint hearted...

Teaching Assistants

2008-01-30T10:34:00.000-08:00

Our course Teaching Assistants are the excellent Messrs. Stephen Zillwood and Ryan Stephenson. As I think you say, "FYI."

I, of course, am Dr. Ogden.

Class Cancelled January 30th

2008-01-30T08:31:00.001-08:00

The picture here, from a school in Surrey (Pacific Academy) says all.
One dead-line will change as a consequence: the Group Project Outline is now due in your February 4th or 6th tutorial. Otherwise, all is as it was.
A word regarding the reading schedule in relation to the Final Examination. Beside attending all lectures, the single most effective means of succeeding on the Final Examination is staying on top of the reading schedule. It will, I can say, be all but impossible--absent genius--to do well on the Final without having read smoothly & evenly throughout the Term.
Coming to lecture without having read the material is to be in the fog, interpretively speaking; and as literature studies are a training in extrapolating meaning (be it written, spoken or situational), cramming is all but worthless. On the other side of that coin, reading ahead of lecture (i.e. following the syllabus reading schedule) puts one in excellent position to do well on the Final Examination.
"A word to the wise doth suffice."

Tennyson Lives!

2008-01-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

Well, a phrase from his poetry, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" specifically, is used in the headline of an article today online in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Into the Valley of Death
Anger at vote-rigging has worked to rip a thin scab off many years of frustration at poverty, corruption and inequitable land ownership
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
January 26, 2008 at 12:28 AM EST
KIPKELION, KENYA — With the sun barely over the edge of the valley, the colours on the hills were muffled. The banana leaves were dull green, the sugar cane stalks pale yellow. And so the flames, when we saw them flare in first one house, then a second, then streets and streets on fire, were shocking, vivid orange, more alive than anything around.

Academic Options Day

2008-01-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

For students who are still undecided about their academic programme there is an Academic Options Day, this coming Wednesday, January 30th, 2008. Pick a time between ten thirty and two o'clock and visit the AQ North Concourse and talk with representatives from the various SFU programmes.

Wednesday's Lecture

2008-01-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

Today, we spent half the lecture each on the remaining two poems available for use in the Close Reading assignment. You were given a framework for understanding the two poem and suggestions to the important aspects of each. Thus prepared, you have broader context in which to present your personal selection of interesting elements -- a word, a phrase, a line, perhaps a couplet -- from your chosen poem.

For Monday's lecture, give some thought to what a Final Exam essay question based on the lecture on "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"would look like.

Monarchy's Continuing Power

2008-01-23T00:34:00.000-08:00

An illustration of the real practical power that the Monarchy still has, even in the Commonwealth, is given in this story from the State media division online about a Canadian soldier who had refused to pledge loyalty to our Sovereign:

"....the fact is that the Queen is....Commander-in-Chief and Canada's Head of State"...."A refusal to display loyalty and respect to the Queen where required by Canadian Forces' policy would not only be an expression of profound disrespect and rudeness but it would also represent an unwillingness to adhere to hierarchical and lawful command structures that are fundamental to good discipline."

Life in Victorian London: The Real Sweeny Todd

2008-01-19T01:54:00.000-08:00

From Britain's Daily Mail, an article excerpting Sweeney Todd: The Real Story Of The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street by Peter Haining, published by Robson Books at £8.99. ° Peter Haining 2007. [The picture I include here is the most frightening, terrifying, maleavolent, horrifying Sweeny Todd image that I could find. Shudder. Anyone music fan from the '70s-'80s will feel their flesh crawl....]

Sweeney Todd's name is seen in Victorian 'penny dreadful' newspapers and then 19th century melodrama, complete with his own catchphrase, "See how I polish 'em off!" .... This undercurrent of malevolence was compounded by the young Todd's bizarre interest in the instruments of torture displayed at the nearby Tower of London. To escape his parents' brawling, he lingered in the Tower's museum, where thumbscrews, racks and other macabre tools were displayed to discourage citizens from dissent.

Essay Grading Criteria

2008-01-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

I have posted a detailed analysis of the criteria for grading academic essays—such as our Close Reading essay and Mid-Term essay—for your continuing reference.

[To my best recollection, the document was originally authored by Dr. Whatley of the Departments of English and Distance Education.]

E-Mail Efficiency

2008-01-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

I have been heartened so far with the class' adherence to the spirit of the e-mail protocol posted in the Pertinent & Impertinent links here. For instance, with only slight exceptions, e-mail to the Instructor and TAs has been limited to matters of unavoidable emergency.

If this keeps up through the remainder of the Term, a question for bonus marks will be added to the Final Exam by way of respect.

About "Charge of the Light Brigade"

2008-01-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

Give some over the weekend to the way that Tennyson's poetry-type poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" might be have intellectual content" -- i.e. contain idea in the way familiar to us in prose essays -- but with a type of effectiveness unique to its genre.

For an account of the Charge, click here.

You can actually hear Tennyson himself reading the poem here (it is somewhat unstettling, actually, hearing a voice down through the ages) from a wax-recording arranged by another historic great; Thomas Edison.

In fact, speaking of great, here is the voice of one of the truly great: the angel of the Crimean War, the "Lady of the Lamp," Florence Nightingale.

Student Learning: Resources

2008-01-14T12:05:00.000-08:00

The Student Learning Commons at the SFU Libraries offers "....friendly and knowledgeable assistance with a wide range of academic writing, learning, and study strategies. Our goal is to provide you with resources and tools for academic success. The SLC encourages collaboration, discussion, and peer learning."

Their new information poster is online here.

Close Reading Assignment

2008-01-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

The Close Reading Assignment is a gentle way to get us started on the course; improving our understanding of Literature of the nineteenth century. Worth fifteen percent of the course grade, the assignment is to write up a close reading of any one of three of the longer poems from the first weeks of our course: Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, or Browning's Childe Roland. The finished paper will be fifteen hundred words in length, and is due in lecture February 25th.

This long period of six weeks for the assignment allows for successive draughts to be worded and edited in seminar; both with peers and with the seminar instructor. The seminar instructer will provide you with a schedule for the dates of the draughts and discussion.

"Close Reading" in our context means reading the text carefully, paying attention first and carefully (i.e. closely) to the words and phrases: their diction, etymology, order, meter, metaphors, associations, and the like. It is starting with the particular before making remark on the general; letting, as far as possible, the poem speak to you before you speak to the poem.

When you have made notes and comments about the specifics, you can then write you discoveries up in essay form, and consider any conclusions about the author and his or her intentions and significance; historical, intellectual or æsthetic.

Seminar Group Project: Victorian Cool

2008-01-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

This project is worth fifteen percent of the course grade. Groups of five members are set in seminar and will deliver the project on the last seminar day of Term. A written proposal of the project is due in seminar, course week 4 (January 28th - 30th.)

The project creatively engages present-day Victorianism; either Victorian Cool, or Canadian Victoriana.

Victorian Cool includes

Steampunk (e.g. the Steamboy anime, books like Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine, pop-culture artifacts like Victorian action figurines, etc.);
Gaslight graphic novels (e.g. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc.)
Neo-Victorian movies (e.g. From Hell (i.e. on Jack the Ripper); Sweeney Todd; various Sherlock Holmes adaptations; etc.)

Canadian Victoriana presents aspects of the fact that Canada is a Victorian country.

Our province (British Columbia) and its original capital city (New Westminster) were named by & in honour of Queen Victoria, and our current capital is named after & in honour of her.
Our neighbouring province is named by her & in honour of her husband.
Our nation's Confederation -- in 1867 -- was a Victorian event: in her parliament & with her involvement.
Queen Victoria's father lived & administered the military in Canada for over a decade; the Duke of Kent lived for nearly thirty years with a French-Canadian mistress (Adelaide Dubus, with whom, in all likelihood, he had illegitimate offspring) until his 1818 marriage to another woman, who became Victoria's mother.

The project can take the form of a blog; a video-taped theatrical presentation, documentary, a short film, etc.; a written collection; or any creative form of presentation.

The objective is to give evidence of a creative engagement with and understanding of the Victorian character; as a means of better comprehending the period and cultural character of the Age under our present literary study.

On the last seminar day of term -- April 2nd or April 7th -- hand in along with the project any hard copy material -- scripts, blog URLs -- that you wish to have included in the grading.

Victorian Cool: Steampunk SuperHeroes

2008-01-12T10:30:00.001-08:00

Follow the hotlink to "Gaslight Justice League" action figurines. The model pictured here is the Victorian Wonder Woman.

This is an excellent example of the Victorian Cool currently alive in our popular culture; and the type of material available to be worked into the Group Assignment for the course.

Steampunk superheroes: who knew?

Queen Victoria and Beyond

2008-01-11T22:04:00.000-08:00

Canada, as you know, still celebrates a national holiday in honour of Queen Victoria.
I came across this oblique & tendentious article in the Daily Telegraph on the predominance of women at the political head of England following on from Victoria's eminent sixty-four year regnancy:

Have you noticed that modern Britain is the most matriarchal society in the history of the world? The four most famous figures in the public service since the war have been women - the Queen Mother, the Queen, Diana, Princess of Wales and Margaret Thatcher.

Browning, Barrett, Love

2008-01-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

From "Today in Literature" a brief story on "Browning, Barrett, Love":

On this day in 1845 Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, so inciting one of the most legendary of literary love stories. The letter belongs to the 'fan mail' category -- the praise of a thirty-two-year-old up-and-comer for one just six years older and already internationally famous -- but it was more than just poet-to-poet. After commending "the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought," Browning confides that he is addressing "your own self," and that "for the first time, my feeling rises altogether."

Lecture Terms from Wednesday

2008-01-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

Here are the terms used in lecture to detail some of the aspects of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese. They are simply a few very basic terms from poetics. The importance of the metrics in a poet of Elizabeth Browning's superlative calibre is the use that she makes of them for the meaning and import of the poem, as lecture detailed.

Iamb: a two syllable 'foot' or pattern - unstressed/stressed, or short/long. "Computer" is an iamb.
Pentameter: a meter with five (Gr. = 'penta') feet (two-syllable pairs) in a line.
Iambic Pentameter: a line of poetry, such as found in a sonnet or in blank verse, with five iambs. From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks" is iambic pentameter.
Trochee: opposite of an iamb: two syllable 'foot' or pattern - stressed/unstressed, or long/short. "Stephen" is an trochee.
Anapest: a metrical foot of three syllables, unstressed/unstressed/stressed. " Called the 'galloping foot' because is reads as "quick-quick-hard." (SFU's motto -- Nous Sommes Prêts -- is an anapest.
Dactyl: opposite of an anapest -- stressed/unstressed/unstressed. "Canada" is a dactyl.
Spondee: a stressed/stressed foot. In sonnet 43, the penultimate line opens with a spondee: "Smiles, tears...."
Anaphora: a repeated word or phrase. "I love thee..." is the anaphora in sonnet 43.
Octave: the first eight lines of a sonnet.
Sestet: the six lines concluding a sonnet.

I have put a link to a useful informal online guide to literary terms in the "Pertinent & Impertinent" link list. As always, use the Library for scholarly -- i.e. assignment -- research.

E-mail Netiquette

2008-01-08T21:19:00.000-08:00

A few salient points of productive e-mail protocol :

Use only your SFU account for e-mail to the course Lecturer. All other e-mail is blocked by whitelist.
E-mail (indeed, all communication) between Lecturer and student is a formal and professional exchange. Accordingly, proper salutation and closing is essential.
Business e-mail is courteous but, of professional necessity, concise and direct. It rejects roundabout or ornate language, informal diction, and any appearance of what is termed in the vernacular, 'chat.'
Customary response time for e-mail to the Course Lecturer and Teaching Assistants is two weekdays. E-mail on weekends will ordinarily be read the Monday following.

In general, course e-mail is dedicated to essential matters of Course business and avoids questions about lecture material, course reading, assignment criteria, or deadlines, which are all reserved for tutorials and office hours. Missed classes and deadlines do not need to be reported by e-mail: if a medical or bereavement exception is being claimed, the supporting documentation is handed in, along with the completed assignment, either in person or to the Tutorial Instructor's mailbox outside the Department Office.

Course Syllabus

2008-01-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

Course Syllabus & Information

Schedule of Readings

[Page numbers are from the Longman Anthology. The schedule is for your readings: lecture inevitably keeps to is own, cheerful, responsive & organic, timetable.]

Week One
Perspectives: 1137
Fanny Kemble 1140
Parliamentary Papers 1143
Henry Mayhew 1158

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
To George Sand x2 1198

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh 1203

Week Two
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Lady of Shalott 1235
The Charge of the Light Brigade 1291
The Higher Pantheism + Response 1327-8

Week Three
Charles Darwin:
On the Origin of Species .... 1357

John Henry, Cardinal Newman
from Apologia Pro Vita Sua 1390
Thomas Henry Huxley
from Evolution & Ethics 1398

Robert Browning
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came + Response 1427

Week Four
Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol 1464 (w.1520)
Elizabeth Gaskell
Our Society at Cranford 1522

Week Five
Thomas Hardy
The Withered Arm 1538
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Scandal in Bohemia 1556

Week Six
John Ruskin
from The Stones of Venice 1580-1590

Florence Nightingale
Cassandra 1608

Perspectives Victorian Ladies & Gentlemen 1626

Sarah Ellis 1632
John Henry, Cardinal Newman 1638
Queen Victoria 1651

Matthew Arnold
Dover Beach 1662
Culture & Anarchy: from Sweetness & Light 1695

Week Seven to Week Nine
George Gissing
In the Year of Jubilee

Week Ten
Dante Gabriel Rosetti
The Kiss 1718
The Burden of Ninevah 1719

Christina Rosetti
Goblin Market 1731

Week Eleven
Robert Louis Stevenson 1840

Hilaire Belloc 1845

Rudyard Kipling
Without Benefit of Clergy 1860
Gunga Din 1882

Week Twelve and Week Thirteen
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest 2003

Schedule of Assignment Due Dates:
Assignment details in "Pertinent & Impertinent" Links.

Nb: There is a four percent per day late penalty for all assignments, documented medical or bereavement leave excepted. For medical exemptions, provide a letter on a Physician's or Surgeon's letterhead which declares his or her medical judgement that illness or injury prevented work on the assignment. The letter must cover the entire period over which the assignment was scheduled and may be verified by telephone. For bereavement leave, simply provide, ex post facto, a copy of the order of service or other published notice of remembrance.

January 14th: Close Reading Project: release date.
February 4th or 6th: Updated Group Project Proposal due date.
February 25th: Close Reading Project: due date.
March 3rd: Mid-Term Essay topics posted.
March 31st: Mid-Term Essay due in lecture.
Week of March 24th & 26th: Unofficial Reading Break: No Lecture or Seminar .
April 2nd or April 7th: Group Project due date in-seminar.
April 12th 3:30-18:30: Final Exam.

Lecture Quizzes
There will be fourteen quizzes in Lecture throughout the Term: seven in the first half and seven in the second half. The quizzes will be given on random dates and at random times in the Lecture; on occasion twice in the same Lecture. Each quiz will have one question only, and the answer will be a gimmie. If all seven quizzes for the first half of Term are handed in to the Tutorial leader, the mark on the Close Reading assignment will be bumped up to the next letter grade in the scale. If all seven quizzes for the second half of Term are handed in to the Tutorial leader, the mark on the Final Exam will be bumped up to the next letter grade in the scale.

Research material is available on Library Reserve.

Nb: “Participation requires both attendance and punctuality ."

Instructor Contact:
Expanded Office Hours: AQ 6094 -- Monday two thirty to five thirty, Tuesday ten o'clock to noon, Wednesday two thirty to three o'clock, Thursday ten o'clock to noon. Bring your coffee and discuss course matters freely. E-mail to ogden@sfu.ca Use your SFU account for e-mail contact. Other e-Mail accounts are blocked by white-list.

Course Approach:

Surveying, analysing, understanding and enjoying the vast empire of literature in the nineteenth century, concentrating on the material written under the majestic matriarch, Victoria Regina. Attendance and enagegment in lecture, discussion and exchange in seminar, careful and close reading of course material, and group study and presentation of contemporary Victorian cool are the requirements of the course.

Opening Lecture: Online

2008-01-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

On-line link here.

Getting an "A" on an English Paper

2008-01-06T11:50:00.001-08:00

An excellent article here with practical advice from Jack Lynch at Rutgers University.

Course Outline

2007-12-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

ENGLISH 206 D1.00
19TH-CENTURY LITERATURES IN ENGLISH
Instructor: S. OGDEN
SPRING 2008

The Victorian Imprint

Despite or, perhaps, because of the serene regnancy of its titular monarch, the Victorian age was a riot of conflict religious, political, intellectual, social, industrial, familial and, of course, artistic. Our course will experience the contradictions, energies and titanic attainment - for good and ill - of Britain under Queen Victoria through an apposite selection from its enduring literature. The concept of ‘literature’ itself is a case of the range, variety and contradictions of the Age. In our, Second Elizabethan, Age, fiction, poetry and essay are read by almost mutually exclusive populations of reader. The Victorians, quite the contrary, enjoyed all types of literature promiscuously for aesthetic delight, for improvement and for education. Their exemplary names - Darwin, Dickens, Martineau, Marx - have power scarcely diminished, and to a surprising degree the concerns of literary Victorians are the vivid concerns of our own day. For our course, we will read selections from the commendable Longman anthology and one ‘Victorian Novel’ entire and, among other benefits, will be able to better understand the implications of the deep imprints of Victorian England in the nation of Canada today.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Longman Anthology of British Literature, The Victorian Age
Gissing, George, In the Year of Jubilee

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

10% Attendance and participation
15% Group project
15% Close reading project (1500 words)
25% Term essay (2500 words)
35% Final examination