adrury wrote a new post, Favourite section of In Memoriam, on the site...
In connection with the conversation we’ll have in class, tell us here about a section or two of Tennyson’s In Memoriam that is most meaningful or resonant (or, even, puzzling) to you as a reader. What...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Scott's Letters, on the site English 391W, The...
The other choice of question for this week (of September 19) concerns Scott. What moment(s) do you find interesting in the excerpts you’ve read from Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, and why? And...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Carlyle's Crisis, Carlyle's prose style, on the site...
What would you say are the definitive qualities of Carlyle’s prose style, and what is a definitive moment in the personal crisis he represents in “The Everlasting No” of Sartor Resartus? Experiment...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Carlyle and Modernity, on the site English 324/HTH...
An interesting aspect of Carlyle’s writing is how in its strangeness and idiosyncrasy it shows us flashes of trends that in future occur on a wider scale: in writing style, in modes of thought, in...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Spirit Photography: a question for the week of 3...
Interpret a “spirit photo” for us. First (after telling us which one you’re writing about), tell us what to look at in it — guide our eyes; then, reflect on the meaning of what we see. (Some of our...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, M. Oliphant's "Library Window": a question for the...
Identify a passage from the story that you find especially appealing or interesting. What does its meaning seem to be?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Seeing in "The Library Window": another choice of...
How does seeing work in Oliphant’s story? Show us a passage or two where seeing is important. How does it work? What does the story communicate about the meaning/ consequences/ problems of looking?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Childe Roland as failure?, on the site English...
One way of reading Browning’s “Childe Roland” is as a representation of failure, perhaps a kind of glorious failure: of a quest that spectacularly doesn’t work out. What do you think about this...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Something striking in Darwin, on the site English...
Tell us about a striking moment in our excerpts from Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle or On the Origins of Species. What attracts you to this moment, and what does your moment reveal about Darwin as a...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Macaulay's "Minute", on the site English 324/HTH...
What is the value of a text like Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education”? How are we supposed to understand/ think about/ use it as readers and scholars today?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Moment in Modern Love, on the site English 324/HTH...
Show us a moment or two that you find especially striking or significant in Meredith’s Modern Love, and explain why you find it (or them) notable. How can we understand this moment (these moments) in...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Silence in Modern Love, on the site English 324/HTH...
Pursue a bit farther the discussion we started in class of the “silence” that “best can speak” in #49 of Modern Love. Is this characterization of silence harmonious with Meredith’s project of...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Woods of Westermain, on the site English 324/HTH...
What is the nature of nature in Meredith’s “Woods of Westermain”? And what is nature’s meaning in the poem? Show Meredith’s text to help us understand your answer to this question.
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Arnold's prose, on the site English 324/HTH 240:...
What is an interesting moment in Arnold’s prose? Suggest to us how your moment reveals something about Arnold’s situation as a Victorian, about his beliefs, and/or about his writerly practices. One...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Arnold and the "dialogue of the mind with itself",...
One of Arnold’s critiques of his own poem “Empedocles on Etna” (which we have not read) was that it had the modern fault of offering readers the “dialogue of the mind with itself.” Find a passage in...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Favourite Barrett Browning, on the site English...
Show us, and talk to us about, one of your favourite moments in Barrett Browning’s poetry. Why is it your favorite? What does it communicate, and how does it effect that communication?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Victorian writers and tradition, on the site English...
Where do you find one of our authors relating to or engaging with tradition (whether literary tradition specifically or a tradition of ideas more broadly) in a way that is interesting/ perplexing/...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Unasked, unanswered question, on the site English...
Draw on our reading since the midterm to identify a question you think is worth asking; in framing it, avoid yes/no constructions, aiming instead for a “How can we make sense of …” or “What does it...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Barrett Browning and social critique, on the site...
We’ve spoken about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s social engagement and about the way she seeks to escape the confines of the feminine “missionariness” Aurora critiques in Aurora Leigh. What are your...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, "Goblin Market": moment of choice, on the site...
Write about a moment of choice in “Goblin Market”: who is choosing, and what does the choice consist of? How is the moment of choice represented, and what do you think its significance is for the rest...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Poetics of no in Christina Rossetti, on the site...
Show a moment from Christina Rossetti’s poetry where a poem is propelled by saying no. How does the poem say no, and what is it saying no to? Is the “no” unequivocal — is it definite — or is there...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Its alienating qualities, its friendly...
Ahh, Victorian poetry and prose: at some moments so alienating — overly mannered, hard to penetrate, distant in sensibility and values — and at other times so friendly, so approachable, so much exactly...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Essay practice, on the site English 324/HTH 240:...
Create a post that identifies the likely topic for your second essay and that “practices” the essay by doing any or all of the following: sketching out its likely course, interpreting an important...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Your final essay and the Victorian Supernatural, on...
How has your work on your final essay changed or developed your thinking about the Victorian supernatural, and what source(s) have been important for you in this process?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Style in Stevenson (a week-one question), on the...
Tell us about a passage in Strange Case where Stevenson uses description to probe or evoke the boundary between the real and the otherworldly (or between the regular and the otherworldly, or the canny...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Freud's "Uncanny" (a week-one question), on the site...
Share some thoughts about Freud’s essay in relation to Stevenson’s novella. First, what moment do you find most engaging in Freud’s essay, and why does it interest you? Secondly, point us to a passage...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Sound in "Goblin Market" (a week-two question), on...
What is the role of sound in “Goblin Market”? What does sound do or make happen within the world of the poem (e.g., goblins ‘crying’) and/or in the ear of the ‘outside’ reader (us, as we hear the...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Twilight in Stevenson and Rossetti (a week-two...
Compare the role of twilight in Stevenson’s Strange Case and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market.” With what conditions (and/or transformations) is twilight affiliated in each text? What does twilight...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Boundaries of the supernatural in "Goblin Market" (a...
Where is the boundary (or, where are the boundaries) between natural and supernatural in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”? How does the poem define them?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Note on our first weeks of blog posting, on the site...
Here is how our posting for the first weeks of the semester works. By Tuesday, 1 October, you need to have answered one question from each of our first three weeks. Remember that across the entire...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Supernaturality in the "Woods of Westermain" (a...
Where and how does Meredith make his woods seem supernatural?
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Sir Walter Scott's first "Letter" (a week-three...
Comment on a moment you find interesting in Scott’s first “Letter on Demonology and Witchcraft.” What is interesting about it, and what questions does it raise? Can you relate it to any of our other...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Stumbling around in the "Woods" (a week-three...
Meredith’s “Woods of Westermain” is named for real woods in the county of Surrey, England, where the poet lived. We can read the poem as inviting us on a walk: one full of obstacles, irregularity, and...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Supernaturality in In Memoriam (a week-five...
Show us one or two moments of interesting supernaturality in In Memoriam. How is the sense of supernaturality created, and what does it mean for or make happen in the poem when it occurs? Remembering...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, In Memoriam, Canto XCV (95!) (a week-five question),...
Return for a minute to the section of In Memoriam that we read on the first day of class, the canto that envisions a moment of contact between poetic speaker and dead friend. Identify a few words or...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Seeing in "The Library Window" (a week-six...
Identify a passage in “The Library Window” where vision is important. How is the experience of seeing rendered in prose, and what role does the experience have in the development of narrative? What...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, "The Library Window" and our other reading (a...
How can we relate Oliphant’s “Library Window” to our other reading and to our discussions in the course so far? Show us a passage from the story that resonates with a text — whether one of our...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Interior Design and the Time Traveller (a week-seven...
What is it like in the Time Traveller’s home, and what does Wells’s representation (through his narrator) of this domestic interior suggest about how we are to understand the Time Traveller and his...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, The Time Traveller as Theorist, on the site The...
Identify a passage or two in which the Time Traveller theorizes about the world of the future he encounters. Tell us what he is trying to explain (and where the passage is), and then consider these...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, *Using* a secondary source (a week-eight question),...
Post here a sentence (or two) in which you draw a connection between a secondary source and a primary text. Quote directly from your secondary source (and give a parenthetical page-number citation) as...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Some sources on gender and the Victorian world, on...
Here are some sources I (Prof. Drury!) found. If you found a useful source, please add it here in a “comment.” Author: Griffin, Ben. Title: The politics of gender in Victorian Britain : masculinity, […]
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Some sources for Stevenson's Strange Case, on the...
Here are some sources on Stevenson’s Strange Case. Remember that the back of your Broadview edition has a good bibliography. Add a good source if you know one, using the “comment” option! Eckley,...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Your poetry collection, on the site English 165H,...
Hello, Class! This is the first in our series of four posts, across the rest of the semester, on reading a poetry collection of our choice. We need to write this first post — as a “comment” in response...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, A good juxtaposition, on the site English 165H,...
Volumes of poetry — which represent an individual poet’s gathering and arranging of his or her work — invite us to think about how poems speak to and of one another. Some poets believe that structuring...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, Something not quite convincing?, on the site English...
Our third post asks you to think about a poem in your collection that you somehow don’t find fully convincing or satisfying. Within an entire poetry collection, any good reader is apt to discover at...
View Articleadrury wrote a new post, A find! Discovered poems, on the site English 165H,...
Tell about a poem in your collection that you hadn’t known before and that you like. Why do you like it? Would you say your poem is representative or emblematic of your poet’s strategies, interests,...
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