A few Austen links

Here are a few of my favorite Austen-related links. Just in case you need more!

What Jane Saw (online exhibition)

http://www.whatjanesaw.org

Thug Notes

http://www.thug-notes.com

Fictional Manuscripts project

http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html

Cartoon of Pride and Prejudice
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/27/170253360/pride-and-prejudice-turns-200?sc=emaf

Have a great break!

Ideas

I'm getting excited about the range of ideas the class is working on for the research essay. There is very little overlap in the various fandoms being explored, so I'll learn something new with each essay! I suspect that I might even be convinced to venture into some of the primary materials I've neglected so far. (I will admit to checking the kindle prices on George R.R. Martin's books and adding Glee to my Netflix queue.)

Our discussions, as everyone gives their presentations, are generating so many lines of inquiry and potential arguments. I feel like everyone really has embraced the challenge of exploring as they are getting their research underway.

The hard part--pulling all of the research together and creating a coherent argument is just ahead. I though this would be a good time to talk about some of the strategies for doing this.

One of the most common pitfalls in doing a research essay is failing to make an argument; the research overwhelms and by the time you've sorted through it all it can be hard to see what you can contribute. A working thesis helps--and sometimes a working thesis can have only the smallest gesture toward evaluation--this seems strange, this is good, this is a problem. But some kind of evaluation is necessary to move toward developing that more complex, arguable thesis.

The first stage of drafting is also a good place to think about MOTIVE. Why is this issue important? What larger problems does it touch upon?

Finally, given this particular topic of fandom, it seems important to keep thinking about why some authors, shows, books, books series, or even entire cultures, hold such lasting appeal. Can you capture and explain that in some way? Can you open this world up to your readers and make them want to enter it?

The Thrill of the Chase

It is time to start the research essay. I fear that students may approach this unit with dread. It is a long essay and, here at the beginning, it looks like a long road. But I envy students just getting started on research. It's a world full of possibilities and interesting new ideas and arguments. I'm always most excited by the the research phase--it is only second in excitement and satisfaction to finally being finished!

Research is exciting because every avenue is open. You should approach your research with an open mind--the interesting possibilities will be missed if you simply go into your research hoping to find support for a pre-existing idea or argument. In fact, this approach--using research to back up an argument--is exactly the opposite of academic inquiry. In academic inquiry, in general--and academic essays, in particular--arguments and theories should develop from a close examination of the evidence. If you don't approach your research with an open mind, willing to see ALL of the different existing perspectives on a topic, you'll be shortchanging yourself, and--more importantly--misleading your reader. While misleading your reader may not seem like as big an issue as actual plagiarism, the end result is similar. Plagiarism makes it seem that someone else's ideas are yours. Ignoring important lines of thought in your sources makes it seem someone else's (or many people's) ideas don't exist. In both cases, the end result is a distorted picture of the actually existing evidence. As a writer, your job is to try to provide the clearest picture you can of your topic.

This doesn't mean, of course, that you have to agree with every source your use. In fact, some of the best arguments--and thus the best productions of new knowledge--come from strong disagreements. But such a disagreement MUST start from a strong understanding of the source as well. To dismiss a source, or a line of argument several sources take up, is to indicate a failure of understanding on the writer's part.

But I've gotten ahead of myself and into the more difficult territory of evaluating arguments and figuring out your own position amongst them. Here, at the beginning, dig in and try to enjoy the ride for a while.

Defective Understandings

I recently came across this bit of wisdom from I.A. Richards: "We are with difficulty persuaded that we have much to learn about language, or that our understanding of it is defective. And this illusion re-forms whenever is is shattered, though any efficient educational procedure ought to have no trouble shattering as often as is needed. The first condition for improvement in the adult's use of language must be to disturb this ludicrous piece of self-deception" (335, Practical Criticism, 1929).

Richards, although discussing poetry, hits on a key problem that teachers of writing confront. Our students usually have been speaking, or at least hearing, English their entire lives. Having learned the basics of reading and writing at 4 or 5, they come to college with experience reading and writing at a sophisticated level--what is there left to learn? No one likes to be told that his or her understanding is is defective--hence the seemingly protective reformation of the illusion. I wonder how often that illusion re-forms over the course of a semester of first-year composition? Is the underlying rationale behind grading and commenting to continue to shatter students' illusions and to break through the self-deception of believing that it is easy to understand texts?

Perhaps, but I am also thinking about the advice given to readers in some eighteenth-century essays and conduct books. We've been reading commentators like John Gregory and Hester Mulso Chapone who were worried about what their audiences--assumed to be young women--were reading and how their reading might affect their characters. The fears they express about novels and sentimental fiction suggest a defective understanding not so far from Richard's. We also read Samuel Johnson's famous Rambler #4, known as "The New Realistic Novel." Johnson certainly believes that reader's understandings are defective! He doesn't even trust them to understand mixed characters.

These eighteenth-century writers have specific concerns--that young readers will be misled by fiction and fall into corrupt or vicious habits. Richards, writing at a time when literature, including novels, was more acknowledge to be edifying than corrupting, wanted educated people to be better interpreters of language, although we can easily see the anachronism of his assumption that many people are interested in discussing literature, much less poetry, at all. My purpose in pointing out certain defective understandings is usually situated in the context of academic inquiry. Students in college must be able to rigorously examine and explain the sources they use as evidence to develop their arguments. But it seems interesting--and maybe not entirely productive?--that the first step in all of these processes must be so aggressive--shattering illusions and pointing out ludicrous self-deceptions.

Novels and Education

When I heard that my proposed course on Jane Austen had been accepted for Expository Writing, I was thrilled. Austen is fun and the way her works remain popular presents fascinating questions for exploring contemporary culture and for thinking historically. And, of course, I love reading and teaching novels!

Novels play a significant role for students majoring or minoring in English literature. But the Expository Writing program is a general requirement; everyone takes it, or its equivalent. And classes need to to be not only interesting but widely valuable for a college student. Is it valuable to read novels? Does reading novels help you become a better writer? How useful is reading a novel going to be for, say a business major? Or a chemical engineer?

I struggle some with these questions every semester. But I remain convinced that these questions can all be answered with a firm YES. Interestingly, they are similar to the questions Austen herself asks in Northanger Abbey. In that novel Austen seems to suggest that the novel might play a role in the education of young people. When Catherine expresses astonishment at Isabella's deceptive character, Henry jests about her not having much experience: "Among all the great variety [of characters] that you have known and studied," he observes ironically (142). Perhaps, novels might teach their readers something about the "great variety" of characters in the world--and about those to avoid.

That probably sounds too simplistic--even if one considers how quiet and isolated life was before easy transportation and mass media. Catherine is innocent, but are we really meant to perceive her understanding as entirely limited when it comes to the obvious deceptions Isabella weaves through everyday conversation? Maybe.

But the "lessons" for the novel reader don't bear a one-to-one relationship to the lessons the characters within the novel learn. Particularly when those lesson apply, as in Austen's case, to social norms and modes of life long past. But maybe learning about that past is, in itself, important? Novels do not provide the facts of history; but, as Austen herself point out in Northanger Abbey, sometimes history needs the approach of the novel to keep it interesting. Eleanor finds the "embellishments" of historians to pleasurable and they seem to contribute to her understanding of the events (74). Reading the novels of the past can work to help us understand the ideas and the problems of the past on an individual level rather than from the perspective of the grand sweep of political and military history.

That deeper understanding of history may not be precisely pertinent to writing a business plan, or working out a chemical formula, but it does help make the reader a more generally educated person. I would argue further--although I don't have time right here--that reading novels gives one a larger vocabulary of words and ideas for understanding the world. And, while very few of those taking writing in college go on to be novelists, reading novels provides a deeper understanding of how language works and that produces better writing in all endeavors.

Fog and Castles

Northanger Abbey is often off-handedly called "Austen's satire on the gothic." That makes it sound so simple!

The more I read this novel, the more I find so many additional target of satire from the relatively small detail of "being denied" when calling upon someone to the larger issues of coercion among people who claim to have affection for one another.

Making fun of gothic conventions and gothic definitions of heroes and heroines is the obvious part of this novel. It is also the funny part--we laugh when Catherine finds a long lost manuscript that turns out to be a laundry list. But I don't find myself laughing when John and Isabella Thorpe physically hold her to prevent her from undoing John's rude canceling of her plans with the Tilney's. Surely this is plain cruelty.

Northanger Abbey, I think, challenges readers to figure out the distinctions between real and imaginary dangers.

Permission

Around the time the first draft of the first essay is due I start hearing questions that all start the same way: Can I . . . . ? The student then, almost inevitably, voices a "rule" about writing that he or she is worried about breaking: Can I use I? Can I use "you"? Can I use "we"? Can I use contractions? Can I use the word "because"?

The answers are: Yes, No, Yes, Yes YES!

Actually, the answers are all YES. I only make a tiny exception for "you" because it is difficult to use well and even more difficult to use it and maintain a sufficiently formal academic style.

I really hate these kinds of rules. Yes, of course, you (breaking the "you" rule here) have to abide by the basic grammatical conventions of standard English. But otherwise, there's an awful lot of ambiguity and flexibility in how we use language. Why put up obstacles to expressing meaningful ideas with all of these little rules?

More disturbingly, students frequently ask some variation of this: "Can I actually tell my reader what I'm trying to argue?" I know that some writing instructors come up with lists of rules and "Don't use the first person" or "Don't use contractions" might be on that list. But, "Don't tell your reader what you are up to"?!

Somehow, somewhere along the line, students get the sense that writing is about a set of tricks and isn't about trying to convey meaning to a reader. One the most literal level, I think students have been told to avoid "metacommentary"--saying what the essay is doing or arguing ( I will argue that . . . This essay will then look at . . . .). I fail to understand this rule given that most PUBLISHED academic essays use metacommentary extensively. If your ideas are complicated, giving your reader these concrete handhold really helps.

I also worry that this belief that writers have to disguise their ideas under fancy terms or convoluted sentence structures and follow a bunch of arbitrary rules means that beginning writers are afraid to fully engage in the messy work of drafting BEFORE editing. All of these rules can makes a writer stop and second guess every sentence before she has even worked out the main substance.

Stopping to take a breath and write "Okay, what I'm trying to say here is . . . ." can lead to great revelations. If you been taught to avoid using the first person or to avoid using metacommentary, you've been deprived of this tool. You can always go back and take the main idea and edit out the thinking. But do the thinking first!

So, whatever it is, if it helps YOU say what YOU want to say--yes, you can do that.

Bridget

Of the various adaptations and continuations of Pride and Prejudice we are reading in class this semester, I have to confess that I like Helen Fielding's  Bridget Jones's Diary most. I don't think this is simply because I remember the 90s in way that many students, most of whom were tiny babies when the novel was written, can't--although there is a certain nostalgia in my attraction. What I really like about Bridget Jones's Diary is that it is a riff on Austen, but it stands entirely on its own. It works as a novel without slavishly following the plot of Pride and Prejudice; in fact, many readers have to be told that it was inspired by the earlier novel. This same sort of relationship exists between Emma and Clueless, and, I think, is partly why Clueless has found so many fans. It holds its own as a self-contained film and finding out that there are parallels to an Austen novel only adds depth.

And then there is Bridget herself. What a complicated character--are we meant to laugh at her? Once that voice gets into your head it is so hard not to fall in love with her.

New media and Austen

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries vlog is smart and clever in many ways--characterization, modernization, adaptation of events and issues of class and economics to a United States's context. But it also comments intelligently on new media itself. Lydia, for example, participates it the gossip mill about whether Bing Lee's "harem" of women by texting and calling her network of friends (Lizzie Bennet Diaries, episode 4). In addition to the videos of main story, there is Lydia's blog, twitter exchanges, tumbler posts, and the main webpage with the cast bios and interviews. It is an entire media world of its own--maybe a bit like the mini-worlds Austen herself creates in her novels?

There's probably a lot more to say about how LBD participates in new media, but (with my head, as usual, in the world of the eighteenth-century), I'm interested in how the series picks up Austen's own concern with new media and its influence on it users. That is, Austen herself commented on what we can call one of the new media of her own time--the novel. She does this most pointedly in her novel Northanger Abbey, as we will see. While the series is certainly interested in this, bringing it explicitly into the story with Lizzie being a Mass Comm grad student and both Darcy and Mr. Collins owning a digital media companies, I'm not sure LBD is a forceful in its examination of new media as Austen was. I'll be interested to see what everyone thinks after we've read Northanger Abbey!

Active Reading

When I assign students chapters of writing texts about the importance of reading and reading actively I always feel like there is a collective sigh: Ah, this again; haven't we been told this in one way or another thousands of times by dozens of teachers?

So here it is, one more plea. Practically speaking, reading very carefully and reading for true comprehension can save you time in the long run. You develop an understanding of concepts, historical trends, and ideas that builds up over time and allows you to read more quickly. A careful reading with notes and marginalia also will save you time when you are writing, providing you with ideas and passages. Good marginalia and notes might mean that you never really confront a blank page as you start a writing assignment.

Enough said. Go read (actively).

Lights, Music, Argument

For class this week we are reading John Wiltshire's "Why Do We Read Jane Austen?"* Wiltshire argues that film adaptations of Austen inevitably change the novels, minimize her social critique (particularly about the cult of sensibility) and re-romanticize Austen's "suspicion of the romantic" (168). As he notes, light and music make their own argument that works against Austen's skepticism. The heritage film in particular, romanticizes the past.

There is more to say about Wiltshire's specific argument, but it also seems interesting to examine a tangential line of thinking--that movies make arguments that might have little to do with the actual script or story of the movie. We all know, of course, from horror films or scary movies that is easy to create an emotional effect in the viewer. How do directors build tension? Creepy music, lingering shots of the big knife and so on. But are we aware of those effects in movies that purport to be more "realistic"? I know that I am susceptible to feeling sad or nostalgic very easily when certain kinds of music are used--I might tear up even if I'm hating the movie or know that the director is using the song ironically.

Movies--and other media of the moving image like tv and videos--are certainly the dominant form of media today. The printed word--the dominant media at the time Austen was writing--is better able to force the reader to be critical or skeptical of what is being shown. Readers proceed at their own pace , are easily able to go back and examine contradictions or connections, and--importantly--are confined to one kind of visual image (the printed word), allowing their brains more time to process. Print seems more distant from the world or the ideas it tries to convey while images seem to immerse us in that world. Of course, it took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for humans to fully develop a culture of reading and, in particular, to develop the vocabulary that accompanies critical reading.

Most people know how talk about camera angles, lighting, special effects, and soundtrack choices. That is, we've developed a way to talk about how movies are put together. But how often do we talk about the subtle emotional effects that those technical choices have on us? Do we think hard about the way movies make arguments aside from their content?


* From A Truth Universally Acknowledged. Ed. Susanna Carson. New York: Random House, 2009.

I'm Not a Hypocrite--Really

This is the time of the semester when I ask my students to begin their reading journals. Write about what you are reading. It is simple. And yet, it is the kind of assignment that students tend to see as busy work. In other words, they think, no one has to do this sort of thing except students who are only really doing it for a grade.

I try never to ask my students to do something I wouldn't do or don't do. So I pause I bit when I ask them to keep reading journals because I don't keep a reading journal that looks much like what I assign. I rarely, for example, free write about what I've been reading. I do, however, write about my reading every day--in lesson plans for class reading, in a personal journal and (rarely) on another blog for my "fun" reading.

No one ever asked me to keep a reading journal when I was an undergraduate--I so wish they had!--and it wasn't until I was a graduate student that I developed my own system of keeping track of my reading and research; this system is what I think of as my reading journal. I don't like typing while also reading in a book or from photocopies. So I take handwritten notes on a steno pad as I write. They look something like this:

Yes, I actually copy out entire passages--it makes me careful in choosing them and forces me to do the work of paraphrasing or summarizing more often. I put my own ideas, thoughts, objections, points of comparison, side notes, and so on in brackets. Here, I'm reminding myself to read a book this author alludes to: [read Levine's Realistic Imagination]. Then--and this is the part that is dialectical--I take my notes to the computer and create an entry in a word document with other entires on the same topic. As a review the original notes, I usually flesh out the notes at this point and add to my own comments and questions. Here's an example from a different reading.

When I'm ready to use these notes in an article, I usually cut and paste large chunks of these notes directly into the first draft. Most of it gets cut down eventually, but I find it helps to have more specifics at hand--this way I don't have to keep going back to the original book or journal. Some scholars use systems of notecards, others use bibliography software. I guess the key is finding a system that works for you and doesn't feel like busywork!

Reading Pride and Prejudice AGAIN

I have no idea how many times I've read Pride and Prejudice. The all caps in the title isn't meant to suggest exasperation but, perhaps, astonishment. It is just so good no matter how many times one encounters it.

But I feel so excited for anyone just reading this novel for the first time. Of course, the novel is so much a part of our culture (in the U.S. and England, particularly, but also world-wide) that I wonder if there is any reader who can truly read this for the first time. How many people reach adulthood or their late teenage years without encountering a reference to the novel? Does anyone NOT know how the story of Elizabeth and Darcy turns out?

It is a commonplace that Mr. Bennet likes Elizabeth more than his other daughters. And yet, if one were trying to read as an entirely new reader, the evidence (at least early on) is rather thin. All we get is a quick line about her relative intelligence--she "has something more of a quickness than her sisters" who are described as "silly and ignorant"--and a desire to put in a "good word" for her in the competition for husbands (Chapter 1). One can't help but wonder just how significant it is to be the favorite of such a father. How did the myth of this favoritism start and how does it color the way we now read the novel?

The passage that really gives me pause when I read the first few chapters occurs when Darcy slights Elizabeth at the dance: "Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit down for two dances" (Chapter 3). Elizabeth, or Lizzy, has been briefly introduced as her father's favorite and, while trimming a bonnet, noted to be the Bennet's second daughter. But the last name here is jarring. Surely we ALL know Lizzy Bennet? Wondering why Austen feels that she needs to reintroduce Elizabeth as part of the Bennet family reveals that we come to this moment with a wealth of information and ideas and even images about Elizabeth. Not the least of that is that we know she is the main character in the novel. The last name signals that there were readers, once, who had to figure out if Elizabeth was a main character or if, perhaps, Lady Lucas was going to be more important. We, however, know that she likes to read, that she is witty and unconventional, that she has a "pair of fine eyes" (Chapter 6), that she refuses to marry her ridiculous cousin for financial security, and, well, we know the whole story, don't we? Wouldn't it be fun to be one of the early readers, or the rare reader who encounters this text without this previous knowledge of the novel?  Is it possible to discard everything we think we know about this character and read the story with absolutely fresh eyes?

Happy Summer!

See you in the Fall. If you have questions about the course, feel free to email me (my OU address can be found at the OU Expository Writing site) or leave a comment.

Is It Drafty In Here?

One of the writing skills I always find it difficult to teach is the importance of real revision. Real revision is not just tweaking an idea here or there or fixing comma errors. It is creating significant new drafts of an essay.

Here is a screen shot of the folder where I keep the draft versions and notes of an essay I wrote (and which was recently published in ECTI, Eighteenth-Century Theory and Interpretation):

I couldn't actually get the screen shot to capture the full list of versions!

Of course I don't expect my students to create nearly as many drafts or sets of notes for their essays. But I suspect most only create one or two--and that isn't nearly adequate to the task of really developing ideas.

 Keeping a folder for each essay is a good idea--you can use it to collect notes, quotations, your journal writing, and your different drafts. Saving different versions is a good idea because it lets you see your progress and lets you go back to a previous version if necessary. 

This week we'll be working on strategies for drafting such as cluster diagrams and sentence outlines. While not all writers use all of the techniques we'll explore, most writers have some sort of system that helps them move from notes and thoughts to actual sentences and paragraphs. I usually create set of comprehensive notes, including long quotations from the texts I know I will use. Once I create this, I save it and call it something like "complete notes." Then I "save as" and call this document version 1.0. That means I can start cutting and moving pieces of text without worrying that I will lose an important idea or quotation--I can always open the complete notes and find it. As the argument takes shape, I "save as" again as version 1.1. With every major revision, I create new document. When the essay really changes--when, for example, I incorporate comments from a colleague or editor--I "save as" and call the new version 2.0.

There is no right way to move through from early draft to final draft. But it is KEY that you consider drafts as individual documents and as documents that should change significantly throughout the writing process.

Do What I Tell You

“Be even cautious in displaying your good sense.”

 “The men will complain about your reserve. They will assure you that a franker behavior would make you more amiable. I acknowledge that on some occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it would make you less amiable as women.”

“You will not easily believe how much we consider your dress as expressive of your characters.”

John Gregory, from A Father's Legacy to His Daughters , 1774

 “The danger of pedantry and presumption in a woman--of her exciting envy in one sex and jealousy in the other, would be I own sufficient to frighten me from the ambition of seeing my girl remarkable for learning.  Such objections are perhaps still stronger with regard to the abstruse sciences.”

If you have natural modesty, you will never transgress its bound, whilst you are converse with a man, as one rational creature to another, without any view to the possibility of a lover or admirer, where nothing of that kind is profest—where it is, I hope you will be able to distinguish the effects of real esteem and love from idle gallantry . . . .”

Hester Mulso Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, 1773

The advice quoted above reminds eighteenth-century women to, in essence, remain stupid or pretend to be so. It suggests a careful calculation about behavior around men. And, importantly, it probably strikes a modern ear as so odd that we have to ask: Who read this stuff?  And why? 

While these quotations are somewhat out of context, and Chapone, in particular, actually was interested in educating women, much of the conduct literature of the eighteenth century sounds patronizing and degrading to our modern ears. Advice about reading, for example, suggests a limited critical understanding on the part of the reader. Don't read anything fictional without getting advice, Chapone warns. Samuel Johnson worries that readers won't be able to tell the difference between right and wrong if the bad characters aren't clearly delineated (see Rambler #4). At best, many of these essays and letters seem boring and overly moralizing to modern readers.

It is important to remember that texts like these were big sellers, steady sellers over decades of time. Excerpts from books like Chapone's and Gregory's were reprinted in anthologies and these anthologies sold well and kept the writers names and ideas in circulation for years after the original publication date, and after the author's death.

Before we dismiss this as simply another strange historical phenomenon, we should remember the enduring popularity of self help and advice books even today. In particular, we might compare the moralizing and religious strain of the steady sellers on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the enduring popularity of books about living spiritually. The language and the terms though which the issues are discussed is very different across time. But consider:  Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life is an all time best-seller; Spencer Johnson's, Who Moved My Cheese? also shows up there.  What Not to Wear is in its tenth season. Advice and self help show up on best seller lists like this one, this one, and even this one from 1968.

Think those rules about how women aught to behave about men are strange and outdated? Check this out, from The Rules, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider:

“Don’t meet him halfway or go Dutch on a date.”

“Don’t open up too fast.”

“Don’t call him and rarely return his calls.”

“You don’t accept a weekend date after Wednesday.”

Something Very Horrid

Even if you haven't read any gothic novels from the late 1700s, Austen's parody in Northanger Abbey makes many of their conventions fairly clear. A beautiful heroine finds her self in old castle or abbey--the older the better. It is filled with mysterious noises and lights. It has secret, locked chambers and staircases. Old cabinets and trunks hold secret manuscripts. The inhabitants are oppressed by a force no one seems able to name. The heroine herself has, in all likelihood, been kidnapped and brought to the castle against her will--locked up in one of the chambers herself, perhaps.

Austen domesticates many of these events in her novel. She makes the kidnapping, for example, into a event that hinges more on the social impropriety of backing out of a prior engagement than on actual abduction. The heroine is not taken away from her home, but sent back to it. Mysterious manuscripts turn out to be laundry bills. And while we can easily see the amusement in reversing or miniaturizing the overblown events of the gothic, it might be more difficult to see why she does this.

As many have noted, Austen was suspicious of some of the currents of thought represented by the gothic. The exaggerated feelings of sympathy and sensibility, the heightened workings of the imagination, and the preference for old, ruined buildings and landscapes--Romance--are her targets in many of her novels. Did common people really have such exaggerated feelings for potential lovers that they would refuse to eat or sleep? Would anyone really prefer an old house with ancient furnishing to one fitted up with modern conveniences?

At the same time that Austen seems to be arguing that the novel might accommodate common people's stories (notice how often the word "common" shows up in the novel itself!), gothic terrors creep in as not entirely unfounded. This is especially true, of course, in the case of General Tilney. Catherine is right about many of her surmises--he is an oppressive force, there is a mystery about him, he is cruel and tyrannical. Is it possible that Austen finds more truth in the gothic than it seems on a first reading?

Read!

The Reading Rainbow. The Big Read. "Read with your child for 20 minutes every day." We make a pretty big deal out of reading and literacy in this country today; indeed strong habits of reading have been connected with involvement in "cultural, sports, and volunteer activities." Readers are more likely to "visit an art museum . . . [and] volunteer or do charity-work" (Reading at Risk). Other studies suggest that people who don't read as much "do less well in the job market." People in jail are more likely to poor reading skills and people who don't read are less likely to vote (To Read or Not to Read ).

Such studies, in other words, show a strong correlation between civic participation and reading. In this country (the United States), at this historical moment (the early 21st century), we want people to read so that they can be better citizens and have more productive lives.

But this has not always been the case. In eighteenth-century England (the historical context for Austen's Northanger Abbey), many were quite worried about increasing literacy and habits of reading. They were worried about what the lower classes might read--would they get dangerous ideas about overturning the social hierarchy? Some cultural arbiters tried to promote "safe" reading that would be "the best security you can have, both for the industry and obedience of your servants" (Hannah More, The Cheap Repository Tracts, c. 1795). Here, the proposed "safe" reading was the Bible, which might raise other questions, but the intent--to keep people in their places--is clear. Samuel Johnson saw novels as the "entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impression" and therefore recommended that writers be very careful about the kinds of lessons and examples they put forth in their novels (Rambler #4, 1750). Hester Mulso Chapone, while mostly encouraging young women to read and educate themselves, cautioned that "the greatest care should be take in the choice of those fictitious stories, that so enchant the mind--most of which tend to inflame the passions of youth" (Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, 1773).

These are two very different sets of assumptions! Both moments see that reading has strong effects on people, but the earlier time tends to fear rather than applaud those effects as inflaming the passions and generating disruptive trends in thinking. Another way of thinking about this, I suppose, is that we now see reading as a path to critical thinking: we think (generally--there are still exceptions) it is good to read in order to shake up our established ideas.

Paragraphs

Paragraphs are always a problem early in the semester. I usually say a paragraph is a unit of thought. But that seems ambiguous--units of thought might be small or large, short or long! An idea that might be a single sentence in one essay, might be explored for two or three paragraphs in another. How does one develop rules and strategies? Like everything with writing, the sense of what a paragraph is, that is, where your ideas end and begin, is one that simply strengthens with practice.

In the meantime, Parfitt offers a few good reminders. Have a clear sense of your paragraph's topic. Make that clear to the reader by stating it in a topic sentence (you'll want to make a claim as well and someetimes the topic setnence and the claim are the same). Keep linking each sentence back to the topic. But, as he notes, "repeating the exact same word frequently will create a sense of  tedium." He goes on to explain that "words and phrases that are related but not identical, that work as variations on a theme, can forge connection and develop your point at the same time."*

Developing a strong constellation of key terms is, therefore, important in showing the links between your ideas and writing unified paragraphs. A constellation is a group of words or phrases that help you express similar ideas. It requires some work, and maybe a thesaurus, but if you take five minutes and brainstorm a variety of ways to express your central ideas, you'll have them ready as you revise your paragraphs.

I also like Parfitt's explanation of the "map view" and the "globe-trotter's view"* of a paragraph. Seeing the whole paragraph at a glance, the map view, is probably what we do when we are drafting. We say, Ok, this paragraph is about X, the next one about Y. But the reader experiences the paragraph one sentence at a time and must "work to make sense of each one in relation to the previous sentences and paragraphs." It is important, then, to think about each paragraph as a trail that moves forward, or a mini narrative. What does the reader need to know first? Is this a conclusion or is this helping to set up my claim? The more you ask those questions and revise to create a logical order, the easier a time the reader will have.

And, the more you ask those questions, the more you can revise to give your reader signposts. The small words seem to the words that beginning writers often avoid and yet they are the most helpful--when used correctly--in guiding the reader. First. Then. However. And. But. Therefore. One the other hand. Yet.

* From Matthew Parfitt, Writing in Response (Boston, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012), 131-132; 139

Re-

I have struggled some with what to call the various texts we read in the first unit of the "Jane Austen Meme" class. P.D.James' Death Comes to Pemberley certainly seems like a sequel or continuation, but it also re-interprets Austen. James seems so much more interested in secondary characters and in the servants in particular. Mysteries need more characters, but noticing that Elizabeth is more involved in her servants' lives than Mr. Bingley's sister, Mrs. Hurst--who doesn't factor into this novel at all--seems to underline an interest in those individuals who support the lifestyle of the landed gentry in the early nineteenth century.

Nancy Butler and Hugo Petrus's graphic novel seems clearly like a re-telling in a visual mode. But again, it re-interprets certain characters by presenting their personalities through images. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (by Seth-Grahame-Smith) seems more like what we might call a mash-up: it takes the original and adds the new element  of zombies. But, like the previous texts, it gives us new interpretation in doing so. In Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding takes up themes of the original, creating an entirely new story. But her novel still, I would argue, asks us to then look again at Austen's original--to re-view or re-see--and ask some new questions.*

Why am I so interested in this prefix this week? The premise of this class is that writing requires revision--a word I've already tossed around above. Looking at again. Revising your own work isn't the same as revising or retelling someone' else's story. That is, you are starting with your own ideas and going back to look at them again--to make them better and more clear.  But maybe there are more similarities than at first appear. Are you the same person you were when you wrote the first draft? I'm not trying to get too philosophical here, but our ideas are changing all the time. Importantly, once you've written down your ideas and they aren't in your mind, they exist outside of you. And that changes them in an important way: You can look at them as if they belonged to someone else. What I hope you will find is that also means they become flexible and more easily manipulated. Once the ideas are in the first draft, you can think of them as building blocks to be re-shaped and re-arranged to get to the clearest expression of your ideas.

The Oxford English Dictionary** gives this as a definition of the prefix "re": 1. With the general sense of ‘back’ or ‘again’ . . . . 2. Prefixed to ordinary verbs of action (chiefly transitive) and to derivatives from these, sometimes denoting that the action itself is performed a second time, and sometimes that its result is to reverse a previous action or process, or to restore a previous state of things.

That all fits with what I've written except those last two parts about reversing a previous action or restoring a previous state. It makes me wonder whether rewriting and revising our writing isn't, perhaps, about trying to get back to the purest thoughts we had before we ever wrote anything down?


* Was Elizabeth so aware of the rituals and rules of courtship as Bridget seems to be? Was Elizabeth as obsessed with her weight? Is Austen's eighteenth/nineteenth-century character actually more modern than Fielding's?

**This a resource you should know and use. To access it go the Ou library home page (libraries.ou.edu). Sign in. In the middle of the page, go to "Databases" and then to "O." Click the "E-Reference Materials" tab and scroll down to the dictionary.

Gossip

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer taking up the subject of Jane Austen must allude to the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice. Ok, that's done (if awkwardly) and I can move on. I can't help but wonder if Austen's style, and the fact that there have been so many who have written so well on Austen is a stumbling block--like the perceived necessity of misquoting the first line of Pride and Prejudice--in writing about Austen. I know it has been for me! Since beginning to teach this class  I have hardly written a word on this blog about Austen. And yet, as I discover in class every day, there is still so much to say . . . .

In reading the first few chapters this time around, I found my self thinking about gossip. At the beginning of Chapter 3 the Bennet girls and their mother are wondering about Mr. Bingley. But this soon transforms into the whole community wondering and gossiping about the new arrivals. Notice how many times "report," "intelligence," and "hearing" or "heard" show up through here. The Bennet ladies "accept second han-hand intelligence" about Mr. Bingley from Lady Lucas's "report." Mr. Bingley "has heard much" about the Bennet girls." Everyone is alarmed by a "report" that Mr. Bingley will bring twelve ladies to the ball, but later they "hear" that only his sisters will accompany him. During the ball a "report" enters "general circulation" about Mr. Darcy's wealth.

While we often think about how Austen creates the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy--and how we follow Elizabeth's thoughts in particular--when we think about this novel, before we ever find out any thing specific about either of them the voice of the community is well established. Who gives these reports? Who circulates this information? We only know in a few cases.  Like the "truth universally acknowledged" some information seems to float through this book without any real source.

This raises many questions: Is the community more important for Austen than her main characters? To what extent are her readers part of this community? Is she making the reader part of the community by giving us this seemingly free-floating information? So many Austen readers note with admiration that she creates a little world in which we live as we read her novels. The creation of this world has, in part, to do with creating this community voice that makes us feel like we, too, live in Meryton. Does gossip make us feel like we belong? That raises so many more questions--am I the only one thinking about Facebook right now?