Tim Morris
Writing Assignments for short papers #5-8
All papers are one-page maximum and due in class on the date indicated. To receive credit for the paper, you must pick it up when it's returned on the following class day.
Tues 8 Oct: #5 due: Robert Frost is closely associated with the New England countryside; most of his poems are set there, and one of his best is even called "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things" (pp. 212-213). The countryside that he writes about was disappearing even during his youth, however, and most of his readers nowadays live in cities or suburbs. What makes Frost's poetry continue to be meaningful for us, even when we share so little of the landscape that he wrote about? Or are these country poems meaningful any more? Thurs 10 Oct: #5 turned back.
Tues 15 Oct: #6 due: In his essay on Lolita, Nabokov traces the origin of the novel to "a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes [the Paris botanical gardens], who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage" (p. 311). Nabokov goes on to admit that the connection between this story and Lolita is indirect; but it's a striking image. I suppose it has something to do with Humbert telling the story of the novel: he is trapped in his own identity and cannot show us anything except how the world looks to him. How does Humbert's narration make the story different from how it might have been told by a neutral observer, or by Quilty, or Lolita? Thurs 17 Oct: #6 turned back.
Tues 22 Oct: #7 due: Nabokov goes on to say in the essay: "For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm" (pp. 314-315). How does Lolita connect us to such "states of being"? Thurs 24 Oct: #7 turned back
Tues 29 Oct: #8 due: Wallace Stevens complained that Robert Frost "wrote about subjects": that Frost's poetry is always directly about natural things, people, clearly spelled-out ideas. Stevens's poetry is almost never about subjects. Taking it on its own terms (that is, I'm not interested at the moment in whether you like Stevens or not), how does Stevens manage to write without subjects? What, in fact, is his poetry about? Thurs 31 Oct: #8 turned back