|
Slashie posted:Do you require your Shakespeare students to see a play in performance each semester? If so, what do you do to prepare them? Do you feel that as an academic you are looking for something different in a performance than someone approaching it from the theatrical side? I know that as a longtime Shakespearean actor and director I am often willing to enjoy more experimental interpretations, because after working with these plays for so long they have started to look more like blank canvasses than priceless cultural artifacts. I think the biggest difference is that, when I teach a play, I'm leading an open-ended exploration of its structure and characters rather than trying to explain how the play works within a particular vision -- in that sense, my Shakespeare class is much more like a narrowly-focused scriptreading course than a process that would lead to a production. We don't -- or at least haven't -- looked at plays in performance, but that's not because I don't think them useful. The local Shakespeare companies don't announce their schedules far enough in advance that I can build their shows into my syllabi. But I'm working with the Theater department here to run occasional two-semester courses on individual plays. During the first semester, the students carefully read the play, research the history behind it, and look at productions, adaptations, rewritings, and similar period plays; they use this to produce a performance during the second semester as part of the Theater department's regular offerings. The first run of this is next year, so we'll see how it goes.
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 22:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 21:02 |
|
|
NeekBerm posted:Do you ever find yourself reading a terrible novel like "Twilight" or anything by Nora Roberts? I do this all the time, partly to mine the print world for both positive and negative examples to use in my freshman writing classes. My writing students' progress really hits them when, at the end of the semester, they can improve a piece of professional writing that they couldn't work with during the first few weeks. quote:P.S On that note, does it bug you to put punctuation within quotations? I know that saying "Know thy enemy!" is incorrect, yet why even bother putting the punctuation within the quotes in the first place? It seems more natural to write "Know thy enemy". This is one of a billion grammatical points that need doctoring. Consider using quotes in an instructional phrase like type "grep -i ps ~/.bash* | grep -v history." To a novice, it's a toss up as to whether the terminal period is part of the command, since periods are syntactically relevant (in "~/.bash"). Another crackrock adventure is verb conjugation in the subjunctive mood -- the conjugation changes, but how it changes seems absolutely random. "If I were in your shoes" shifts from singular (was) to plural (were), but "it's time we bought new carpet" shifts to the past tense. But the only way we'll frog march that pointless irregularity out of common use is if ESL students crash passenger jets into MLA headquarters.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 22:58
|
|
|
What do you wear when you teach? I can easily pass for an undergrad so I try to dress a bit nicer.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 23:04
|
|
|
Grouco posted:What are your favourite poems? My hands-down favorite is Milton's "Lycidas." That's probably no surprise if you've read anything I've written about it. But I'm a sucker for Edmund Spenser. His sonnets are, frankly, disturbing. Stalkerish. And Faerie Queene is the most interesting epic poem there is or (hopefully) ever will be.* Edna St. Vincent Millay is good, too, and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, has got to be the language's single finest craftsman of pornographic vulgarity. And who else? Adrienne Rich is fantastic and totally misread. Everyone reads e.g. "Diving Into the Wreck" as some kind of meditation on Feminist politics because of her biography, which makes about as much sense as reading all of Shakespeare's poetry as meditations on the divine right of kings. But "DITW" is also a brilliant piece on what it means to engage poetry as a tradition -- maybe the best in the past century. Meantime, other poets do some things particularly well. Look at Wyatt if you want to see masterful lineation. Look at Skelton if you want to see stylistically ingenuous political poetry (Langston Hughes borrows heavily from him, which makes Skelton's the longest and strangest shadow cast by a 15th century poet). Fulke Greville and John Donne both have a startling command of images. And the list goes on. * Everybody reads out of Book I, which is a big mistake. As you progress to Book VI, things look more and more like Arthurian legend on peyote.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 23:20
|
|
|
FightingMongoose posted:I guess your field requires a lot of reading. How long does it take you to read a typical length novel? What are your thoughts on speed reading? I usually count on about 250-300 pages an hour for prose at the Esquire/New Yorker/Harry Potter level, and maybe 150 an hour for anything likely to be thought provoking. For careful reading of early, unedited texts (in the Folger or off of EEBO) I'll count on about a page or two a minute. For a good reading of a poem it's wide open. And speed reading? It depends on how you do it, what you're reading, and to what purpose. For a report or any other kind of header/subheader writing (e.g. textbooks), busting through once quickly to get a sense of the arc and then returning to salient details makes sense. But that would suck the joy out of a story or a play. But I don't really trust speed reading as commonly taught (finger tracking, cutting subvocalization) because it suggests that reading quickly is preferable to reading slowly. A good reader reading good writing will mostly check a few pages and stop to think about an interesting point or turn of phrase. A focus on speed excludes that kind of reflection.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 23:32
|
|
|
Junior G-man posted:I assume you have read Lunar Park and I was wondering what your opinion on it was? I think that he got a little too carried away by his own cleverness and failed to present a novel that is worthy of Less than Zero or The Rules of Attraction. Have you seen the movie version of Rules of Attraction? Any thoughts? Lunar Park doesn't have the hard edges you'd see in Rules or Zero, but I think it's actually a much more interesting book. It's the best rewriting of Hamlet I've ever read, which says something. And the end is deeply touching, which says something, too -- let's just say that the narrator's closing wish-fulfilling hallucinations make for the most satisfying resolution to a complex story I've yet seen. So while Lunar Park isn't the two by four to the face you get with Ellis's earlier work, it's one gently caress of a step up in intellectual and emotional depth -- American Psycho seems like a shallow horror story with a cop-out twist ending by comparison. I vaguely remember the film version of Rules, and vaguely remember thinking it tepid. Non-parodic film generally doesn't do a good job of social indictment, which might have something to do with it -- the medium's just bad at subtlety, which makes good adaptations of complex stories practically impossible.
|
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 23:47
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:lots and lots of yummy words Brainworm posted:Another crackrock adventure is verb conjugation in the subjunctive mood -- the conjugation changes, but how it changes seems absolutely random. "If I were in your shoes" shifts from singular (was) to plural (were), but "it's time we bought new carpet" shifts to the past tense. But the only way we'll frog march that pointless irregularity out of common use is if ESL students crash passenger jets into MLA headquarters. What are the rules for who and whom in a compound sentence that has a second verb for which who/m is supposed to be the nominative? For instance: "I tackled George, Bob, John, Isaac, and Samantha, all of who(m) sought to suck on my toes." Whom seems to be more commonly used, but Ayn Rand and Orson Scott Card (whom I cite for their publishedness, not skill), at least, seem to favor who when the word is pressed into service as a subject. Lastly, while I don't have a specific question for this one, would you mind talking a bit about hyphen usage? I'm terrified that I overuse them, but at the same time I'm fairly certain that I only use hyphens when it's technically correct to do so, while the rest of the civilized world seems to hardly ever use the things. e: Oh, and why does God hate the Oxford comma? Fast Moving Turtle fucked around with this message at 01:06 on May 27, 2009 |
|
#
?
May 26, 2009 23:56
|
|
|
Fast Moving Turtle posted:What are the rules for who and whom in a compound sentence that has a second verb for which who/m is supposed to be the nominative? For instance: "I tackled George, Bob, John, Isaac, and Samantha, all of who(m) sought to suck on my toes." This is a big thing for me so I'm going to answer it too. "Who" is the nominative, "whom" is the objective (or accusative. Not sure what it's called in English grammar strictly). Only use "whom" if you can replace it with "him/her/them" and still make it make sense. "I tackled George, Bob, John, Isaac, and Samantha. All of they/m sought to suck on my toes." = use "all of whom." "Whom" there is the object of a preposition ("of") while "all" is the subject proper. On the other hand: "I tackled George etc., who all sought to suck on my toes." would be correct because there "who" is the subject and "all" is an adjective. Also, I love the subjunctive and it is beautiful with its "were" and its random past tenses  I do not think "was" is ever proper usage in the subjunctive, but I may just not be thinking of an instance.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 02:32
|
|
|
Fast Moving Turtle posted:Is there ever ever ever any point at which was is used in the subjunctive mood? Not that I can think of. There might be a corner case, but the rules for verb conjugation in the subjunctive mood are so crackrock that I'm not sure I can give you a categorical situation where was would be used instead of were. It's academically possible, though. The past and present subjunctives (I were/I be) indicate a modal (rather than a temporal) situation.* So you could have a "was" in a sentence to set the tense and a "were" indicating the subjunctive mood; it's keeping the "was" inside the proplerly subjunctive part of the sentence that's a bear, e.g. I was thinking that if I were a mountain climber, I would kill John Lithgow. Here, the "was" is clearly indicative. But it's possible to really mix it up: If I were a Clevelander, I was born in Cleveland. The conditional means it's tough to make the case that the "was" isn't part of the subjunctive, since it's just as conjectural as the first clause of the sentence. But "was" should be "would have been" or a similar construction that makes the conjectural nature of this conditional predicate clear. But my inability to think of a good tense/modal frankensentence doesn't mean someone can't zap one to life. The non-tense surrounding the past subjunctive makes one entirely possible. quote:What are the rules for who and whom in a compound sentence that has a second verb for which who/m is supposed to be the nominative? For instance: "I tackled George, Bob, John, Isaac, and Samantha, all of who(m) sought to suck on my toes." Exactduckwoman has the who/whom issue nicely sorted. But I'd like to bury it even if the body's still twitching. I never use "whom" for the same basic reasons I never use "one." Both are too precious even for formal writing. quote:Lastly, while I don't have a specific question for this one, would you mind talking a bit about hyphen usage? I'm terrified that I overuse them, but at the same time I'm fairly certain that I only use hyphens when it's technically correct to do so, while the rest of the civilized world seems to hardly ever use the things. Hyphens are as easy and exciting as a white girl on coke.** You've just got to remember a few rules:
quote:e: Oh, and why does God hate the Oxford comma? All good hearted people love the Oxford comma. Without it, it's impossible to create a list of compound elements without introducing parsing difficulties. Witness: Good People posted:The dinner choices were fried chicken, grilled chicken and rice, beans and rice, or stew. As opposed to Illiterate Baby Rapists posted:The dinner choices were fried chicken, grilled chicken and rice, beans and rice or stew. In the first case, it's instantly clear to the reader that the last choice is between beans and rice or stew (instead of beans and rice or beans and stew / beans and rice or stew). A reader of the second, non-Oxford, case can't parse the sentence as he or she reads, but instead has to float until the sentence is complete, then reread it to resolve the ambiguity. The case for the Oxford comma being so clear, I can only attribute its deliberate omission to the unfathomable ends of a malign God. * They're called "past" and "present" subjunctives because they look like the past and present indicatives, not because they suggest anything about what happens when. Which is awesome. ** Also as thin. And constantly sandwiched (metaphorically speaking). *** Or lions or vehicles.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 04:30
|
|
|
exactduckwoman posted:Also, I love the subjunctive and it is beautiful with its "were" and its random past tenses This sounds like the beginning of a playfully confrontational and pedantic seduction. But if you ever hurt the subjunctive, I'm coming after you.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 04:34
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:All good hearted people love the Oxford comma. All good hearted people do love the Oxford comma. It got omitted because newspapers were concerned with character counts and column spacing. On old-school presses, the plate for a comma would take up as much space as a capital F plate, so dropping every Oxford comma could save significant space in a newspaper (this is why the AP style guide still says not to use the Oxford comma). Word processors correct for spacing issues now (try to line up two lines of Times New Roman text in Word using the space bar), but people still insist on dropping the Oxford comma. It is a holdover from a defunct printing practice that got taught as a "rule" and so it sticks around. edit: It is the same reason some people say not to split infinitives. Some 16th century Oxford grammarians decided English should be more like the language of God. They decided since we can't split infinitives in Latin (because they are one word), then obviously we shouldn't in English! It got taught enough times as a rule so people still adhere to it today, despite it being a silly grammatical justification. The Last 04 fucked around with this message at 05:28 on May 27, 2009 |
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 05:14
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:This is one of a billion grammatical points that need doctoring. Consider using quotes in an instructional phrase like type "grep -i ps ~/.bash* | grep -v history." To a novice, it's a toss up as to whether the terminal period is part of the command, since periods are syntactically relevant (in "~/.bash"). Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 13:17 on May 27, 2009 |
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 13:14
|
|
|
Let me start out by nth-ing the "this is my favorite thread on SA right now" comments. I wish I lived near you so I could buy you several beers. I'm out of college now so classes aren't really an option, but I've been wanting to get into English literature for my own edification and leisure. Would you recommend the books you listed on the last page for someone just looking to get the most enjoyment out of difficult books in his spare time? I'm not planning on publishing any journal articles or anything, obviously, so super deep analysis isn't required. But I do know that I'll need some guidance to understand what's going on in the harder stuff. If the ones you listed are maybe too far on the hardcore scholar side for my purposes, got any recommendations that would fit?
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 15:20
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:All good hearted people love the Oxford comma. Without it, it's impossible to create a list of compound elements without introducing parsing difficulties. Thank you. This is the element of APA formatting I dislike the most. I regularly create long lists and I struggle to make them comprehensible without that last comma.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 16:39
|
|
|
The Last 04 posted:It is the same reason some people say not to split infinitives. Some 16th century Oxford grammarians decided English should be more like the language of God. They decided since we can't split infinitives in Latin (because they are one word), then obviously we shouldn't in English! It got taught enough times as a rule so people still adhere to it today, despite it being a silly grammatical justification. It is silly. Some infinitives, like some relationships, improve on being split. In fact, splitting an infinitive is an excellent emphatic tool. In English, there are generally only two good avenues to emphasis and both involve word ordering. The first is simple -- ideas at the beginnings and ends of sentences, paragraphs, and texts are the ones your reader remembers, so that's where your most important points go.* In practice your subject normally leads a sentence, so your real flexibility is how you follow it. So "tall, dark, and handsome" emphasizes handsome while "handsome, dark, and tall" emphasizes tall. The other, less powerful, way to emphasize involves changing conventional word order. This is a tricky thing, because there aren't many ways to do this that keep your writing clear -- there's an informal grammar that determines word order, and you gently caress with it at your peril. So say I'm describing a group of people using these terms: Fat Female(s) French Four Any native English speaker will say "the four fat French females," and look at you like you've grown a third eye if you say "the fat four French females" or "French fat four females," even though there's nothing grammatically wrong with either phrase. Your only other option is the precious and archaic-sounding "Fat french females four," which is only OK if you're rhyming it with "waddled through the bathroom door" or "world's easiest orgy score." But the split infinitive is an exception. You can crack that with any adjective you want for instant emphasis and occasionally delightful cadence. So you get: The Most Famous Example posted:To boldly go where no man has gone before. or Clarence Chugwater posted:it is when apparently crushed that the Briton is to more than ever be feared! * If you've ever studied, say, a foreign language by using a list of terms, you already know this. You always learn the first and last terms on the list earliest.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 17:01
|
|
|
Just to join in with the punctuation chat... I use far too many dashes - how should I replace them with other punctuation? (Yes, I know, I did this on purpose as an example.) I use them whenever a phrase links with another phrase - so they are too linked to use a full stop, but they aren't linked enough that a comma seems appropriate. Also, I don't know how to use semicolons properly.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 17:02
|
|
|
BusError posted:I wish I lived near you so I could buy you several beers. I'm carving this into my palm so I can hold you to it. quote:I'm out of college now so classes aren't really an option, but I've been wanting to get into English literature for my own edification and leisure. Would you recommend the books you listed on the last page for someone just looking to get the most enjoyment out of difficult books in his spare time? Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is probably the classic general audience text, but it's really focused on novels, which most people don't have problems with. Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why is, I think, better in that respect. I'd also check his Western Canon and Best Poems of the English Language, which has a fantastic introduction and a delightful range of poetry. If you want to read Shakespeare, I'm sad to say I haven't yet seen a good companion. But David Ball's Backwards and Forwards is a great introduction to scriptreading -- a matter bafflingly omitted by even well-edited editions of the plays. That should get you where you want to go. These are popular texts in freshman-level English courses and for general readers, so used copies are cheap and easy to find. Also, stay away from Sparknotes and the like. The whole point of reading is enjoyment, and nine-tenths of enjoyment is surprise. Plot summaries will make the reading easier, but kill the fun. Also, those kinds of texts suggest that the most important parts of a text are high school-level bullshit terms like "symbols" and "themes" and "foreshadowing." And last: if you live near a college, track down a course schedule and just show up for what you're interested in (as long as you won't look too suspicious -- this works better at State Us than places with small classes). If it's something close to a lecture-style class, the professor won't care even if he notices. Alternately, get a list of the people in their English department and ask whether they run any reading groups or, alternately, whether they'd be willing to talk to you about what you're reading. I'm in a small town and don't get these kinds of requests too often, but I take them up when I get the chance.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 17:26
|
|
|
lewi posted:Just to join in with the punctuation chat... Ellipses (...) and dashes (--) usually show up when people stretch their writing. That is, they're a sort of developmental stage between simple sentences and real punctuation kung-fu. Advanced punctuation includes commas (when used with parentheticals and appositives), parentheses, colons, semicolons, and dashes. All of these are used to either tack clauses to the ends of sentences or shoehorn them into the middle. I'll start with the easiest matters first: Semicolons [;] join two independent clauses, just like [, + conjunction/relative pronoun]. The difference is that a semicolon is a harder stop than the comma/conjunction combo or the popular comma/relative pronoun combo. Semicolon Example posted:Single parents pay an average of $60 per week for daycare; this means that a single parent earning minimum wage spends more than half her take home pay on child care. Compare that to Comma/Relative Pronoun Example posted:Single parents pay an average of $60 per week for daycare, which means a single parent earning minimum wage spends more than half her take home pay on child care. Because I have tons of bad casual writing habits, my knee-jerk reaction would be to use a dash instead of a semicolon. That moves the sentence faster, but is tougher to parse than the comma/relative pronoun. Colons [:] terminate independent clauses and introduce either a list or an example. For instance: Intrusion posted:The plan was terrible: it called for three batteries. Rupture posted:The plan was terrible because it needed too many things: ducks, baked brie, model rocket engines, AAA batteries, and a waffle iron. There's no flexibility here. An independent clause introducing one or more examples gets a colon. If you don't want to use one, subordinate the leading clause or (as in the first case) break the sentence in two by making the example (or list of examples) an independent clause or usable fragment. Parentheticals are clauses sandwiched by other clauses, and generally contain incidental information. How you punctuate them depends on how incidental the information is. If it's nearly irrelevant, footnote it. If it's only slightly less important than the surrounding material, use parentheses. If it's as important, use commas. If it's more important, use dashes, but reconsider your sentence structure since important information doesn't belong in the middle. This is most important when you want to build logical relationships. Consider the backstory implied by each of these:
You can also use dashes to emphasize trailing clauses -- they draw readers' attention in a way that semicolons or pure sentence stops don't. But overusing them kills this effect.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 18:07
|
|
|
are there any books you think everyone should read? if you were to given the oppertunity to restructure elementary/high school English education, how would you do so? edit: and goddamn is this a good thread
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 19:45
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:Also, those kinds of texts suggest that the most important parts of a text are high school-level bullshit terms like "symbols" and "themes" and "foreshadowing." Speaking of which, how would you teach The Great Gatsby?
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 20:08
|
|
|
coffeetable posted:are there any books you think everyone should read? That's a tougher question than it sounds. I think there are certain books everyone can benefit from reading in specific ways. I'm a Shakespearean, so I'm going to use Hamlet as an example, keeping in mind that you could apply most of what I'm going to say to just about any text. Reading Hamlet teaches at least two things everyone could use more of: empathy and subtlety. The play only works on the page if you think about why the characters do what they do, which means asking which characters know what, what they infer from what they know or suspect, how these suspicions inform their motivations, and how their actions reveal their motives. This kind of thought isn't something you should ever switch off. When you see someone doing or saying something, you need to look through that to what they suspect (and why), what they know (and how), and what they want (and why). That's the foundation for every complex human interaction from picking up women to getting a raise. I've got a long list of smart people who are very bad at this. So if we're talking about books everyone should read, this is the kind of metric I'd like to use. A good piece of reading is going to hone some skill, not just deliver a pile of trivia. quote:if you were to given the oppertunity to restructure elementary/high school English education, how would you do so? The easy answer is to split the English into two discrete curricula: writing and interpreting. Writing might include creative writing, but should definitely cover the conventions of most popular forms of real-world (political, business, and personal) communication -- think email, memos, articles, and reports/recommendations. It should also cover different methods of writing (like collaborative and editorial processes). And, since I'm wishing for ponies, this writing should articulate with other parts of the curriculum. Think business and/or technical writing alongside math and science courses.* Interpreting would focus on what I like to call "interpretive practices," that is, ways of reading different types of texts. What we call "literature" might be a part of this, but it's probably more important to ratchet up students' literacy of more common media -- think advertisements, television, the bajillion iterations of online whatever, and article-length research, along with some fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. The thing about primary and secondary level English right now is that it doesn't seem to address the needs of the vast majority of students. Every student needs to be prepared for active citizenship, and that's tough to do if they're not persuasive article and letter writers or effective real-world researchers. Every student is also going to be exposed to popular media, so some mechanism for making sense of that media seems a clear educational duty. Most students, college-bound or otherwise, are going to end up working inside a company, so it make sense that they should be familiar with the kinds of reading and writing this will ask of them -- even if you need to sacrifice a five-page report on Julius Caesar to get it. That's not a deeply romantic picture of what High Schools should do, but the current curriculum makes absolutely no sense to me. I doubt many High School students are developmentally able to become subtler thinkers by reading poetry, or understand the motivations of adult characters in any novel worth reading. That's not about intelligence as much as intellectual and emotional maturity. Take any decently crafted story, like Ellison's "Jeffty is Five." Any fifth grader can read that story and understand the plot. But the emotional reactions the story relies on (responses to the ways aging changes your relationship to the present and the past) aren't things a teenager can experience. You can't teach them to an eighteen year old any more than you can teach a dog to play the trombone. * Why business is excluded from High School curricula I'll never know. Like sleeping around and shooting heroin, it's one thing we expect every nearly student to do, but systematically put it off until college.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 21:21
|
|
|
Magic Hate Ball posted:Speaking of which, how would you teach The Great Gatsby? Alongside Less Than Zero and/or Rules of Attraction or, if everyone's read too much Ellis, Jay McInerney's Story of My Life. The idea would be to set Gatsby against a text that's been deeply influenced by it. Bret Easton Ellis is a fantastic reader, and his books are wonderful tools for teasing out what's going on in their antecedent texts. For instance, the Gatsby reading Zero puts forward starts with two pretty basic ideas: 1) That Jay Gatsby's really just a symptom of a conflict between deeply insular old and new cultures that, at bottom, are nearly identical (like, say, L.A and Camden College).* 2) That Nick's resolution not to judge is not substantially different from Clay's hopelessness. Also, Nick's terminal meditation on the past is characterized by deep ambivalence rather than clear resolution, like Clay's maybe-I'll-leave-L.A. And goes from there to better and better places. I won't spoil them. Like Geordi La Forge says, read the book. Point is, tossing the texts up against each other nets readings of both that are really tough to get to using either text in isolation. I'm not sure I buy Ellis's reading of Gatsby any more than I buy his reading of Hamlet in Lunar Park, but drat if it isn't good. * McInerney makes JG an uncertain pregnancy (later aborted) to much the same effect.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 21:50
|
|
|
NUMBER 1 DBZ FAN!!! posted:What do you wear when you teach? I can easily pass for an undergrad so I try to dress a bit nicer. A button down and jeans, usually, with an assortment of bitchin' V-neck sweaters in cool weather. I've got this thing about only buying and wearing clothes made by union labor or in first world countries, so that steps on pants higher than jeans but lower than suits. But I typically up the formality with Blackspot V2s and a messenger bag,* and I call up suits when I need them. Good suits. None of this "I'm an academic so I can't visit a tailor" bullshit. Even then, parents mistake me for an undergrad. Shows you how little they remember about being twenty. * Yes, a good messenger bag ups formality.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 22:03
|
|
|
Would you be available on AIM to chat about English things? My friends get fed up. Also, have you read Kluge's Alma Mater? I was able to finish it in about a day, and I thought it was well done. Granted, that may be a judgment clouded by the fact that I attended the institution in question, but I thought it held up as a thoughtful dig into the liberal arts school. Strangely, it pushed me more towards wanting to teach than scaring me away.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 22:04
|
|
|
Where would you suggest one start with Shakespeare's comedies? I've read half of the tragedies but only The Merchant of Venice from the comedies--which others are must reads?
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2009 22:24
|
|
|
How do you say I have consumed a cold beverage properly: a) I have drunk a slurpee b) I have drank a slurpee c) other. ?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 00:03
|
|
|
What are your thoughts on Macbeth? Also, are there any Shakespeare plays you consider skippable or are they all worth reading?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 00:49
|
|
|
How do you spend your summers? Are you pretty free to work on pet projects and the like? Do you have administrative work or obligations to committees you sit on? I taught summer school last year and it was a bear (6 week sessions are rough when you require 6 papers). I decided to take this summer to work on some side projects, do a few summer institutes/conferences, and get some articles ready to send out. Basically, I'm getting caught up on things the semester doesn't allow for (but that are still expected of me) and lining a few things up for fall. I just worry that this kind of freedom will vanish after grad school, so give me the scoop. Also, are senior faculty good about mentoring/giving advice to younger profs at your college? If so, how do they help? Would they look over a book manuscript? Help you with contacts?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 02:30
|
|
|
Glowskull posted:Would you be available on AIM to chat about English things? My friends get fed up. I'm not often on AIM, but I hand out my email address like candy.* quote:Also, have you read Kluge's Alma Mater? I have not. I think it's already on my Summer reading list, but if it isn't, I'm adding it. *It helps if you'rea t least a B cup. Gender is secondary.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 02:44
|
|
|
Extortionist posted:Where would you suggest one start with Shakespeare's comedies? I've read half of the tragedies but only The Merchant of Venice from the comedies--which others are must reads? You definitely want Midsummer. Shakespeare's generally not much for tight plotting, but Midsummer shows he can write a more Jonsonian plot-complex drama. Basically, Midsummer has five plots. Four of the five are variations on relationship tensions, and the play largely works by building parallels between them. Because those parallels are so clear, it's a good play to cut your teeth on. The other comedies I like have complicated endings. All's Well is a good example, as is Measure. Shrew and Merchant deserve a mention there, too. As You Like It is worth reading for Rosalind, who (all things considered) is probably Shakespearean comedy's most interesting character.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 02:59
|
|
|
Defenistrator posted:How do you say I have consumed a cold beverage properly: Depends on how you want to say it. "Drank" is the past tense of the verb "drink," as in "I drank the beer." "Drunk" is the past participle, which you'd use in the perfect aspect or the passive voice, e.g.: Past Tense (simple): The bride drank the toast. (Past) Perfect Aspect: The bride has drunk the toast. Passive Voice (Past Tense): The toast was drunk. This maybe gets complicated because "drunk" is also an archaic form of the past tense of "drink," so in, say, 16th century manuscripts, you'll see "she drunk the wine at her wedding."
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 03:13
|
|
|
exactduckwoman posted:"Whom" there is the object of a preposition ("of") while "all" is the subject proper. Brainworm posted:Exactduckwoman has the who/whom issue nicely sorted. But I'd like to bury it even if the body's still twitching. I never use "whom" for the same basic reasons I never use "one." Both are too precious even for formal writing. Josh Lyman posted:My understanding is that putting ending punctuation inside quotes is a British convention, whereas putting it outside quotes is an American convention, or at least up to the publisher. Sir Worm, do you have a favorite passage in Shakespeare?
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 04:03
|
|
|
OctaviusBeaver posted:What are your thoughts on Macbeth? Just in general? I think the center of the play is actually V.v (in most editions), when Macbeth hears of his wife's death. The soliloquy there ("She should have died hereafter...") is the best in a play whose language is a bit uneven, and the measure of the central character. There's no crux here -- there's no pointed question about whether Macbeth thinks he's being overheard by conspirators. But it's interesting in that all of Macbeth's other soliloquies show ideas developing or solidifying, while this one seems prepackaged. These are ideas that Macbeth already knows, not ideas he discovers as he speaks. So the real question is when he starts thinking this way, or when he abandons his faith that his (or anyone's) actions are capable of meaning. If it's early in the play, then Macbeth's wife drives him to murder in spite of his indifference. If it's late in the play, then Macbeth's wife is the thing that gives his actions meaning. Without her, he withers like an uprooted tree. So when I say that soliloquy's the center of the play, I mean that it implies something about Macbeth's relationship with his wife. But what it implies about that relationship depends on when in the play you root the ideas behind the soliloquy. It also affects how you read the appearance of Banquo's ghost and Macbeth's visit to the witches. quote:Also, are there any Shakespeare plays you consider skippable or are they all worth reading? Oh, there are tons of skippable plays. Of the thirty-eight plays critics conventionally credit at least partly to Shakespeare, his reputation really rests on the seven major tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra) and the "Henriad" (Richard II, 1&2 Henry IV and Henry V, with Richard III getting an honorable mention). I listed the six or so comedies I like a couple posts up. But if all we had were the comedies, Shakespeare would rank somewhere between Marlowe and Jonson as a dramatist. I'll also toss Titus Andronicus on the pile of must-reads. That gives eighteen, and leaves twenty that range from the interesting (like The Tempest) to the indifferent (like Cymbeline) to the borderline awful (like King John).
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 05:05
|
|
|
The Last 04 posted:How do you spend your summers? Are you pretty free to work on pet projects and the like? Do you have administrative work or obligations to committees you sit on? Summers are great. When I was a grad student, I did about what you're doing -- hustled to get some summer comp sections at the local community colleges, took on odd jobs, and trawled the UPenn CFP list looking for needy journals. I always liked Summer that way. Even though Summer comp. classes are grading nightmares, I could usually make it through the Summer on two. And when I bought a house and started renting rooms, I could get through on none if I leaned it out. I never finished everything I wanted to, but once I got it down I could get two articles, maybe a small grant proposal, and some other big, non-writing deal (like re-reading Shakespeare, Spenser's Faerie Queene and so on). Summers now are even better. Part of that has nothing to do with the job and everything to do with time management -- I've finally figured out what I can do in three months. And I've also learned that some real exercise over the Summer is better than a vacation (I've never been good about keeping a rigorous program during the year. The recovery time's nearly impossible to find). And of course I get paid over the Summer. That comes with maybe a total of two weeks of on-campus commitments, but I can beg off those in advance if I have a good reason.* I still take on work, but it's mostly consulting, and I've been talking to some of the local community colleges and State College branch campuses about offering their neediest students for-credit tuition-free comp, business and tech. writing, and lit courses (where I volunteer the time and they volunteer the facilities).** I've also moved away from articles and toward books -- for your dissertation and your first book, it makes sense to send out chapters as articles, get good feedback, and then revise them into a longer piece. What I'm finding is that for subsequent books, it make more sense to write the book, get it out, and then revise the chapters as articles to answer criticism of the book. Plus, books are more flexible. I don't have to harp on the current thinking about whatever text as much, so I can do what I like (whatever that is). So yeah, the Summer is all pet projects of one kind or another. Now that I don't have to work for most of it, though, it's sometimes tough to quickly find my balance.*** You all weep for me, I'm sure. quote:Also, are senior faculty good about mentoring/giving advice to younger profs at your college? If so, how do they help? Would they look over a book manuscript? Help you with contacts? We've had some problems with this, since the quality of mentoring varies from department to department. My mentors have been incredible, but mostly at helping me navigate our college's atypical governance and design classes for our students (they're a great bunch, but completely unlike students I've taught anywhere else). I'm sure the other folks in my department would look over a manuscript if I asked, but we're a small department. There's nobody else in my field. So I'd take that elsewhere. Contacts are the same story. I already know most of the people I'll probably need to, or have field-specific vehicles for meeting them. But if someone in my department could arrange a needed introduction, it would happen. We do look over each other's book proposals, though, and do the occasional teaching evaluation (completely voluntarily, by the way -- the formal teaching reviews are done by committee). And they also help me figure out what my teaching evaluations mean and how I should respond to them during my reviews. Obviously, that's tougher than it sounds.**** * Next Summer I'll be in East Asia with a group of other faculty by dint of a hefty grant. Nobody seems deeply upset that we'll be missing our July committee work. ** That'll hopefully roll after I get back next Summer, and I want to get e.g. Math involved, too. We don't do Summer sessions at my college and are unlikely to start, but I'm also working on getting my college to volunteer facilities to run these courses, even though we'd be teaching other colleges' students. *** I have this problem. When I have something to schedule around (say, classes) It's easy to do other work, because I know when it has to be done and how long I have to do it. When things are open, the same jobs take twice as long because the time constraints are totally artificial and I labor under an almost infinitely flexible schedule. So if it doesn't get done now, no sweat. There's always July. **** I just got my evals. back, and there's not a substantive complaint in the bunch. What negative stuff there is has to do with course times, enrollments, and so on -- nothing I can really change. So figuring out how to respond to those for my internal reviews gets complicated.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 15:02
|
|
|
What do you think of "Catcher in the Rye"? Especially because it seems like it's one of those books you can't graduate high school without reading.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 16:10
|
|
|
Fast Moving Turtle posted:[Regarding "whom" and my burial of it] Never? What do you use for an object in formal writing? I suppose it might be different for you, being that you're Bearer of the Red Pen, but I know that if I used who instead of whom for an object in a paper, my teacher would whip out his instrument of torture and snarl with glee. I always use "who." This is a matter of ear, not a matter of grammar. It's also a matter of practicality. Were I in a situation where I'd need to use "who" as the subject and "whom" as an object to avoid legitimate confusion, I'd rethink the entire sentence. It's probably broken. Maybe this is my dust-baby past showing, but "whom" always sounds precious. For instance, I would never date a person who seriously and habitually used "whom" as the object in any type of conversation. That person would never be elected president if a "whom" popped up in his or her speeches. It's like "thou." Even in the early 20th c., it was grammatically correct to use "thou" as the second person informal, but gently caress. Why would you?* "Whom" is in the same historical place. I don't care who's using it. I'm more concerned that you have a teacher who seriously advocates the use of "whom." Don't get me wrong. It's worth knowing the difference. But just because I know what a top hat** looks like doesn't mean I'll wear one. quote:Sir Worm, do you have a favorite passage in Shakespeare? I've got a few. Hamlet's first soliloquy (too too solid flesh) is one of my favorites. Not because of the language, but because of what it does with the character -- basically, he says something, overhears himself saying it, thinks about what he just said, and responds to the though. That describes the second half of the soliloquy, anyway. It's wonderfully crafted because even though so much of it happens in Hamlet's head, you can still follow it precisely once you realize what's going on. In the hands of a good actor, it's tremendously effective, which is probably why Shakespeare recycled the technique for Iago's soliloquies (which do the same thing but not quite as well). Incidentally, this seems like an easy kind of thing to write. The best way to get how insanely well this is crafted is to give it a shot yourself. But for pure language, I love Macbeth's soliloquy in V.v. Everyone knows the "out, out brief candle" bit from it, which is a shame since that's the most stilted part. But check the lines before it: Macbeth posted:Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, And then read them aloud. It sometimes helps to relineate it so you don't pause at the line breaks (especially "day/to" and "fools/the"). Here's what's so great about it. The tropes are natural sounding, sort of transparent. They add to the sentiment the lines are expressing but don't get in the way -- that is, they're elegant. Just right. Precise but not overly complicated. Second, listen to it as you say it. It hits you with a focused and powerful kind of emotion without telling you what that emotion is or how it works. That's what good writing does. A quick scan should also help you see how the meter helps do it -- the lines alternate between clear and regular iambic pentameter and really irregular meter, which automatically makes you slow down in all the right places. There's a similar kind of balance in my favorite piece from Richard III: George, Duke of Clarence posted:Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower, Yeah, so it's wordy. But what happens here is probably the most psychologically complex moment in early Shakespeare. In this retelling of his dream, Clarence starts to realize what it means: that part of him suspects his brother Richard is going to betray him. But he can't accept that, because he trusts his brother completely. That's part of what inflects the tenor of the images changes in the last five or so lines. He wants to read his dream death at the hands of his brother in the most generous terms -- Richard accidentally knocks him overboard into a sort of magical treasure-heaped underwater fairyland. But as he starts to figure out what's going on, drowning becomes a less romantic and a more particular. And this shakes him up. By the end, we've got two sets of contrasting images: the magical treasure-heaped fairyland that's associated with Clarence's trust of Richard, and the more grisly kind of death associated with his dawning suspicions. The last two lines show how part of him is starting to realize how all this will play out -- first wooing (as in trust) then mockery of the dead. The cool thing is how this is clear, but it's buried in imagery. That's why I keep using this "part of Clarence" to talk about what he thinks and feels. Clarence feels a deep ambivalence toward his brother, who he knows is capable of deep loyalty and seemingly random (but deeply calculated) violence -- that's been the substance of this play's prequel. So whenever Clarence suspects his brother, he sort of represses that suspicion. And it comes out in different, coded, ways that everyone but him can see. * Unless you're Diana Ross. "I say to thee that I'm aware you're cheatin'." ** Condom? I went back and forth on that.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 16:14
|
|
|
Brainworm posted:Book recommendations. I picked up The Western Canon and read the first chapter. Holy crap Bloom is cranky and hilarious and unbelievably smart! I'll know for sure once I get further into the book, but I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 16:45
|
|
|
I noticed that you didn't include Much Ado in your list of preferred comedies - could you describe why? It's one of my favourites...
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 17:30
|
|
|
j8910 posted:What do you think of "Catcher in the Rye"? Especially because it seems like it's one of those books you can't graduate high school without reading. I've had an odd relationship with it. Maybe everyone has. I read it the first time when I was I think fifteen, and it didn't speak to me at all -- that is, it didn't seem like it touched anything I was thinking or feeling. But as I go back and re-read it, I keep thinking it closer to what I remember thinking and feeling at the time, if that makes sense. I'm not sure what to make of this, but there are a couple possibilities. One's that I wasn't really aware of what I thought and felt when I was fifteen, but I remember those thoughts and feeling and am somehow more in touch with them now than I was in the moment. The more likely possibility is that Salinger's written a book that nicely captures the ways adults rewrite their teenage years as they age -- in which case the book belongs in reading groups and libraries, rather than High Schools. I'm not sure if this is a typical relationship with Catcher or not. It's safe to say that my teenage years were atypical. So that raises a third possibility: that Catcher in fact captures something about what it's like to be a teenager to which I've only had relatively recent access, listening to friends talk about High School and so forth.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 18:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 21:02 |
|
|
BusError posted:I picked up The Western Canon and read the first chapter. Holy crap Bloom is cranky and hilarious and unbelievably smart! I'll know for sure once I get further into the book, but I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! Yeah, he's the best crank out there. There used to be some Charlie Rose interviews of Bloom floating around Youtube, but now they're on Charlie Rose's site. Priceless.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2009 18:29
|
|