Reading Stanley Fish on Milton or Reading Milton: Which Do You Prefer to Do?

“Perhaps a class in literary theory will not be taught in the future,” I said, to which my colleague replied, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that. . . .” She believed that theory came between the writer’s work and the reader, interfering with a pure reading. Although the movement to let literature “speak for itself” is growing, undergraduates should learn theory because it opens texts in a variety of ways, it makes students aware of their own cultural approach, and, according to theorist Terry Eagleton, it allows for a “democratic impulse” in the study of literature. Writers of books on theory agree that not only does the study of theory illuminate texts, but it also makes students much more open to their own thought processes. Charles E. Bressler says that “there is no such thing as an ‘innocent’ reading of a text” (xiii), and Eagleton says that “we would not know what a ‘literary work’ was” without some use of theory (x). Still, for many professors, theory is not their first choice in approaching literature. They would prefer reading Milton to reading Fish on Milton. With a well-planned course, literature does not have to be sacrificed on the altar of theoretical criticism. This presentation will concentrate on these elements of a good course in theory

Social Spaces: Family Secrets, and Today\u27s Students

Southern women writers of literature uncover family secrets of dysfunction, abuse, violence and hierarchical rigidity as seen in the works of Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker

Narrative Authority in Hawthorne\u27s The Ambitious Guest

August 28, 1826, a landslide in the White Mountains of New Hampshire caused the death of the Samuel Willey family when they left their home for a shelter. The slide split to either side of the house, leaving it intact while burying the family in the shelter. Hawthorne published the event as a short story in the New-England Journal, changing many aspects. Taking such liberties suggests that Hawthorne intended to use the account as fodder for his Romantic agenda: to present [the] truth under circumstances... of the writer’s own choosing or creation. A close examination of the text reveals that Hawthorne takes the liberties necessary not only to engage his audience, but also to control their responses. He does so by using a variety of narrative techniques. The most obvious instance of narrative authority in The Ambitious Guest is the intrusiveness of the narrator who begins a paragraph with Let us not suppose. Immediately the narrator has caught the reader as a collaborator in the formation of the story. The reader is also encouraged to participate in interpretation. In The Ambitious Guest, the omniscient narrator encourages the reader to foretell the ending. The most subtle of Hawthorne’s narrative devices, however, is the diegetic shift in which the focus changes from the narrator to the character of the young man, who was not part of the real tragedy. Hawthorne has made him real by shifting from the words of the narrator looking into the young man’s mind to the very words of the young man framing his future. Hawthorne has no need to employ some of his other Romantic techniques, such as the use of the supernatural or paranormal; instead, he masterfully uses narrative techniques that subtly change reality

Narrative Authority in Hawthorne\u27s The Ambitious Guest

August 28, 1826, a landslide in the White Mountains of New Hampshire caused the death of the Samuel Willey family when they left their home for a shelter. The slide split to either side of the house, leaving it intact while burying the family in the shelter. Hawthorne published the event as a short story in the New-England Journal, changing many aspects. Taking such liberties suggests that Hawthorne intended to use the account as fodder for his Romantic agenda: to present [the] truth under circumstances... of the writer’s own choosing or creation. A close examination of the text reveals that Hawthorne takes the liberties necessary not only to engage his audience, but also to control their responses. He does so by using a variety of narrative techniques. The most obvious instance of narrative authority in The Ambitious Guest is the intrusiveness of the narrator who begins a paragraph with Let us not suppose. Immediately the narrator has caught the reader as a collaborator in the formation of the story. The reader is also encouraged to participate in interpretation. In The Ambitious Guest, the omniscient narrator encourages the reader to foretell the ending. The most subtle of Hawthorne’s narrative devices, however, is the diegetic shift in which the focus changes from the narrator to the character of the young man, who was not part of the real tragedy. Hawthorne has made him real by shifting from the words of the narrator looking into the young man’s mind to the very words of the young man framing his future. Hawthorne has no need to employ some of his other Romantic techniques, such as the use of the supernatural or paranormal; instead, he masterfully uses narrative techniques that subtly change reality

Social Spaces: Family Secrets, and Today\u27s Students

Southern women writers of literature uncover family secrets of dysfunction, abuse, violence and hierarchical rigidity as seen in the works of Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker