Before midnight on November 18, please publish a comment of two, well-developed paragraphs about the reasons for what happens to Ralph Marvell in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country. in Chapters XXXIV-XXXVI. What are the social and biological causes of what happens to him?
After you publish your comment, please reply to one of the other students' comments.
Thank you
Dr. Kornasky
Students:
As you begin your journey (and hopefully a love affair) with Edith Wharton and the Naturalist novel that many Wharton scholars consider her greatest, please read this 2022 Time magazine article that is a testament to Wharton's enduring interest not just to serious literary folks like us but to American popular culture in general:
https://time.com/6141634/the-gilded-age-edith-wharton-books-to-read/
And then read this recent New Yorker article specifically about the staying power of the story of the superficial success of the protagonist readers love to hate, Undine Spragg, in The Custom of the Country (1913):
After you read these secondary sources, then read (or reread if you have already started the novel) Chapter 1 and 2 of The Custom of the Country. (For convenience, here is the link, the same one you can also find in the syllabus, to a free pdf of the novel's full text: Pdf of The Custom of the Country
In your comment, due on Friday, November 11, at midnight (or submitted later if you need extra time), please publish a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs about the ideas from the two articles linked here about the power of celebrity status and what you have read about in Chapters 1 and 2, in which we meet Undine.
After you publish your comment, please reply to at least one of the other students' comments.
Enjoy the novel,
Dr. Kornasky
English 3318 students:
Happy Halloween! It is very fitting that we will explore the horror of nature's extremes this week in Jack London's "To Build a Fire."
Before midnight on Friday, November 4, please publish a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs about the characterization of "the man," who is the nameless protagonist of "To Build a Fire." Explain how his obliviousness to danger evokes dread and fear in readers, quoting and citing the story in your comment.
After you publish your comment, please reply in one well-developed paragraph to at least one of the other students' comments.
Thank you,
Dr. Kornasky
Before midnight on Friday, October 28th, please submit a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs about the meaning of each one of their four appearances in these chapters.
After you post your comment, please reply in one well-developed paragraph to at least one of the other students' comments.
Thank you,
Dr. K
English 3318 students:
For your Friday, October 21, blog, please submit a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs in which you discuss the meaning of music on pp. 567-569 (the last couple of pages of Chapter IX) and at the top of p. 580 (the last couple of paragraphs of Chapter XIV) of The Awakening. What is the biological effect of music in these moments in the novel? In your comment, quote from these pages to support your interpretation, and parenthetically cite the page of each quote you use.
At the end of your comment, please explain which of your favorite songs makes you feel the same way that Edna does in this part of the novel.
After you post your comment, please reply in one well-developed paragraph to one of the other students' comments.
Sincerely,
Dr. K
English 3318 students:
For our Week 7 blog, please publish a comment of about 500 words before Friday, October 7, at midnight, about Stephen Crane's depiction of nature vs. humankind in "The Open Boat." Before you compose your comment, please be sure to watch Paul Auster's interview about his recent biography of Crane (the one that is also linked in Saturday's class announcement on Blackboard):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HoSfBpGhEE&t=1s
After you publish your comment, please reply to one of the other students' comments.
Thank you,
Dr. K
Sui Sin Far
English 3318 students:
For Week Six's blog, by midnight on Saturday, October 1, please post a comment of at least two well-developed paragraphs comparing and contrasting the city settings of Pauline Hopkins's "Talma Gordon" (762-73), which is set in Boston on the East Coast, and Sui Sin Far's "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" (908-17), which is set in Seattle and San Francisco on the West Coast. How do these unique places with their distinct social environments figure in these narratives? Please use as least two quotations from each story (in other words, at least four total) in your comment.
Keep in mind as you compose your comment that "Talma Gordon," widely acknowledged to be the first Black-authored American mystery story, contains obvious echoes of the most infamous Massachusetts real-life, murder mystery that had happened four years before the publication of "Talma Gordon": the brutal double murders of a very wealthy father and stepmother allegedly at the hands of one of their two heirs--a New England "spinster" named Lizzie Borden, who was accused of killing them with a hatchet. That actual case ended with an acquittal although Borden was likely guilty. Here is a link for an article about the details of this infamous case:
After you publish your comment, please reply in one well-developed paragraph to at least one of the other students' comments.
Thank you,
Dr. K
English 3318 students: Before midnight on November 18, please publish a comment of two, well-developed ...
