Three tools on the sidebar

A thrilling blog tour! If you scroll up and look to the right you’ll see three points of interest:

1. The course calendar

This is a Google calendar of class meetings and due dates. If you have a Google account you can just add this calendar to yours; if you don’t have one, you can set one up for free.

Not included on the calendar: the reading schedule. If you have your own Google calendar, though, you can add the readings as individual tasks.

2. Course materials

Lose your copy of the syllabus? Want a shorter version of the 44 Reminders? We can solve that.

3. Resources

These are tools we might not talk about in class but that can really help you push forward this summer. The big ones are the Writing Center and the librarians.

The Writing Center is an extraordinary writing instruction service, completely free. You schedule an appointment to meet with a writing instructor—all Ph.D. students in English—where you can brainstorm possible answers to an essay question, review a completed draft of your essay, or anything in between. The Writing Fellows with whom you will be working this summer are affiliated with the Writing Center.

Although there aren’t a lot of occasions for scholarly research this summer, the UW librarians are unqualifiedly amazing researchers and are eager to help you figure out how to answer your questions. I use their Ask a Librarian service all the time.

Reading reading in Jane Eyre

For discussion on Thursday, please pick one of the passages below and read it with the same exacting, word-after-word attention we gave to the paragraphs on pages 131 and 132 this afternoon. Here is the main question we will try to answer:

• Why are the acts of reading and seeing important in Jane Eyre?

To answer that question, we will have to have a sense of how images of reading and seeing intersect with other images and themes in the text.

Adopt one of these passages and master its every detail:

• Pp. 58-59: from “As yet I had spoken to no one…” to “She received it quietly…”
• Pp. 82-83: the paragraph beginning “‘Hush, Jane!’”
• P. 111: the paragraph beginning “A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play…”
• P. 159: the paragraph beginning “‘All right then…’”
• Pp. 198-99, 202: the paragraph beginning “A soft sound of rising…” and the paragraph beginning “At last coffee is brought in…”
• Pp. 215-16: the paragraph beginning “There was nothing to cool or banish love…”
• Pp. 294-95: from “”Am I a liar in your eyes?’” to “‘Gratitude!’”
• P. 365: the paragraph beginning “I did.”
• P. 369: the paragraph beginning “A mile off…”
• P. 396: the paragraph beginning “Mr St John…”
• P. 427: the paragraph beginning “‘I am come to see how you are spending your holiday…’”
• P. 519: the paragraph beginning “I have now been married ten years…’”

Discussion questions for 6/26 (Chekhov)

Hi, all!

Please read Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog” twice before you come to discussion tomorrow.

As you read the story twice, jot down possible answers to these four questions:

• Why did Chekhov title this story “The Lady with the Pet Dog” and not, for example, “Anna Sergeyevna” or “The Inferior Race”? Why is this specific title important?
• Why did Chekhov choose for Anna Sergeyevna to have a pet dog? Why isn’t she called “the lady with the pet parrot,” or “the lady with the nice fur-lined coat”?
• Yesterday we looked at how Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 uses two subtle themes – wealth and religion – to develop its main point about the transcendental power of love. What subtle themes does Chekhov use to develop the main point of this story?
• What is the main point of “The Lady with the Pet Dog”?