Final Exam: Take Home OR In-Class (Read Below Carefully)

In Kate Lilley’s excellent (and very readable) Introduction to Cavendish’s The Blazing World & Other Writings, she concludes by stating, “My role as editor and introducer adds another level to this recursive process of female collaboration. On behalf of, and in the spirit of, Cavendish’s own authorial interventions and ambitions, this collection solicits new readers and new readings” (xxix). This is an interesting point to make in an Introduction—that someone who writes about an author can be a collaborator, even when the author in question is several centuries dead and buried. I also like the idea that the living can speak for the dead, and continue to resurrect old works and inspire new readership (and thus strike up new friendships among the dead and the living!).

For your Final Exam, I want you to write your own Introduction to one of the works in class. Your AUDIENCE is future British to 1800 students, many of whom will be leery of reading this work in the first place. Your goal is to “solicit new readers and new readings” by giving them an “in” to the work—a way to enjoy, appreciate, or understand what the work is, what it does, and why we continue to read it. This is NOT a critical essay that advances an argument or uses sources; rather, it is simply an essay that has a specific purpose: I think you should read this work and this is why. To do this, you need to be persuasive, charming, interesting, and knowledgeable about the text itself.

SOME GENERAL GUIDELINES/THINGS TO CONSIDER:
v Remember how you felt when you first approached this work; write to that person.
v Consider what aspects of the work will surprise or delight your audience; make sure they “see” this in your Introduction.
v Point out how “modern” or applicable the work is to our own times—that it’s not a mere museum curiosity, but a living work of art.
v WRITE WITH PERSONALITY! Point out ideas and passages that you feel are important to seeing the work, but don’t make it sound like a “college paper.” Write as if you’re describing something you’re in love with.
v Try to explain or introduce ideas or concepts that might initially puzzle the reader, but if understood, could actually crack the book wide open.
v Remind your audience why the work is important and why you think it should be taught in a British Lit to 1800 class—or elsewhere. Defend its place in the canon of British and Western thought.

LENGTH: 4-5 pages (if take home); 2-3 pages (in-class)
No sources required, but YOU MUST QUOTE FROM THE BOOK.

FINAL EXAM DATE: Wednesday, May 6th, 3:00-6:00 pm

LAST POST: Bonus Questions for Part IV of Gulliver's Travels

I will add one response to your missing assignments for EACH QUESTION YOU ANSWER. So, if you answer, one, that’s +1 response. All three, +3.

1. Do you feel that Swift means to depict the Houyhnhms as an ideal/utopian civilization? Is he describing their attributes at face value—or does this, too, come in for a fair share of satirical criticism? Use specific details to explain how you think Swift wants us to read this.

2. How does Gulliver describe English/European civilization to the Houyhnhms? What aspects of his culture is he at pains to describe, and who is wearing the satirical mask in this discussion—Gulliver or the horses? Use a specific scene to support your answer.

3. Why does Gulliver change during his stay in the world of the Houyhnhms—and why does he come to despise the Yahoos? How are we supposed to read his transformation and his subsequent return home, where he lives in a stable and spurns his wife and children? Is this satire, misanthropy, or common sense?

LAST QUESTIONS: Gulliver's Travels, Part Three (pp.175-203)

1. Swift engages in some of his most delightful scatological satire in the closing pages of this voyage. What do you think is the purpose of his grotesque/obscene humor? Considering passages such as the reading of the stool, what is being satirized here—and why does Swift spend such detail on what initially amounts to a gross-out joke?

2. How does Swift satirize critics and the accepted history that scholars/critics preserve for the ages? Where might we see Swift use his pen to settle some personal disputes with his own critics/rivals?

3. Who are the Struldbruggs, and how do they become a vehicle for Swift’s focused or broad satire? How do their unique talents (which have been copied by many a science fiction novel) allow him to satirize the vanity and aspirations of mankind?

Monday: Part Three, A Voyage to Laputa, etc. (pp.142-174)

* The painting above, The Rhinoceros (1751) by Pietro Longhi, is a satirical portrait of "polite" society. A group of fashionable Venetians oogle a captive rhino taking a dump. Yet they, too, are on display, preening themselves before the viewer with masks, hats, capes, and pipes. Perhaps the rhino stares at them with the same dumb fascination, chuckling at their vanity and folly? This echoes the satirical mask that Swift wears throughout Gulliver's Travels, where the object of satire peers back at the reader--and Swift's England.

1. What does Chapter Three share in common with Cavendish’s The Blazing World? What ideas, images, or philosophies are echoed in Swift’s work—particularly regarding science and discovery?

2. Laputa might be considered a philosopher/mathematician’s utopia, resembling as it does an ivy league institution, full of top-flight scholars and teachers. So why does Swift paint it as a dystopia—a kind of nightmare world where everything is topsy-turvy?

3. What do you feel is the most ludicrous/satirical invention that Gulliver encounters in Laptua and/or Balnibarbi? What do you think this reveals about the real world (our own or Swift’s England)? Where is the satirical “sting”?

Friday: Finish Part Two of Gulliver's Travels: Handout on William Dampier below

* If you missed Wednesday's class, I explained the link between a "real" traveler--the pirate/adventurer William Dampier and his books of travel--and Swift's creation, Gulliver. Swift borrows from and alludes to Dampier throughout the book, notably in the opening letter, when he writes: "as my Cousin Dampier did by my advice, in his Book called, A Voyage Round the World." Swift pokes fun at Dampier's apologies for his style, which consists of passages like those below, some of which Gulliver nearly quotes in his narrative.

From A New Voyage Round the World (1696), by Willliam Dampier

I have not so much of the vanity of a Traveler, as to be fond of telling stories, especially of this kind; nor can I think this plain piece of mine, deserves a place among your more Curious Collections…Yet dare I avow, according to my narrow sphere and poor abilities, a hearty Zeal for the promoting of useful knowledge, and of any thing that may never so remotely tend to my Countries advantage…This hath been my design in this Publication, being desirous to bring in my Gleanings here and there in Remote Regions, to that general Magazine, of the knowledge of Foreign Parts, which the Royal Society thought you most worthy the Custody of, when they chose you for their President…

Before the Reader proceed any further in the perusal of this Work, I must bespeak a little of his Patience here to take along with him this short account of it. It is composed of a mixt Relation of Places and Actions, in the same order of time in which they occurred: for which end I kept a Journal of every Day’s Observations…

As for the Actions of the Company among whom I made the greatest part of this Voyage, a Thread of which I have carried on thro’ it, ‘tis not to divert the Reader with them that I mention them, much less that I take and pleasure in relating them: but for method’s sake, and for the Reader’s satisfaction; who could not so well acquiesce in my Description of Places, &c. without knowing the particular Traverses I made among them; nor in these, without an Account of the Concomitant Circumstances: Besides, that I would not prejudice the Truth and Sincerity of my Relation, tho’ by Omissions only. And as for the Travelers themselves, they make for the Reader’s advantage, how little soever for mine; since thereby I have been the better inabled to gratify his Curiosity; as one who rambles about a Country can give usually a better account of it, than a Carrier who jogs on to his Inn, without ever going out of his Road.

MORE ON WILLIAM DAMPIER AND 17-18th CENTURY PIRATES & BUCCANNEERS…
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier (a basic introduction to Dampier’s life with maps and links to Dampier’s works)
* Preston, Diana & Michael. A Pirate of Exquisite Mind. New York: Berkeley Books, 2004 (a fascinating biography of Dampier & the world of piracy, travel, and exploration)
* Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates. Carroll & Graff Publishers, 1992 (supposedly by Defoe, this is an 18th century work that compiles biographies of the famous pirates such as Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Stede Bonnet, Captain Kidd, and two famous women pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Reed).
* Defoe, Daniel. Captain Singleton. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992 (a novel about an English lad who gets caught up in piracy, explores Africa, and ends up raiding Spanish vessels with a Quaker. Jolly good read).

Wednesday: Gulliver's Travels (pp.51-99)

1. What ultimately leads to Gulliver’s downfall in the court of Lilliput, and how can this be read either a universal satire OR as a satire of Swift’s England? (here the notes might help you)

2. Besides the obvious shift from little to big, how does the court of Brobdignag satirically reverse Gulliver’s experience in Lilliput? What does he see and experience here (so far) that makes it the ideal counterpoint to Book One of the novel?

3. Swift has long been criticized for his obsession with scatological detail, which is often accompanied by a certain strain of misogyny. Where do we see this in Book Two and how might it serve the satirical/misanthropic view of the work?

Monday: Swift, Gulliver's Travels (pp.7-50)

Despite pretending to be a true account of Gulliver’s discoveries in the far corners of the world, Gulliver’s Travels is a vicious satire of English/European life and thought. Read travel/exploration as the “frame” that allows Gulliver the freedom to say what might normally seem treasonous—or simply nasty—back home.

With this in mind, choose ONE of the following passages and explain its satirical intent (and how it might reflect on Swift’s England or European culture in general):

* Gulliver’s opening letter to his Cousin Sympson
* The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu (esp. the Big-Endians)
* The Rope Dancers
* The contract between the Emperor of Lillput and the “Man Mountain”
* Gulliver’s unique method of extinguishing a fire