Class2notes
From English 194 Wiki
Contents |
Preliminary Class Business
- Handouts
- Handouts from first class for newcomers (syllabus + first chapter of Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, and Trees)
- second chapter of Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, and Trees
- Enrollment & Sign-Up Sheet
- Review of Course Idea and Format
- Questions?
- Assignment of "Respondents" for Readings in Classes 3-8
Introductions
- Self-introductions by class members
- Skills inventory
Getting Started with the Class Wiki
- Create accounts on the Wiki
- [Instructor's note to self: temporarily enable account creation by changing the LocalSettings.php file so that 'createaccount' in the implicit group permissions is set to 'true']
- Students create accounts, using real names
- Introduction to MediaWiki
- Help Resources for MediaWiki
- Internal test page (use for relatively simple experimentation with formatting on the test page itself)
- Wikipedia test page (use if you want to experiment with creating new pages; requires you to create an account [free] with Wikipedia)
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (Ch. 1, "Graphs")
- Opening Comparison
The sylvan historian certainly supplies no names and dates--"What men or gods are these?" the poet asks. What it does give is action--of men or gods, of godlike men or of superhuman (though not daemonic) gods--action, which is not the less intense for all that the urn is cool marble. The words "mad" and "ecstasy" occur, but it is the quiet, rigid urn which gives the dynamic picture. And the paradox goes further: the scene is one of violent love-making, a Bacchanalian scene, but the urn itself is like a "still unravish'd bride," or like a child, a child "of silence and slow time." It is not merely like a child, but like a "foster-child." The exactness of the term can be defended. "Silence and slow time," it is suggested, are not the true parents, but foster-parents. They are too old, one feels, to have born the child themselves. Moreover, they dote upon the "child" as grandparents do. The urn is fresh and unblemished; it is still young, for all its antiquity, and time which destroys so much has "fostered" it.
Typical Graphs from Moretti's book
Figure 2 (p. 6)
Figure 9 (p. 19)
Staged Series of Questions:
- When graphing literature in Moretti's mode, what disappears from the normal layperson's experience or understanding of literature?
- What disappears from the literary critic's understanding of literature?
- What appears?
- What survives as the bridge between literary interpretation and graphing?
- (Moretti, p. 1): What is the meaning of "abstract" in the title of Moretti's book, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History?
