ENG 564.04: Topics for Paper I
Due Tuesday, January 24, your first
essay should be 1,250 words +/- 10% (from 1,125 to 1,375 words) and
adhere to the formatting guidelines that can be linked to here:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman145/papertemplate.html
Please note that your essays
represent opportunities for you to explore your own ideas, so you
should do your best to avoid repeating specific points that have come
up during our class-discussions.
Option A: As we discussed in class, Joyce uses the term gnomon in "The Sister," the
first story in Dubliners,
as a clue to interpreting the other stories in his collection. Recall
that the ancient Greek geometer Euclid defined a gnomon as what is left
of a parallelogram when a similar parallelogram containing one of its
corners is removed. Hence the concept of gnomon crucially involves
gaps--things left out or left unsaid--as well as the relationship
between what is present and what is absent. In still other words, Joyce
used the concept of gnomon to reflect on and incorporate into his own
writing practice the idea that no text can be exhaustive, but must
inevitably leave some things unsaid (more or less obviously).
Compare and contrast the nature and functions of
gaps in two of the stories in Dubliners,
preferably two of the stories whose "gappiness" wasn't a central focus
of our discussions of Joyce's text in class. What kinds of gaps do you
find in these texts? What role do they play in the structure of the
stories and in your interpretation of them? Does the gappiness involve
the same sorts of things in both cases, are or more significant things
gapped out in one story as compared with the other? Or does Joyce's use
of gaps place a question mark next to the very idea of "significance"?
If so, how?
Option B: Using the
first explanatory paragraph and closing brainstorming questions
included in Option A, compare and contrast the nature and functions of
gaps in two scenes from Portrait.
Alternatively, compare and contrast the gappiness in one of the stories
from Dubliners with the gappiness in a scene from Portrait.
Option C: Compare and
contrast Joyce's treatment of gender roles in a story from Dubliners with his
treatment of gender roles in Portrait.
How do issues of gender manifest themselves in the story, on the one
hand, and in the novel, on the other hand? Do the two texts comment in
similar ways on cultural roles of and expectations for men and women?
What are those roles and expectations in each case, and to what extent
do Joyce's texts prompt us to think critically about them? (Note: for
this assignment, you should focus on a single scene from Portrait and order to
compare and contrast representations of gender in that scene with
representations in the story from Dubliners.)
Option D: Joyce is a
master of the technique called "figural narration," whereby a writer
uses a third-person narrative voice but filters events through the
vantage-point of a specific consciousness or "reflector." Compare and
contrast his use of such figural narration EITHER in two stories from Dubliners OR in two scenes
from Portrait. How,
in each case, does the character's consciousness manifest itself in the
text? What textual cues or markers suggest a mind at work? Further,
does Joyce's use of the technique have different functions or effects
in the two stories or the two scenes? (Hint: in a way, this Option asks
you to explore issues that connect up with some of the issues mentioned
above in Options A and B.)