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20 November 2003
The essays will all be available to collect from the EMSAH
office after midday on Friday 21 November.
If you've enjoyed this course, you may find something of
interest in these other EMSAH courses:
Once again, thanks for doing this course, and I hope you've got
as much pleasure from it as I have. Enjoy your break!
Tony
27 October 2003
FAQ number 4:
Q: Could you run those distinctions
between direct, indirect, and free indirect discourse by
me again?
A: Direct discourse:
Lily said, "I'm
afraid my paintings aren't very good"
Indirect discourse:
Lily said that
she was afraid her paintings weren't very good.
Free indirect discourse:
"Tell us about
your paintings, Lily," said Mrs Ramsay. But Lily was silent. For
her paintings were not very good.
Ha! thought Charles Tansley, the atheist. Women can't write, women
can't paint!
Where does that "For her paintings were not very good"
belong? Is it a dispassionate narration of an objective, agreed
truth, the judgement Art itself might pass on Lily's paintings?
Is it what Lily thinks about them? Is it what Lily imagines or fears
her listeners might think about them, which is why she's not saying?
Is it Tansley feeling vindicated in his beliefs? And what about
the two sentences which follow? Are they what Tansley thinks, or
what Lily knows only too well he's likely to think by her silence?
Free indirect discourse is narration whose provenance is ambiguous
and indeterminable. It doesn't belong to any character--or even
to that old stand-by an "omniscient narrator."
(Don't go looking for those passages in To the Lighthouse.
I made them up.)
24 October 2003
I've just uploaded what will probably be the last of the course
materials for this semester. Make sure you have a look at them,
because they both have bearing on the final essay.
The first is a Guide to critical
reading. It's meant to help clarify just what is generally
meant by scholarly critical reading, and includes some examples
of just what is and what isn't. It also includes a more extended
discussion than the Key provides of how best
to use scholarly materials in your essay, and a guide to documenting
scholarly materials you've found online. The other is an addition
to the end of the Criteria sheet,
of some notes which I hope will be useful.
As usual, I'll be handing out hard copies of these in the lectures
next week.
And if you haven't already let me know that you're planning on
coming along to the extra Ulysses class on the Tuesday
evening of swotvac, make sure you do now through the email link
in the entry below this one!
23 October 2003
I'll be running two extra classes on Joyce, in study vacation,
the week after the last official week of classes and the week before
exams start. As I've said in class, these aren't in the slightest
bit compulsory. You won't be penalized in any way for not coming,
but if you do come, I'll put another tick on the roll opposite
your name. Come if you'd like to spend a little bit more time on
Ulysses.
The times I've got in mind are:
- 6.00-8.00 pm, Tuesday 4 November, in Michie 530 (see below)
- 10.00am-12.00, Wednesday 5 November, in Michie 542.
I'll be out here all day on Wednesday anyway, so that class is
definitely going ahead. As I'll be making a trip out for the Tuesday
evening class, though, I'd like to make sure that I won't be the
only one there. So:
If you're planning on going to the Tuesday evening class, could
you drop me an email to that effect? You can do that in two
clicks here (the subject line's already filled in for you, so just
click SEND once your email program opens):
Yes,
I'll be coming along to the Tuesday evening Ulysses class on 4 November.
Thanks!
20 October 2003
The topics for Stein and Auden are now
up.
17 October 2003
Thanks to all who supported yesterday's strike action. Believe
me, it's greatly appreciated, by all staff.
I handed out the first essays at the tutorials this week.
If you missed this week's tute, you can pick up your essay from
the EMSAH office.
If you're in any doubt about any of the abbreviations I've
used in it, see the section on Feedback
in the Assessment sheet.
14 October 2003
Don't forget, this Thursday, 16 October, there will be a national
strike by the members of the NTEU (National Tertiary Education
Union), in protest against the Government's attempts to impose its
Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements as a condition
of university funding. For a brief review of the union's position
on the HEWRR, see the NTEU
website. I hope you'll give us your support.
Change to lecture timetable: Because Martin Duwell has a
number of other commitments, we've decided to swap the lectures
for the last two weeks of semester. Next week (21 October) I will
be giving the second lecture on Joyce, and the week after that (28
October), Martin will be giving the lecture on Auden. Tutorials
will remain the same: Stein on 21-22 October, and Auden on 28-29
October. I've just altered the Timetable
to reflect that.
7 October 2003
Essay topics for Lawrence and Woolf
are now available.
And while we're on that, I'm planning on handing back the first
essays in classes next week (14-15 October).
3 September 2003
As I'm adding to the essay topics every week, I won't be
putting out a printout of this page in hard copy. Check the topics
page online each week for new topics on the writers we've been
dealing with in that week.
Some more online Joyce resources:
- As you've noticed from classes, there's a proliferation of editions
of Ulysses, all of which have quite different paginations.
If you've been reading critical material on Joyce, you've come
across the same problem: the edition the criticism is using isn't
necessarily the one you've got.
So here's a useful, free online resource: the Ulysses tables
from the remarkable Split
Pea Press of Edinburgh. (Click on the link, then click on
"Ulysses Tables" in the left-hand menu.) The tables
correlate the page numbers of all the English language editions
of Ulysses. How could you do without it? And while you're
at Split Pea, check out their other resources, especially the
Electronic Telegraph.
- And here's a set of Joyce images well worth checking out--a
gallery
of postcards of some of the places in Ulysses.
1 September 2003
I've just uploaded some Joyce and Yeats essay
topics.
25 August 2003
As the lecture and tutorial schedule has been pushed back a week,
it makes sense to push the due date for the first assignment back
a week as well. That way, you'll have exactly the same range of
texts available to write on. Accordingly, the due date for the
first assignment is now 12 noon, Thursday 25 September (Week 9).
I've emended the assessment page to
that effect--please make this correction on your own hard copies
of this page.
And just a reminder: I generally mark the tutorial rolls
5-10 minutes into a class. If you come in later than that, remember
it's your responsibility to make sure you get marked off as present.
(After the class is the best time.)
21 August 2003
Well, I'm back. My apologies again for having to cancel classes
last week--I hope the SI-Net emails reached everyone in time. And
thank you for all those emails wishing me a quick recovery!
This coming week (5), we'll do the classes we were going to do
last week: a lecture on Joyce, and a tutorial on Wharton. After
that, we'll just move everything back one week. This means we'll
have to leave out our second Joyce tutorial, at least at the scheduled
class times, but I'll see if we can arrange something there for
the end of semester.
The new timetable, with all of these
changes incorporated into it, is available on this site. I'll get
print copies to everyone next week.
5 August 2003
As you probably know, the UQ Bookshop's out of copies of Heartbreak
House, and all the Library's copies are, predictably, already
borrowed. The best I can suggest at the moment is either:
- see if you can find it at another Brisbane bookshop. Here's
a list of links
to bookshop sites from the Brisbane City Life website: many
of these wll have online catalogues so you can check if HH
is in stock; or--
- in an emergency, download the Project
Gutenberg etext.
4 August 2003
If you've been looking for those BBC Shaw files mentioned on the
resources page, they've moved. I've now made links to the new, correct
URLs.
1 August 2003
D'oh! Those essay topics are working
now.
Seeing this Noticeboard is starting to expand a bit, I've started
archiving previous messages: the archive
link at the bottom of the Noticeboard is now working.
And it's FAQ number 3:
Q: I read Homer's "The Odyssey", a few years ago when I
was doing my ancient history component of the degree and am a bit
rusty on it. I have started Joyce and am struggling quite a bit
with it - I don't feel that it reads easily at this stage. Hopefully,
that will get better as the novel progresses. Do you think I should
re-visit Homer and read both works at the same time? Do you think
this will enhance any lost interpretation?
A: It is difficult to begin with, no doubt at all.
Things get a bit smoother by the fourth chapter. The first three
chapters all concern Stephen, who's not particularly likeable and
for various reasons is all wrapped up in himself at this time. The
fourth chapter brings in Leopold Bloom, who's much more immediately
likeable, and who will be the main focus of the rest of the book.
Persevere, and get beyond that speed bump of chapter 3.
As for the Odyssey: yes, a knowledge of it adds to the book, but
it's not a key to it, in the sense that everything will fall into
place if you know your Homer. Knowing that Bloom is a sort of Odysseus,
Stephen is in a way his son Telemachus, and so on, adds another
rich layer to the mix, but it's only one thing going on in it: don't
feel frustrated if you go back to the Odyssey and find it
doesn't explain everything in Ulysses, which isn't just a
rewriting of Homer in modern dress. That Joyce took those Homeric
chapter titles out of the manuscript at a fairly late stage
of composition seems to indicate that he didn't want to place too
much weight on them. But if you do want to brush up on your Homer,
there's now a link to a summary of the Odyssey in the Joyce
resources page on this site (look for the 
logo).
31 July 2003
I've put up the first set of essay topics.
So far, they include some general topics and some on Shaw. In the
weeks to come, I'll add to these, with topics for all the other
writers we're dealing with.
New resources will appear on resource pages throughout the
semester, even when I've printed out and distributed hard copies
in classes. I'll signal any online updates to the printed versions
with this graphic.
There are already a couple of occurrences in the General
and Joyce pages.
15 July 2003
And only one day after our first FAQ, our second (with a
frequency of 1):
Q: I notice SI-net says this course uses WebCT. When will
that be running?
A: It won't. This site will have everything that would otherwise
be on WebCT. I signed up for WebCT a few months ago, but quickly
decided against it. I've asked for it to be cancelled twice, but
that hasn't happened.
My main objection to WebCT is that it hides everything behind password
protection, so that the only people who have access to it are currently
enrolled students, technical support staff, and me. So the people
who wouldn't be able to get into a WebCT site unless they approached
me for special permission would include:
- potential ENGL2035 students (who aren't enrolled, but want
to look around before making a decision),
- potential EMSAH students (ditto), potential UQ students (ditto),
- colleagues who want to coordinate what they're doing with what's
going on in other courses, and
- people whose resource sites I've linked to (and who often, on
the Web, make reciprocal links so that our sites get hits from
all over the world).
The WebCT decision to hide everything is counterproductive for
everyone, from students and teachers up to the University as a whole;
it's quite unnecessary for nearly everything that gets onto a site;
and, ever since MIT decided to make all of its course materials
freely available (check out its Open
CourseWare site), it's also quite against the trend of the big
players elsewhere. So there you go.
[Opinions expressed in this FAQ are those of the
author, and do not reflect official UQ policy. But I'm working on
it.]
14 July 2003
First notice for a new site! This site is still very much in draft
mode. There are essay topics and lots more resources to come, plus
some overall organization. The timetable
is tentative: should be a guide to the overall order of things,
but there may be some changes to be made before semester begins.
Keep checking back over the next couple of weeks.
And we've had our first FAQ (well, three times):
Q: What should we start reading first?
A: The first two texts we'll be dealing with are Shaw's Heartbreak
House and Wharton's The Age of Innocence, but the one
you should really start reading as soon as you can is Joyce's Ulysses.
It's a long book, and it can't be rushed: it demands its own timescale.
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