Hebdomadal topics (week 2): To the borders of bullshit

Tame textual interpretations often result when literary critics are unsure what distinguishes a risky but persuasive reading from utter bullshit. Critical temerity consists in straddling the border between the two, and this is the skill I would like you to develop early in the semester.

Topic 1: The prosodic and the prosaic

Last Thursday, Prof. Ortiz-Robles pointed out that nearly every line of "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" has an official interpretation endorsed by critics; this can be expanded to the rest of the poems we are reading this semester, for which authoritative interpretations have been more or less locked down. This can be dreadfully boring, as there is nothing quite so deflating as being told to memorize that a poem means such-and-such a thing. Fight against this literary interpretive history with this hebdomadal:

1. Pick a small chunk of a text that has an obvious or at least received interpretation (e.g. ll. 58-66 of "Ode: Intimations," ll. 31-36 or 37-44 of "Kubla Khan," ll. 9-14 of "Elgin Marbles" -- you can pick any small chunk of whatever you like, but for my sanity please avoid the last stanza of "Grecian Urn")
2. Briefly explain the obvious or received meaning of this passage -- this meaning can come from lecture, from prior experience with the poem, or just with your guess at what thousands of students and critics have said about the passage
3. Explain, at length, why this reading is incorrect.

Note: Your reading doesn't have to be correct! You need only be persuasive.

Topic 2: Practicing persuasion

Develop a close, analytical reading that defends one of the following interpretations:

1. In Middlemarch, George Eliot urges nineteenth-century women to castrate British men (literally or figuratively)
2. The nightingale of Keats's ode is a symbol of British industrialization
3. "Frost at Midnight" is an anti-Wordsworthian screed
4. Kubla Khan is Coleridge's vision that his son will usurp him, perhaps in a Oedipal sort of way
5. The preface to "Kubla Khan" is a better poem than the poem itself
6. Mrs. Cadwallader is, in fact, the narrator of Middlemarch

(You are welcome to shift these interpretations or to develop a new one; just let me know what you're up to.)

Your defense must (1) build out of a close reading of the text, and (2) address basic counterarguments. Although you are arguing a silly interpretation, your audience is persnickety and needs to be thoroughly persuaded by careful analysis of textual evidence.