Hebdomadal (week 5)

There is some logic to writing an extra one or two pages of literary analysis the same week you have a high-stakes essay due: you can think of these prompts as intellectual appetizers to the meatier course of your first essays. You can continue to test the limits of your analytical prowess in a low-stakes hebdomadal, taking risks in your argument here to practice ways of taking risks in the longer argument of your essay. A tantalizing, crisp response paper should serve to whet your appetite for more substantial work.

Topic 1: Structuring Middlemarch

In discussion this week we dissected Book III of Middlemarch to see how its chapters suggest a larger argument; however, we didn't get around to looking at how the Books of Middlemarch themselves serve as the building blocks of the larger novel. (Stephen suggested this avenue of analysis in 305.)

In this essay, look at how the structure of the first four Books in Middlemarch suggest connections and affinities in the larger novel.

Alternatively, repeat the structural dissection we did in class for Books I, II and IV of the novel. What symmetries and affinities do you see within and between Books? What is the significance of these connections?

Topic 2: Quotation and allusion

We also looked a little bit at the sorts of narrative entanglement practiced by George Eliot and Percy Shelley as they interrupt their texts with quotation. We did not treat with allusion very much, although it would have been more proper to have characterized the relationship between "Mont Blanc" and "Tintern Abbey" as one of allusion.

Pick one text (a poem or a paragraph of Middlemarch) and work out how allusion functions. Is it, too, interruptive? Does it unravel textual webs? Or does it add another level of entanglement to the text? What is its structural significance?

If you want a specific set of allusions to work through, you might consider the Ariadne theme in Middlemarch. So far, I have noted four appearances of the Ariadne / Theseus / labyrinth myth:

• p. 16: the Key to All Mythologies as "labyrinthine"
• p. 121: Dorothea compared to Ariadne (or Cleopatra)
• p. 141: Dorothea as virgin sacrifice (of the sort made to the minotaur)
• p. 188: Rosamond as Ariadne

I'm sure I'm missing dozens more. How does this specific allusion connect to the structural concerns of the text? In what way(s) is it significant?