Creative Nonfiction and the Not-for-College Essay

On Tuesday and Wednesday we read, took notes on, and discussed excerpts from Phillip Lopate's essay "Are We Living Through a Resurgence of the Essay?" We were especially keen to find answers to his question: "How can you tell a first-rate essay?"

To answer the question we looked at Lopate's own words but now we'll cast our net farther into the sea of personal essay writing. So let's go over to Brevity: a Journal of Concise Creative Nonfiction. By class time on Monday (1:16 pm) read and respond to one piece that you find there. (I've read and enjoyed most of the essays in the Fall 2009 issue.)

Your response should focus on interpreting how the author's use of literary techniques (language choices) contributes to meaning and effect.

How does the way it is written affect what it means? How does the way it is written affect the reader? How is the author using language in a way that will provoke you to think and feel certain things?

After analyzing how the piece works you might also evaluate if it has done what it sets out to do well and if what it sets out to do is worth doing.

Jane Eyre and Literary Criticism

Visit Jane Eyre on the Victorian Web.

Choose a work of literary criticism to read. I recommend the following pieces:
"Jane Eyre's Three Paintings"
"She bit me...like a tigress"
"Dreams in Jane Eyre"
"Angry Angels"
"...Female Protagonists in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea"
Reason and Passion
Law, Insanity, and Self-Respect
Jane Eyre as Double Bildungsroman
Many of the lit. crits. in the imagery section
This and the other commentaries by R.B. Martin (found at the end of this short crit.)

Write a summary of the literary criticism. (What from the criticism might be useful and thought provoking for other students of the novel?)

Write a thoughtful response to the literary criticsm. (How has the criticism affected your understanding of the novel?)

300+ words. Due by pumpkin time Friday, October 16.

Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman

In the comment box discuss the following prompt:

Jane Eyre is often described as a bildungsroman or "novel of formation." However, although Charlotte Bronte portrays a protagonist who "comes of age" over the course of the novel, her novel does not adhere to all of the conventions of the nineteenth century bildungsroman.

How does Bronte's novel adhere to and deviate from the bildungsroman conventions (as listed below)? How is the novel's adherence to and deviation from the conventions significant to the novel's overall effect and meaning?

Suzanne Hader developed the following list after reading Marianne Hirsch’s The Novel of Formation as Genre.

1. A Bildungsroman is, most generally, the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order. The growth process, at its roots a quest story, has been described as both "an apprenticeship to life" and a "search for meaningful existence within society."

2. To spur the hero or heroine on to their journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar them at an early stage away from the home or family setting.

3. The process of maturity is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.

4. Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself and his new place in that society.

Due by Pumpkin Time Friday, October 16.