Prompt for Poe Story Posts
For your posts on Poe, I want you to follow these instructions:
1. As you read, either in your notebooks or your books themselves, keep track of particularly salient and confounding passages throughout the two stories.
2. In your posts, identify (as independently from your compadres as possible) THREE passages:
a. one in which you find the identification of evidence / conclusions drawn irrefutably logical and genuinely impressive
b. one in which you find an identification / conclusion / string of reasoning baldly untenable.
c. one which you find genuinely confounding either because of language or plot: some place you had to stop and go back or you have 'uh, wut...' written in your book, etc.
I'd like you to have one of each. If you don't have one of each, try to get at least one of two of the categories and double up on the categories. It's also fine if you have three passages that you find confusing.
FYI, extra reading from Lacan on "The Purloined Letter": read at your leisure after finishing Poe if you'd like.
For instance:
"Whist has long been known for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies a capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind" [citation]
I found this passage dissatisfying: is the narrator really suggesting that a form of bridge is better than chess? Have I elevated chess in my own mind to be something more fantastic and mentally stimulating than bridge, or is the narrator overly enthused with the potential power of parlor card games? How can I understand the metaphor of the card game as something which is motivating or describing how the story is shaped or how the detectives think? Is it indeed a better metaphor for ratiocination and detective work and logical thinking than chess? [etc etc etc]
1. As you read, either in your notebooks or your books themselves, keep track of particularly salient and confounding passages throughout the two stories.
2. In your posts, identify (as independently from your compadres as possible) THREE passages:
a. one in which you find the identification of evidence / conclusions drawn irrefutably logical and genuinely impressive
b. one in which you find an identification / conclusion / string of reasoning baldly untenable.
c. one which you find genuinely confounding either because of language or plot: some place you had to stop and go back or you have 'uh, wut...' written in your book, etc.
I'd like you to have one of each. If you don't have one of each, try to get at least one of two of the categories and double up on the categories. It's also fine if you have three passages that you find confusing.
FYI, extra reading from Lacan on "The Purloined Letter": read at your leisure after finishing Poe if you'd like.
For instance:
"Whist has long been known for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies a capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind" [citation]
I found this passage dissatisfying: is the narrator really suggesting that a form of bridge is better than chess? Have I elevated chess in my own mind to be something more fantastic and mentally stimulating than bridge, or is the narrator overly enthused with the potential power of parlor card games? How can I understand the metaphor of the card game as something which is motivating or describing how the story is shaped or how the detectives think? Is it indeed a better metaphor for ratiocination and detective work and logical thinking than chess? [etc etc etc]
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