Prompt
As you finish Pynchon and start Borges, please start working toward answering some of the philosophical / narratological questions of the course in your posts.
Remember this from the course description: "What makes a story, and what makes it a mystery story? In this course, we'll study and write about the nature of narratives.... We'll look at the way they hold together, the desire and fear that drive them, and the secrets they tell—or try to keep hidden."
So, start thinking about what makes a story a story; what makes a mystery story a mystery? What kinds of desires have we examined? What kind of things have been hidden from us? What's served as evidence in Doyle's story? Poe's? Shakespeare's? Langland's? What fears have these authors brought to the forefront, and how do they try to confront them?
I want you to try to keep two things in mind: 1. try to think about the nature of these things beyond the understanding you came in with; work on thinking about these questions as the texts we've read have expanded these questions, have offered different approaches than those with which you're most comfortable or which seem easiest to understand. 2. Read with charity -- try to assume (as I've tried to remind you to do in this class) that the author has something important to tell you & to figure out what that is. We practice being critics a great deal, but learn to listen to the texts (even the hard and frustrating ones) and let them teach you something about this conversation we've been having with varying degrees of explicitness throughout the semester.
Remember this from the course description: "What makes a story, and what makes it a mystery story? In this course, we'll study and write about the nature of narratives.... We'll look at the way they hold together, the desire and fear that drive them, and the secrets they tell—or try to keep hidden."
So, start thinking about what makes a story a story; what makes a mystery story a mystery? What kinds of desires have we examined? What kind of things have been hidden from us? What's served as evidence in Doyle's story? Poe's? Shakespeare's? Langland's? What fears have these authors brought to the forefront, and how do they try to confront them?
I want you to try to keep two things in mind: 1. try to think about the nature of these things beyond the understanding you came in with; work on thinking about these questions as the texts we've read have expanded these questions, have offered different approaches than those with which you're most comfortable or which seem easiest to understand. 2. Read with charity -- try to assume (as I've tried to remind you to do in this class) that the author has something important to tell you & to figure out what that is. We practice being critics a great deal, but learn to listen to the texts (even the hard and frustrating ones) and let them teach you something about this conversation we've been having with varying degrees of explicitness throughout the semester.
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