Outline for Meredith McGill's "Common Places: Poetry, Illocality, and Temporal Dislocation in Thoreau..."

I chose this article because I think Meredith McGill is one of the clearest writers that I've encountered in my scholarly life. I've broken it down paragraph by paragraph, but you don't need to read it all. I'm going to do a general overview first, but reading Hayot's article made me think about essays on the paragraph level (though it would be waaaaay time intensive to outline an article Hayot-style-no, thanks).

General overview of the article: McGill's article is interesting because it does not make a definitive claim about a literary object. This is not an article about interpretation. Instead, this is an article that asks critics to revise their own habits and contemplate the ways 19th century commonplace books might be more important as a kind of genre, or a set of conventions, that influenced two of the most celebrated American authors, Emerson and Thoreau. The introductory section begins with how commonplace books have been overlooked, giving a history of them in relation to literary criticism, showing how they've become disconnected from more popular subjects like travel narratives (though McGill claims this attitude is opposite to how 19th century people would have thought of them), and lays out how Emerson and Thoreau collaborated on a commonplace book and how that might be central to their theories about literary creation and authority.

Then, McGill gives a section on Emerson, where she focuses on how we've been reading Emerson's connection to Whitman and poetic theory wrong. Basically, our preconceived notions (preconceived by decades of scholars) of Emerson as a failed poet and as Whitman's Pygmalion have made us read "The Poet" all wrong. Emerson is less invested in literary nationalism and more interested in the ways poetry gets read/consumed in the present time (as opposed to a national legacy). After explicating some Emerson, she returns to the connection between Emerson and Thoreau (their friendship and their projects).

The next section on Thoreau begins with a reiteration of the depth of the friendship between the two men, but this time she acknowledges its rifts. She then turns to how Thoreau reconciles Emerson's poetic theories in A Week and points to its numerous deviations from the accepted travel narrative. By inserting bits of poetry (fragmented pieces without authorial attribution like in the commonplace book), McGill claims that Thoreau sees history and nature as being independent of the poet. Since this is not the brunt of the argument, McGill quite comfortably points out the problem with Thoreau's ideas about the beauty of dislocation (mainly that it does not provide an ethical imperative for remembering history) and ends on an ambiguous question. However, again, I want to point out that the thesis of this article was to prove that commonplace books have more influence on literature than critics have previously thought and could provide keys to new interpretations, rather than advancing a definitive interpretation herself.

I notice that McGill used the Emerson/Thoreau friendship as a through-line for the whole article-she kept returning to it as a way of contextualizing and transitioning between sections. I also noticed that there's not a lot of close-reading; only about 6 out of the 25 paragraphs were actual explication. Perhaps that's just because this isn't necessarily an article about interpreting a text, but rather advancing a new methodology. In any case, below this break is an intense map of the article.

Outline for Adamson's Questions of Identity in Renaissance Drama

In this post, I’m looking at how Adamson establishes her argument in Questions of Identity in Renaissance Drama: New Historicism Meets Old Philology, an article in Shakespeare Quarterly. While I’m reading this article specifically for the implications on King Lear, I plan to focus more on the argument as a whole in this post. More so, I’m trying to look at how the argument is framed rather than some of the finer technical points.

Broadly speaking, Adamson examines the way that the use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun is used to trouble conceptions of post-feudal identity. She does this by delving into some of the linguistic nuances of the matter, then hones in on King Lear as an example of a text in which this plays out. The article is divided into five parts.

Part one opens with an anecdote regarding a letter between a son and his father, in which the tensions between the two generations—and between social class as identity v. personal identity—are evident. This anecdote provides a concrete example of the conflict in action and gives readers a historical frame of reference for the things that will be discussed later in the essay. It also provides context for the attention to interrogative pronouns (“who” v. “what”) used in the following section by presenting a document that examples of this language can be pulled from.

Part two shifts to a somewhat more theoretical discussion. While less concrete than the first part, she keeps the discussion grounded with specific examples from texts, and with attention to different historical moments. The focus of this section is the evolving distinction between “who” and “what.”  She starts by giving the distinction between them in modern usage—something that is given little time, since it is assumed to be well understood. Then she moves back to their early modern usages, establishing the fact that “what” was often used to refer to personal identity and that it was, in many cases, preferred to “who.” She does this by presenting statistics on the relative usage of the two interrogative pronouns by early modern playwrights. Additionally, she sets up several sets of grouped examples that demonstrate the different possible meanings of the question, “What are you?” which could be asking for name, social status, occupation, or personal qualities.

The first two parts strike me as what Hayot would qualify as the unmarked introduction. They do not yet assert much that isn’t previously known or theorized, and do not set up an argument about a specific piece of literature. Rather, they lay out the terms of what is about to be discussed.

Part three introduces King Lear as an example. After making a few broader statements, Adamson narrows her focus to a single play. Drawing on her discussion of the varying uses of “what,” she begins to inspect the ways that the questions “What art thou?” and “Dost thou know me” (among other variations of “What are you” and “Who am I?”) are used to construct identity. In doing so, she pulls out several exchanges from the text and walks through them, detailing the ways that Lear and Kent establish their identities through a series of questions, the way that Oswald challenges Lear’s identity in response to Lear’s attempt to make him verify his (Lear’s) identity as king, and through Lear’s questions of his own identity directed at the fool. Later, she also draws on an exchange between Edgar and Edmund in which similar questions are used to discuss their own identities.  Much of this is done through concrete evidence pulled directly from the text and by close analysis.

Part three makes two main points. First, it shows the way that identity is discussed—and either accepted or rejected—as a unified entity, in which one’s social role is their self. Lear is seen moving away from this, as he slowly develops a personal persona apart from his social role as king. Kent and Edmund both, on the other hand, move back towards using social role as the basis of a single, unified identity. The second point is the idea that identity is not simply asserted by a single person, but is negotiated through dialogue.

Part four brings in a second example, The Duchess of Malfi, to show another text that handles similar question of identity, and in some ways creates a counterpoint to King Lear. In doing so, Adamson shows that there were many ways that the questions could play out, that Lear was not an isolated incidence of identity emerging through dialogue, and that just as many of the characters in Lear gravitated back towards feudal identities, many works also showed a movement towards personal identities. Notably, she uses it to illustrate a servant of the Duchess, likened to Kent, choosing a personal identity over a social one. She also notes on the fact that the Duchess is only known as the Duchess and, unlike Lear, never establishes a private identity, though this last point isn’t fully developed.

Part five serves as an unmarked conclusion. Here, Adamson sums up her argument and ties it into other scholarship in the field. She clarifies her ideas about the emergence of identity through dialogue and explains that, while several others are studying something similar, soliloquies are still thought of as the most important place that identities emerge. This puts her research in context and suggest its relevance, since she’s posing a counterargument to contemporary opinions. She also points out her argument’s relevance to linguistic history and the evolution of interrogative pronouns. By showing the relevance of her research, she puts it in context and gives readers a sense of her argument’s broader application.

Outline on The Central American transnational imaginary: Defining the transnational and gendered contours of Central American immigrant experience by Yajaira Padilla

Here is my outline. I did it as if i was just jotting down notes. It is research for Spanish Seminar so enjoy!

1.       The article begins with a discussion and growth in Central American Representation from film to literature

a.       Also, discusses how their “trans migrant lives “related to economic instability as well as a history of social and political conflict

b.       Formulates claim of this rise of medium of expression

                                                               i.      itself, a broader reflection of how the Central American presence is transforming the country’s multicultural milieu. They are also, however, suggestive of the ways in which northbound migration and transnationalism have impacted notions of Central American collective identity and immigrant integration into the United States. As I contend, such works signal and are instrumental to the existence of a “Central American transnational imaginary,” one marked by memories of war, settlement in the United States, and crossings through Mexico, and in which individual and communal identities are being continuously defined and renegotiated (151)

2.       Lists the three works that she will work with Bernardo the virgin, December Sky, and Sin Nombre

a.       These three she says give an “expansive view of the diverse experiences and salient issues that characterize Central American immigrant reality . . . the Central American transnational imaginary” (151)

b.       Moreover, in these texts women are prominent figures. This fact underscores the need to consider gender as an inherent aspect of Central American international migration and of the collective imaginings and subject formations of Central Americans that have resulted from such migration. (151)

3.       Central American migration motivated by/post migration

a.       Recent waves caused by economic policies and loss of occupation

b.       Prior waves caused by civil wars

c.       Exclusionary policies imposed by the US by their migration

d.       Community stilled thrived

4.       Central American as a Transnational identity

a.       These immigrant communities have fostered and maintained strong economic, political and cultural ties to their countries of origin that have taken the form of transnational practices and enterprises.6 Remittances, which have become an integral part of the national economies of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, are a key example. 152

b.       By these actions and communities, the sense of “nation” is disrupted

                                                               i.      Quotes Saldivar to better define it Fundamental to Saldıvar’s conceptualization of the transnational imaginary is Taylor’s discussion of the “social imaginary,” defined as “the ways people imagine their social existence,” and a process achieved by and expressed through “images, stories, and legends” (153)

                                                             ii.      Proposes this similar transnational community for central Americans

                                                           iii.      But also, recognizes the contentious history behind a “united” Central America and refers that that this imaginary from this connected history

                                                           iv.      Better definition of her claim of Central American transnational imaginary Central American transnational imaginary is a new articulation that has been engendered precisely by the international migration of scores of Central Americans to the United States and their transnational undertakings in the latter half of the twentieth century. It needs to be understood in this specific context. It is an emerging site that includes Central Americans both in and outside of the region, recalling what Homi Bhabha denotes as a “third space” in which hegemonic structures are reaffirmed and reproduced, but also challenged, and identities and strategies of selfhood are claimed and redefined at both the individual and communal level (Rutherford, 1990).  154

5.       Her title of the section Affective Representations and Gendered Visions

a.       Narratives created by Central American “transnational imaginary”

                                                               i.      Creates a “social practice” that provides images and stories about civil wars, migration, and integration 154

b.        Discusses issues of emotion as well

                                                               i.      The ability of Central Americans to engage in such forms of transnational imagining does not only rest, however, on a mutual recognition of the shared experiences recounted through these images and stories, but also on the registry of emotions such images and stories likewise evoke (154)

c.       Also, discusses role of women in transnational scheme

                                                               i.      Usually allegorical reps as left behind or “republican mothers”

                                                             ii.      Used as a lens to explore migration and immigrant community building

1.       Shows patriarchy

d.       Argues a bit differently “the female portrayals in these written and visual narratives perform a similar critical role in that they too call attention to the gendered tensions and aspects that characterize the Central American immigrant experience.” (155)

e.       Argues through the portrayal and focus of women on the works she analyzes he Central American transnational imaginary is not only the “emergence of new citizen-subjects and the construction of new spaces for the enactment of their politics outside the realm of the purely national” (Saldivar, 2006, 59), but also how these developments intersect with and are shaped by other factors such as ethnicity, citizenship status, class, and most notably, gender. (156-157)

6.       Nicaraguan Immigrants Before and After the Wars her title of the section

a.       Highlights that the novel “Sirias’s Bernardo and the Virgin affords a dynamic depiction of Central American international migration and of the different processes of identity formation taking place among Nicaraguan immigrants in the United States” (156)

b.       Discusses how the book shifts the outlook of Nicaraguan women by viewing them as pioneers

c.       Discusses the complications of integration and culture keeping within the novel to form ethnic identity

7.       Salvadorans living the “American Dream”? her title

a.       Discusses how November sky illustrates “that migrant narratives constitute “political acts” that, on the one hand, “narrate a condition of alterity to, or exclusion from, the nation,” and on the other, “enunciate a collective desire for a different order of space and belonging” “(159)

8.       A Modern Tale of Migration

a.       Looks at Sin nombre by looking at the female protagonist Sayra  

b.       Looked through her perspective how Mexico is “an extended border zone” (161) for all Central American immigrants

                                                               i.      Through the deportation of her father illustrates the reality of deportation and “the undesirability of Honduran immigrants as citizen-subjects of the United States and, by extension, of Mexico, which enforces the same discriminatory immigration policies.” (162)

                                                             ii.      more than just political boundaries, meaning they also “traverse social planes of race, class, and gender relations,” certain groups such as women, who are often the victims of violent sexual assault, become more susceptible than others (2007, 83). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the pivotal scene in which Sayra is almost raped by the gang leader, Lil’ Mago. (162)

1.       illustrates how immigration makes women more susceptible

c.       probably more important point “As Sayra moves forward and, perhaps, becomes trapped in the same cycle of undocumented labor and exploitation as her father, the only thing for certain is that her crossing through Mexico’s border zone will play a key role in the type of life she leads in the United States and the struggles she will face as she tries to acquire a new sense of belonging and identity as a Central American, an immigrant, and as a woman.” (163)

                                                               i.      illustrates that reality of immigrant struggle and a possible cycle to create belonging or identity not. Not too sure what is added with this point.

9.       Expanding the Discussion: From Immigrants to Central American-Americans

a.       Basically, concludes the work by saying its complicated and needs to be fleshed out more

                                                               i.      . By exposing the varied transnational and gendered historical, political and social aspects that define the Central American immigrant experience, authors such as Sirias and Cortez Davis, themselves part of these newer generations, have laid the foundation for future and needed inquiries, including the notion of Central American Latino lives. Such issues and debates will, undoubtedly, be of importance in the near future and lead to the further expansion and transformation of the Central American transnational imaginary. (164)

Post #6: Outline

This post outlines a chapter from Jonathan Rose’s A Companion to the History of the Book called “Modernity and Print I: Britain 1890-1970.” This selection is for my class with Elizabeth Miller called Victorian Media and the Victorian Novel.

Structure of the argument:

As the chapter title seems to suggest, the structure of this chapter is loosely chronological. While it certainly jumps between different times within 1890-1970 (to make a comparison, for instance, or to think of the breadth of time within this period for a certain phenomenon), it begins just prior to 1890 and ends pointing just beyond 1970. The chapter, as you’ll see in the paragraph analyses below, contains sections of background information which are linked often by subject material. Common threads throughout are the notions of accessibility, popularity, and regulation of both fiction and nonfiction in this period. These threads of background information are complicated throughout with counter examples. It’s important to note here that while the chapter is in certain ways laid out chronologically, there is not necessarily a notion of “progress.” Rather, when Rose points beyond 1970, it is to bring up the oncoming censorship, which points back to the censorship and suppression he had earlier described from the 1890s.

Function of each paragraph/section:

Opening: The first two paragraphs set up the historical moment of 1890 for the rights of authors by going back about 4-5 years to the significant New Book Agreement. Rather than start with 1890, this paragraph gives a short lead-in by describing the importance of the new international copyright law and its influence on trans-Atlantic book sales.

Directly after this section, the third paragraph takes on a change of perspective, which serves to complicate the opening of this chapter. It briefly portrays the American views of the international copyright law. While the law helped Great Britain in terms of sales, Americans were accustomed to getting their British works for cheap, and were thus annoyed by the international law until their own authors were selling well in Great Britain (for example, with Mark Twain).

The next paragraph serves to define and give background information about publishing firms around 1890 in Britain and the main firm that started producing international bestsellers. Similarly, the paragraph following is informational: It helps define the status of a literary agent around 1890 (a somewhat distrusted figure, but someone who was nonetheless necessary in such a complicated system). Next, there’s a paragraph describing the changing readership scene in England right before 1890: there are a variety of reading publics and different marketing attempts.

There’s a shift in the next paragraph to the innovations starting in the 1890s: the move from the three-decker to the less expensive single work. New publishers are here connected to the success of authors such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf. This helps set up the next paragraph describing the growing market for modernist works. This section also shows that publishing companies became themselves something to market: by buying a book from a specific publisher of modernist works, the buyers could show their “taste.”

The next section complicates this image of a booming market for modernist fiction. It does this by bringing up “highbrow critics” who were resistant to the mass production of these works, and also the increased material costs after World War II. These complications lead to the next section: The Obscene Publications Act and the ways in which suppressed material made the work all that more profitable. Overall, the next section seems to argue that factors (such as the Victorian notion of self-improvement) led to less expensive re-prints and more overall profit for publishers.

So as to not generalize, the following paragraph describes one of the major exceptions to these mass produced, cheaper works: William Morris’s hand-crafted, expensive, and nostalgic prints. This exception, moreover, is complicated in the next paragraph by examining the ways in which Morris’s hand-crafted style was picked up by mass producers.

For the next four-five paragraphs, a further complication emerges: the concept of book borrowing occurring in book clubs and, of course, circulating libraries. These paragraphs help connect, I believe, the earlier information about book buying to the chapter’s discussion of popularity, as both book buying and borrowing must be taken into account. This leads to a look at popularity and content, especially arguments (made at the time) that the popular was “middlebrow.” The period’s criticism ties in directly here in the following paragraph.

There’s then a surprising turn, I think, to the effects of World War II on book production. The chapter had briefly discussed its impact before, but now the focus is on the actual damage to books, libraries, and places of publication, as well. I wonder if, at this point in the chapter, there is more of a chronological structure guiding the writing. The chapter ends with the rebuilding of these book sources and the success of British literary exports by 1970.

After finishing this chapter, I am wondering about the more overall argument of the larger work in which this chapter appears. (I'm wondering how this chapter itself might function at Hayot's levels 1 and 2 within the larger work). Although there were complications throughout the chapter, the information was given as though it was objective material.

#6 Making Darkness Visible Outline

“Making Darkness Visible—Capturing the Criminal and Observing the Law in Victorian Photography and Detective Fiction” by Ronald Thomas

-       Connection between the onset of photography and the detective, seen through

Bleak House and Sherlock Holmes

-       [the first several paragraphs lay out the role of the detective in Bleak House: similarities between the camera and the detective’s mind]

-       The picture as incriminating evidence

o   Lady Dedlock’s portrait

§  More threatening than letters

§  Connects Guppy to “unreachable upperclass”

-       Decline of portraiture

-       [portraiture’s history and how it defined status; relevance in BH]

o   Once a status symbol

§  Middle class accessibility disruptive to aristocratic position shown through portraits

§  Becomes criminal evidence

-       Photography

-       [main argument emerges here]

o   Questions of authenticity

§  Complicated by ability to mass produce

-       Detective as reproducer

-       [the detective role is examined in the next few pages – as a literal detector as well as in the hypothetical sense. This is the meat of Thomas’ argument]

o   Stands in for the picture of what is revealed

o   “authenticates ancient court and traditional oil portrait are no longer empowered to authenticate”

-       Detective as seer

o   Clarifies for others

§  Hands

·      Uses finger gestures

·      Enables Jo to see clearly (rings)

§  Disciplinarian

§  Shows Esther her dead mother who she does not recognize

-       Detective paradox

o   Contradicts the ideological implications of the camera that he inhabits

o   Reproduction of pictures diminishes class differences

§  Bucket’s inability to recognize the “signs” (clothing) of aristocracy reinforces distinctions

o   Ultimately, pictures and detection both can be affected by changing the lens

-       Vision projects national guilt upon the foreign

o   Bucket sees the criminality in Hortense

§  Forms that he should go to use

·      Visual evidence

-       Dicken’s view of detection

-       [shift away from BH and SH and supports argument through Dicken’s work outside of novel]

o   “the eye is the great detector”

o   evidence that he integrates this into his work

o   Correlates with emergence of photography

o   Discussion in Household Worlds

§  “mysterious designs”- negotiates this concept

§  resembles his detective

-       Photograph’s reception

-       [last part of article moves from literature/photography to the role of photography on criminality and profiling]

o   Seen as silencers and killers

§  Photographees have no say once photographed

§  Marked as “dead”

o   Photographer is a threat

-       The camera as detective

o   Marketed in Sherlock Holmes periodical

§  Sneaky factor

-       Camera as intrusion

o   Development of technology

o   Flash – instantaneous

o   Lack of permission

§  Ability to assume possession and authority

-       Detective’s authority through class

o   Legitimacy

o   Professional status allows for new position in society

§  Power gained through abilities rather than birth

-       Photography as police evidence

o   Mugshot becomes dependable source

-       Galton’s composites

o   Combines multiple pictures of criminals into one picture

o   Reinforced (or introduced) idea of what a criminal might look like

o   Makes “truths” of the face visible

-       Eugenics

o   Racialized criminal profiles

o   Pictures were made to distort and highlight certain aspects while disguising others