16 June 2009
14 June 2009
Wide Sargasso Sea
A couple of things to think about as you read (not necessarily to respond to): how is Eve Sedgwick's sketching out of Gothic convention borne out in Rhys's text? How does that potentially indexical relationship compare to the appearance of the Gothic in Beloved? How does the post neo-Gothic make use of form in the service of producing affects of terror? In what ways are those strategies both similar to and departures from the neo Gothic as in the Brontes, Melville, Gilman, Dickinson? How do names and the importance of "the call" or what one is called work in all four of the novels we've read? How does Rhys's invocation of Bronte's name refer to an adherent haunting while simultaneously effecting a "making of the world" in Elaine Scarry's sense? Time to start pulling things together...
09 June 2009
The Other Side of A Mirror
The Other Side of A Mirror
I sat before my glass one day,
And conjured up a vision bare,
Unlike the aspects glad and gay,
That erst were found reflected there -
The vision of a woman, wild
With more than womanly despair.
Her hair stood back on either side
A face bereft of loveliness.
It had no envy now to hide
What once no man on earth could guess.
It formed the thorny aureole
Of hard, unsanctified distress.
Her lips were open - not a sound
Came though the parted lines of red,
Whate'er it was, the hideous wound
In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.
And in her lurid eyes there shone
The dying flame of life's desire,
Made mad because its hope was gone,
And kindled at the leaping fire
Of jealousy and fierce revenge,
And strength that could not change nor tire.
Shade of a shadow in the glass,
O set the crystal surface free!
Pass - as the fairer visions pass -
Nor ever more return, to be
The ghost of a distracted hour,
That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!'
-- Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1896)
I sat before my glass one day,
And conjured up a vision bare,
Unlike the aspects glad and gay,
That erst were found reflected there -
The vision of a woman, wild
With more than womanly despair.
Her hair stood back on either side
A face bereft of loveliness.
It had no envy now to hide
What once no man on earth could guess.
It formed the thorny aureole
Of hard, unsanctified distress.
Her lips were open - not a sound
Came though the parted lines of red,
Whate'er it was, the hideous wound
In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.
And in her lurid eyes there shone
The dying flame of life's desire,
Made mad because its hope was gone,
And kindled at the leaping fire
Of jealousy and fierce revenge,
And strength that could not change nor tire.
Shade of a shadow in the glass,
O set the crystal surface free!
Pass - as the fairer visions pass -
Nor ever more return, to be
The ghost of a distracted hour,
That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!'
-- Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1896)
07 June 2009
03 June 2009
Beloved III/ Modern Medea/ Black Frankenstein
Did you have a chance to look at the Kara Walker images? This is a reminder. Second short Beloved, etc. response here...
02 June 2009
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