The Lover - Blog Prompt:

I am posting these as a blog prompt, but they are all suggested topics for you research paper. You may choose to answer any of them in the blog as a way of beginning to think about your papers. Please post AT LEAST 4-5 paragraphs.



1. What is the relationship between memory and forgeting in Duras’ The Lover? What role does photography play in the remembrance of the past? What is the significance of the various images—both photographic ones and ones indelibly etched in the mind?
Consider the following quotation by Carol Hoffman from Forgetting and Marguerite Duras (University of Colorado Press, 1991):
"The repetition of situations, events, memories, and words abounds in Duras’s texts. This repetition seems to emphasize the changing, unstable aspect of memory and language and move the reader to question his or her own memory and examine the dynamics of forgetting. . . . memory is seen as volatile and impossible. It is a movement toward the ever-elusive and often painful ‘impossible,’ the ‘vide’ [‘void’/‘emptiness’], the ‘manque’ [‘lack’], what Jacques Lacan called ‘le réel’ [the real]. It is a remembering that destroys memory and leads to a new memory, which can replace the last only fleetingly and without substance . . . a refusal of convention or disguise, as a unity of thought and will, life and appearance" (35-6).


2. How does Duras incorporate the body into her writing? Is the body the ‘site’ of the written text? or is it the ‘space’ or ‘site’ from which the text arises?
Consider the following quotation by Leslie Hill in Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires (London & New York: Routledge, 1993):
"For Duras as for Barthes, the body is not a mode of self-identity: the body is a figure of madness, not self-possession. It is not an essence or nature, but a reverse of an essence or nature; it is a name for that which provokes crisis in the realm of representation by producing irreducible difference. And what it denotes most of all, in Duras as in Barthes, is desire" (30).


3. Marguerite Duras's The Lover is narrated from the points of view of age and youth. Although the "older" voice gives perspective and shapes the representation of the youthful self, this is not simply a dialogue or contrast between youth and age. They are intertwined in ways that suggest equally that as the artist recreates the teenage speaker, the latter has given birth to the voice of the artist. The novel chronicles loss (of family, innocence, a great love), mourning, and discovery. The speaker’s re-creation of what she has lost, with frequent references to death, suggest a process of remembering and mourning in her writing. Psychoanalyst Henry Krystal describes adolescence as a transition into adulthood and a time when an individual develops the ability to grieve (63). In this portrait of her development as an adolescent, Duras chronicles her growing capacity to grieve as she tells of individuating herself from her anguished family. Her increased independence coincides with discovering she wants to be a writer, a vocation which provides her the means to frequently revisit this period of trauma and loss the in the book (1) While The Lover tracks a time of transition and a time of loss, it is also during this time that the speaker develops her creative imagination, her ability to relate to others outside of her family, and experiences alienation and sexuality, which all help her transition towards an adult identity. In your essay, explore the ways in which the process of growth and mourning are inextricably bound together and mutually generating in her text.


4. One major theme in the novel is that of transgression - of going beyond or overstepping some boundary. The speaker transgresses, in the sense of "going over" or "going across," when she crosses the Mekong. She transgresses, in the sense of "violating some moral law," by commencing and continuing her affair with her Chinese lover. The family transgresses societal expectations just by virtue of their poverty, and then because of that poverty, by silently condoning the speaker's relationship with her lover. The family transgresses familiar/family ideals: they are not the archetypal loving and supportive family. The style of the novel transgresses traditional temporal/chronological plot structures - i.e. the narrative weaves between the past and the present, using the present tense and past tense to describe the same moments in time. Pastness is collapsed into present, but at the same time, without the past being the past, the speaker would have no subject on which to reflect. What do you think is the importance of transgression? How, as a theme, does it characterize the novel's subject, its style, and its purpose?



Some Useful Places to Look:

1. Marguerite Duras: Apocaliypic Desire, by Leslie Hill
http://books.google.com/books?id=9UYOAAAAQAAJ&dq=Marguerite+Duras+Lover+essay+questions&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=FF3aSeO6KaTNlQe4tOXFDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12#PPP1,M1

2. Marguerite Duras, by Renate Gunther
http://books.google.com/books?id=_MZhsT4W7KcC&dq=Marguerite+Duras+Lover+essay+questions&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=cGTaScv9I9vtlQfro_HCDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11#PPP1,M1

3. "Image" and Absence in Marguerite Duras' "L'Amant"
by Nina S. Hellerstein
Modern Language Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 45-56, Published by: Modern Language Studies (You can find it on JSTOR)

Revised Schedule

Course Schedule


Week 1

Thursday January 28 Introduction


Week 2

Tuesday February 2 Introduction – pp. xxiii – liv
Art of the Personal Essay


Thursday February 4 CLASS CANCELED

Week 3

Tuesday February 9 Virginia Woolf – “A Room of One’s Own”


Thursday February 11 Charles Lamb – “A Chapter on Ears” – pp. 165 - 169


Week 4

Tuesday February 16 Annie Dillard – “Seeing” – pp. 693-706
Blog

Thursday February 18 NO CLASS






Week 5

Tuesday February 23 First Draft of Analytic Essay Due
Peer Review


Thursday February 25 NO CLASS

Week 6

Tuesday March 2 Richard Selzer – “The Knife” – pp. 707-714
Stylistic Devices – (handout)

Thursday March 4 Natalia Ginzburg – “He and I” – pp. 453-457
Blog


Week 7

Tuesday March 9 “Meatless Days” – pp. 458 - 475
Blog

Thursday March 11 Wole Soyinka – “Why Do I Fast” – pp. 422-430


Week 8

Tuesday March 16 The Lover – pp. 3-10

Thursday March 18 The Lover – 11-38
Blog



Week 9

Tuesday March 23 First Draft of Stylistic Essay Due
The Lover pp. 39-83



Thursday March 25 The Lover 84-end

Week 10

Tuesday March 30 NO CLASS – Spring Recess

Thursday April 1 NO CLASS – Spring Recess


Week 11

Tuesday April 6 The Pain of Sorrow in the Modern World: The Works of Marguerite Duras” – Julia Kristeva (handout)
Blog

Thursday April 8 Library Session




Week 12

Tuesday April 13 Louise Gluck - “On Impoverishment” (handout)

Thursday April 15 F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Crack-Up”
Blog


Week 13

Tuesday April 20 E. B. White – “Ring of Time” – pp. 538-539
First Draft of Research Paper Due



Thursday April 22 Joan Didion – “Goodbye to All That” – pp. 680-688

Week 14

Tuesday April 27 Jorge Luis Borges – “Blindness” – pp.376 – 386

Thursday April 29 James Baldwin – “Notes of a Native Son” - pp. 587-604



Week 15

Tuesday May 4 Second Draft of Research Paper Due
In class conferences concerning the final Personal Essay Assignment

Thursday May 6 In class peer review of final Personal Essay Assignment


Week 16

Tuesday May 11 First Draft of Personal Essay Due

Thursday May 13 Portfolio Conferences
Final Portfolio Due
POSTED BY LAURA AT 9:04 AM 0 COMMENTS

Stylistic Essay Blog Prompt

Consider this a pre-write for your stylistic essay I have posted below. Choose which essay you will be writing on, and then try to identify the stylistic elements that contribute to the essay's overall meaning. Why does the writer write the essay in the particular style that he or she does? What themes are generally discussed, and how does style contribute to these themes?

The Stylistic Essay: Assignment

The Stylistic Essay:
Due March 23rd

In this unit you have read a number of highly stylized essays, and we have discussed different stylistic devices. In a four – five page response paper, I would like you to pick one of the following essays, “The Knife,” “Why Do I Fast,” “He and I,” or “Meatless Days,” and do a close reading of it, discussing what stylistic elements are used and how they contribute to the essay’s overall meaning. In this response you must identify the essay’s thesis, or general message, and then, after identifying that thesis, you must clearly supply your own thesis regarding the ways in which you believe the stylistic elements we’ve discussed enhance or detract from the piece you are discussing..

In your essay you may want to address some if not all of these questions: what was the author’s intention and what is the thesis? How is the thesis supported and specifically, what evidence is supplied? Make sure to give examples and quote passages. What stylistic devices are used? How do they enhance or detract from the meaning? Is the reader intended to have an emotional reaction to the essay?

Again this essay should be four – five pages long and in 12 point Times New Roman Font. Good luck and work hard.