Virtual Reader

Some quotes from 'The Loss of the Creature', by Walker Percy. This essay was written in 1954.

"The educator whose business it is to teach students biology or poetry is unaware of a whole ensemble of relations which exist between the student and the dogfish and between the student and the Shakespeare sonnet.

To put it bluntly: A student who has the desire to get at a dogfish or a Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which it is presented. The great difficulty is that he is not aware that there is a difficulty; surely, he thinks, in such a fine classroom, with such a fine textbook, the sonnet must come across! What's wrong with me?

The sonnet and the dogfish are obscured by two different processes. The sonnet is obscured by the symbolic package which is formulated not by the sonnet itself but by the media through which the sonnet is transmitted, the media which the educators believe for some reason to be transparent. The new textbook, the type, the smell of the page, the classroom, the aluminum windows and the winter sky, the personality of Miss Hawkins---these media which are supposed to transmit the sonnet may only succeed in transmitting themselves. It is only the hardiest and cleverest of students who can salvage the sonnet from this many-tissued package. It is only the rarest student who knows that the sonnet must be salvaged from the package. (The educator is well aware that something is wrong, that there is fatal gap between the student's learning and the student's life: The student reads the poem, appears to understand it, and gives all the answers. But what does he recall if he should happen to read a Shakespeare sonnet twenty years later? Does he recall the poem or does he recall the smell of the page and the smell of Miss Hawkins?)"

[...]

"I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards ..."

Walter Percy -Bio
(1916-1990)
Wikipedia entry
"He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a unique combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith."

Encyclopedia of Alabama
"Percy also wrote other noted works that explore the notion that human beings are out of place in the cosmos, that they have become alienated to the world they inhabit, and that they are searching for ways to bring significance into their lives. In short, as the title of one of his works of non-fiction implies, they are looking for "the message in the bottle" that will bring a salvation of sorts."

Some notes on Percy's essays
Wikipedia entry
"'The Loss of the Creature' is an exploration of the way the more or less objective reality of the individual is obscured in and ultimately lost to systems of education and classification."
[...]
"The literature student is blocked from the sonnet by the educational system built around it, what Percy calls its "package." Instead of transmitting the subject of education, education often transmits only itself, and the student does not view the subject as open and delightful, nor does he view himself as sovereign. Percy offers two ways around this, both involving, as did his solution to the problem of the Grand Canyon, an indirect approach. Either the student can suffer some sort of ordeal that opens the text to him in a new way; or else he can be apprenticed to a teacher who takes a very unusual approach to the subject. He suggests that biology students be occasionally taught literature, and vice-versa. The overall effect of this obscuration by structure is one of the basic conditions of modern society: The individual layman is reduced to being a consumer. The individual thing becomes lost to the systems of classification and theory created for the consumer, and the individual man loses all sense of ownership. The solution to this problem, according to Percy, is not to get rid of museums but for 'the sightseer to be prepared to enter into a struggle to recover a sight from a museum'"

Inventory of Percy's Works

The essay text
Fragment

Pdf file
(html)

Percy at Notre Dame
In his speech, Percy reflects on the task of the novelist.
9:55

Image credits
Walker Percy by Brilarian
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bybri/499689622/

Robert Frost- The Road Not Taken

2009-03-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Professor Kevin Murphy from Ithaca University lectures about Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.

Video: 26:43

My notes while watching the vid:

-Frost 1874-1963

-Pulitzer Prize: 4 times

-Contrast between the public and private Frost

-Demystifying poem interpretations

-Min 7. Reads the poem

-Appeal of the poem- apparently simple poem for basic decisions in life

-An affirmation of non-conformity. Go your own way.

-Autobiography. A tale with this uncle Peter. Inspiration for the poem

-How do we know that the person speaking in his poem took the road less travelled by?

-Examined one road and then took quickly at the other

-Rather than giving us evidence, it becomes an equivocation

-He wishes he could do everything.

-Sigh. Shifting point in the poem. Jumps forward to the future

Sigh. contentment? nostalgia? regret?

-A slight revision takes place ...and I (hesitation)

-The evidence before contradicts the statement of having taken the less travelled by road.

-He doesn't say if the difference made was good or bad. People seem to want to hear a positive message. 1973 readings.

-In the future I will provide a happy rationalization of the experience, not that it was good or bad.

-We would think well of ourselves. Our understanding of ourselves is a positive one.

-Self-deception. The title. Looking back to a decision. A terrible sensation: what if I have made the wrong decision?

-Indecision and equivocation. Could it be that they naturally lead to this kind of rationalisation? As fallible human beings , we will question our decisions.

-Clearly, the final two lines are not supported by the evidence that precedes them.

-Frost's darker side in his life was masked. Just as in the poem.

A darker depth, underside to the poem is an interpretation which has been overlooked.

Links

Some quotes on analysis of the poem.

Comments in a class blog. Yet another.

Pictures of Robert Frost.

Harold Pinter

2008-07-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

I will be reading and discussing in class the play A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter.

Play Summary
Flora and Edward sit at the breakfast table chatting of flowers and wasps and of the slight ache which Edward feels in his eyes. Their conversation, which seems so simple and is yet so strangely revealing, then shifts to the mysterious matchseller who has been standing by their back gate for many weeks. Somehow his presence intimidates them, particularly Edward, whose ache becomes aggravated as they discuss who the matchseller may really be, and they resolve to call him in for a direct confrontation. Flora goes out to invite him to come into the house, and when he appears he proves to be an old man, dressed in rags, and so feeble that it is doubtful whether he can see or hear. Seating him in a chair Edward speaks to him in an unnaturally jovial and somehow terrifying manner and soon Edward, without a word of reply from the matchseller, is so unstrung that he cannot go on. Flora takes over the interrogation, and again the old man's silence spurs the spilling out of buried frustrations and fears. Edward returns, and this time there is a note of desperation in his attempts to break through and understand the meaning of the matchseller. But it is Flora who leads the old man off at last, as a young girl might take her lover to the garden. As she goes she hands his tray of matches to Edward. He has lost the struggle, the nameless competition in which he has been engaged, and now it is he who has become the matchseller.

References to the play
Harold Pinter's homepage
A Slight Ache at Wikipedia

Performance Reviews
Article 12th May 2005
A blog entry 3rd July 2007

Times Online -28th July 2008
A blog entry -22nd July 2008

A forum discussion

About this Site

2006-11-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

This site has been written for students of Literature, particularly English Literature. It is meant to guide you to quality websites including those with information about authors, works and periods in English Literature. It offers guidance about how to perform research on the web as well as listings of information sources.

This site is still under construction.

For questions or comments about Virtual Reader please write to Claudia Ceraso at fceblog@gmail.com

Manuel Puig

2006-10-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Manuel Puig
Argentinean novelyst and playwright: 20th century

Biographical Articles:
Wikipedia entry on Manuel Puig: Life and Works
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Puig

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mpuig.htm

GLBTQ
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/puig_m.html

Biblion.com
http://www.biblion.com/litweb/biogs/puig_manuel.html

Literatura.org (Spanish)
http://www.literatura.org/Puig/Puig.html
Includes articles by Tomás Eloy Martínez and Ricardo Piglia

Interviews
Centre for Book Culture
By Jorgelina Corbatta, translated and adapted by Illan Stavans. Colombia, 1979
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/interview_puig.html

By Giovanna Pajetta. Crisis, Nº 41, April 1985 (Spanish)
http://www.literatura.org/Puig/repo_puig.html

Analysis of his works
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Characters, themes, style, historical context.
http://www.enotes.com/kiss-spider/

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3822/is_199804/ai_n8804966

Film
Boquitas pintadas
Painted Lips - Heartbreak Tango
Leopoldo Torre Nilsson - 1974
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071238/

Blogs
http://baires.elsur.org/archives/manuel-puig/
http://www.manuelpuig.org/

Trivia
A caricature
http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/939

An open letter to Fidel Castro signed by M. Puig
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4150

LATIN and OLD ENGLISH Dictionaries

2006-07-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

LATIN and  OLD ENGLISH Dictionaries

LATIN
Latin and Grammar Aid. University of Notre Dame
Type in the form of the word that you would expect to find in a dictionary or a truncated form of the word (e.g., stem only). 15,600 words.
http://archives.nd.edu/latgramm.htm

Perseus (Lewis & Short)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin

Dictionary of Medieval Latin for Celtic Sources
Royal Irish Academy
http://journals.eecs.qub.ac.uk/DMLCS/index.html
The List takes the form of a browsable, lemmatized, alphabetical list consisting mostly of two kinds of words: vocabulary that is foreign to Classical Latin and would not be found in a standard Latin dictionary, and Classical vocabulary that appears in unusual forms in our texts.
List of sources in the same site: http://journals.eecs.qub.ac.uk/dmlcs/frameset_links.html
Celtic texts, old English.

OLD ENGLISH
The Dictionary of Old English. Centre for Medieval Studies University of  Toronto.
The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first centuries (600-1150 A.D.) of the English language.
http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/
List of sources in the same site: http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/links.html Anglo Saxon, Old English, manuscripts, resources.

Researching: Search Engines

2006-07-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

ONLINE RESEARCH TOOLS &
WEBSITE ASSESSMENT

Categories: Search Engines - Collection Methods - Custom Made Engines
A collection of web resources for the English Literature student

______________________________________________

Search Engines: General

Search Engines, Meta Search Engines, Invisible Web, People & Organisations

Exeter University Library

http://www.library.ex.ac.uk/internet/search.html

Search Engines: Targeted scope of search

Google Book Search

http://books.google.com/

Search on pages of specific languages or countries

Google Language Tools

http://www.google.com/language_tools

Google University Search

http://www.google.com/options/universities.html

Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/

Google Directory: Reference - Machine indexed directory

Includes: Biography, Museums, Style Guides

Home Page: http://directory.google.com/

Reference: http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/

Google Advanced Search

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Google Advanced Search Tutorial

http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html

Google Advanced Operators –Search Engine Syntax

http://www.google.com/help/operators.html

The Open Directory Project - Human-edited directory

Home Page: http://dmoz.org/

Search Engines: Results Refiners

Results classified in categories

http://search.ask.com

http://vivisimo.com/

Results shown as a map

http://www.kartoo.com

Manual Rating of Results

http://www.ujiko.com

Search Engines: Custom Made

http://rollyo.com (create a list of 25 sites maximum/shared with other users)

http://lushe.net (add a button in your browser)

Search Engines Assessment

Primary Data Collection Methods

-Web Crawling

-Human Indexing

Brian Kelly reviews the search engines provided on UK University web sites.

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/webwatch/

______________________________________________

Website Assessment

Evaluating Website Content

Trash or Treasure? How to Evaluate Internet Resources

http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/tips/eval.html

Evaluating Website content

http://www.studygs.net/evaluate.htm

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

How does google rank webpages? A Link popularity checker

http://www.mypagerank.net/service_linkpopularity_index

Checking for dead links in a website

http://www.dead-links.com/

Finding the sites that link to a page (Alternative way to access the Invisible Web)

http://wholinkstome.com/

http://www.mypagerank.net/service_link_check_index

______________________________________________

The Invisible Web or Deep Web

Definition:

Newspaper article. Guardian, Search for the Invisible Web by Chris Sherman , Sep 6 2001

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,547140,00.html

A tutorial

UC Berkeley Library

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/InvisibleWeb.html

A list of Invisible Web search engines

Search Engine Watch (A Search Engines Portal)

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156181

Major Invisible Web Search Engines (including Pdf format)

The University of Wales - Aberystwyth

http://www.inf.aber.ac.uk/academicliaison/internet/invisible.asp

Recommended Search Strategies

UC Berkeley Library

Analyze your topic & Search with peripheral vision

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Strategies.html

Site Map

2006-06-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

ENGLISH LITERATURE I
From the earliest texts to Neo-classicism (600-1700)
A collection of web resources for the English Literature student

_____________________________________________

Representative Texts and Authors

1- The Old English Period

Beowulf

http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-on-steorarume_front-page.html

2- The Middle English Period: the Romances

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/gawain.htm

3- The Middle English Period: Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucer.htm

4- The Fifteenth Century: Ballads

Ballads collected by Child:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/index.htm

5- The Late Fifteenth Century: Morality

Everyman

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/everyman.htm

6- The English Renaissance: Sonneteers

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Philip Sidney
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/sidney.htm

E. Spenser
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/spenser.htm

W. Shakespeare
http://www.bartleby.com/70/index1.html

7- The English Renaissance: William Shakespeare
The Complete Works

http://www.ipl.org/div/shakespeare/

8- The Seventeenth Century

J. Donne

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/index.html

Background Reading

Beowulf

Translations

http://www.beowulftranslations.net/raff.shtml

The Electronic Beowulf

http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue9/reviews/beowulf.html

IPL Online Literary Criticism

http://www.ipl.org.ar/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=beo-279

Old English Links – University of Toronto

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~msundara/eng240/links.htm

Middle Ages

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medresource.htm

Ballads

Internet Sacred Texts Archive

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/index.htm

Pan-Hispanic Ballad Project

https://depts.washington.edu/hisprom/

English Ballad Archive 1500-1800

EMC (Early Modern Center- University of California-Santa Barbara)

http://emc.english.ucsb.edu/ballad_project/other_sites.asp

Shakespeare

Shakespeare - University of Virginia - US

http://etext.virginia.edu/shakespeare/

University of Victoria - CA

http://ise.uvic.ca/index.html

Books- Pronouncing Shakespeare CUP

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/literature/pronouncingshakespeare/links.htm

Shakespeare's Resource Centre

http://www.bardweb.net/

Shakespeare and the internet

http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/

Shakespeare’s Themes

http://www.shakespeare-online.com

E-notes

http://www.shakespeare.com/

Aristotle: Poetics

Introduction
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/resources/poetics/index.htm

Adapted version by Prof. Malcolm Heath

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/resources/poetics/poettran.htm

Download e-book

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1974

_____________________________________________

Evaluating Website Content

Trash or Treasure? How to Evaluate Internet Resources

http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/models/tips/eval.html

Evaluating Website content

http://www.studygs.net/evaluate.htm

Online Research Resources

Universities

Leeds University http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/resources/index.html#Teaching
University of Birmingham

http://www.shakespeare.bham.ac.uk/researchcollections.htm

University of York

http://www.york.ac.uk/library/subjects/englint.htm

Brock University

http://www.brocku.ca/english/elinks.html

University of Waterloo Library, Ontario

http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/resources/index.html

University of New Hampshire

http://www.reference.unh.edu/guides/englit.html

Standford University

http://library.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/medieval/oes.html

Yale University

http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/english/reneng.html

Libraries

The British Library

http://www.bl.uk/

ILP – Internet Library Project- Literary Criticism

British Pre-1500 Literature

http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?pd=British:+Pre-1500

British 1500-1700 Literature

http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?pd=British:+1500-1700

The British Academy

http://www.britac.ac.uk/portal/index.html

Harvard Libraries

http://lib.harvard.edu/

Enciclopedias

Britannica

http://www.britannica.com/

Bartleby

History of English and American Literature

http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/

Books

Cambridge Companions to Literature

http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CCL

Sites with Link Collections

Luminarium

http://www.luminarium.org/

Heorot Resources

http://www.heorot.dk/beo-links.html

Internet Medieval Source Book (Full texts)

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook2.html

Searchable Online Early Texts

http://eebo.chadwyck.com/about/about.htm

Medieval Studies

Nottingham University

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medieval/

Harvard University

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~medieval/links/

The Catholic University of America

http://libraries.cua.edu/instruct/irmedbyz.html

Worldwide Universities Network

http://www.wun.ac.uk/medieval/

University of Kent

http://www.kent.ac.uk/mts/research/index.htm

Glassglow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mars/CMRShome.htm

Bristol University

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medievalcentre/

The University of York

http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/cms/research/gateway.htm

Universidad Nacional del Comahue

http://www.uncoma.edu.ar/investigadores/htdocs/cecym/cecym2005/recursos.htm

Recursos en Internet para Medievalistas

http://www.geocities.com/medievalnet/

Medievalists Weblogs

http://fishpond.owlfish.com/medievallogs.html

Conferences

Cambridge University

http://www.medievalgender.org.uk/about.htm

Course of Studies Search Engine

http://www.educationuk.org/

http://www.netserf.org/Research/Degree_Programs/Medieval_Studies/

_____________________________________________

Image & Sound

Literary Conferences

http://literaryconferences.britishcouncil.org/

Museums

British Museum

http://the.british.museum/

Theatre

Shakespeare’s Globe

Official Site

http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/

Resources

http://www.bardweb.net/globe.html

University of Victoria – Canada

http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/stage/stagesubj.html

Study Guide

http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xGlobe.html#Globe

Shakespeare’s Birth Place Trust

http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/

Royal Shakespeare Company

http://www.rsc.org.uk/home/default.aspx

Films

Shakespeare’s Films

http://absoluteshakespeare.com/trivia/films/films.htm

http://absoluteshakespeare.com/links/films.htm

____________________________________________

Academic Writing

Essay

http://www.german.arts.gla.ac.uk/EssayGuidelines.doc

Downloadable

Writing Essays in Literature Classes

http://.studyqs.net/wrtstr2.htm

Research Paper

Owl Online Writing Lab

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_lit.html

Dissertations

University of Kent

http://www.kent.ac.uk/uelt/learning/online/dissertation.html

Thesis

Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

S. Joseph Levine, Ph.D.

Michigan State University

http://www.learnerassociates.net/dissthes/

How to Write a PhD Thesis by Joe Wolfe

School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html

Reference and Citation

Methods

Leeds University- General note

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/training/referencing/