Day: September 2, 2019

Clarissa, Week 1 (Preface, Letters 1-31, pp. 1-148): UPDATED

Hi folks,

Thanks for a great seminar on Thursday. As I mentioned in class, we’ll begin slowly with Clarissa and then speed up as we go along.

In class Thursday, we’ll read as a group the Preface, including the Principal Characters (35-8), then the first 31 letters, and conclude with the first letter of Lovelace to Belford (142-8).

For your first blog comment, I’d like you to mine your reading journals to talk about the transition from amatory fiction (Bowers) to a more circumstantial realist presentation (Watt) in SR. You might also want to think about the extent that SR might want us to recognize Clarissa’s characterization as potentially offering a ““reform’d coquet” (Spencer) style narrative (with other characters perceiving her this way) and then showing this reading of her to be wrong.

Hit the comment button on the left hand column (or the “leave a reply” box) and discuss what you noticed in the transition in a paragraph or so, along with some textual evidence taken from the texts you discuss. You are free to use the Bowers, Watt, or Spencer selections, or not, in your responses below.

Good luck,

DM

UPDATE: Please have these posted by Wednesday evening, so we can all read and review them before classtime. Thanks, DM