I: Some General Structural and Formal
Topics:
1.
Discuss the author's (or authors') persona or literary identity and
situate it in relation to the total imaginative structure of the work or works.
By persona or literary identity, I mean the author’s implied personality,
temperament, point of view, values, and tastes. You will want to analyze the
interaction between this persona and the chosen subject of the narrative. You
can elaborate on this topic by discussing aesthetic qualities (style), tone or
larger generic structures, or thematic structures. Or, you can link this topic
up with any of the other topics that follow in this list.
2.
Discuss the relation of the author's view of things to that of one or more
characters and situate this relation within the total imaginative structure
of the work or works. Consider the author's total persona and how the author
locates the character within the author's own range of judgment.
3.
Compare two or more characters not just in relation to their personal
qualities but in respect to their function within the total imaginative
structure of the work(s). There needs to be some significant interpretive
rationale for your selection. You might choose characters who have some
similarity or contrast in personal characteristics and/or situation; or you
might choose characters who seem representative of larger categories such as
sexual identity, family function, social identity, cultural significance, or
metaphysical perspective.
4.
Discuss the significance of setting and situate this element within the
total imaginative structure of the work or works. How does the setting help to
define or influence the author's conception of possible values in the story? What
limits do settings place on human possibilities? What opportunities do they
open up? How do they enter into normative concepts of moral value or cultural
order?
5.
Discuss the narrative structure--the sequential structure of narrated
events--and situate this element within the total imaginative structure of the
works. Are there distinct structural divisions--for instance, divisions of
chronological order or pacing, point of view, represented subjects, or point of
view--in the sequence? What is the larger thematic or imaginative significance
of these divisions?
6.
Discuss tone in relation to the total imaginative structures of the
works; that is, is the tone comic, satiric, ironic, tragic, depressed, heroic,
or what? Tone emerges as an interaction between the emotional character of
experience in the characters being represented and the emotional response of
the author to the characters. What is the nature of this interaction? To what
extent does the emotional quality of the characters' experience set the tone? Is
there any tension between the author and the characters (as in irony and
satire)? What does tone--this emotional quality or mood--have to do with the
significance of the story or stories? Is tone in any way a crucial criterion of
experiential quality? And is the identification of experiential quality in any
way a primary concern of imaginative literature?
7.
Discuss the style of the work and situate it in relation to the total
imaginative structure of the work or works. Style is the verbal aesthetic
correlative for all the other properties I have mentioned in these topics. The
most obvious aesthetic properties of language are rhythm--including the
rhythmic structure of syntax or sentence structure--and variations in phonic
qualities (that is, qualities of sound). These purely aesthetic components are
correlated with the connotative aspects of diction or word choice, and these
aspects are themselves integrally related to the aesthetic quality of
represented objects. Style is evocative and expressive, registering mood and
state of mind. It reflects the characteristics of the author’s temperament and
manner of thinking. Is the sentence structure complex or simple? Indirect and
self-involved or direct and objective? Are the words abstract, subjective,
concrete, vivid? Is there much use of metaphor? Tone intermingles with style;
irony, pathos, and humor are also components of style and enter into an
analysis of the use of language and the way language reflects both the subject
matter and the author’s imaginative conception of the subject. How much and in
what way does the use of language evoke and make imaginatively vivid the
conceptual and emotional components of the literary representation?
8.
Discuss the use of symbols, allegorical figurations, or fantasy (supernatural
events) and situate this aspect of the work in relation to the total
imaginative structure of the work or works. How do the events serve the
particular purposes of the story? In what way are they lodged within a sense of
subjective reality? How are they integrated with our commonplace view of what
is objectively real? Is the relation between the subjectively and objectively
real itself an important thematic issue? For instance, is the concept of the
objectively real associated with science or with materialist sensualism? Is the
subjectively real associated with a spiritual or religious conception of the
world?
9.
Discuss the total imaginative structure, that is, the total structure of
meaning in a work or works. What are the largest governing elements and
what is the relation among them? How do the emotional (tonal), sensory
(aesthetic), and conceptual (thematic) elements fit together to constitute a
total structure of meaning? If you like, you can argue that there is no total
determinate structure of meaning and that the elements of the work can be
arranged in a virtually infinite variety of interpretive ways to produce an
infinite number of possible significations, but you must use this argument to
illuminate a specific work or works.
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II: Some General Themes or Subject
Topics:
1.
Discuss the concept of individual identity and situate this concept
within the total imaginative structure of the work or works. You might pay
particular attention to the problem of the secret identity or the divided self,
or you might choose to consider the elementary facultative components and
personality components used to depict characters, and you might want to
consider the way these components enter into the larger categories such as
sexual identity, family function, society, humanity, life, and the universe. You
might want to consider the way the structure of individual identity enters into
normative judgments of moral value or cultural order.
2.
Discuss relations of sexual identity and/or family functions in one or more
works and situate these in relation to the total imaginative structure of
the work or works. Men and women, fathers, mothers, children--are these
categories important? If so, how and why? How do they fit in with tone,
authorial point of view, setting, social and political themes, or the author's
philosophical or religious views? Does it matter if the author is a male
chauvinist, a radical feminist, a militant homosexual, or a celibate bachelor? If
the sexual character of the author does matter, how does it matter? How does it
influence his or her depiction of moral or cultural order? How does it
influence the depiction of sexual identity and sexual relations in the story? What
relation does it have to metaphysical views and to the total imaginative
structure of the author's work?
3.
Discuss the social and/or political themes and situate these themes in
relation to the total imaginative structure of the work or works. Is there a
critique of an established social order? Is there any implied alternative? What
are the basic elements of the social order? In what way is social order
influenced by individual identity, sexual identity, and family structures? Are
class relations important? What is the relation of social structure to
socioeconomic organization? What is the structure of power and/or authority in
the society?
4.
Discuss the concept of biotic "nature" or "life" in
one or more works and identify the function of these concepts within the total
imaginative structure of the work or works. In these works, does biology
regulate human destiny, both individual and cultural? Or is there some
spiritual world that transcends biology? What is the nature of life itself? What
about evolution, the development of organic forms through the interactive
relation of organisms and their environment? In what way is morality or culture
dependent on or in conflict with biotic nature?
5.
Discuss the concept of the specifically human and identify its
significance within the total imaginative structure of the work or works. What,
if anything, distinguishes human beings from the lower animals? What are the
dominant elements in the human constitution? Are the elements of human nature
in concord or in conflict? How do these elements enter into conceptions of
sexual identity, of family functions, of social organization, or of culture? What
is their relation to the metaphysical (religious or philosophical) views in the
work or works?
6.
Discuss the philosophical or religious views implicit in the work or works
and situate them in relation to the total imaginative structures of the work or
works. Philosophical and religious views concern themselves with the nature of
life, human existence, and the ultimate forces and powers in the cosmos. How do
these larger categories correlate with personal and sexual identity, social or
cultural order, moral views or normative value structures? Do the larger
categories regulate the more particular categories, or do they themselves merely
reflect other, more elementary forces within the author's imaginative universe?
How much direct attention is given to metaphysics? Is it a main focus? Is there
any conflict in the author's sense of what constitutes the ultimate forces in
the universe? Is the author in conflict with himself or with the ultimate
structure of the universe? What is the place and potential of human freedom or
human development within the total universal order?
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1.
Discuss the role of mate selection strategies, particularly conflicts
between male and female strategies. Consider the greater investment of
females in offspring, and the tension between male investment in offspring and
male disposition for multiple sexual partners. Consider the psychological
dimensions--motivational, emotional--and the ethical or moral articulations of
differential male and female mating strategies. Consider differences in short
and long-term strategies. Consider values such as attractiveness, health,
kindness, intelligence, status, and wealth, as criteria of mate selection. Analyze
the way in which those criteria translate into feelings and judgments for the
characters, and assess the normative value structures within which the author
situates those dramatic relations. Assess conflicts with relatives (close kin,
parents, for instance) over mating preferences, and tensions or disparities
between conventional social norms and the individual judgments or choices of
characters. Is male jealousy an issue? Female? Are their differences in the
types and sources of these forms of jealousy? Are males more jealous of
potential sexual infidelity, and females of emotional infidelity, or not?
2.
Discuss the conflict between mating investment and parenting investment in
the story. Consider the differences in male and female parenting investment
and the three factors that regulate paternal investment in offspring: (a) aid
to offspring success; (2) paternal certainty; (3) other mating opportunities
for males. Consider also the way in which female reproductive strategies
balance off mating effort—maintaining male support—and parenting effort. Are
step-parents involved? If so, do they invest less willingly or not at all in
step-children? What conflicts emerge from second marriages involving children
from previous marriages? What stresses arise because one parent wishes for more
investment in parenting or in mating effort than the other parent?
3.
Discuss conflicts that emerge from child-parent conflict. Do children
and parents have different interests? Do they struggle over the distribution of
resources? Do parents favor one child over another and distribute resources
accordingly? What determines resource distribution? Do children want parents or
other relatives to die so they can inherit wealth? Do older relatives resist
premature resource acquisition by younger relatives? Do parents ever sacrifice
themselves for their children, or vice versa? Do parents try to enforce values
that reflect their own fitness interests rather than those of their children,
and do they invest those interests with moral force? Do children ever do the
same?
4.
Discuss the way in which the tension between “somatic” and reproductive life
effort structures the behavior depicted in the story. Somatic effort is the
effort directed toward gaining or keeping wealth, status, material goods. Reproductive
effort is the effort devoted to mating, to parenting, and to helping kin. How
do the desires for wealth and status enter into the characters’ motives? Are
those desires partly in tension with family bonds or romantic desires? Are they
partly interdependent with family bonds or romantic desires? Is there any
normative organization of good and bad characters on the basis of the focus
characters give to somatic as opposed to reproductive motives? (That is, are
bad characters hungry for wealth and status, while good characters devoted
themselves to love and family?) If so, how do the interdependence of somatic
and reproductive motives complicate that moral pattern? What are the
conventional social norms depicted? What is the author’s relation to those
norms?
5.
Discuss the tension between affiliative behavior and dominance behavior in
social life. Are “getting ahead at the expense of others” and “getting
along constructively” major dimensions of social life? If so, what specific
goals or motives are involved in each? What personality factors contribute to
each? In what ways do they conflict? Are they also in some ways interdependent?
How does the acquisition and distribution or sharing of resources enter into
this dimension? (Resources include both material goods and social and other
opportunities.) How are “sympathy” or “empathy” involved in this opposition? In
what way do conventional social status hierarchies complicate or help organize
or produce conflict in affiliative behavior? In what way do the desires for
mating or parenting or aiding kin complicate or conflict with dominance
behavior? For both affiliative and dominance behaviors, what forms of emotion
are carried over, as metaphors or emotional parallels, from the more intimate
relations of mating and family life? What is friendship? Is it enabled by
shared interests (material interests, fitness interests) or concerns (mutual
involvement in some activity)? Is it a form of mutual support within an
established social framework? Is it an economy of complementary or common
affections, ideas, beliefs, values, perceptions? Is friendship or social
bonding a primary motive, in life or in this story, or is it supplementary to
some deeper need based on more intimate shared fitness interests? Is “power” in
itself a motive? Does it serve as an end in itself? If so, what must be
sacrificed to it? How does the assertion of power fit within the implied
normative framework of value in the story?
6.
Discuss the tension or interaction between elemental fitness interests,
somatic and reproductive, and the functions of human intellect, mind, or
imagination. Is the mind used chiefly as an instrument to satisfy needs for
survival and reproduction, for acquiring resources, acquiring mates and
sustaining relationships, raising children, calculating kin relations, and
negotiating social relations, including establishing status and forming social
coalitions? Does the mind have ends and aims of its own? Does it provide a
distinct set of motives and forms of fulfillment? What function is served by
observation, intelligence, imagination? Why is art important? Science? General
knowledge? Is some philosophical or imaginative conception of the world an
essential part of individual identity? How do mental acquirements enter into
social identity? Into mate selection? How do mental acquirements interact with
other features of temperament or personal identity? What are the features of
mental life? Are there distinct faculties or aptitudes for curiosity, analytic
precision, originality, or articulateness? Do spatial and verbal skills diverge
in orientation and social function? Are there significant gender differences? How
important are all these issues and questions to the characters in the story? To
the author? Do distinctions deriving from mental aptitudes and mental
cultivation form significant fault lines in the organization of characters into
communities or sets? Into protagonists or antagonists?