Welcome English 603! (Discourse Chronicle)
Posted by Bobby Kuechenmeister on November 13, 2005 
Comments(42)
Comments(42) [Dr. Ives’s Eng 603 students may post here about their research guide projects as an alternative to a poster session. BK]
category: Bibliography, Pedagogy
Throughout my research process, I came across a variety of interesting facts concerning L. Frank Baum and his writings. Although Baum is best known for writing _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_, he continued the Oz series and wrote additional unrelated books until his death in 1919. One of the later books in the Oz series, _The Patchwork Girl of Oz_, is particularly intriguing due to the exclusion of what was intended to be chapter 21, “The Garden of Meats.” The illustrations that were to accompany that chapter are disturbing, to say the least, as they depict the heads of children sprouting from the ground while giant vegetables are standing nearby or watering them. After Baum submitted a copy of _The Patchwork Girl of Oz_ to his publishers at Reilly & Britton, F. K. Reilly wrote him a letter dated November 23, 1912, suggesting that Baum omit the chapter or else rewrite it entirely. Reilly articulated his concern that the chapter concerning the Garden of the Meats would elicit strong criticism, as well as stated that the chapter was really unnecessary to the story overall. Baum responded with a letter dated November 27, 1912, in which he stated that he did not care for the chapter either and that he felt it would be better for him to write about a meeting between the Marshmallow Twins rather than to completely omit the chapter. Neither the rewritten chapter nor the galley proofs of the original chapter remain in the publishers’ archives, which is unfortunate granted that neither chapter appeared in the finished copy of _The Patchwork Girl of Oz_. The book contains only 28 chapters, rather than the 29 that were originally intended. Furthermore, one of the pictures that was to be included in chapter 21 and that features a woman holding a snake, or perhaps an eel, while scolding two children, remains a mystery as to its pertinence to the chapter. I apologize for not being able to show you the pictures at this time, but when we meet in class, I will pass around _The Best of the Baum Bugle, 1965-1966_, which contains the story about the Garden of the Meats as well as the illustrations to which I have referred.
I chose to do my project on H.G. Wells, not realizing that he penned more words than Shakespeare and Dickens combined. (by the time I stopped running in circles pulling out my hair, it was too late to change..ha ha!) I discovered several important things about research. First, an author with an name like H.G. means you have to search under all forms of his name. With the “.” and without; with spaces between, and without; and with his full name. I eventually narrowed the scope down to his science fiction works, but even then, there was an incredible amount of material. One of the more important things I discovered through this, is that “science fiction” as a genre is not covered effectively in the databases. Throughout your career, if you happen to be in this genre, anthologies and other reference works will have to be employed. Wells published many of his better known novels first as a series in magazines. For textual critics, collating this would be an overwhelming task! Most of his books were published simulatenously in America and England. Perhaps the most interesting is “The Time Machine.” The magazine series is different than both of the novels. The London is considered the definitve edition, although I am still investigating why. Wells had a PHD in science and actually published some textbooks. He was really into Darwanism, and most of his science fiction had very strong political roots, perhaps this is one reason why the American edition is vastly different than the London one. I just was notified that these books are ready from interlibrary loan, and Cushing has the other I need…so hopefully, I will be able to give more information about this on Dec 1. Happy posting! đ
Frank Norrisâs novel, _McTeague_, which has proven to be his most famous and well-respected work, was first published by Doubleday & McClure on February 25, 1899. Norrisâs handwritten manuscript of _McTeague_ served as the printerâs copy for this edition.
Norris died of peritonitis resulting from a burst appendix in 1902; the manuscript for _McTeague_ apparently remained in his publisherâs possession until 1928. In this year, Doubleday, Doran & Company (a publishing house which had evolved out of Doubleday & McClure) published 245 copies of _The Argonaut Manuscript Limited Edition of Frank Norrisâs Work_, each of which included a leaf from the _McTeague_ manuscript inserted in a manila envelope secured to the endpaper at the front of Volume I. Thus the manuscript for Norrisâs most famous novel was split up into 245 pieces, and dispersed to various locations throughout the United States.
Over the past three decades, James D. Hart of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeleyâwhere the most complete archival collection of Norrisâs work, Frank Norris Collection of Papers and Related Material, is housedâled a campaign to recompile the _McTeague_ manuscript. Though his campaign was relatively successful, many leaves of the manuscript still remain at large. Most are located in various archival libraries throughout the U.S.
The most important thing that I learned in conducting research for my reference guide and primary source study projects is courage. I did not begin my quest for textual information for my author by having courage; rather, that came after I returned from my trip or at some point while I was at the Marion Wade Center, which houses more archives of Sayers than all other libraries combined. However, I would not have dared to travel to a major archive center for my author Dorothy L. Sayers if it were not for having some initial degree of nerve or at least desperation; yes, it was probably desperation for obtaining textual information in a timely manner on Sayersâ that motivated me in the beginning.
I think that perhaps a transformation of courage as a scholar began when I was into my second day at the Wade Center. I spent my first day at the center analyzing Sayersâ manuscripts in Xerox form although I was well aware that the center had in their vault the original hand-written manuscript of Sayersâ book _Gaudy Night_. Somehow I managed to ask the very nice, but intimidating, librarian to see the original text; although, it felt a little like asking to see the crown jewels outside of their glass-enclosed security case. She asked me for a good reason for my request before she would seek clearance to go to the vault and get the original manuscript. At this point I was feeling a little shaky, but I remembered what Dr. Ives said about the problems with working with photocopies, and I came up with my âmystery punctuationâ excuse. I said to the librarian that I could not tell from the Xerox copy whether there was a period on the title page inscription or if it was piece of lint. The librarian was a little stunned, as if thinking to herself, âboy, thatâs a new one!â
Consequently, I was given access to the document that Sayers touched and wrote upon in her own hand with her own ink on her own paper! Touching the pages of _Gaudy Night_ came close to just about any religious experience I ever had. Although that life-changing experience gave me new found courage as a scholar, it was really Dr. Ivesâ comment to the class that has made the difference. Dr Ives stated that we were indeed scholars and had every right to have access to archives.
My hope for everyone working on their projects is that they will take that advice to heart and develop the courage to ask to see the âcrown jewelsâ of academia.
All the best,
Debbie Pfuntner
What has surprised me most in researching Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, for my project this semester is how difficult it was to get started compiling a bibliography on the most prolific female writer and translator in early modern England. I thought I had decent research skills, but I was initially stumped by the variations in name under which Sidney was listed in various databases (Sidney, Herbert, Pembroke) and the almost total absence of indexing prior to about 1980 for any materials related to her.
The second surprise I had was how influential Sidney has been in spite of the fact that she was fairly unknown in contemporary critical circles until so recently. While I knew that she was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, I was unaware of her active role as patroness, friend, and mentor to so many other writers in her time: Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, niece Mary Wroth, Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary. She also influenced others with whom she may or may not have had a direct acquaintance, including Ben Jonson, John Donne, and Shakespeare.
Finally, what has struck me most forcibly recently (as I dig into my primary source study on Sidney’s translation of Garnier’s _Tragedie of Antonie_) is the mysterious nature of texts produced by early modern women. For many texts from the time period written by men, we have a manuscript or related letters extant, some materials that help us to place the works in context, sketchy though that may be. For texts by women, the writer is usually at a still greater remove. While about 15 or 16 manuscripts of the Psalms that Sidney translated with her brother have survived (because of Philip’s involvement in them!), no manuscript for any of her other translations or original poems has surfaced. I suppose that makes it easier to be an editor with a bibliographic bent rather than a focus on authorial intent!
During the course of this term project looking at Edith Wharton, I was surprised to learn that her writing career had not flourished until she met Rutger Bleecker Jewett, who Shari Benstock describes in _No Gifts From Chance_ as responsible for “nominating her for literary prizes and securing for her the largest royalty advances and serial rights contracts then known in American publishing” over 16 years (Benstock 354).
Something else worth noting I discovered comes from Edie Thornton’s article in _Arizona Quarterly_, titled “Selling Edith Wharton: Illustration, Advertising, and Pictorial Review.” Thornton looks at how Wharton’s _The Mother’s Recompense_ was printed in serial format and what role advertisements played alongside it. Advertisements were strategically placed at critical points in the story, such as when a main character provides a social critique about fashion and beauty products. One would see an ad of that type next to that passage, undermining the point of that character’s speech. To make room for ads and other illustrations, some parts of Wharton’s text was deleted, under much duress from Wharton.
Margaret Cavendish was a woman with a great ambition for fame who got very lucky in catching a husband who not only encouraged her literary activities but kept company with a coterie of philosophers and poets with whom she was able to interact. She published in almost every genre, poetry, plays, philosophy, epistolary, biography, autobiography, even what is considered science fiction.
For my primary source study, I have been looking at edited copies of Cavendish’s autobiography from around 1900ish. Both editors seemed to feel that her writing was good “for a woman” and that while her philosophy was ridiculous, some of her poetry, some of her “letters”, her biography of her husband and autobiography of herself were among her best work. This is despite the fact that she seemed to be rather proud of her philosophy and less concerned with her poetry.
I agree that while her accomplishments were remarkable for a woman at her time, most of her success in due to her husband’s encouragement and rank. She was not, as were other women writers of the time such as Mary Sidney and Elizabeth Cary, at all well educated. While the writing style of her autobiography, full of incredibly long convoluted sentences full of commas, semi-colons, and colons, may be due more to acceptable style of the time rather than her own faults, the text at points does become a bit excessive and I have to agree with the editors who say that one of Cavendish’s faults was not knowing what to disinclude.
I include for your amazement a piece of one of Cavendish’s excessive sentences, which is a portion of a list of descriptions she gives regarding her mother’s children (herself, four sisters, and three brothers):
“…there was not any one crooked, or any ways deformed, neither were they dwarfish, or of a giant-like stature, but every ways proportionable; likewise well featured, cleer complexions, brown haires, but some lighter than others, sound teeth, sweet breaths, plain speeches, tunable voices, I mean not so much to sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor warling in the throat, or speaking through the nose, or hoarsly, unless they had a cold, or squeakingly, which impediments many have: neither were their voices of too low a strain, or too high, but their notes and words were tuneable and timely…”
In this semester, I have prepared the research guide to George Washington Cable (1844-1925). While I study Cableâs scholarship, I realized that Cable is one of the significant Southern writers in the early 20th Century. Despite his background as a Southern writer, his literary main theme was the political and social criticism of racial discrimination and other injustice of Southern social systems that his Southern neighbors wished to conceal.
Cable began as a columnist under the pseudonym âDrop Shotâ to the New Orleans Picayune in 1870. The discipline of writing a column and the influence of literary companions allows Cable to try to incorporate the narratives, the settings, the characters he had collected into a few tales. Mark Twain called Cable the âSouth’s finest literary genius.â One interesting thing in his literary career was a lecture tour with Mark Twain from 1884 to 1885. In 1884, Cable agreed to Mark Twain’s proposal to go on a lecture tour. Mark Twain repeated his popular Mark Twain platform performance, and Cable read his Creole stories and sang a few Creole dialectic songs. The money was good, $450 a week, but the grueling schedule often tired Cable. Some mild trouble arose over Cableâs insistence on keeping the Sabbath, and the tour ended in confusion. Mark Twain and Cable were never boon companions, but their friendship and mutual respect continued during the lecture tour. The inquiry of Cable’s literary association with Mark Twain is the incessant topic in Cable scholarship.
While I have researched Cable’s works, I became interested in one of Cable’s earliest works, âJean-ah Pouquelin.â It was written in Gothic style and was published first at Scribnerâs Monthly in 1875. According to Alice Hall Petry, compared with Cable’s most famous novel, The Grandissimes, âJean-ah Pouquelinâ is not lacking in technical excellence and deserves to take serious consideration. Besides, this work reveals Cable’s strengths as a local colorist and his handling of folk motifs and characters. In this work, we can also find Cableâs deep Creole heritage.
Pulp fiction writers have a reputation for writing in a style similar to newspaper journalists; the style is direct and streamlined; it is done quickly, with minimal editing. For my primary source study of Dashiell Hammett I examined the short story, “Two Knives,” which was published near the end of his writing career, in 1934. I found that the manuscript contained notable changes between the first printing. Subsequent printings were all derived from the 1934 Collier’s edition, though these all contained minimal changes.
One of the changes I found particularly striking where that the Collier’s edition had none of the mild cursing or profane use of “God” that the manuscript version did. This cleaner version makes the characters seem more polite than they do in the manuscript and it also makes the underworld seem nicer.
Doing collation was a new experience for me. Although tedious at times, I found the discovery of alternative texts exciting. I also enjoyed finishing each collation and determining the placement of the edition within the stemma.
In the course of producing my research guide to Siegfried Sassoon, one of the major British World War I poets, several aspects of his writings and career stimulated my interests. First, I was intrigued by the fact that, although Sassoon was renowned for the use of bold irony and satires in his realistic war poems, he had usually found his subject matter in sunrise and music in his earlier career and thus his poetic mode at that time had been highly lyrical and pastoral. For instance, âBefore Day,â which was the best and the first piece in his Sonnets (1909), aptly illustrates the Wordsworthian moment of hushed mysticism. A comparison of the different texts of the poem could make it easy to observe the poetâs efforts to refine his language and imagery toward the end. In particular, note the effect, in the 1911 text of Twelve Sonnets, of the expressions âcoldâ and âthat waken meâ and compare it with what is aroused by âoldâ and âI call theeâ in the 1909 text of Sonnets. (You may find a link to the texts at the bottom of this posting.)
Another aspect of Sassoonâs writings and career that proved even more interesting to me is related with the publication history of a poem, âTo My Mother.â The most intriguing phase of its publication is when it was initially printed, according to Geoffrey Keynesâs descriptive bibliography of Siegfried Sassoon, in the Flameâa British Independent Labour Party (ILP) magazineâin December 1925 under the title âTo An Inconspicuous Friend.â The poem appeared later in the form of a single book with the current title as No. 14 of the Ariel Poems Series published by Faber and Gwyler in 1928. And, according to Keynes, changes were also made in the Ariel text. What is more noteworthy in the later text is that it includes a colored drawing by Stephen Tennant of a mother and a child with flowers around them, in addition to the front cover drawing of a bunch of flowers.
On the one hand, the meaning of the 1925 text, âTo An Inconspicuous Friend,â is operating within the interplay between the textâs âbibliographical,â âlinguistic,â and âcontextualâ codesâi.e., the fact that itâs a contribution to a periodical publication without any illustrative element, a less clear title, and moreover the political context of the magazine and the organization behind it respectively. Scholarly biographers of Sassoon note that the poet once made his debut as Literary Editor of the Daily Herald, the paper intended to espouse and explain the Socialist cause and attracted the poet with âthe opportunity to promote the Socialist cause through literatureâ (Roberts 141).
The textual condition of the meaning in the 1928 Ariel text, on the other hand, involves significant changes especially in the linguistic and the bibliographical codes, which in turn affect the shape of the overall meaning of the text. The previous political context of the poem is suddenly checked or channeled into a marginal realm by the interactive efforts of the author and the illustrator; the authorâs decision to change the title and the illustratorâs effort to embody the authorâs intention in a cooperative manner. Unfortunately, however, in spite of my utmost efforts to locate the 1925 text and the Flame in which the text appeared, I have been informed of the fact that the major archives of the ILP publications do not have a copy of the magazine. I am nonetheless happy to find the fascinating topic to which my learning from this course might be readily applied!
(In an hour, I will post a link to my temporary blog at which the images of the 1928 Ariel text of âTo My Motherâ and the drawings are available for your glimpse. Other images of âBefore Dayâ in its 1909 and 1911 texts will be also accessible there. But donât forget to return to Bobbyâs blog!)
The images of Sassoon’s texts are now available. Enjoy!
For an author who published only four works of fiction and really nothing else of critical note, Nathanael West has inspired a significant amount of critical scholarship since his premature death in an automobile accident in 1940. During his lifetime West was largely ignored by critics and completely ignored by the book-buying public, but beginning in the late 1950âs interest in Westâs work began to build momentum, as evidenced by the 1957 publication of The Complete Works of Nathanael West and the 1958 release of a film version of his novel Miss Lonelyhearts. Since that time West and his work have been a continuing subject of critical scholarship and dissertations. One of the two bibliographies published on lists 507 works of critical scholarship on West. The Research Guide I have compiled lists another nearly 200 works on West (not including dissertations), most of which have been published since 1976, when the last West bibliography was published.
Why the continued interest in West? Early scholarship focused almost exclusively on Miss Lonelyhearts, largely considered to be Westâs masterpiece, but the emphasis of more recent scholarship has shifted towards Westâs final work, the quintessential Hollywood novel, The Day of the Locust. This shift seems to have coincided with increased interest in the study of film and mass culture and the use of Southern Californiaâand Hollywood in particularâas a metaphor for America and the American Dream. Another significant vein that more recent scholarship mines is an examination of Westâs place in the literary sub-genres concerning the Grotesque (Black Humor) and the Apocalypse. Westâs work has been most frequently compared to that of Flannery OâConnor and William Faulkner as examples of the Grotesque.
The Primary Source Study I am conducting examines the composition of Westâs second novel, Miss Lonelyhearts. According to West biographer Jay Martin, West began working on his second novel in mid-1929 and finally published it four years later, in 1933. In 1932 West published short stories from his work-in-progress in a little magazine called Contact that West co-edited with William Carlos Williams. These early versions of Miss Lonelyhearts document the evolution of Westâs work on this novel and one of the goals of the Primary Source Study is to discuss the revisions that West made to these periodical publications. Miss Lonelyhearts also had a troubled publication history because the novelâs original publisher, Liveright, went bankrupt just as Miss Lonelyhearts was being released. The printer refused to release 2,000 of the 2,200 copies of the book until payment was received from the publisher. Payment never came and two months later Harcourt, Brace bought the publication rights and the plates from the original printer and released Miss Lonelyhearts under their own imprint. The Primary Source Study will therefore include a publication history of Miss Lonelyhearts.
when i first started working on this research guide, i had little information about the importance and technique of the bibliographical work and how bibliographes manipulate their work.It was entirely a new discipline for me,especially being introduced to the sophisticated computarized library system.As a student from Iraq who was deprived of such studying technique, i had too much to learn. The beginning is always difficult but it is time to go along with modernism in academia. The great support for me was from the instructor of this class,Dr.Ives. Without her encouragement,consideration,and believe in my abilities i would not have achieved the end of the project.
I had to start from the v.beginning and to learn the alphbet of the library system,such as, the searching tools, many different databases,Evan lib.catalogue,and many other things.The huge amount of information was too much for a beginner in the field.And while you all were working on the second section of the research,i was still struggling with the first one.I worked for twenty-two hrs.contineouly to be able to submit the first and second parts together.
I have choosen my writer,Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman,arbitrarly.But then found that she was the famous woman writer of her time.Though she was well-known through her life-time,she was completely ignored after her death.Her works received special attention from scholars in the 1980s only.she wrote more than 14vol.short story, tens of novels, volumes in poetry,plays,science fictin,terror stories(especially cat stories,this is for you Charlott),literary criticism,strategy of teaching,and a work which was adopted to a motion picture play. It was not easy at all for me to trace the works of such a prolific writer but i accepted the challenge.
At last,i was so hopeful to recieve the manuscript of one of her works from London,but when it arrived i found that it is the same microfilm we have here at Evans Library,and the same book copy i have.so for me,there is no original work to my author to ‘touch’ or ‘smell’to feel the ‘prcious jewelry’of the old works.but i have in my memory the archival works of Poe and Ernest Hamingway which the Iraqi Fulbright team had a special opportunity to go through at Thomas Cooper Lib.back in South Carolina.I still can feel the touch and smell the audor of the precious works of the great literary figures.
Special thanks for Dr.Ives and for all of you.
Methal
Christopher Smart, an eighteenth-century poet, is commonly known as the mad poet who wrote some religious and lyrical poems. âA mad poet in the Enlightment, even he was a religious monomania!â Fascinated with his biographical facts, I started to my (bibliographical!)journey to this poetâs life and works.
His major genre is considered to be poetry, but his works also cover songs, librettos, nonfictions for periodicals and translations. Among the works,a book-length poem,âJubilate Agnoâ caught my attention. This poem has important meaning in terms of Smartâs reputation as a great poet. Before the discovery and publication of this poem, Smart has been relatively neglected for two centuries. However, the discovery of this poem drew attentions of modern scholars and critics and made them reappraise Smart as one of the greatest poets in eighteenth century.
The publication history of âJubilate Agnoâ is also interesting. This poem was composed during Smartâs confinement in Mr. Potter’s madhouse, 1759-63. However, this unconventional poem was not published in his time and its manuscript was used just as a document in poetic mania to examine the madness of another poet, William Cowper. Then, this poem remained in Colonel Proberâs family papers before it was discovered by William Force Stead. In 1939, Stead published this masterpiece under his devised title, “Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam.” Shortly after that, W.H. Bond re-edited the manuscript of the poem and published in “Jubilate Agno”(1954).
The considerable emendations appeared in these two editions are very interesting and problematic. First of all, the title of the poem was totally different and the organization of the manuscript also appeared in different way.
The dating and order of âJubilate Agnoâ and its revisions of editors have been a main theme of textual scholars of Smart and even until now various discussions about it have been continued among them. In this semester, I also decided to take part in this discussion. Would it be a sweet dream or nightmare? I’m not sure now.
Some group John Dos Passos with Hemingway & Steinbeck because of his populist novels of the 1920s & ’30s. His 1925 novel _Manhattan Transfer_ is popular in American lit. courses, & his 1938 trilogy _U. S. A._ is highly acclaimed but about a thousand pages too long for most reading schedules. DP, however, produced just as much of his oeuvre (a total of 43 books) in the ’40s, ’50s, & ’60s, & he also wrote plays, prose poetry, & nonfiction. I’m focusing on DP’s prolific sociopolitical writings for a variety of journals & popular magazines.
DP’s collection of essays & sketches of Spain, _Rosinante to the Road Again_ (1922), which he wrote after spending time post-Harvard in Spain imbibing socialism along with the sangria, first appeared as fourteen articles in a handful of leftist journals. In addition, in 1938, after establishing himself as a writer, he reissued three sections of _Rosinante_ as part of a nonfiction trilogy titled _Journeys Between Wars_, probably partly because of his new relationship with Harcourt, Brace and Company, which published most of his work of the 1930s. My primary source study will consider these two book versions of _Rosinante_. Collation reveals minor differences in the texts. For example, Spanish passages were not only lengthened, but Harcourt added translations. The original George H. Doran issue is on better paper with a slightly larger font & more generous margins. (Unfortunately, neither publisher included illustrations; Rosinante is Don Quixote’s horse, so I could have had fun with those Cervantes Project images!)
By the ’50s, DP’s sociopolitical journalism turned more conservative. This ideological shift over the long course of his writing career should be of interest both to those studying DP’s life, in particular, & to anyone interested in 20th c. literary history, in general.