This page includes class notes and in-class writing assignments.

Jan 24: Fowles I

Course anthology at Jenn’s.

CONCEPTS FOR NEXT CLASS:
    Compassion: 

    Sympathetic Imagination:

FOWLES I DISCUSSION:

    Beauty and free will

    How do we identify duty?

  • Thomas: Sarah is dutiful because she waits for her lover.
  • Noel: Mrs. Poulteney’s duty is affected. Its not authentic, but contrived.  
  • Ben: No such thing as “true duty”.   That would most likely be love.
  • Susan: Altruism.
  • Willie: Mrs. Poulteney’s duty is to herself.  
  • Noel: Do Mrs. Poulteney and her servants epitomize “duty”??
  • Mita: Not really…
  • Brian: Mrs. Poulteney is from Middle Ages.  Her duty is compared with Victorian duty.

BUMP: Victorian sense of duty is hard for us to grasp.  Fowles is biased against it.  Mrs. Poulteney’s treatment of her servants is an issue of class.  At this time, Marx is writing Kapital in London.  Darwin also writing. 

Pharisees

Sarah. What is her love?  Love for servants is higher love, or agape.      

  • Noel: Sarah’s melancholia (depression).  She sees through facades and sees suffering and prays that it will end.  So, she has compassion.

Chapter 13: sarah is an enigma to not only us, but also the author himself

BUMP: That the English hate the French is an understatement.   

  • Ben: In this we are supposed to reconcile evolution and intelligent design

 

Jan 26: Browning: Egoism vs. Sympathetic Imagination

Leader: Puja

Compassion and sympathetic imagination are different.

Susan: Compassion is on the emotional level, while the sympathetic imagination is more intellectual

Ben: In Porphyria’s Lover, he can’t feel sympathy, oneness, or anything for this crazed murderer. 

Meghan: ability to visualize what is going on is sympathetic imagination

Willie doesn’t think so.

Bump:  Clinically insane person is described as having no ability for sympathetic imagination. Sociopath.

Abstractions mean nothing.

Eleanore: suspicious of sympathy.

Ben: plato says the most dangerous thing of all is too see things that aren’t true (sympathetic imagination)

Bump: end of Porphyria: death of god.

Eternal moment…
 

Feb 7: Evolution 2

Debate: evolution vs. the crazies

Pos: Noel

Darwin  not trying to overthrow religion or be controversial. 

His natural selection theory is a viable, scientific explanation

David Hall: science tries to understand the universe.  To say that the universe is to complex to understand is too confining

Neg Cross Examination: Susan

Is natural selection the only way evolution occurs?
No, it’s the most plausible.

What about the implications?
Just saying that

Neg Susan:

Natural selection is atheistic in nature.  It is a comment on God’s role in our life. 

Darwinism isn’t limited to one idea:
Pluralistic Darwinism: punctuated individualism

More than reason, there is a greater awareness even within our own selves. 

Cross examination: eleanore

Pos eleanore:

Is Christianity and Evolution compatible?

Science can be proved…

No evidence

We should not base our understanding of God on reason alone. 

Neg: Cheryl

Should instill a purpose for life

Cross E: Noel

Why should you instill this purpose?

Do other animals have purpose?

Pos Noel

Scientologists are crazies



Mar 23: Jane Eyre I

Too windy for undercliff.  Confined to Parlin.

First order of business: Shock Noel

  • The internet works!

Rachel interjects! 

  • Thomas, Susan, and Rachel want to really get to know everyone in this class. (especially in light of willie's death) 
  • camping trip? dinner? 
  • bring calendars next time to schedule 
  • tangent: future class activities

Rachel: arthur might have been a roman general

The Brontes: a virtual-tour 

  • Bronte family burried under floor of Bronte's father's church
  • atavistic: relating to something ancient
  • stained glass saints
  • "if i lose myself i save myself"
  • the moors: so rugged!  so barren!

    • Penistone Hill
    • sheep (baaa!).  moor is too rugged to put sheep

 

 

 

Susan leads! paper bag with "J.E.": Jane's emotional baggage.  Everybody takes out an object and talks about it.

  • Anush: optical illusion of old woman
    • Jane sees people as ugly
  • Ben: Zombie with bag over head
    • Jane takes on roles
  • Me: David and Goliath
    • Jane's defending herself vs. Helen's turning the other cheek
  • Eleanore: to shadows 
    • she says: representative of Jane reaching out for love, but everything she reaches out to is a shadow (abandons her and not there for her)
    • puja: jane lives childhood as a shadow
    • father/mother shadowy figure.  forshadows looking for rochester 
  • Vanessa: golden calf
    • she says: reminds her of jane's stubborn attitude
    • people in story don't understand religion
    • sus: idolatry 
      • important concept because it is a very important sin
      • Jane's search for perfect family
      • anush: looking for an ideal, but does not go for it
    • Sharon: cycle
      • she wants to get out.  she doesn't belong and tries to find new places.
    • Mita: UT tower
      • feeling of home: structure and purpose
      • school is escape from other things
    • Megan; Silver dollar: susan b. anthony
      • indicates class societies
      • proto-feministic
      • rachel: noone saw that she was a woman writer-->we see what we want to see 
      • noel: its not that feminitic; just about a woman rather than a man

Yay for Susan!  Best. Class. Ever.