For Friday: Leskov, The Steel Flea & Critical Paper (see below)

For Friday, be sure to read Leskov's story, "The Steel Flea" (108-136): there are no questions, but we will have an in-class response when you arrive on Friday (so make sure to read!).

Also, I assigned the Critical Paper assignment today, though it's not due for several weeks.  Start thinking about it, and let me know if you have any questions!

Critical Paper: Literary Time Travelers

Imagine that one of the authors from class has miraculously escaped his own century and emerged in our own.  Now that he is trapped in this world, being an author, he will naturally start writing about the 21st century much as they did the 18th or 19th century.  What would he think of this brave new world?  Was it everything he hoped and dreamed of?  Would he be amazed, inspired, and proud of humanity?  Or simply pissed off, since his descendants clearly didn’t read any of his books? 

Choose ONE of the books from class and write a 4-5 page paper from the author(s) perspective using the ideas in his book, poem, or stories.  Would Voltaire approve of 21st century justice after escaping the barbarism of the 18th century?  Would Wordsworth or Keats be sympathetic to the Green Movement—or horrified by Climate Change?  Would the Grimm Brothers like how Disney adapted their stories for a new generation?  And what would Pushkin, Tolstoy, or other Russian writers think of the conflicts of class and race going on in America today?  The trick to this paper is using ideas and passages in the stories to compare to situations in our own world.  What does Voltaire seem to satirize most about his society in Candide?  Would he find the same things in America today?  What would he satirize if he were writing in the 21st century?  Try to use the book as a frame to examine our own society through old ideas which, when read, become quite new and relevant once more. 

MLA FORMAT

Be sure to introduce quotations by offering a brief introductory tag, so we know who is speaking and from what source.  Then cite the page number at the end so we can find this quotation.  For example, a quotation from “The Queen of Spades” might look like this: As Pushkin writes in his story, “The Queen of Spades,” “Chekalinsky shuffled.  Hermann chose his card and placed it on the table, covering it with a heap of bank notes.  It was like a duel” (Pushkin 25). 

The last page of your paper (which doesn’t count as one of the 4-5 pages) should be a Works Cited page, listing alphabetically all the works you quote in your paper.  Make sure to list individual poems and stories and not just the book they came from.  For example, if you quote the passage above from “The Queen of Spades,” it should look like this:

Pushkin, Alexander.  “The Queen of Spades.”  Russian Short Stories from

     Pushkin to Buida.  ed. Robert Chandler.  New York: Penguin Books, 2005. 

ALSO KEEP IN MIND...

Ø  Make sure you use specific examples from the works you choose.  Don’t summarize the plots and/or make sweeping generalizations.  Focus on short passages (quote them) that would illustrate important ideas from the author’s perspective. 

Ø  Don’t use too much: if you use Grimms’ Fairy Tales, try to use ideas from only 2-3 stories so you can be clear and specific.  The same goes for poetry: only use a few poems so you can relate analyze these ideas and relate them to our own world. 

Ø  CRITICAL PAPER DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 3rd BY 5pm