Advice for an English paper?

[kitsjay]

HELP!

Okay, so I need some advice. I have a paper due soon and it's over The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. If anyone has read that, then I would be greatly appreciative if you can help me out with this.

Basically we were talking in class about class distinctions and the like in the book, which led to everyone naturally assuming that Toad was the upper-class of society. I was talking this over with Sean (who has never read the book, but is excellent for bouncing ideas off of) and I think I've established a tentative theory, but I'm not certain it holds water. So, if you're familiar with either class structure. in England during the Industrial Age or the book, read on:

1. Badger, Mole, and Rat are closer to Nature and therefore more content, while Toad is constantly attempting to break into the human world and getting into trouble because of it;

2. The animal society may be broken up into lower, middle, and upper class like human society, but the human society is an entirely different sphere;

3. When the two mix, not only does trouble arise, but even the lower-class of the human sphere is considered above the upper-class of the animal sphere (e.g., when the barge woman throws Toad off and proclaims him a filthy toad; no matter how rich he is, he is still a filthy creature);

4. Toad inherited his wealth from his father, who presumably worked to earn it, and so assumes he is on par with the aristocracy/nobility because he was born with wealth, HOWEVER he was not born with a title, which is more important in the long run;

5. ERGO Grahame is using Toad to represent the nouveau riche of the industrial age in England. Mole & co. are content with their place in life and closer to Nature, and represent gentlemen, but they are still not Lord or Baron etc. Toad, however, is trying to go against his nature as well as Nature, breaking into a sphere of society where he does not belong. No matter how wealthy, he is still a Toad by birth, not a titled gentry.


I've been mulling it over and think it makes sense, but my knowledge of late 19th-early 20th British history is curiously lacking. I also feel as if Grahame is incredibly hard to analyze. It seemed every time I had put my finger on something I felt was important, he would have another character who directly contradicted that notion. I still feel as if there's something that completely destroys my argument in one line that I somehow completely missed.

Anyway, thoughts? My first draft is due on Tuesday.

Comments

[kairina.livejournal.com]

I'm the one who replied to you in uppityundergrads. Mind if I add you? Your journal looks interesting. :)

[kitsjay.livejournal.com]

Not at all! (Though I hope it lives up to expectations... a lot of it is just ranting and assorted silliness :))

[kairina.livejournal.com]

Now, I feel bad about the recommendations I gave you. I just realize you're way more upper-level than I am and you must have a good background on the history of rhetoric. :)

[kitsjay.livejournal.com]

No, no, your recommendations are super helpful! I have more of a background in straight literature, but not necessarily the nuts and bolts of rhetoric. And even then, I wouldn't have any idea where to start, so you totally saved me hours of looking up books and finding which ones were useful/which ones weren't.

So are you a classics or English or rhetoric student?

[kairina.livejournal.com]

English and philosophy. I wanted to study classics but then it just falls under the category of things I want to study but I really have no time for it. I actually majored in philosophy because of the texts I had to read for required World Civilizations classes. Now, I'm sort of in love with Continental Philosophy which has made me want to learn French and German instead of Latin and Greek. Ugh.

(wall of text)
I took an English course called Critical Practice and it had a focus on visual narrative, and that's where some of the recommendations come from since they're related. Your course description also mentioned the sublime. I'm taking a Philosophy of Art seminar now and I'm writing a paper on the sublime for it, which is pretty much a close reading of Kant's "Analytic of the Sublime". As far as I know, this was influenced by Edmund Burke's work on the sublime, which was influenced by Longinus'. We also study Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, where he opposes Aristotle's Poetics with his own dramatic theory as a non-traditional classicist. His "Truth and Lies" is probably good for this too.

I hope you forgive the geekiness here but I was actually interested in NYU's Poetics and Theory program for grad school. :)

[kitsjay.livejournal.com]

Hey! There's a girl in one of my classes who's an English/philosophy major. We're reading The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley right now and she's beside herself with glee at all the references to Locke and the like.

Yeah, same here--I'm trying to fit in Intensive Ancient Greek (3 semesters of Greek shoved into 1 summer session) but... I don't know if it's going to happen.

It happens. Have you started learning French or German yet?

I picked up all the books you suggested and am slowly wading through them. I meet with the professor today to talk to him, so hopefully I know enough to justify my being in his class.

Anyone with an interest in Classics is a geek/closet geek, I think. That sounds great though! What drew you to NYU? I'm looking at Comparative Literature at a few schools so I need to know this anyway, you know?

[kairina.livejournal.com]

Well, it would probably be helpful to just focus on the chapter or section of the work that deals specifically with rhetoric, like in the Phaedrus and Longinus.

I haven't learned French or German yet. I'm trying to prioritize which language to take first, or at all. I'm sure I'm not going to know all of these by the time I graduate in 2011 or 2012. I'm not even sure what I want to go to grad school in yet.

I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese before college. With a bit of practice I can write academically with it and read classical text, but I wish I was even interested in a field of study relevant to it, like comp lit or philosophy. I'm halfway through a Spanish minor as well, since I read a lot of Castillian and Latin American lit in translation and would like to read it in the original language. So very unfocused, haha. That or I'm very easily enthused over anything.

If I were to focus on Literature in grad school, I would want to make use of my philosophy background too, so I'm mostly just looking at schools that have strong departments in poetics and cultural studies. Some schools have Philosophy of Literature programs too. Anyway, I might opt for a fifth year or a post-bacc just to get focused and think about what I want.

It's also always said in applyingtograd that classics applicants (or those applying to related fields) benefit greatly from post-baccs. :)

[kitsjay.livejournal.com]

Ah. I would suggest French, but then again, I'm partial. If you have any sort of background in Latin, though, you'll pick up French in a snap. German is the closest grammatically to English, so it's fairly easy, but the main thing is learning vocabulary, whereas French you can usually muddle through fairly well. And if you're worried about GPA (who isn't?) you could just audit the classes; that's probably what I'm going to do with ancient Greek.

Well, you have time if you graduate in 2012--are you doing an honors thesis or anything like that?

Actually, that's probably the smartest thing to do--you're much more likely to get into a good grad school if you have post-bacc work or a Masters, plus, like you said, it'll give you time to figure out what you want to do and maybe publish some stuff/make connections in the meantime. It's not just classics, either--I've heard it from pretty much everybody that it's way appealing. The only problem is that Masters aren't usually funded--but you could always "MAS out" -- join a PhD program then ... drop... :))