From Polemics to Wit

Hello, everyone.

As requested, I post here the results of the polemics grid we constructed today. For Tuesday, please bring Wollstonecraft's Vindication to class again. I would like to devote the first 10 minutes to a textual interactions quiz on Vindication, much like the practice quiz we discussed on Makin's Essay to Revive the Antient Education. (I will offer extra credit to anyone who thinks they can articulate the principal characteristic, quality, or convention that allows us to justify Vindication as the "standard feminist polemic" for the turn of the nineteenth century. I believe our grid represents some nice examples -- but how can we synthesize them?)

Tuesday's class will be devoted to a discussion of Walter Ong's notion of "fictionalized audience" and a consideration of how that notion helps us to notice explicit audience construction in Harper's "The Two Offers" or Parker's "The Waltz." Ong's essay is long -- please take it in chunks and allow yourself time to look up unfamiliar terms in the OED. Although we are moving from polemics to wit, Ong's essay may help us to trace the evolution of several ideas in Harper's and Parker's texts, including the usefulness of moral virtue, the role of rational thinking, and the coexistence of passion and intellect in the same being.

Enjoy the readings!

-Professor Graban