Difference between revisions of "BM1 - Introduction to Literature - Assignment 4: Research Paper Outline:Example"

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This is only a guideline, not a perfect example. Please note that the text is not part of our curriculum.

Example One

Title

The Role of Power in W. Percy’s Sonnet Sequence Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia

Table of Contents

1 Explanation of the term Petrarchism based on a comparison between the Petrarchan model and the English sonnet

2 The ambiguity of power in W. Percy’s sonnet sequence

2.1. The power of speech

2.1.1. The oppressor and the oppressed

2.1.2. Coelia’s passiveness

2.2. Male subjectivity

2.2.1. The speaker’s helplessness against Coelia’s scornfulness

2.2.2. Coelia’s role as a mere object of love

3 Female sonnet writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century and their image of the female lover

Written Outline

First of all it must be said that there is a myriad of secondary literature concerning Elizabethan sonnets or the widely known English poets and their main work, such as Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Spenser's Amoretti or Samuel Daniel's Delia. Yet little has been written about William Percy's sonnet sequence Coelia. Thus my paper about the role of power and its interpretation by the male speaker in these particular sonnets rather relies on the primary source and only implicitly on some chosen pieces of secondary work.

As an introduction to the topic I would start with an explanation of the term Petrarchism and the changes it has gone through from the Italian, Petrarchan model to the English or Shakespearean sonnet. The discourse between these is described in Pfister's essay published in Seeber's Englische Literaturgeschichte. This would give me the chance to introduce the structure of the sonnet and to give a definition of the sonnet sequence as discussed in Spiller's The Sonnet Sequence.

By speaking of the ambiguity of power I refer to the two power models expressed in Percy's sonnets. On the one hand the speaker's role of a victim of love and on the other hand his power to use this love and the object of love for his own purposes. This ambivalence is not shown explicitly but can be read between the lines.

As poetry is based on the creation of and play with words, the main aspect is the power of speech. The speaker describes his falling in love with Coelia, his courtship with all its ups and downs and the final game of conqueror and conquered from his point of view. He is the author of the image created in this sequence.

The speaker chooses a wide range of such images to describe his position as the oppressed and the role Coelia plays in his story as the oppressor. Among these contrasting pairs are the images of judge and accused, divine creature – simple man, hunter – prey (sonnet I), executive power – prisoner, ruler – bondman (sonnet VI). Such oppositions are emphasized by the use of oxymora ("the sweetest sour") and antitheses ("Oh happy hour, and yet unhappy hour", sonnet II). Coelia is the personification of such contrasts: she is sweet but callous, shows "first Love, and then Disdainfulnes" (sonnet VI). Here I should refer to Manfred Pfister, who deals with this inconsistency in his essay mentioned above. In her studies about Sidney's female characters Fair Ladies, Katherine J. Roberts also discusses this moodiness.

Speaking of the power of speech one should bear in mind that this impression given by the speaker changes as soon as we look closer into Coelia's role. It strikes the reader that she is almost speechless. Contrary to other poets of the sixteenth century, Percy includes two short dialogues between the loved and the lover (sonnets IV and XVII) but Coelia's part is more like a mirror of the speaker's imagination than a real, individual voice. Ina Schabert speaks of the poet as ventriloquist (1996:140) when dealing with this phenomenon. Coelia's passiveness is found even stronger as she is thought as the addressee but in fact the poems are not really directed at the loved person bur rather at a third, or in this case fourth person, the reader. The third person would be the god Amor, whose speech (sonnet II) shows more individuality and strength than Coelia's. In the second main point I would deal with male subjectivity and the way the speaker creates his own misery to gain the power of compassion as a desperate romantic.

The speaker is absolutely helpless against Coelia's scornfulness (sonnets I, XVIII vs. III, XVI). He offers her everything, she rejects it all. She has the power to leave him in his pain, to abuse his love. And yet, no matter how scornful she may be, he does not want to give up.

But in spite of these presumable power relations as shown on the surface, the real conditions reveal Coelia's role as a mere object of love. This is where I would have to agree with Ina Schabert's conceptions from a gender perspective. Coelia is a construct, an ideal created by the speaker, which serves his purposes as a tool serves a craftsman. The woman is the means to an aim.

Taking everything into consideration I would conclude with a description of female sonneteers around the turn of the century and show different power models on the example of Lady Mary Wroth concepts in her Pamphilia to Amphilanthus with reference to Ina Schabert's Englische Literaturgeschichte aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung.

Bibliography

• Berry, Philippa. "Mirrors of Masculinity. Renaissance Speculations Through the Feminine and Their Genealogy." Of Chastity and Power. Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen. New York: Routledge, 1989. 9-37.
• John, Lisle Cecil. The Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences. Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature 133. New York: Russell, 1964.
• Low, Anthony. The Reinvention of Love. Poetry, Politics and Culture from Sidney to Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.
• Pfister, Manfred. "Die Frühe Neuzeit: Von Morus bis Milton." Englische Literaturgeschichte. Ed. H.U. Seeber. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991. 92-103.
• Roberts, Katherine J. "Social and Literary Images of Women." Fair Ladies: Sir Philip Sidney's Female Characters. Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts 9. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 1-28.
• Schabert, Ina. "Das Begehren der Geschlechter und die Liebesdichtung." Englische Literaturgeschichte aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung. Stuttgart: Kröner , 1996. 123-144.
• Spiller, Michael R.G. The Development of The Sonnet. An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1992.
• Spiller, Michael R.G. The Sonnet Sequence. A Study of Its Strategies. Studies in Literary Themes and Genres. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Example Two

Title

Why does Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde continue to cause an ongoing literary debate about homosexuality?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The debate about Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality

2.1 'Misogyny and Homosexuality' (William Veeder)

2.2 The Labouchère Amendment (Wayne Koestenbaum)

2.3 The double life and homosexuality (Elaine Showalter)

2.4 Homosexuality versus masturbation (Grace Moore)

3. Stevenson's ambiguous use of language in Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

Written Outline

Introduction

Already shortly after its publication in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde caused literary critics to note the fact that the story focuses almost entirely on single men. Andrew Lang comments that “His [Stevenson's] heroes (surely this is original) are all successful middle-aged professional men. No woman appears in the tale” (Maixner, 1981, p. 200-201) and Julia Wedgewood states that “No woman's name occurs in the book, no romance is even suggested in it” (Maixner, 1981, p. 223).

Another subject of interest to critics was the nature of Jekyll / Hyde’s “undignified pleasures”. As early as 1887, these pleasures were linked to sexuality by an unknown dramatic critic (cp. Maixner, 1981, p. 230) . Stevenson responded to this assumption in a letter to John Paul Bocock:

The harm was in Jekyll, because he was a hypocrite – not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly an inverted lust, that they can think of nothing but sexuality. The hypocrite let out the beast Hyde – who is no more sensual than another, but who is the essence of cruelty and malice, and selfishness and cowardice: and these are the diabolic in man – not his poor wish to have a woman, that they make such a cry about (Maixner, 1981, p. 231).

It wasn't until the 1950's, however, that Vladimir Nabakov made a connection between the absence of women and the subject of sexuality and linked the story of Jekyll and Hyde to homosexuality: “The all-male pattern [...] may suggest by a twist of thought that Jekyll's secret adventures were homosexual practices so common in London behind the Victorian veil” (Nabokov, 1980, p. 194). A possible relation between Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality has since been a topic of literary debate.

Why is it that literary critics continue to have a debate concerning Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality despite Stevenson's dismissive statement? And which are the arguments used by critics to support their theories?

Main Part

To answer these questions I would first give a short overview of the development of the debate concerning Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality on hand of three chosen texts. Here I would look at each of these texts which support the theory that Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde deals with homosexuality and summarize the main arguments employed. Then I would focus on a text and its arguments which oppose this debate.

I would first look at William Veeder's text “Misogyny and Homosexuality” (1988). Here Veeder argues in the context of patriarchy, claiming the characters in Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde to be misogynistic. Due to this they turn to other men as objects of mirroring. In their relations to other men “late-Victorian professional men feel emotions that they can neither express nor comprehend. An aura of homosexuality serves to signal both the homoerotic nature of many male bonds and the lethal consequences of them” (Veeder, 1988, p. 144). These emotions, so Veeder are hidden behind a facade of professionalism.

I would then look at the article “The Shadow on the Bed: Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and the Labouchère Amendment” (1988) by Wayne Koestenbaum. As the title suggests, the text focuses on the influence the Labouchère Amendment had on Stevenson's writing of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Passed in 1885, this amendment made all male-homosexual acts punishable by law.

Elaine Showalter's article “Dr. Jekyll's Closet” (2000) takes a closer look at the meaning double life had for homosexuals in the Victorian era and the representation of this duality in the story of Jekyll and Hyde. To Showalter, the story can be “read as a fable of fin de siecle homosexual panic, the discovery and resistance of the homosexual self” (Showalter, 2000, p. 69).

In her article “Something to Hyde: The “Strange Preference” of Henry Jekyll” (2004), Grace Moore argues that Stevenson was not attempting to depict homosexuality but rather that Jekyll's “undignified pleasure” is that of masturbation. Her argument against homosexuality is that Jekyll is portrait as a lonely figure which, as part of the gay subculture, he would not have been: “Jekyll's illicit homosexuality conflicts with the deep rooted sense of alienation pervading the narrative” (Moore, 2004, p. 153).

Considering both sides of the argument would enable me to show that in the analysis of Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, much depends on the argument of the critic.

After analyzing the four texts I would take into consideration what is stated specifically about Stevenson's use of language (e.g. symbols of homosexual literature such as “mirror” and “blackmail”) and choice of words (such as “queer”, “gay” and “faggot”) to imply homosexuality in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To relate the arguments to the general depiction of homosexuality in literature, I would also take a look at Marita Keilson-Lauritz's article “Maske und Signal – Textstrategien der Homoerotik” (1991) on textual strategies in homoerotic literature.

Conclusion

After having looked at the different positions used by critics to argue that Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does or does not deal with homosexuality, I would attempt to answer the question why it is, that literary critics continue to have a debate concerning Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality despite Stevenson's dismissive statement.

Here I would argue that Stevenson's refusal to define Jekyll / Hyde’s pleasures and misdeeds, his often ambiguous use of language and words as well as the marginal role he assigned women in the story, gives a lot of room for interpretation. As long as it is argued well, this enables critics to present different approaches of interpretation of enigmatic aspects of the story and disregard Stevenson's statement concerning Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and sexuality.

Bibliography

Primary Literature

• Stevenson, Robert, Louis. “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ed. Katherine Linehan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 7-62.

Secondary Literature

• Keilson-Lauritz, Marita. “Maske und Signal – Textstrategien der Homoerotik.” Homosexualitäten – literarisch: literaturwissenschaftlische Beiträge zum Internationalen Kongress “Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality?” Amsterdam 1987. Eds. Maria Kalveram and Wolfgang Popp. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1991. 63-75.

• Koestenbaum, Wayne. “The Shadow on the Bed: Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and the Labouchère Amendment. Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender and Culture Vol. 4, Iss. 1 (Spring1988): 31-55.

• Maixner, Paul (Ed.). Robert Louis Stevenson. The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

• Moore, Grace. “Something to Hyde: The “Strange Preference” of Henry Jekyll.” Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation. Eds. Andrew Maunder and Grace Moore. Burlington / Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. 147-161.

• Nabakov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

• Showalter, Elaine. “Dr. Jekyll's Closet.” The Haunted Mind. The Supernatural in Victorian Literature. Eds. Robert Haas and Elton E. Smith. London: Scarecrow Press, 1999. 67-88.

• Veeder, William. “Children of the Night: Stevenson and Patriarchy.” Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde after one hundred years. Eds. William Veeder and Gordon Hirsch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. 107-160.