Instructions

We've created this class blog as a group travel journal for everyone to contribute impressions, adventures, and photographs. Title each post or comment as Day #x (according to the day of the trip).

In addition, students enrolled in English 458 will also use the blog to brainstorm for their course essay by “posting” (creating a text entry on the front page) or “commenting” (responding to another student’s post) at least 5 different days between 24 May and 7 June. For these special entries you need to create at least 2 posts and at least 3 comments. Please label your posts Literature/Geography: Author's Name.

For your posts, you should use the class’s evolving ideas about the intersection of geography and literature to argue for a relationship you have discovered between one of our literary texts and a place we have explored. (So for Day #8, you might consider how your visit to the Tate Modern helps you better understand Daisy in McEwan’s Saturday; for Day #14, you might consider the ways Oxford shaped/was shaped by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, or The Hobbit.)
You’ll need to do the following, in the order given; include the numerals to designate the separate parts of the assignment:
1. Provide the name of the place you explored, followed by a brief (probably between 50 and 100 words) but pertinent description.
2. Provide the name of the literary text, and summarize a segment of the text illuminated by your explorations.
3. Finally, explain how you see the literature and geography shaping one another. This explanation should not be a simple observation on how this particular locale is the setting for the novel. Such statements are invariably unhelpful overgeneralizations. Instead, provide a significant insight. Maybe you’re realizing just how the Globe’s size would have determined the number of characters on stage at one time; or maybe you’ve seen that desolate landscapes of a novel help explain the desperation of its characters. Or maybe you’ve discovered that our image of Shakespeare is the result of tourism’s very active merchandizing. Always support your discussion with evidence, quoting and citing from the literary text(s) when possible.

For your responses, you should agree with, disagree with, or amend a post’s conclusions about the intersection of a specific work of literature and a locale by providing and explaining NEW evidence that either supports, questions, or adjusts the post.

This assignment is credit/no credit. If you complete all the blogs as instructed, you will receive credit.