OpenLab introduction

Open Lab Help Documents

 Ways of analyzing a literary text

FORMAL ISSUES

Characters

• relationships they have with other characters
• character development

Genre

• what genre(s) is the text part of
• what generic conventions does the text employ or disrupt?

Language of the Text

• Figurative language of the text – beyond the actual meaning — symbolic language

Plot

Theme / Motif – a reoccurring set of issues/ideas in the text

 

TEXTUAL/AUTHOR HISTORIES

Textual History

versions of the text

manuscripts/drafts

editors

censorship

altered for mass-market appeal

translations

 

Author

• authorial intention — how do we know the author’s intention? should the author’s intention be privileged over other possible interpretations? —-> multiplicity of meaning. —> is interpretation of a text up for everyone to discuss or should the author have special privilege to adjudicate meanings?
• cf. movies –> director interpreting a book —-> adaptation
• is the author just another reader after the text is released? —>
• line between what is part of the text and what is interpretation?
• trying to assign motives to the author is problematic
• how do we know what an author intends? — ask him. What if author misleads? what if author is dead? —> read biographies. rea

• Author
• biographies
• introduction to an edition
• life/ideas
• interviews
• wikipedia???
• look at records related to life
• journals
• historical/socio-economic
• analyze whole collection of books
• newspaper articles
• letters
• read authors who inspired that authork
• other authors in genre

 

CONTEXTS

Political/Social/Historical Context

• what beliefs were generally held about the topic of book? ex. robots 150 years ago
• social/racial/class issues at time
• laws, constitutions – what type of government in country
• economic issues – ex. industrialization of country
• technological advances/issues/development
• intellectual climate — what were people talking about, etc.

 

PRIMARY SOURCES — related to original publication. contemporaneous with it.

• book itself
• interview
• writings by the author — journals, letters, manuscripts, published books
• recordings of author speaking
• autobiography
• political documents — ex. presidential speech. text of a law
• media recordings from that time

SECONDARY SOURCES — comes second/afterwards. provides analysis or intepretation

• biography
• critics writing about the book — newspapers, magazines, academic journals, academic books
• online interpretation — blogs, etc.
• documentary

 

 

ACTIVE READING

 

DISCUSSION OF CAVES OF STEEL

• List 4-5 specific themes/motifs you see in the book
• List 2-3 moments in the book — specific passages — that seem to you worthy of extended discussion (perhaps because they relate to the themes you listed, perhaps because they are really complicated). Look for especially rich/complicated/interesting moments that we can unpack together. Rich mineral deposits of textual meaning that we can break apart and examine.

THEMES/MOTIFS

• Spacer/Human relations
• Human survival —
• Biblical references/allegories
• Socialism/communal living
• artificial / natural
• efficiency – streamlining/regulating human behavior
• earthmen/women viewed as primitives by spacers
• classification — social stratification
• conformity vs. individual expression (architecture/art)
• human/robot tensions — fear that robots will take over jobs, or that robots will become as human as humans, will eradicate life on earth.
• innocence of robots — r. sammy’s stupid smile (friendship circuit)
• earthbound robots (r.sammy) vs. spacer robtots (olivaw)
• fall of society on earth – Lije looking back at when it used to be better
• tolerance/xenophobia — earthpeople afraid of spacers. tensions — cf. immigration stances in US
• relation of spacer planets to earth — issues of power
• spacer disgust at earthpeople — fear of disease

Prof. Gold’s

• Foreignness/disease infection
• line between human and robot
• colonization – earth to space, space to earth
• social class / privilege
• urban space
• biblical allusions
• privacy / sexual issues

p. 91 — blood prick
— being treated like an animal — his consent doesn’t matter – because he’s a diseased earthman

— spacers treating humans as human colonizers used to treat colonized people

— issues of power

— themes — spacers/humans —

— spacers as GMO — selected for height, etc.

— spacers view earth as wild and untamed as earthpeople view life outside city walls

— trust — fear

— transgressiveness of pin prick/blood test

— fear of contamination

— border crossings