Discussion Questions: English 376

The following list of discussion questions will grow throughout the semester.

Check in periodically and use these questions to help you prepare for class.

What do you lose when you look at a poem as an organic whole on its own? What do you gain?
Ezra Pound adapted the seventeen-syllable Japanese haiku form, in which the poem's title is

In a Station of the Metro

What does Eagleton mean by "ideology"?
How do you think Eagleton would read the expansion of "Freshman Writing" courses over the last

Consider how any of the following terms have been shaped by the relatedness of other signifiers:

What is the signifier? What is the signified? How are they related?
DeSaussure says that values are relative within language. How, then, does he tell us meaning is made?
If the word "cup" didn't exist, how would language change?
To remember: in language there are no positive terms, only differences.
Barthes says that myth is a language. How does he use DeSaussure's vocabulary to describe it?
What is glamour? Why does Berger claim that glamour didn't exist in the Middle Ages?

The class which controls the means of material production also controls the means of mental production. What does Marx mean when he argues this point in The German Ideology?
What does Marx mean by the total relations of production?
Marx opposed ideology to consciousness. Define either term.
Althusser defines ideology differently than Marx does. Comment on these differences.
What does "interpellate" mean in Althusser's essay?

What are some of the ways that we know to be suspcious of Antonio and Sebastian?
What similarities do you see between the Antonio/Sebastian plot and the Stephano/Trinculo plot?
What does an island "mean"? Can you offer a Barthes-esque mythology of islands that would help us understand this play?
What has Prospero done with this island? Is his approach to the island part of the mythology of islands?
Do you think Prospero is cruel? Why or why not?
Notice some of the speech patterns or forms of either Antonio and Sebastian, Caliban, or Prospero. What do their speech choices tell you about the characters?
Where does Prospero's power come from?
After reading Filmer's Patriarcha,would you say that Prospero's attitude toward authority matches his?
What do you think Said would have to say about The Tempest? Who are the racial others in this play? What is their function?
Place yourself in the Greenblatt/Will debate. Which side do you tend toward and why?

Book II has both a monkey and a midget. What point does Swift try to make through their presence? You might want to look at p. 123 in particular. Does Gulliver learn anything about himself from these comparisons?
Gulliver and the king of Brobdingnag talk about education on pp. 132-136. What kinds of educational formats do they present? What does Swift seem to advocate? Do you think that this system might be something to propose to UT President Wade Gilley or the state legislature? Why or why not?
Peter Briggs has suggested that satire is concerned not so much with what the objects of satire are doing wrong but why they are doing it. Using the "why" approach, can you see any similarities between the Academy of Lagado and the Houynhnms?
Gulliver first recognizes the Yahoos as somewhat like himself, (pp 212-3) but he cannot bring himself to see them as human. The Houynhnms eventually exclude Gulliver from their society (252-3) because he has the body of a Yahoo. What error of thinking do these two operations share?
Where did you start to grow suspicious of the Houynhnms and their world view? Assuming that you did become suspicious, why did you mistrust their sense of justice? (There are many different places in the text you could use in your answer, but you might want to consider the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 9 if you are having trouble getting started.)

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