Published in the print edition of the June 30, 2025, issue, with the headline “Sex Bomb.”

Different version: Cropped photo removing the cell phone on the left in The New Yorker (2025)

Dinitia Smith, "'Dear Juliet': Seeking Succor From a Veteran of Love," New York Times
March 27, 2006

Verona Tourism and Taylor Swift

Ella Taylor,'Letters To Juliet': A Comedy Of Errors, In Three Acts May 13, 2010

https://www.npr.org/2010/05/13/126775950/letters-to-juliet-a-comedy-of-errors-in-three-acts

"Dear Juliet" (Yes, That Juliet) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW8V60PNDhU

Part 1. Give two examples of humor in The House of Mirth.

Examples: " That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way"; "Lily stood staring vacantly at the white sapphire on its velvet bed. Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce? The names rang derisively through her brain. Evie Van Osburgh?"; "Grace Stepney’s mind was like a kind of moral fly-paper"

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

https://www.youtube.com/@AmazonMGMStudios

Further Suggested Reading

Gilbert Ryle, Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 46 (1945 - 1946), pp. 1-16

Gilbert Ryle, Improvisation, Mind , Jan., 1976, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jan., 1976), pp. 69-83

Jason Stanley, Timothy Williamson, Knowing How The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 98, No. 8 (Aug., 2001), pp. 411-444

Shepard Fairey, "Obey"

POETRY AND MUSIC

Listening to musical structure / performance (as listening to yourself as you play)

People talk all the time about poetry being the most musical of any kind of writing. But they nevre go to music to show you what that means. So let's go to music. "Run Away with Me" E·MO·TION 

Der Leiermann - Schubert - accompaniment in G minor

The Power of Poetry, with William Sieghart, Jeanette Winterson, and Helena Bonham Carter (actors reading poems selected by writers)

Remake of Le Corbeau (The Raven)

The 13th Letter aka The Last Letter (dir. Otto Preminger, 1951)

A discussion question means writing icritically about something in the work’s aesthetic form.

You will be counted absent if you do not turn in the DQs on time Mondays, and Wednesdays. No late work is accepted. I allow two unexcused absences. Three or four absences will impact your final grade at my discretion. More than four absences means you will fail the course. See the Attendance policies for this course.

Please see my policy on class participation and how it counts in determining your final grade for this course.

We will not read primarily for character indentification or for the plot. You need to read carefully paying close formal attention to the what the text says and how it says it, to the words used, language, and the style. We will be reading to appreciate why these works are considered great. That is critical thinking or appreciative criticism. It means you be surprised. We will not be reading to find out what is wrong with the book or film to judge the authors for being x, y, or z. That is called uncritical thinking. It's a kind of pin the tail on the donkey exercise. You may already know how to do it. If you do, you need to unlearn so you cannot do it.

The Merchant of Venice 2004 720p BluRay

The Merchant of Venice (2004) trailer

The Merchant of Venice (1973) (Full movie)

Romeo and Juliet, Levenson, Jill L. ed. 1987

Shakespeare King Lear

Le Vert au cinéma - Blow Up - ARTE

Le Rouge au cinéma - Blow Up - ARTE

Chopin Ballade in G Minor Scene- The Pianist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHfQCfUTlXE

https://archive.org/details/FredericChopinBalladeNo.1InGMinorOp.23FromThePianist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=o5PNi2KjXkU

Painting for auction shown without a frame, with a frame, and the back side of the framed painting.

https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/9372850/

https://www.cursedtext.net/glitch-text-generator

https://x.com/LostInFilm/status/1942272624668692519

Casa Malaparte in Jean-Luc Godard’s 'Le Mépris' (1963)

Atomic Blonde | The 10-Minute Single Take Fight Scene in 4K HDR

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/083883-015-A/blow-up-les-generiques-de-quentin-tarantino/

Guy J. Williams, "Harkness Learning: Principles of a Radical American Pedagogy"

Harkness table

Dead Letters Sent: Queer Literary Transmission

Ohi, Kevin, 1972

Sir Thomas Wyatt My Galley Charged with Forgetfulness

(no. 12)

“Was I never yet of your love grieved / Nor never shall while that my life doth last”

Rime 82, ”Io non fu’ d’ amar voi lassato unqu’

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-wyatt

And Wilt thou Leave me Thus?

Whoso list to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586): Sonnet 3 from Astrophil and Stella Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine, 1 That, bravely masked, their fancies may be told; Or Pindar’s apes2 flaunt they in phrases fine, Enam’ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold; Or else let them in statelier glory shine, Ennobling new-found tropes with problems old; Or with strange similes enrich each line, Of herbs or beasts with Ind or Afric hold. For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know; Phrases and problems from my reach do grow, And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites. How then? even thus,—in Stella’s face I read What love and beauty be, then all my deed But copying is, what in her Nature writes. Notes: 1 The nine Muses. 2 Poets who slavishly imitated the literary works of the Greek poet Pindar.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586): Sonnet 3 from Astrophil and Stella Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine, 1 That, bravely masked, their fancies may be told; Or Pindar’s apes2 flaunt they in phrases fine, Enam’ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold; Or else let them in statelier glory shine, Ennobling new-found tropes with problems old; Or with strange similes enrich each line, Of herbs or beasts with Ind or Afric hold. For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know; Phrases and problems from my reach do grow, And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites. How then? even thus,—in Stella’s face I read What love and beauty be, then all my deed But copying is, what in her Nature writes. Notes: 1 The nine Muses. 2 Poets who slavishly imitated the literary works of the Greek poet Pindar.

John Donne (1572-1631): “The Apparition” When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead, And that thou thinkst thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign’d vestal,1 in worse arms shall see : Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call’st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink : And then, poor aspen2 wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver3 sweat wilt lie, A verier4 ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee ; and since my love is spent, I’d rather thou shouldst painfully repent, Than by my threatenings rest still innocent. Notes: 1 Virgin priestess. 2 Trembling like an aspen leaf in the wind. 3 Liquid mercury, used to treat veneral disease. 4 Truer.

I will be asking you to learn how to do something no one may ever have asked you to do: it's called close reading. (Please do not confuse being moralistic and judgmental--"it didn't do 'x' and it should have done!"--with being critical--"why is the work doing what it is doing the way it is doing it?")." 

Close reading means paying attention to language, to the words the author has used, the order in which they are used, and appreciating how well they are used. It means paying attention not to what is said but to how it is said; it means paying attention to the structure of sentences and the structure of the narrative; it means paying attention to tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, and irony, among others; it means being alert to allusions a work of literature makes to other works of literature.

See Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," in The Well-Wrought Urn.

Close reading is a practice designed for literature, for texts that are extremely well-written. Literature is universal. Literature is often difficult to write. And it is often difficult to read. Not just anyone can write it. And not just anyone can read it closely. (If you do not know how to write a grammatical sentence or how to punctuate or how to use words correctly, you cannot learn how to read closely.) All writers of literature are excellent close readers.  They know humongous amounts of (big) words.

Do not ask about the author or the historical context. Do not ask speculative questions. They cannot be answered and so are not productive for discussion. Do not ask what the work tells us about some general issue today. Ask about what the work says.

Predatory Reading vs. Literary Criticism

How to Read a Book 1940 edition

How to Read a Book 1966 edition

How To Read A Book 1972 Edition

"What we must not forget, however, is that it is in the completion of the text by the reader that these adjustments are made; and each reader will make them differently. Plurality is here not a prescription but a fact. There is so much that is blurred and tentative, incapable of decisive explanation; however we set about our reading, with a sociological or a pneumatological, a cultural or a narrative code uppermost in our minds, we must fall into division and discrepancy; the doors of communication are sometimes locked, sometimes open, and Heathcliff may be astride the threshold, opening, closing, breaking. And it is surely evident that the possibilities of interpretation increase as time goes on. The constraints of a period culture dissolve, generic presumptions which concealed gaps disappear, and we now see that the book, as James thought novels should, truly "glories in a gap," a hermeneutic gap in which the reader's imagination must operate, so that he speaks continuously in the text.

Barthes denies the charge that on his view of the reading process one can say absolutely anything one likes about the work in question; but he is actually much less interested in defining contraints that in asserting liberties.

When we see that the writer speaks more than he knows what we mean is that the text is under the absolute control of no thinking subject, or that it is not a message from one mind to another."

--Frank Kermode, "A Modern Way with the Classic"
New Literary History Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1974), pp. 415-434; pp. 425; 432; 433

The reason literature, film, and philosophy are so great, so deeply admired yet often controversial, even despised, is that writers are free to say anything they wish they way they want to say it, fillmakers get to show images of anything they wish, they way they want to show them, and philosophers can ask philosophical questions about anything they wish whenever they want. It's called FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

In order to include all students in class discussion, and in order to make it easier for you to read closely and thereby improve your own writing, We will close read, read slowly the assigned text sentence by sentence or the assigned film shot by shot. Discussion co-leaders and I will call on a student at random and ask that student to read a specific sentence out loud and then to close read it. If the student is unable to read the sentence closely, the co-leaders will call on another student and ask that student to read a specific sentence out loud and then to close read it. We will continue to discuss the same sentence until a student reads it closely. We will then proceed in the same fashion with the next sentence. And so on. Due to time constraints and because close reading is slow reading, we will skip parts of the assigned text, but we will always be talking and only be talking about words, syntax, punctuation, paragraphing, and narration in the text. As we move through the text, we will be able to make more general comments about parts of it. If students have comments to add on the sentence under discussion, they may raise their hands and make them once they have been called on by the co-leaders or me.

In order to learn the names of all the students in the class, I will take roll on canvas at the beginning of class. As I state on the requirements webpage, if you are late to class, I consider you absent. If you are absent more than twice, your final grade may suffer. If you are absent four times, you fail the class.

Here is what I have written on the requirements webpage:

"Attendance means not only being in class, but includes completing the assigned work for each class by the time it is due and arriving to class on time. (If you arrive late to class or if you don't do the discussion questions, you are counted as absent.)

Repetition is key to learning.

To learn how to understand a piece of music, a philosopher said, you have to hear it twice.

A conductor of baroque music said you have to listen to repeated hearings before you understand it.

"How full of meaning and significance the language of music is we see from the repetition of signs, as well as from the Da capo which would be intolerable in the case of works composed in the language of words. In music, however, they are very appropriate and beneficial; for to comprehend it fully, we must hear it twice."

--Arthur Schopenhauer, "On the Metaphysics of Music"

Vienna and Schubert: 'Death and the Maiden' String Quartet - Professor Chris Hogwood CBE

"The greatest pieces of music are called classics simply because at a first hearing--that is terribly...very complicated to work out what's going on or even more complicated to explain to yourself why it's going on--even to hear it has to be heard several times. Probably after first hearing, immediately go back and hear it again, and on repeated hearings repeated things come to light."

--Christopher Hogwood

	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTziL0Xwa-s timestamp 29:00

An A.I.-Generated Film Depicts Human Loneliness, in “Thank You for Not Answering”

Hua Hsu, What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?

1976-04-00 STAMP ART - Lomholt Mail Art Archive

PLEASE AVOID THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

--Barbara Johnson quoting Roland Barthes on rereading versus reading.