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(S1C17) The Doppelganger Motif

10/8/2014

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Today we will discuss Chapters 7-12 and your LRJ responses to "The Literary Gothic."
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Illustration from Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson"
The Doppelganger Motif
A doppelganger is a German term, literally meaning a “double-goer,” an apparition or double of a living person. As a literary device, a doppelganger is used to show two different distinct, often opposite, personalities or personality traits. This literary device is used in stories to show internal conflict and the multifaceted nature of a character. Such a figure haunts the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s narrative poem (the one quoted by Mary Shelley in Frank.):

Like one, that on a lonesome road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head,

Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. (lines 445-51)

Interestingly, on July 8, 1822, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia. On August 15, while staying at Pisa, Percy's wife Mary Shelley wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. She writes that, in the early hours of June 23, Percy had had a nightmare about the house collapsing in a flood, and:
    
... talking it over the next morning he told me that he had had many visions lately — he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him — "How long do you mean to be content" — Not very terrific words and certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill.
 
Obviously, Mary Shelley was interested in the idea of a doppelganger and used it as a literary motif in Frankenstein. This idea of the literary doppelganger can be interpreted in a number of ways:
 
  1. It can be seen simply as a double, an alternative version of the individual
    concerned;
  2. It can be seen as a complement, a version of
    the individual that possesses different qualities and thus completes the
    personality;
  3. It can be seen as an opposite, a being that
    possesses all the qualities that the individual lacks and most abhors.

By the way:  An important literary form employing the Doppelganger motif is the psychomachia (we'll discuss this when we read Dr. Faustus), originated by the Greek poet Prudentius to depict "conflict within the soul" or the struggle between virtue and vice within an individual. The psychomachia was particularly important in medieval art and drama, where separate characters were perceived a representing different aspects of a single human personality, so that conflict within the drama depicted the struggle of conscience or the need for integration of the personality.

For Friday (A)/Monday(B)         
Complete LRJ#3 (Option A only!) on “The Doppelganger Motif”
Quiz over Frankenstein, Chapters 13-18

Significant Quotations -- II
Although you are not required to dropbox the following eWorksheet, you will be working on it in class and you will likely find it helpful as a way to review this section of the novel and to help you study for the Frankenstein unit exam.

    DOWNLOAD: eWorksheet -- Part Two (Ch. 7-12) -- Significant quotations 
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Skullduggery, Jiggery-Pokery, Hugger-mugger, etc.

3/26/2013

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Speaking of synonyms. There are a number of ways of talking about skullduggery. 

skullduggery (n.) -- deceitful or dishonest manipulation; underhand scheming or behavior; hocus-pocus, humbug, subterfuge, skullduggery, slickness, trickery.

Interesting tidbit #1: jiggery-pokery and is a classic example of what’s called a double dactyl, a dactyl being a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables; it’s named after the Greek word for finger, whose joints represent the three syllables. Another example of a double dactyls are higgledy-piggledy.

Interesting tidbit #2: Hugger-mugger and hanky panky are classic examples of a reduplicated word, one in which its two halves are very closely similar in form. Other examples include hoker-moker, helter-skelter, and hodge-podge.

Interesting tidbit #3: In the 18th century, skulduggery meant fornication, adultery, unchastity (hanky-panky). In the 19th century it seems to have shifted to a sense of obscenity and indecency in language. Later in the 19th friendly was changed again to its current meaning.
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Word Stuff: "Utilize" vs. "Use"

3/21/2013

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One of the most commonly overused and misused words these days is "utilize." One simple rule of thumb would be: every time you want to say or write the word "utilize" use "use" instead.

Although (arguably) use and utilize have the same denotation, their connotations call for differing usages. Both mean "to put to practical purpose." However, utilize is used when something is used for a purpose for which it was NOT designed. For example:

    Quincy used his credit card to purchase 25 copies of Moby Dick.
    Quincy utilized his credit card to pick the lock on his front door when he forgot his key.

Utilize also connotes making use of something in a mechanical or scientific way.

If you'd like another perspective, here's what Grammar Girl has to say on the subject:
Bonnie says that as a copy editor she often reads fluffed up marketing material full of big words that try to make the writer sound important or knowledgeable. She usually just changes them
to normal, unimpressive words that get the point across without much fuss. One of these words she changes often is “utilize,” as in the pretentious-sounding sentence “If you utilize this brand of printer, you will go far.” A sentence like that sounds fluffy and overly important, and it gives readers the impression that you’re trying too hard. Most of the time you can avoid the verb
“utilize”; “use” works just fine (7).
 
So if you’re in marketing or PR, you can just use “use”; it’s probably not a good idea to utilize “utilize.” In a similar vein, please avoid the word “utilization.” It does your sentence no
good.

Surprisingly, “utilize,” a 19th-century loanword from French (8), does have very specific and valid uses, mostly in the scientific world. The word “utilize” often appears “in contexts in which a strategy is put to practical advantage or a chemical or nutrient is being taken up and used effectively” (9). For example, according to the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, you might hear “utilize” properly used in a sentence such as “If a diet contains too much phosphorus, calcium is not utilized efficiently” (9).
 
So if you're a science writer, you might find yourself using the word “utilize.” If you’re just a regular person writing a regular sentence, you should probably just stick with the word “use.”
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Oxford's 2012 Word of the Year

1/1/2013

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Oxford University Press has announced its 2012 “Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year.” And the winner is: omnishambles.

Coined by the writers of the British sitcom The Thick of It, Oxford has defined the word as “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.”

Although omnishambles won’t necessarily make it into the next edition of the Oxford dictionary, it had “great resonance for 2012,” especially in political contexts, and even gave rise to its own derivative, omnishambolic. It beat out other notable new words like Eurogeddon (the potential financial collapse in the Eurozone), pleb (an ordinary person, especially one regarded as being of low social status), and second screening (watching television while simultaneously using a second technological screen device).
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