eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

This is related to the discussion in class of the challenge of 'now' being the question of whom to believe, in the sense that Lincoln's personal grief is compounded with national grief: does this somehow relieve Lincoln because many people are grieving too, or make him feel worse because many people are grieving many other people, but will never share his specific grief? This passage suggests that the nation is grieving alongside him, but not necessarily 'alongside' in the sense of the same grieving.

This page is interesting because it highlights the historical backdrop of Lincoln's grief. It is a coincidence that his son is buried on the same day the country is equally shocked by the release of Civil War casualties lists. This page shows that Lincoln's grief is both expanded, as he is shown the number of people who have died in the Civil War, but also diminished, because the nation attention had shifted to horror at this news. This passage also shows that Willie Lincoln's death is not unique; this is a part of life, and especially combined with the release of the Fort Donelson casualty list, and grief cannot be avoided. Lincoln's personal grief is combined and maybe obscured by the national grief.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

This page is interesting because it highlights the historical backdrop of Lincoln's grief. It is a coincidence that his son is buried on the same day the country is equally shocked by the release of Civil War casualties lists. This page shows that Lincoln's grief is both expanded, as he is shown the number of people who have died in the Civil War, but also diminished, because the nation attention had shifted to horror at this news. This passage also shows that Willie Lincoln's death is not unique; this is a part of life, and especially combined with the release of the Fort Donelson casualty list, and grief cannot be avoided. Lincoln's personal grief is combined and maybe obscured by the national grief.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

One piece of paratext that is interesting, and frustrates me, is the "New York Times Bestseller" text. There is nothing untoward about the NYT or their bestseller list, but it is interesting because it is Hannah Crafts' work, but she had no input onto the consideration or consequences of it being a bestseller; it is obviously Crafts' achievement, but Henry Louis Gates, Jr is the one benefitting off it. Who is the NYT bestselling author? It should be Crafts but it is somehow Gates also and this is troubling. It was published obviously outside the scope of Crafts' life, but its publishment by Gates suggests that it took his established career and expertise to help release it, so he is entangled into this achievement.

This stricken block of text is fascinating; it seems almost not to fit with the rest of the novel. Crafts' novel focuses on the cruelties of slavery, and it is jarring to a moment where Crafts details herself or her characterized self as liking the "fun and frolic, the show ...the novelties... the days or hilarity and nights of revelry" of a lavish feast of the mansion ladies and gentlemen. It seemed to very clearly mimic novels of the time, while also remaining unclear if whether this actually happened. It seems unlikely for Crafts, writing a novel that shows the inhumanity of the institution of slavery to include a scene where an enslaved person enjoys watching mirth they cannot partake in, so she may have struck it out for not fitting wholly within the rest of her work.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

DH3 9/27/23

This tool obscures meaning; unlike what I predicted, it has no involvement in diction and word definition. Since it has no way to consider what other words could have been used in the text sample, it is a purely literalist analysis tool. It can tell one how many times certain words appear together, phrases commonly used by the author, and numerical data on the sentences, but it cannot tell you why such data exists; it cannot explain why certain diction is used versus other choices, and is therefore limited.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

DH2 9/25/2023

This is the 'corpus' created when William Blake's The Sick Rose is put through voyant tools. I was slightly off on what I thought this tool does, but I had the right idea. It is able to show the sequences of the text and analyzes what words show up in what order and how many times. Since this is a relatively short text, the only phrase it pulled out was "in the" but the potential is there to find something interesting with more text. It also shows word combinations in what words are often used together, and again a short text sample does not show anything interesting, but a very long text may reveal stylistic choices the writer uses frequently.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

9/20/2023

This tool seems to be a text analyzer. The about page says it is a "web-based text reading and analysis environment." I'm sure what this means, since I am not sure how analysis of text can be automated, but I am intrigued. I am guessing that it is able to use a thesaurus to link words within a text and attempt to formulate some kind of "reading" out of it. This tool makes me wonder if an automated website could guess genre, time period, or author of a text based off diction and style of a given writing sample.

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

8/30/23

[eng362genrehistorytheorysemeraro]

8/29/23