Lovely response here–I didn’t intend to comment, but I can’t help myself. Great job analyzing the text itself and very polished prose style in your analysis as well.

Be careful to use page cites for Iago, even as a pdf. That helps locate the specific passages you’re working with. I’m curious, however, that you talk about the characters in Iago just as characters, and not as the metatheatrical references by Woman and Author, for example, in the prior scene. Why does she get to be Emelia in this scene, but “Woman” in other scenes? Do you think that’s related to the parallelism of this scene with Shakespeare’s version? Add the cites and Works Cited, even in these blog posts for both precision and usefulness at the midterm.

Love the primary sources you found and your analysis, and on a sidebar topic, John Glavin is a very kind man who is Georgetown faculty. You could probably interview him if you liked for a future research paper. My only small comment is that your Works Cited has some erratic format, capitalization and it appear missing information in terms of always letting your reader know where you find the item, whether online, in a special collection, or on a website (and for JSTOR, you don’t need the URL usually in MLA, just JSTOR since as a database it requires membership to access the URL).

Ally,
Really nice use of direct quotes to stitch together both textual analysis and gender analysis. This point in particular is masterfully made: “These examples are ones that he uses against Desdemona later to Othello. He points out her “loose tongue” and her encouraging ways with suitors. He mentions her weakness in character as she is a woman, and a woman who had already disobeyed her father to marry Othello. All of these are strikes against her, as she has not lived up to the ideal of womanhood.” This would be worth discussing more in class–how Iago takes Desdemona’s traits and frames them within specific Early Modern values of femininity to undo her. Similarly, we could look at how she attempts to reframe herself through her own speech, and whether a woman talking in defense of herself is an effective strategy in this play, and perhaps in this era.

Ally,
I love the connections you are making to outside class and your thesis, but be careful to keep bringing yourself back to this course’s readings as well when possible. This will make these posts more useful when it comes time to review for your midterm exam, for example. Don’t get me wrong–the outside connections are great. Perhaps just alternate them with posts that delve into the readings for our class, or bring it back to a quick bridge between Bronte and Shakespeare, for example (there do seem to be some slippery auto/biography connections here).

Very nice job tying your observations to specific examples like the various editions of Frankenstein and the Key and Peele Othello riff (which I used in an UG class, and find very appropriate. After all, Shakespeare is utterly profane for his day). You are right that one reason I chose Shakespeare is because of his complete cultural saturation and appropriation, as well as the undetermined nature of his own original texts.

To address your own examples, the evolution of Shelley thematically from free-will to fate makes sense to me in light of age and loss, but is pretty heart breaking. Of course that raises the question of whether I’m oversimplifying her motives in terms of autobiography, which fits this week’s reading. So we can continue to discuss!

It’s always an interesting method to utilize the three (3) story-line such as Walton, Frankenstein, and the Creature, and with this type of research, I feel that it will benefit you indeed. I believe close-reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein might be the simple solution to the problem you mentioned of “where one framework ends and another begins.” I’d like to ask, however, how will you organize these graphs and compare them to each other? Otherwise, I am excited to learn more in how this project will progress as the topic-subject of story and plot are interesting and it seems you have a great understanding of these devices.

To address some of the questions you raise in the third paragraph (since I can’t really comment on the technical aspects of your project) – I think as long as you recognize going into the project that the sentiments expressed might not be completely “legitimate” because of the framing, then it can still be factored into your analysis or provided as a disclaimer. This is all the textual evidence that Shelley gives us, so there is really no other way around it. I think a deeper analysis of the difference between plot and story would also be interesting.

Ally,
What an interesting idea — I can’t wait to see how your project develops! Like Vincent, I am not familiar with Syuzhet, so am hesitant to offer much in terms of guidance with that. My main suggestion, however, would be to try to narrow your focus (this could be a potential thesis topic, perhaps?). One idea might be to limit your project to short stories, rather than novels? Or not trying to look at all six of Vonnegut’s basic plots, and instead identify one or two. That being said, my primary concern is that you haven’t explicitly stated how your project differs from Prof. Jockers. For instance, you could identify that you are building upon his model for the purposes of __ X___, or conversely, that you are differing with his conclusions because of __Y__ (whatever X and Y happen to be), and use your texts as evidence of that. Does that make sense and/or help? Again, I think that this idea has a great deal of potential, but the current scope might make it unwieldy for this our 571 final project.