Study Guide to New Historicism and Cultural Studies

03.11H Constructing

Guide to New Historicism and Cultural Studies
Essential Questions
1. What in the text indicates historical events? ~ The text starts off with “In 1820,” which indicates past tense.
2. What in the text would not fit in a different time period? ~”In 1820, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier—restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we should call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meager comforts which they had voluntarily renounced.” I choose this piece of text because the homes now in 2014 are more modern and strong.
3. What in the text indicates the beliefs and values of the author? ~”From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather.”

Guide to Feminist Criticism
Essential Questions
1. What in the text concerns women or marriage? ~”In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of her name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I should share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of the man's widowed life; for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?” the story is about Murlock and his wife.
2. What in the text indicates the writer is male or female? ~”I never saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.” He says “when he was a lad.”
3. What in the text indicates assumptions about women and female roles in society? ~”In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart.”

Guide to Psychoanalytic Criticism
Essential Questions
1. What in the text explains what the main character is thinking? ~”I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.”
2. What in the text might be symbolic of underlying feelings or thoughts? ~”To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms upon the table's edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening woods! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep.”
3. What in the text depends on irrational fears or beliefs? ~”Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step—another—sounds as of bare feet upon the floor!
He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move.”