35 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2018
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    1. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.

      Here we find yet another personification of air, which enwraps the story with subtle layers of movement and circulation. We could trace this pattern, and its effects on narrative time and narrative progress, through concordances and dispersion plots of "air" and any wind-related words.

    2. [quote] _____ [verse] ____ I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls With vassals and serfs at my side, And of all who assembled within those walls That I was the hope and the pride. I had riches too great to count; could boast Of a high ancestral name, But I also dreamt, which pleased me most, That you loved me still the same. ____ _____

      Dubliners's incorporation of song fragments and musical allusions deserves closer attention, especially in stories such as "Eveline" and "The Boarding House." Before performing close readings on the language of these songs, and the effects and implications of such language, we could treat every song lyric in Dubliners as a document and identify the most distinctive words of every song with TF/IDF analysis.

    3. It was a bright Sunday morning of early summer, promising heat, but with a fresh breeze blowing. All the windows of the boarding house were open and the lace curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath the raised sashes.

      The windows allow a "fresh breeze" to enter Mrs. Mooney's house, opening up a circulatory channel between the house's interior and the summery world that surrounds it. A concordance and dispersion plot of the word "window" would allow us to trace the figure of the window across all of the stories. After all, the window paradoxically enables characters like Eveline to behold the outside world--and all of the openings and escapes that the view suggests--but blocks immediate access to wider horizons.

    4. They were Charles Segouin, the owner of the car; Andre Riviere, a young electrician of Canadian birth; a huge Hungarian named Villona and a neatly groomed young man named Doyle

      This is the first instance in Dubliners of a narrator introducing characters by name and in sequence. To begin to tackle the question of why only certain characters are named throughout the text, we could perform a stylometric analysis on the stories; looking at the generated graph in Jupyter, we might then identify a cluster of stories that involves more overt character descriptions.

  3. Jul 2018
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    1. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

      These sentences capture the story's thematic core: the internal and external dynamics of coming and going, not only spatially (e.g., the passing pedestrians) and geographically (e.g., the priest in Melbourne), but also generationally (see the double repetition of "grown up" in this paragraph) and in the transition from life to death. We could begin to trace the workings of this theme in this story, and throughout Dubliners, by comparing the frequency of language of stasis and return to the frequency of words associated with leaving and escape.

    2. NORTH RICHMOND STREET, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free

      This first sentence already raises some questions. What does it mean for North Richmond Street to be "blind" (sightless?)? And why is the Christian Brothers' School characterized as a prison from which boys are "set free"? We could explore the second question further by creating concordances and collocations with words associated with freedom and captivity.

    3. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce—the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.

      The narrator's description of the commercial ships, and his fantasy of sailing away from Dublin, briefly suspend the narrative, creating a temporal and spatial expansiveness that pressures the story's geographic containment. It would be interesting to track and investigate the language of imagination and fantasy throughout Dubliners with a concordance and collocations.

    4. I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shopwindows as I went. I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections.

      Packed with mixed feelings of curiosity, fear, deferral, confusion, irritation, freedom, and reminiscing, this passage suggests that the narrator's relationship with the late Father Flynn is far more complicated (and perhaps troubling) than meets the eye. The language of this excerpt is ripe for close reading, but we could also explore it computationally by calculating pronoun frequencies (i.e., how often "he" and "him" appear compared to "I" and "me"), and by performing a sentiment analysis in a Jupyter notebook. It would be interesting to compare one's close readings with the results of a computer-generated sentiment analysis.

    1. Even Charlotte and the girls were too much for him to-night. They were too... too... But all his drowsing brain could think of was—too rich for him.

      I'm curious about what we would find by tracking the word "too" across the entire Mansfield short story corpus, mainly with word counts, word collocations, and n-grams. My hypothesis would be that the word "too" appears most frequently (perhaps exclusively) in stories with thematics of excess, both material and immaterial.

    2. Why didn’t the men begin? What were they waiting for? There they stood, smoothing their gloves, patting their glossy hair and smiling among themselves. Then, quite suddenly, as if they had only just made up their minds that that was what they had to do, the men came gliding over the parquet. There was a joyful flutter among the girls.

      Throughout the story, the narrator figures the men and women as birds participating in courtship/pre-mating dances. Observe the narrator's ornithological language here: the men "glid[e] over the parquet" towards the women, who respond with "a joyful flutter." With part-of-speech tagging, we could zoom in on how the story's syntactical elements (especially verbs and adjectives) create this parallel between social and animal rituals.

    3. And now the landing-stage came out to meet them. Slowly it swam towards the Picton boat,

      This excerpt personifies the "landing-stage" with the verbs "came" and "swam." Where else does this occur in this story? And what does this device imply about the "voyage" that the story recounts? Part-of-speech tagging would allow us to examine when, how, and to what effect(s) objects becoming (grammatical) subjects through personification.

    4. But if it had been cold in the cabin, on deck it was like ice. The sun was not up yet, but the stars were dim, and the cold pale sky was the same colour as the cold pale sea. On the land a white mist rose and fell. Now they could see quite plainly dark bush. Even the shapes of the umbrella ferns showed, and those strange silvery withered trees that are like skeletons... Now they could see the landing-stage and some little houses, pale too, clustered together, like shells on the lid of a box. The other passengers tramped up and down, but more slowly than they had the night before, and they looked gloomy.

      This interlude slows the narrative down with sensory details that evoke unease and gloom: from the icy air, to the skeleton-like trees, to the clustered houses, to the trudging passengers, the reader cannot help but anxiously anticipate the events and conversations that will follow. We can broaden our exploration of how the story creates this mood by tracing the words "cold," "pale," and "dark" with word counts, concordances, and dispersion plots.

    5. pale

      This word occurs five times in this story, both as a verb (i.e., to become pale, or to appear less important and remarkable in comparison to something else) and as a drab color. Along with a concordance, a dispersion plot with "pale" and the more vibrant colors that populate the story would illuminate the visual, textural, and perhaps symbolic significance of paleness.

    6. flushed

      The motif of facial flushing/blushing would be interesting to trace with a concordance and dispersion plots. What are the material, affective, and characterological causes and significances of blushing in this story? Put more simply, when and why do women blush?

    7. Meringues

      The recurrence of "meringues" until this point warrants further examination. In addition to tracing this motif and performing contextual analyses, we can use word collocations and concordances to better understand the physical and figurative resonances of this dessert. This reading could then feed into a broader analysis of all of the story's ingestible substances.

    8. She tugged at his sleeve, and to his astonishment, this time, instead of laughing, she looked like a little girl who was going to cry.

      Throughout the story, the narrator references specific parts of articles of clothing (e.g., "collar," "sleeve," etc.). We could use concordances and dispersion plots to trace this clothing motif and begin to investigate its material and affective significances.

    9. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the air always like this?

      This is one of a handful of examples of "free indirect discourse" or "free indirect style": the impersonal, third-person narrator conveys Laura's thoughts without markers such as "Laura thought" or "Laura said." This narrative mode enables the text to seamlessly move in and out of characters' subjectivities. Would it be possible to write a program to identify instances of free indirect discourse?

    10. And after all the weather was ideal.

      The story begins with the additive conjunction "and," which already suggests accumulation (and perhaps even festive excess) on a syntactical level. Some part-of-speech tagging and n-grams would allow us to see how often the speaker uses additive conjunctions, and to what effects.

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    1. I read those miraculous words with an emphasis which did them justice, and then I looked him severely in the face. “NOW, sir, do you believe in ROBINSON CRUSOE?” I asked, with a solemnity, suitable to the occasion.

      This is the thirtieth and final time that the word "justice" appears in The Moonstone. What does "justice" mean in this text? In what ways does the novel's conclusion do (or fail to do) "justice" to the narrative buildup? What do different characters mean when they mention "justice"? What would a concordance and dispersion plot illuminate about the linguistic and conceptual workings of "justice" throughout The Moonstone?

    2. beyond any reasonable doubt

      With this key phrase of legal discourse, Cuff's takes on the role of a prosecutor in a courtroom, shouldering the burden of proof in the case at hand. What is the relationship between detective work and legal argumentation? How does the novel's language put various characters on trial, not only before other characters, but also before the novel's jury of readers? A word collocation analysis of words and phrases with legal significance would help us to determine whether or not legal language shapes standards of evidence in The Moonstone.

    3. I told him exactly what I was permitted to tell, and no more.

      Ezra Jennings is very conscious about what he can and cannot disclose to other characters (and, consequently, to readers of the text). When and why do characters withhold information throughouth The Moonstone? And how does delayed information shape the pacing of the narrative? A comparative word count of chapters and larger sections that involve deferred information can help us to determine whether the act of withholding knowledge extends or curtails narration.

    4. Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I fancy that I can find it out.

      Once again, we encounter the language of detective work, which often involves the uncovering and probing of underlying motives. What distinguishes Betteredge's "detective fever" from Ezra Jennings's understanding of detection? We could operationalize this comparative question into a word collocation study of target words that are associated with detective work (e.g., "detective," "suspect," "motive," etc.).

    5. “Facts?” he repeated. “Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you’ll get over the weakness of believing in facts! Foul play, sir!” he continued, dropping his voice confidentially. “That is how I read the riddle. Foul play somewhere–and you and I must find it out. Was there nothing else in the tin case, when you put your hand into it?”

      The repetition of the word "facts" in this conversation reanimates the tension between absolute knowledge and shifting suspicions. As an epistolary novel, does The Moonstone present any "facts"? Or is every (alleged) "fact" refracted by memory, sentiment, and linguistic representation? What is the status of evidence (i.e., the stained nightgown) in this scene?

    6. The picture presented of me, by my old friend Betteredge, at the time of my departure from England, is (as I think) a little overdrawn. He has, in his own quaint way, interpreted seriously one of his young mistress’s many satirical references to my foreign education; and has persuaded himself that he actually saw those French, German, and Italian sides to my character, which my lively cousin only professed to discover in jest, and which never had any real existence, except in our good Betteredge’s own brain. But, barring this drawback, I am bound to own that he has stated no more than the truth in representing me as wounded to the heart by Rachel’s treatment, and as leaving England in the first keenness of suffering caused by the bitterest disappointment of my life.

      Although the novel has already suggested that Betteredge is an unreliable narrator, Franklin Blake's explicit refutation of specific points in the First Period account corroborates the faultiness of Betteredge's perspective. Whom should we trust? Maybe a comparative sentiment analysis of Betteredge and Blake's accounts would allow us to test Blake's claim that Betteredge has "overdrawn" his narrative and interpreted passing references too "seriously."

    7. The next thing I have to do, is to present such additional information as I possess on the subject of the Moonstone, or, to speak more correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond.

      The language that Bruff uses to preface the case at hand--"to speak more correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond"--betrays his preconceived conclusion. Once again, the tension between knowledge and suspicion comes to mind.

    8. And what of that?–you may reply–the thing is done every day. Granted, my dear sir. But would you think of it quite as lightly as you do, if the thing was done (let us say) with your own sister?

      Mathew Bruff carefully anticipates the reader's objections, and tries to persuade him ("my dear sir") to reconsider his assessment of Godfrey Ablewhite. To better understand how and why The Moonstone's various narrators directly address readers, we could run a word collocation analysis and/or a sentiment analysis on each moment that features a narrator addressing a reader. Then, we would be informed enough to speculate about the extent to which such addresses prove effective.

    9. witnessed

      As we evaluate the many forms of "evidence" that the novel presents, we should ask ourselves how important or meaningful eyewitness accounts are in relation to testimonies, object clues, hearsay, and characters' inferences. An evidence network would allow us to visualize how information interacts and spreads, and modify our epistemological questions and detective work accordingly.

    10. My diary informs me

      This is an interesting reversal of typical subject-object relations. The diary, which is an object, is grammatically positioned as an informative agent, while Miss Clack, a person, becomes an object that is acted upon. Some part-of-speech tagging in scenes that feature document evidence would help us to better understand when and why this happens, and why it might be significant.

    11. I suspected what was the matter readily enough. But it is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women–if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn’t matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn’t their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it’s the fault of the fools who humour them.

      Once again, Betteredge annotates his own thoughts with plenty of parenthetical remarks and value judgments. Coupled with a word frequency analysis of parenthetical statements throughout the novel, a word collocation analysis of moments such as this would reveal semantic and conceptual patterns about the words that tend to surround Betteredge's parentheticals.

    12. Nothing but the tracing of the Moonstone to our second housemaid could now raise Miss Rachel above the infamous suspicion that rested on her in the mind of Sergeant Cuff.

      Regardless of whether the reader sides with Betteredge or Sergeant Cuff in their assessment of Miss Rachel, "infamous suspicion" is the driving affect of this moment. What would a word collocation analysis of the words "suspect," "suspicious," and "suspicion" reveal about when and how the novel fuels and thwarts the suspicions of characters and readers?

    13. the infernal detective-fever

      This is a curious way of describing the impulse to decipher and investigate as a detective. What would be revealed by a sentiment analysis of the language that characters use to describe the temperament, feelings, and skills associated with detection and detective-ness?

    14. What the girl has done, to-night, is clear enough, of course. She has joined the two chains, and has fastened them to the hasp in the tin case. She has sunk the case, in the water or in the quicksand. She has made the loose end of the chain fast to some place under the rocks, known only to herself. And she will leave the case secure at its anchorage till the present proceedings have come to an end; after which she can privately pull it up again out of its hiding-place, at her own leisure and convenience. All perfectly plain, so far. But,” says the Sergeant, with the first tone of impatience in his voice that I had heard yet, “the mystery is–what the devil has she hidden in the tin case?”

      The "tin case" illustrates how, in the genre of detective fiction, the detective figure constructs answers to the "mystery" at hand not only by asking questions about suspicious behavior, but also by collecting information from object clues. Perhaps a word collocation analysis of scenes with suspicious behavior and/or object clues can shed light on the kinds of words that tend to appear when the text presents important pieces of evidence (or, alternatively, red herrings).

    15. “They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College of Surgeons,” says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice. “I strongly recommend the Professor, ma’am, when he next has an hour to spare, to pay them a visit.”

      The novel's abundance of dialogue warrants questions about how one should evaluate the significance of any given conversation (e.g., the chatter that populates this scene). Perhaps a study of word frequencies, coupled with part-of-speech tagging, can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the words that distinguish informative conversations from less important chatter in detective fiction.

    16. I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually happened–and you must please to jog on a little while longer with me

      In this moment of self-referentiality, the text relies on intensely physical language ("detain you," "put down," "jog on a little while longer") to demand sustained attention towards the facts of the case. Betteredge's physicalized language draws attention to the demanding nature of focused close reading.

    17. I request them to suspend their decision until they have read my narrative. And I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.

      Three questions/issues arise. To what extent can readers "suspend their decision" as they consider the narrator's account? Of what value is the narrator's "word of honour"? What is meant by "the truth," and how do the words "strictly" and "literally" modify it?