Due Wednesday, March 19, by 5:00 p.m. If you've completed the exam BEFORE that time, please bring it to the Honors College office and put it in my mailbox OR slip it under the door to my office. I'll be in 308 Chapman from about noon on Wednesday for hand-delivery of exams.

Here's what we set out to do, according to the syllabus:

This second term of the Honors College literature sequence organizes our readings around the idea of travel to explore important literary themes: language, individuation and identity, culture and cultural relativism, and the definitions of fact and fiction. These issues arise out of the concerns of traveler and narrator. For instance, a traveler's sympathy and identity relates to Socratic self-knowledge and its dark side, narcissism; the language of travel complicates ideas about real and imaginary, especially as we move into the age of enlightenment. Travelers' political and economic aims reflect and create public and private spheres, with their concomitant gendering: geography "maps" the human body. Because the West's colonial impulse grows exponentially from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the ethical dimension of travel and narrative has special meaning for this term of the HC literature sequence. The ways in which literature indexes colonial expansion -- through accommodation and critique -- will be a theme throughout our readings.

Take a two-hour block of time between now and 5:00 pm Wednesday and write TWO essays, one from Part A (emphasizing Equiano) and one from Part B (emphasizing Wollstonecraft). Use your essay to demonstrate your familiarity with the texts and issues mentioned. You may treat the scenarios in the third person or create a conversation between/among characters. Do refer to other class texts as appropriate. Maximum length: two blue books or 1000 words, typed double-space (approximately 500 words per essay). You may consult the passages along with their contexts and plan your essays ahead of time. Please keep in mind that the essays' purpose is to have you assess the interrelationships among our texts and themes. Be as specific and complete as you can.

PART A

Culture and cultural relativism: How is difference recognized and used? Why would women's habits provide a venue for exploring difference? What about the "double consciousness" of the traveler?
Equiano, describing his time in Turkey: "I was astonished in not seeing women in any of their shops, and very rarely any in the streets; and whenever I did they were covered with a veil from head to foot, so that I could not see their faces, except when any of them, out of curiosity, uncovered them to look at me, which they sometimes did" (167).
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on veils: ". . . no woman . . . [is] permitted to go into the street without two muslins, one that covers her face all but her eyes and another that hides the whole dress of her head. . . This perpetual masquerade gives them entire liberty of following their inclinations without danger of discovery" (71).

Language and identity: How important is language, especially written language, to identity?
Equiano speaks about his youth: "I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent" (68).
Caliban to Stephano: "There thou mayst brain him, / having first seized his books . . . Remember / First to possess his books, for without them / He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command" (III.3.83-4, 86-9).

Fact and fiction: How do we as readers evaluate fact and fiction? How do authors address an audience's concerns?
Equiano on his entry to the slave ship (note the present tense): "These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the then feelings of my mind" (55).
The Book of Margery Kempe: "This book is not written in order, every thing after another as it was done, but just as the matter came to this creature's mind when it was to be written down, for it was so long before it was written that she had forgotten the time and the order when things occurred. And therefore she had nothing written but what she well knew to be indeed the truth" (37, p. 45 in the packet).

Public and private: In what ways does poetry denote the difference between public and private?

PART B
Ethics: Does travel provide an especially good situation for thinking about ethics? Do travelers have special insight, or a special responsibility?
Wollstonecraft in Letter III, on labor: "In fact, the situation of the servants in every respect, particularly that of the women, shews how far the Swedes are from having a just conception of rational equality. They are not termed slaves; yet a man may strike a man with impunity because he pays him wages. . .necessity must teach them to pilfer, whilst servility renders them false and boorish. Still the men stand up for the dignity of man, by oppressing the women. The most menial, and even laborious offices, are therefore left to these poor drudges" (26, p. 115 in the packet).
Raphael Hytholoday in Book Two of Utopia: "These sorts of bondmen they keep not only in continual work and labor, but also in bands. But their own men they handle hardest, whom they judge more desperate and to have deserved greater punishment, because they being so godly brought up to virtue in so excellent a commonwealth could not for all that be refrained from misdoing" (168).

Accommodation and critique: How do travelers handle differences they encounter? Is religion a particularly fraught case?
Wollstonecraft in Letter VII: "On the subject of religion they are likewise becoming tolerant, at least, and perhaps have advanced a step further in free-thinking. One writer has ventured to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and to question the necessity or utility of the christian system, without being considered universally as a monster, which would have been the case a few years ago" (67, p. 135 in the packet).
Mandeville, speaking of the Muslims: "But they are very devout and honest in their law, keeping well the commandments of the Koran, which God sent them by His messenger Muhammad, to whom, so they say, the angel Gabriel spoke often, telling him the will of God" (108).

Self-knowledge: How do travelers reveal themselves? How do they denote change?
Wollstonecraft: "Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of the mind to keep awake affection, even in our own, hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship; all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing" (110).
Margery Kempe: "She answering said, ‘Sir, these words [Crescite et multiplicamini, "increase and multiply"] are not only to be understood as applying to the begetting of children physically, but also to the gaining of virtue, which is spiritual fruit, such as by hearing the workds of God, by giving a good example, by meekness and patience, charity and chastity, and other such things–for patience is more worthy than miracle-working.' And she, through the grace of God, so answered that cleric that he was well pleased. And our Lord, of his mercy, always make some men love her and support her" (159, p. 81 in the packet).

Politics and economy: Are these central concerns of travelers? Or of particular travelers? Why?
Wollstonecraft, Letter XIV: "England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank" (129, p. 166 in the packet).
Equiano, writing of his time on the Musquito Coast: "The country being hot, we lived under an open shed, where we had all kinds of goods, without a door or a lock to any one article; yet we slept in safety, and never lost any thing, or were disturbed. This surprised us a good deal; and the Doctor, myself, and others, used to say, if we were to lie in that manner in Europe we should have our throats cut the first night" (207).