Illustrations to The Old English Baron

Frontispiece to the first edition ("The Champion of Virtue," 1777)
Father Oswald and Edmund meet with Margery Twyford.

• a sentimental scene
  

Frontispiece to the second edition (1778 - the one we're reading)
Richard Wenlock and Jack Markham encounter "Lord Lovel"

• a gothic scene
  

Images taken from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Northwestern University)

William Hogarth Prints

William Hogarth - "Cunicularii, or The Wise Men of Godalming in Consultation." This depicts Hogarth's satirical take on Mary Toft "giving birth" to rabbits.


William Hogarth - "The Reward of Cruelty" - a look at the kind of anatomical theatre we spoke of this week in our section on "Murderers."

And here is a link to an exhibition that was here at Northwestern a while back. It is Hogarth's narrative of the life and short career of a prostitute. Based on the story of Sarah Pridden, whose narrative we read, it is called "The Harlot's Progress."

First Paper Assignment

Since we are in the midst of reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Reveries of the Solitary Walker," our first assignment, the personal essay, will mirror our reading. On Friday, the class took a walk out into Nature. Leaving Parkes Hall, we walked toward the lake, stopping and becoming solitary at the shore of painted rocks. The first part of the assignment is to take 50 minutes and walk out into Nature - for 50 minutes, you are not to talk at all, just take with you a notepad and a writing utensil. When we are alone and left to our own devices, our thoughts will inevitably lead us into a train of associations, and even turning to focus on some particular thing of interest to us at that moment.

As you walk, stop when you need to, or find an isolated place to sit in Nature, and make notes about what you're thinking about. At the end of your time, try to select one of the themes, ideas, events or whatnot that you'd been thinking about. The second part of the assignment, and the main part, as it were, is to write out in essay form, a draft of an essay that moves from the specific to the universal. What that means is to use the thoughts specific to you that you mused on and made note of during your solitary walk, and find a way to relate it to a larger, more universal theme - much like Rousseau does in his Walks. Think of the second walk, where his incident with the dog leads to reflections on the uses of imagination. Something like that. In class, when asked, I gave the example of my perpetually dying hamster and my efforts to bring him back to life. I spoke on how this could lead to a number of different essays - on mortality, on friendship, on paying attention, on being there for one's friends, and so on.

In your draft (need be no longer than 2 pages - the final will be 4 to 4 1/2 pages, so feel free to draft longer), foreground your specific event, so that you can move seamlessly into the more general, universal implications.

This assingment requires you to spend some time alone, and quiet, and to really spend some time reflecting on yourself. As Rousseau notes, self-reflection can be painful, but can also lead us to positively assess or reassess how our little place in the world relates to our larger lives.