Friday: BB - Course Document - Poetess Archive - look at 3 version of the Bijou poem - do a close reading of the poem in the HTML version - Answer the following: Is the poem the same in these three versions? - What difference will digitizing make to our understanding of poems? - Bonus: Apply the poem's theme about art to the poem itself: does digitizing contribute to Heman's aim in writing this poem?
http://sarahoims390.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/tag-clouds/
1 - Create a tag cloud for your assigned Frankenstein passage (using above link)
2 - Compare textual versions using JUXTA
3 - Blog
Comparing the three texts:
There were significant differences in the texts. For example, the original 1818 version's tag cloud tagged the word "friend" more than anything else; the 1831 version tagged "converse", "creature", "friend", "man", and "spoke". In addition, the 1831 version's tag cloud contained a lot of adjectives: excited, unhappy. Others included dark, despair, mind, noble, misery. Beyond the interesting differences between the texts without analysis, I suppose Shelley's focus in writing Frankenstein changed when she edited the book later. The later version, maybe, concentrated more on the psychology and the individual.
Because the word that appeared most in the 1831 text was "creature", I googled "creature" and here is one of the images that popped up - a Frilled Shark!
Did Mary Shelley write three different novels? What is the difference in what the stranger agrees to in these three passages? Why does visualizing matter? How does it matter?
While the three novels have significant changes, and can be said to mean different things, the story is essentially the same one. The three texts contain the same characters, plot, plot twists, and ending. It's a story that, for all its cult fame, is really a meaningful story debating issues relevant to any human being. Shelley's editing to her own work might have broadened or altered the story's focus in its three forms, but I think it's still the same novel even when the text differs between editions.
The 1831 version goes into more detail of what a best friend should be to a person - that this person should challenge and complete the other. This sounds a lot like what people talk about when they talk about soul mates.
Visualizing the texts the way we did in class helps reminds us of details we might otherwise have overlooked. Without sharp reading of the 1831 text I might not have noticed which words popped up most often. It offers another angle to analyze a text by.
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