No outside source Just follow the prompt and use the readings form it’s corresponig folder.
PART II: CLOSE READING AND ANALYSIS
Respond to the following prompts, writing 2-3 paragraphs (5-6 sentences per paragraph) of analysis for each. In each case, make sure to analyze the quoted passage in its full context in the original text.
In their article ?A Perspective on Disgust? Paul Rozin and April Fallon assert that ?psychological contamination? is one of the defining features of disgust (29-33). ?The basic phenomenon,? they write, ?is that past physical contact between an acceptable food and a disgust substance (physical contamination) causes rejection of the acceptable food? (29). Paying special attention to Rozin and Fallon?s account of ?the laws of sympathetic magic,? provide a detailed account of the ways that Rozin and Fallon argue that psychological contamination functions in the context of disgust. What different rules does this logic of contamination follow? What are some of the contradictions they identify in the operation of contamination thinking?
Use Folder Q1 focusing on the reading
?I pity the wretched Strephon,? says the speaker of Jonathan Swift?s ?The Lady?s Dressing Room,? towards the end of the poem. ?Should I the Queen of Love refuse / Because she rose from stinking ooze?? Give a close reading of the last two stanzas of the poem, in which you explicate the speaker?s ?pity? for Strephon. What does it mean that pity is an appropriate emotional response to Strephon?s disgust at the revelation of Caelia?s bodily functioning? What does the poem recommend as a solution to Strephon?s problem? And in what sense is disgust a ?problem,? in the first place?
Use Folder Q2 focusing on the reading
Freud writes in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality that ?disgust seems to be one of the forces that have led to a restriction of the sexual aim.? He also observes that ?the limits of such disgust are, however, often purely conventional: a man who will kiss a pretty girl?s lips passionately may perhaps be disgusted at the idea of using her toothbrush, though there are no grounds for supposing that his own oral cavity, for which he feels no disgust, is any cleaner that the girl?s? (17-18). Analyze the tension inherent in Freud?s characterization of disgust?s role in human sexuality (in this passage as well as in the essay on the whole). What functions does Freud attribute to disgust? Are they coherent or contradictory? What part does it play in the elaboration of the categories of ?normal? and ?abnormal? or ?perverse? sexuality? (You may wish to draw on William Ian Miller?s discussion of Freud in chapter 6 of The Anatomy of Disgust.)
Use Folder Q3 focusing on the reading
In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin writes that in the tradition of grotesque realism, the body ?is not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits?The body discloses its essence as a principle of growth which exceeds its own limits only in copulation, pregnancy, childbirth, the throes of death, eat, drinking, or defecation? (26). Drawing on our readings of Bakhtin, analyze George Saunders?s use of the grotesque in his short story ?Sea Oak.? How and to what end does the story draw on the kinds of tropes and images that Bakhtin associates with the grotesque? (Note: This prompt asks you to draw on Saunders?s and Bakhtin?s texts.)
Use Folder Q4 focusing on the reading
