Database Resources for Papers

Hi, class,

I am providing you with basic database searching instructions. This will be of great assistance to you when you begin work on the research paper in April.

DATABASE RESOURCES

Here are the instructions (the emphasis here is on the Literature Resource Center—LRC, as an example). To access The Literature Resource Center, and Contemporary Authors/Literary Criticism Select/Dictionary of Literary Biography, go to:

 http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/essexcc

The password is: county

Click "Proceed"
 
Click on Literature Resource Center - LRC

1) When you get to the search box (FIND), just type in your search terms:

EXAMPLES:

• crane AND monster
• Frankenstein AND nature AND nurture
• AND two offers 
• harriet wilson AND our nig
• morrison AND bluest eye
• douglass AND heroic slave

2) under “publication century,” CLICK “21st century A.D.” 

3) under “by content type,” UNCHECK all the boxes EXCEPT “Literature Criticism”

4) Make sure “All electronic sources” is highlighted (it is the default).

5) Then CLICK “Search” (next to where your search terms were entered).

Several articles will come up--skim through to see if you find some suitable articles. If you cannot find articles that work, try using other search terms. Click on the ones you think might be suitable, and email them to yourself, or download them. If you cannot find suitable articles from "21st century A.D.," click "None selected" and do your search again.
 
TEXTS AVAILABLE IN LIBRARY 
In addition, there are many books on the authors we have studied accessible from the Essex County College Library. For books, you may use works (biographies, collected essays, etc.) published no earlier than the year 2000. Look for the book using the call letters. If you cannot find the books you want to use in the stacks, ask the reference librarian for assistance. You also have access to the Rutgers-Newark Library with your ID card, so feel free to access articles from their resources.

Comments on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Hi, class, please feel free to respond to any (or all) of the questions posted below.

1) Throughout Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, everyone who encounters Hyde finds it difficult to describe his looks. Why do you think author Robert Louis Stevenson avoids having the characters provide a precise visual description of Hyde?

2) In the section, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case” in the Norton (49-62), Henry Jekyll writes of  the “…thorough and primitive duality of man,” which causes him to explore that duality through his scientific experiments: “Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of a life of study I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and well considered, but growing towards the elderly man, the incoherency of my life was growing daily more unwelcome, It was on this side that y new power tempted me until I fell into slavery. I had to but drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde” (52). In an essay, find passages to compare the repressed and dry life of Dr. Jekyll with the exciting and unhallowed pleasures of Edward Hyde. Why, in the final analysis, do you think Edward Hyde triumphed of Jekyll?

3) Some critics view Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as exposing anxieties in the British Empire, with the main conflict as symbolic of threats regarding race, class, sexuality (including homosexuality), Darwinism, and immigration at the end of the 19th Century. Find and analyze one or more passages within the story and write an essay to support or refute such claims.