This Commonplace Book has been created for my English Seminar on Literature and Gender, New World Desires. The assignment was to use reading we’ve completed throughout the semester in order to develop analytical responses that not only fall under the topoi (or “places”) we’ve chosen but also establish relationships across texts and desires in the New World.
Below are my four topoi:
“Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life . . . It involved a special way of taking in the printed world . . . They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities.” (Robert Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces”)
New World Desires 