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The
Last Man |
It is hard to read a novel of this length on line; harder still to ask students to do it. How does one discuss the novel in class without having a printed text with page numbers to consult. Here are some ideas for using this hypertext edition of Mary Shelley's novel in the classroom. |
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| Using the Hypertext edition in conjunction with a print text | Send your students to the Table of Contents of the online edition to find images, pictures, maps, and even sound files mentioned by Shelley in the novel. Have students search the site using the Google Search engine at the top of the Table of Contents page for any allusion in the novel that interests them -- Windsor, for instance. |
| Ask students to print out the maps they find in this edition. Have them mark up the maps, tracking each character's movements (A for Adrian, L for Lionel, R for Raymond). | |
| How can one mine the wealth of the footnotes to this online edition? Say that, as you read, you come to "'the desart and the solitude'" in quotation marks. On the table of contents page, there is a google search engine available simply for searching the novel. Type in "desart." You will find the quotation. It's the sixth one: click on the link, then scroll through the chapter: if it is footnoted, the phrase will be highlighted. But more than that, you will find all instances of the word "desart" in the novel, situated within the sentences in which they occur. This is a wonderful method of tracking thematic keywords, as well as determing an author's idiosyncratic usage, leading to some great assignments. | |
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Sample Assignment (This assignment can be printed out separately if you wish). |
1. Go to the online hypertext edition of the novel we are reading: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/index.html 2. Go to the Table of Contents: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/contents.htm 3. Browse around, looking at the maps,
and also listen to Haydn
4. Notice as you read through the novel any word that seems to express to you a key idea explored by Shelley here and/or a word that is often repeated. 5. Go to the Table of Contents in the online edition: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/contents.htm 6. Search for that word. Click on each link to a chapter that contains one or more instances of it. Each time you come to the chapter, click on "Edit" at the top left-hand side of your browser, then "Find." Type the word into the "find" blank. When you come to the word, highlight with your cursor the sentence in which it occurs, and then copy that sentence into a Word document. Introduce your quotation by explaining what's happening at that point in the novel. Then, after quoting the sentence, explain what the word means in that particular sentence. Repeat this process for each instance of your word. 7. Print out your word document and bring it to class. |
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| Using the Hypertext edition alone |
Idea #1: Each chapter of the novel is fairly short. If you plan to take a lot of time on this novel in your class, have students print it out, chapter by chapter, asking them to bring 3 or 4 chapters to class per class meeting. Ask them to number the paragraphs as they read. Idea #2: Ask groups of students to be in charge of leading class discussion for several chapters of the text. Ask them to excerpt portions of each by copying and pasting them into a Word document. Ask them to make enough copies of that word document to bring to give to all members of the class for that day's discussion. Idea #3 If your students all have Palm Pilots, download portions of the novel that you would like to discuss onto your palm and then beam it to students in class. You will all have text in your hands! |
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| Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Chronology and Resource Site, ed. Shannon Lawson. | Ask students to examine the chronology in order to think about how major events in Shelley's life may have affected her by the time she is writing this novel. |
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