Allusions in the Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair is filled with literary and historical allusions and references that make reading it enjoyable.  It does this by referencing people, places, and items outside of the novel in a way that brings another layer of meaning to the plot and its events.  In this way it creates an experience of meta-reading, something that is not unlike the experiences that we had when reading the hypertext fiction and working to create our own. 

However, you can only experience the reading this way if you are in on the allusions (and the jokes that they are trying to make, in the case of Fforde's novel).  Did you recognize all the allusions?  How did you feel when you recognized one?  How did this compare to how you felt when you did not recognize one? 

In order to delve into the book, you will each be embarking on a webquest to determine to what each of the items listed below is referring.

al·lu·sion

Noun:

An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference. The practice of making such references, esp. as an artistic device.

Look up the following references:

Boswell
Pickwick

Goliath (as in "Goliath Corporation")
Crimean War
William Thackeray
Mycroft
Cardenio
Longfellow
surrealism
impressionism
Gad's Hill
Martin Chuzzlewit
Dickens
Haworth House
Austen
Swift
Gulliver's Travels
Mill on the Floss
Byron
Keats
Poe
Acheron Hades
chimera
Henry Fielding
Styx Hades
Jane Eyre
Bronte
Francis Bacon
Toad (toady) news
Stoker
Spike
Liz Barrett Browning
The Chesire Cat
Bowden Cable
Wordsworth
Braxton Hicks
Felix Tabularasa

Studio Time:  With this understanding of the meaningful use of allusions and references in mind, edit your Hypertext blog entry.  If you have time you may want to start on the seven blog entries that will be due as part of your end-of-unit assignment, due at the beginning of next week. 

Homework:
*Read the next 50pp. in The Eyre Affair (be ready for another reading quiz this week)
*Start to work on your blog entries for your unit assignment
*Poke around Jasper Fforde's website-->www.jasperfforde.com