(That other website is down, and I'd like to keep a record of this #thread somewhere, so I can go back to it.)

I'd argue that #EdwardSaid 's "#JaneAusten and #Empire" is quite pedagogical in weaving in both #textualanalysis and description and #culturalhistory (and other kinds of #history).

What's peculiar about it is that he is being defensive: he will be linking a beloved, canonical author (Jane Austen) with a violent, execrable history of domination, so he better back up not only what he is saying, but also what he is doing. To do that, he anchors #context in a careful reading of the #text. To say that #MansfieldPark is not about #colonialism may be right, but while colonialism "is ... incidental, referred to only in passing" (so you need to read carefully to notice), it is also "absolutely crucial to the action" (so you should want to parse it if you want to get the novel).

A few days back I'd mentioned how homeless used to refer to a temporary situation, almost always caused by some specific event, and generally short-term, not chronic.

A word frequency analysis of about 500 New York Times articles from 1965--1974 illustrates this. Just from the top 20 terms there are 219 references to natural or other disasters. More occur elsewhere in the set.

 1. homeless   108
 2. fire       70
 3. floods     58
 4. and        44
 5. flood      34
 6. dead       32
 7. for        31
 8. the        28
 9. are        23
10. die        23
11. new        22
12. toll       22
13. city       21
14. killed     21
15. quake      21
16. aid        20
17. storm      20
18. hurt       18
19. blaze      16
20. families   16

#homelessness #housing #TextualAnalysis