Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 4b (poetry in English & song)

And then there are the poems written in English...I'm not sure where the poems from the Nuyorican anthology would fit, and I forget whether Michael Ondatjee wrote his poems in English or another language.

We began our unit on poetry, discussing some Romantic poets and their poems (excerpts from Lord Byron's mock-epic Don Juan, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Keats' beautiful "Eve of St. Agnes"--the image above is Holman Hunt's painting of a scene from that poem).  In the section of "Don Juan" that we read, Juan has landed on an island where he and Haidee, the daughter of a pirate king, will fall in love.  Juan is no innocent as he is escaping from his (discovered) affair with an older woman.  Byron plays with the conventions of the epic, especially as he goes off track, discoursing on "wine and women, mirth and laughter."  We also discussed Coleridge and Keats' narrative poems.  Although I did not mention it that day, the concept of medievalism is important here.

We moved onto Walt Whitman's poetry from Leaves of Grass, a collection that he revised throughout his adult life (Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892).  Two poems that we looked at were "I Hear America Singing," for its inclusiveness (that Ruben Dario later plays on) and  "O Captain!  My Captain," a more conventional eulogy to Abraham Lincoln.  We discussed whether or not these poems could be sung with accompaniment.  (We had just watched the tape of Coleman Barks' performance.)  "O Captain!  My Captain!" also seems like it would be easy to memorize!

For a contrast, later, we looked at poems by Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko.  These seemed to be harder to read, and it became harder for us to say what was poetic about them.  These poems were Gunn Allen's "Pocahontas, to her English Husband, John Rolfe" and the ironic "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins" (about the poet's taking a guest to see her mother and her grandmother at their high rise apartment) as well as Marmon Silko's excerpt from The Storyteller in which she retells a Coyote tale told by her white great-grand father.  This time Coyote is not a male trickster but a female victim of another figure's trickery, and her pups die of thirst because of this trickery.  As I reflect on these poems, I remember Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay on the importance of writing African literature in African (i.e., native) languages.   Should Leslie Marmon Silko or Paula Gunn Allen write their poems in Keresan (the language of the Laguna Pueblo)? 

Mary also brought in some of Billy Collins' poems as well as reading one of her own.  (Her poem, by the way, is in the Advocate.  Congratulations!!)

We also looked at the relationship of poetry and music/popular song, figuring in the concept of orality and the effect of print culture.  Songs that we listened to included three from Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music (the medieval "Sumer is Icumen In" [also parodied by Ezra Pound at one point], the 18th century ballad "Bonnie St. Johnstone," and a cover of Britney Spears' "Oops...").  Here are links to the lyrics of the first two songs:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=428

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

We also listened to English-language and Spanish-language songs by Los Lobos.  Here is a link to the lyrics of the English-language song, "One Time, One Night" from 1987:

http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/los_lobos_lyrics_5296/by_the_light_of_the_moon_lyrics_16979/one_time_one_night_lyrics_196225.html

These are the Spanish lyrics of their version of "Volver, Volver":

http://www.lyricsdir.com/los-lobos-volver-volver-lyrics.html

We also listened to songs by The Mighty Sparrow, a famous calypso singer from Trinidad.  Is he a trickster or an acute social observer?

Here is Billboard.com's catalog entry for Early Flight, the album that I brought in.  (We listened to "Sailor Man," "Dear Sparrow," and "Russian Satellite.")

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?JSESSIONID=DK1KH51JV1XMm1zXTgqTHdYFLnWy1bXQPTmY9b4pm0hdvLTzxy1d!87636624&pid=3875&aid=742126

I will let you look for his videos on YouTube!  Good night!

At last! The Final Prompts for EN 202 (Spring 2008)

[The picture above is from a 2007 production of The Country Wife, an intriguing Restoration comedy that hasn't been staged in this area for a while except (this weekend only) at American University!]

1.         Should professors continue to assign plays that are not available on film or are not being performed locally?   Why?  Why not?  Consider how planning for a performance of A Doll’s House, watching that performance, or going to Chesapeake Shakespeare’s performance of that play may have helped you understand Nora’s situation better.  Do you think that watching a performance of Mother Courage or The Love Suicides at Amijima might have helped you understand either play better?  Or should professors of literature not worry about what others choose to stage or film? After all, these professors are not professors of theater!  Feel free to discuss other plays that you’ve seen or to look at blog entries on Shintoku-Maru, Current Nobody, Southside, Gem of the Ocean, and (I hope!) Fences. 

 
2.  Discuss film as a genre of literature.  Given your definition of literature, how is film literature?  How is it NOT literature?  If you were to teach a film and literature course, which films would you include?  Why?  In this type of course, is it more important for a film to be a groundbreaking film (like Citizen Kane or Apocalypse Now) or for a film to be based on an important work of literature (like Jane Eyre, The Taming of the Shrew, or A Doll's House)?  Why?  How should you handle a film like Raise the Red Lantern or Ran that is not in English?  How would you handle a silent film like one of Charlie Chaplin’s or Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?

 

3.                  Discuss folk tales as a genre of literature.  How do stories like the Coyote Tales, Aesop’s Fables, or the tales that the Brothers Grimm collected fit into your ideas about literature?  How do they complicate your ideas?  Should our anthology have included stories about Rabbit, Raven, or Anansi the Spider?  Should our anthology have included additional stories about Coyote (“Coyote and Hen” or “Coyote’s Adventures in Idaho”) or “Godfather Death”?  How would a reworked story like Charles Perrault’s “Donkey Skin” or his “Cinderella” or Somerset Maugham’s “Appointment at Samarra” fit into your ideas about literature?  Conversely, compare one of our folk tales to an authored work like John Keats’ “The Eve of St. Agnes,” S.T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Ludwig Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert,” or the poems by Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko.  How does the folk tale help you understand the authored work better?  How does the authored work help you understand the folk tale better?  Which does each type of work do better? 

4.  More of the works we’ve studied in the second half of the semester were originally written in a language other than English.  How does the presence of works NOT originally written in English (“Sarrasine,” Mother Courage, “Fair-Haired Eckbert”) or the Chinese-language film Raise the Red Lantern change your definition of world literature?  Or what about works like the Coyote Tales that were originally told in languages other than English?  Should EN 202 be a multilingual course?  (Feel free to bring in some of the works you read during the first part of the semester.)  Remember African authors Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s essays on a writer’s choice of language.  Should Joseph Conrad should have written in Polish and relied on translators for his English or French audience?  Should the Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Cheryl Savageau, and Gerald Vizenor try to write in their tribe’s language?  Why?  Why not?

 

5.            Complete at least one of the following statements (apologies to Samuel Johnson):

            If (poem/poet/song/musician/rapper) be not poetry/a poet, what is poetry?

AND/OR

            If (poem/poet/song/musician/rapper) be poetry/a poet, what is poetry?

 

Support your argument with quotes from your poet, musician, or rapper as well as analysis of these quotes and your definition of what poetry is and what it is not.  Consider this statement by British poet Basil Bunting:  “Compose aloud.  Poetry is sound” as well as Robert Frost’s jab at free verse, Ezra Pound’s call to “make it new,” or the older statement from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas that the poet is “not to number the streaks of the tulip.”  Consider the extent to which music relies on a singer’s voice and the producer’s arrangement and to which rap relies on a rapper’s persona and his/her authenticity.

 

           

 

   

Coyote (and Other Tricksters)

Native American literature is known not only for creation myths but also for trickster figures such as Coyote, Raven, and Rabbit. The picture of the coyote above is from Wikimedia Commons.

To begin with, here is the site where I found the Mayan tale "Coyote and The Hen" and the story of "Coyote's Adventures in Idaho" as well as stories about the other tricksters.  I really like that this site notes where a number of tales come from. 

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/loreindx.html

To find out which stories come from our area, here is a map.  Click on each state to find out which tribes, for example, lived in Maryland.

http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm

On the other hand, this page lists the names of the tribes. 

http://www.native-languages.org/languages.htm#alpha

Here a professor from Pittsburg State University in Kansas discusses the trickster in Native American culture.  This site also contains links to various tribes' stories about Coyote. 

http://members.cox.net/academia/coyote.html

The author of this site from the College of the Siskiyous in California discusses Native American traditional prose narratives in general:

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/index.htm

(The picture above is from Trinity University's online journal on trickster studies.)

For more detailed information, see Wyman P. Meinzer's contribution to a 1995 symposium on the coyote in the American Southwest:

http://texnat.tamu.edu/symposia/coyote/p30.htm

Here are a few more stories about Coyote:

http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/wa.html

http://www.shoshoneindian.com/legend_001.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/flood.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/coyote.htm

  

Other trickster figures are Raven and Rabbit.  As you will see below, different tribes in different regions had their tricksters.  The picture of Raven is from the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation's website:

For more information about Gordon Miller's watercolor, see this link below: 

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/nwca/nwcam11e.shtml

In the Southeastern U.S., Rabbit was the trickster.   The picture below is from Professor Tina L. Hanlon's web page on Appalachian Animal Tales/Native American Tales from Appalachia at Ferrum College in Virginia.

Here is a link to Professor Hanlon's article: 

http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/rabbitotter.htm

Then once you move to Africa and the Caribbean, the trickster is Anansi the Spider.  In South Carolina, this figure is called Aunt Nancy.  I wish that I could find a picture of her!

Tricksters appear in other cultures' stories as well.  Reynard the Fox, a figure from French folktales, is depicted below.  (The picture comes from Wikimedia Commons, but it originally appeared in a children's book from the 1860s.)

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 5 (folktales)

As much as I love this picture, I need to put up some text. 

We began this unit with the French writer Charles Perrault's "Donkey Skin," an eighteenth-century adaptation of a folktale about a beautiful princess who has to flee her incestuous father and win the heart of a young prince...despite her necessary disguise.  Her fairy godmother, however, helps her do both.  Perrault was a "Modern."  In other words, he believed that people could improve on what the  Greeks and Romans had done.  "Ancients," on the other hand, believed that we could not.  Perrault, by the way, wrote the original Mother Goose tales.  This story is an interesting blend of magic and the mundane, clothing the heroine in radiant dresses and ending with the "moral" that "clear water and brown bread are sufficient nourishment for all young woman provided that they have beautiful clothes" and the "observation"  that "there is not a damsel under the skies who does not imagine herself beautiful and somehow carrying off the honors in the famous beauty contest between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena" (37). 

The Brothers Grimm, folklorists from 19th century Germany,  collected and edited another version of this story.  It was called "All Kinds of Fur."  It does not have the classical references or the "moral" that Perrault added to his story.  Indeed, the Brothers Grimm's version (that again they collected and edited) spends less time at the father's fabulous palace and at the mother's deathbed and more time on the princess' escape and her efforts to attract the young prince's attention.  (However, as our anthology's editors noted, most of the people whom the brothers interviewed were NOT peasants, and the brothers later edited the stories so that they would be more appropriate for children.  Ah, the 19th century...the age of Bowdler who censored Shakespeare so that his plays could be read aloud in Victorian homes...the age of nationalism.)

I want to give you a link to the Brothers Grimm's "Godfather Death":

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html

Would you read this story about the poor man who chooses Death (rather than God or the Devil) to be his thirteenth child's godfather and about the young doctor, Death's godchild, who tries to trick his godfather, to your neice or nephew?  What do you find interesting about this story?  What do you think that the German peasants who originally listened to this story found interesting about it?

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 4a (poetry & translation)

  Here will be the study guide on poetry that we discussed in class.  Again I would like to thank Mary, Katie, Juan, and Edwin for bringing in poems and songs to share with us!  I always enjoy hearing what people like; moreover, it may end up on next semester's syllabus! 

The picture above is 19th century artist Marie Spartali Stillman's painting of Petrarch and Laura's initial meeting. 

Let's begin with a few quotes:

Even though I did not mention it when we began our unit on poetry, this quote from British poet Basil Bunting is appropriate:  "Compose aloud.  Poetry is sound."

Ezra Pound has called for us to "make it new!"

William Carlos Williams has urged "no ideas but in things." 

Robert Frost, on the other hand, compared free verse to playing tennis without a net.

William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman both called for the poet to be "a man among men."

In Rasselas, Samuel Johnson argued that it was not the poet's job "to number the streaks of the tulip."  Elsewhere, in his criticism, he asked, "if Pope be not a poet, then what is poetry?"

Indeed...consider the poets we covered in class and the others you mentioned in your blog entries.

In a world literature class, translation is important.  Without it, we could not read poems such as Petrarch's, sonnets that have been enormously influential to English literature.  I read selections from Petrarch's Canzoniere, his poems to his beloved Laura; these translations from the anthology that I use for my EN 201 class do not rhyme!!  Then I read Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt," a sixteenth-century translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets.  See here for a link to this sonnet--complete with a little backstory:  http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/whosolist.htm  As you noted, this translation's language sounds archaic (it predates Shakespeare and the hind whom the poet refers to may be Anne Boleyn), and it's a very tight, compact poem.  Then I read two of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's translations ("Soleasi Nel Mio Cor" and "Qual Donna Attende a Gloriosa Fama") from the nineteenth-century.  (By the way, Higginson corresponded with Emily Dickinson and attempted to regularize her poetry.  He was an editor for the Atlantic Monthly.)  Here is a link to Higginson's passionate and deft translations with their Italian titles:  http://www.sonnets.org/petrarch.htm  Finally, I read A.M. Juster's elegant contemporary translations...that rhyme yet evoke an entirely different mood than Wyatt's or Higginson's translations do.  For Juster's translations, see this link:  http://www.amjuster.com/poem14.html  Feel free to compare these translations.  What do they show about each translator's attitude towards poetry, especially love poetry?

We also looked at some translations of the Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi's work.  He composed aloud as he whirled, this action being a prominent activity of Sufi worship.  In addition, his poetry was composed in the aftermath of his teacher Shams al-Tabriz's disappearance and possible murder.  From my EN 201 anthology, I read Iranian-American scholar Amin Barani's translation of "Who'll Take Us Home Now, Now That We've Drunk Ourselves Blind?".  We also watched some of American poet Coleman Barks' performances of his translations of Rumi's poetry.  He was accompanied by the Paul Winter Consort.  Unfortunately, Barks' approach was a little off-putting as he spoke about mysticism. 

We also listened to the original poems of American poet Jane Hirschfield who, with Mariko Aratani, has translated Ono no Komachi's poems.  See this link for examples of these women's translations of her poems:  http://www.geocities.com/diwakerr/komachi.html
As you see, these wispy poems make Petrarch's sonnet seem wordy and sweaty and clunky.  Hirschfield's own poems call us to play close attention to the world around us.  In her interview with Bill Moyers, she discussed the role that this attentiveness plays in her life and her poetry.  (The poet, by the way, spent some time as a Buddhist nun; during this time, she did not write poetry.)

Among the poems Mary shared with us were translations of the Russian author Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry. 

We also discussed the Nicaraguan poet and founder of Modernismo (a Spanish-American school of poetry) Ruben Dario (1867-1916), focusing on his reverent "Walt Whitman" and his political "To Roosevelt."  Here is a link to a slightly different translation of "To Roosevelt":  http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/dario.html

How does it compare to the version that is in our anthology and that I read aloud?

This past Friday (4/25) Edwin and Juan gave a presentation on Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938), reading his poem "Los Heraldos Negros" in Spanish and English!  Edwin and Juan also mentioned a recent translation of The Complete Poems of Cesar Vallejo that won an award from the American Academy of Poets.  They noted the translator (Clayton Eshelman)'s observation on the challenge of translating Vallejo's poems because of his word play and his invention of new words. 

Here is a link to Clayton Eshelman's recent essay on translating Vallejo's poems:
http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/onvallejo.htm

Ten other poems written by Vallejo and translated by Eshelman were also included in this issue.

http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/vallejo1.htm

Each of these poems are late poems whereas "Los Heraldos Negros" is fairly early.

Although we did not discuss Ghalib's ghazals, feel free to mention them if you choose to write about the essay prompt on poetry or on translation.

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 3 (novel & short story)

  Above is a scene from the 1986 TV version of The Story of a Stone or The Dream of the Red Chamber.  The character above is Bao-yu's beloved (and cousin), Lin-yu.

The Story of a Stone is an extremely popular novel from eighteenth-century China.  Initially, its author was not known, and the manuscript was not published until 1791.  Our anthology contains only a small part of the original novel; the full English translation is in five volumes.  I currently have volumes 1 and 5. 

The Story of a Stone follows the life of a wealthy young man, Jia Bao-yu, from the beginning of his life as his grandmother's pet to his romance with the delicate Lin-yu to his marriage (to another cousin, Bao-chai, a woman who is thought to be more suited to him because of her temperament--and a gold trinket that she was born with) to his entry into monastic life after the birth of his son.  Bao-yu, Lin-yu, and the rest of their family live in a estate in the country; however, the family is going into a decline, perhaps epitomized by Bao-yu's reluctance to study and his preference for the company of women.  (Lin-yu, on the other hand, is more scholarly although she is also a delicate young lady of sensibility.  We will see her and Bao-yu burying flower petals rather than letting them float downstream into polluted waters.)  At one point, Bao-yu's father, Jia Zheng, a more conventional man, challenges his son to come up with names for various features in a garden built for Bao-yu's older sister, an Imperial Concubine.  The Story of a Stone also contains elements of magic realism in its opening frame story and Bao-yu's dreams.  After Lin-yu's death, for example, he tries to bring her back from the afterlife, but he fails.

Eileen Chang's "Stale Mate," on the other hand, is a twentieth-century short story set at about the time of Raise the Red Lantern.  Whereas Su Tong's novella and Zhang Yimou's film date from the 1990s, Eileen Chang's story was written during the 1950s after she had immigrated to the US.  This story is also set in a more Westernized although not urban setting (whereas Raise the Red Lantern is set in rural Northern China--although we see mostly Chen's compound).  In "Stale Mate," Luo, a high school teacher, pursues Miss Fan, a student, even though he is married to a woman who lives at his family's farm.  Luo divorces his wife despite his family's protests, but the divorce does not come through quickly enough for him to marry Miss Fan--or so he thinks.   Out of pique, Miss Fan pursues a marriage that her family is arranging for her (she is after all in her mid-twenties ), and Luo marries Miss Wang.  Miss Fan's marriage falls through, and a few years later she meets Luo again.  Luo then divorces his second wife to marry Miss Fan.  However, as it turns out, he is convinced to  ask his two ex-wives to live with him and his current wife...and so, despite his desires to be modern, he is more or less in the same situation as Master Chen in his compound!  Interestingly, he and the former Miss Fan have less money than his ex-wives do.

Below are an undated picture of the author Eileen Chang and a picture of a current stage show that is intended to evoke 1930s Shanghai:

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 2 (film)

Before the midterm, we watched some films that were based on English-language novels.  These films included Apocalypse Now, the 1944 Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles, and the 1999 David Copperfield with a very young Daniel Radcliffe.  (Note: the version of David Copperfield that we saw was a TV miniseries and not intended for theatrical release.)  However, English-language novels are not the only literary sources that filmmakers draw on!

One could also adapt a play by Shakespeare as director Franco Zeffirelli and two other authors did with The Taming of the Shrew in 1967.  (Zeffirelli has also directed two direct adaptations of Shakespeare's plays: the 1968 Romeo and Juliet that you may have seen in high school as well as a 1990 Hamlet starring Mel Gibson as well as a 1996 theatrically-released version of Jane Eyre and film versions of various operas such as Otello and La Traviata.)  Although, as we saw, The Taming of the Shrew was filmed in the studio,  the set designer and the director did enough to counteract the staginess that older films based on plays often have.  Many scenes take place outdoors.  We first glimpse the "good" sister Bianca at a festival in the town square where students serenade her and lift up her veil.  Later on, Kate and her bridal party wait for Petruchio on the stairs into the cathedral, and the newly married couple are caught in the rain.  This film version contains a good deal of physical comedy as Petruchio pursues Kate, even on the rooftops, and they plunge into a bed of feathers.  As Kate, Elizabeth Taylor rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at Richard Burton's Petruchio.  Kate is introduced with a really intriguing shot as she looks out through a keyhole at her sister's would-be suitors.  Later on there is another shot where Bianca looks out through a keyhole.  I wish that we had been able to watch the scene where Kate gives her speech on a wife's duty.  How did Ms. Taylor perform that speech?!

EN 202 being a course in world literature, we also watched Chinese director Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, a film from 1991, just two years after the events in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.  Raise the Red Lantern is  based on Su Tong's 1990 novella Wives and Concubines.  (I have just ordered this book from Amazon!) Zhang Yimou has also directed the historical films Red Sorghum and To Live as well as The House of Flying Daggers, a more action-oriented film.  In Raise the Red Lantern, university student Songlian (played by Gong Li) travels to northern China to become the fourth wife (or Fourth Mistress) of Chen.  She lives in a compound with Chen's other wives although each woman has her own house.  This compound is in the country, but we do not see much of the countryside, except in the very beginning of the film as Songlian walks to the compound.  The other wives are the older and psychologically distant First Mistress, mother of Chen's older son; Zhouyan, the second wife who appears to be very friendly and cheerful but is plotting against the others; and Meishan, a former opera singer who is the mother of Chen's younger son as well as the mistress of Doctor Gao.  Raise the Red Lantern takes place in the 1920s, a time of unrest throughout China although the Chinese Civil War did not begin until 1927.  The scene pictured above is of the lighting of the red lanterns, which signifies the house where Chen will spend the night.  In the film, it is a family tradition; therefore, Chen does not wish to question it.  Above Songlian is shown with her maid, Yan'er, who had had hopes of becoming the Fourth Mistress and, as we see, has hung red lanterns in her room.  (Or has Chen hung them there?)  After Songlian's ruse to feign pregnancy is discovered, and she betrays both Yan'er and Meishan, acts that result in their deaths, Songlian has a breakdown.  In the next to last scene, she is observed by Chen's new bride, the Fifth Mistress.

What did you make of the ending to Raise the Red Lantern?

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 1 (drama)

This study guide for drama & theater will cover A Doll's House, Mother Courage, and The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The Taming of the Shrew will be included in our film unit.  The Japanese play Shintoku-Maru and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean will not be included on the final--unless you'd like to mention them in the extra credit section! 

The picture above is from the now defunct Boston Shakespeare Company's 1984 production that starred the 4'9" actor Linda Hunt as Mother Courage.  One of my former professors has argued that Ms. Hunt's Mother Courage is among the best portrayals of that role (other than Helene Weigel's, of course!).  Below is an undated picture of Ms. Weigel in this role:


I've also highlighted the midterm study guide because that entry contains information about the difference between drama and theater *and* some historical background about A Doll's House.

To begin with...here is a review of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's "problem play" from 1879.  It was originally written in Norwegian although it was soon translated into other languages including English.  At the time it was first performed, A Doll's House was controversial, especially because of its ending!  The play is set at Christmastime in Norway (Oslo?).  The characters are Nora Helmer, a youngish woman whom no one takes seriously; her husband, Torvald, a lawyer who has finally been hired to manage the National Bank; Krogstad, a bank employee who has lent Nora money and whom Torvald is about to fire; Mrs. Linde, Nora's school friend who is about to be hired by Torvald; and Doctor Rank, a dying friend of the family who confesses his love for Nora.  Nora and Torvald have three children.  Nora borrowed money so that Torvald (who was then ill) could travel to Italy's warmer climate.  However, as Torvald refused to borrow money, she forged her dying father's signature so that she could borrow money from Krogstad.  (In the 19th century, a woman could not borrow money on her own; furthermore, very much unlike today, her husband was generally awarded custody of their children--if their marriage dissolved.)  The play begins as Krogstad threatens to blackmail Nora.

The 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht's work can be considered in opposition to the previous generation's plays (like A Doll's House) that are well-made, are very much suited to the proscenium stage with its fourth wall, and have consistent characters with back stories and motivation that we can discuss.  (Note that Ibsen's advocates in English included the failed playwright and ground-breaking novelist Henry James.)  On the other hand, Mother Courage takes place over twelve years (1624 to 1636) as Anna Fierling (aka Mother Courage) tries to hold her family together and profit from the war, selling food, drink, clothes, and ammunition to both sides.  At one point, as the Catholics overcome the Protestant forces, Mother Courage, her family, and their hangers-on change religions.  Mother Courage's family is made up of Eilif, who joins the Protestant army despite her protests; Swiss Cheese, who is killed while his mother haggles over the means to pay a bribe; and Katrin, the mute daughter who is raped and later sacrifices herself to warn villagers of an approaching army.  The hangers-on include Mother Courage's two suitors, a Protestant chaplain and a cook (who tries to convince her to abandon war profiteering and help him run a tavern in Utrecht, away from the battlefield), and Yvette, a prostitute whose red shoes are stolen by Katrin.  Mother Courage and Her Children (the full name of the play) was written in 1939 when the playwright was in exile from Nazi Germany.  (Brecht was a Communist and known for his politicized theater.)  Ideally, the audience is discouraged from sympathizing with Mother Courage and the other characters, and actors are expected to be critical observers of their characters' actions.  Practically, this approach may have made this play difficult to stage although this is probably not the only factor.  Other plays by Brecht include The Threepenny Opera and The Good Woman of Setzuan.  As in The Threepenny Opera, the characters of Mother Courage (except for Katrin, of course) often break into songs intended to comment on the play's action.  Can you imagine Nora and Torvald breaking into song like that?!  OTOH, as I mentioned in class, an actor who has done well with roles like Chicago's Mama Morton, Velma, or Roxie probably could do well with the role of Mother Courage!

With the unit's final play, The Love Suicides at Amijima, we move back in time to 1720 and to a very different theater.  The playwright Chikamatzu Monzaemon wrote this play for the bunraku theater, a Japanese theater that relies on puppets and a chanting narrator.  However, as has been noted, the play was also performed in the kabuki theater by human (male) actors.  From 1629 until very recently, women were not allowed to act in kabuki.  The Love Suicides at Amijima tells the story of Koharu, a young prostitute, and her lover Jihei, a married man, youngish father, and struggling paper merchant.  Because they cannot be together, the lovers commit suicide at a Buddhist temple.  Jihei's wife (and cousin) Osan is surprisingly accepting of her husband's involvement with Koharu, but her family tries to break up the love affair.  At one point, Jihei's brother disguises himself as a samurai and pretends to be Koharu's customer. 

Here is a picture of The Love Suicides at Amijima

  The picture below is a close-up of bunraku, a puppet theater for which The Love Suicides at Amijira was originally written:
  Below is a picture of images from Kabuki theater:

Orality & Literacy . . . Cross-Posting from EN 201 Blog

Do you remember a time when you could not read? Can you imagine living in a society where most people (or all people) could not read? What would that society's literature be like? And did you know that most languages are oral only, without a written "dialect"?

Walter J. Ong's truly groundbreaking Orality & Literary examines the ways in which society, literature, and knowledge have changed with the rise of literacy and, ultimately, print. This examination is especially pertinent to EN 201 because a number of our readings (Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf) began as tales told by storytellers. In fact, Homer, the author of the Iliad & the Odyssey, may have been more than one person, and we do not have a specific author for Beowulf. Up until almost the end of the period that EN 201 covers, works were available in manuscripts; that is, they were individual, handwritten copies, often with abbreviations (to save the scribe's time) and variations from the original. Orality & Literacy is also pertinent to EN 202 as we move onto the unit on tales & folktales, for many of our readings were tales told and then transcribed once folk literature became interesting to the elite.  orWe will not be reading Plato's work in this class, but Father Ong (he was a Jesuit priest) points out that this philosopher was very much a product of the rise of literacy in his precise approach to philosophy and his banning of the poets from his Republic.

These poets, on the other hand, epitomized oral culture with their reliance on performance, set phrases, and copia [fullness of expression]. Performance is more than simply reciting a poem aloud, though. Instead, it involves responding to one's audience and relying on set phrases instead of repeating a set text word for word, for, despite, what we are often told, storytellers and ancient bards did *not* remember their works word for word. In fact, as Orality & Literacy discloses, memory in an oral culture is remarkably pragmatic, changing to suit the needs of the present time. (Father Ong includes an anecdote of an African performing an oral epic for transcription and, in the voice of the epic's hero, spurring the scribe on to "march.") Later poets such as the Romantics are very much products of print culture, for they are concerned with interiority [individual consciousness]. By contrast, characters from oral literature are what Father Ong calls "heavy," individuals who do great deeds but do not have a true interior life. Hmm...I wonder what Christa Wolf would make of this as she has argued that heroic characters are a product of patriarchal society.

Orality & Literacy is also important for what it tells us about genre. As you can imagine, epic is grounded in orality. Even when a highly literature individual like Virgil, Edmund Spenser, or John Milton sat down to write an epic, their work followed conventions that reflected orality (the work's beginning "in media res" or in the middle of things, heroic characters, a reliance on episodes rather than plot). Father Ong notes that Sir Philip Sidney may have revised his Arcadia so that it would flow more smoothly when it was read aloud. And then, with the rise of literacy and print culture, the epic became harder and harder to write. (Hmmm...what did Father Ong make of a modern-day epic like the original Star Wars trilogy? And he *might* have seen it as he lived from 1912 to 2003. In fact, he later wrote on the impact of the internet.) In place of the epic came the novel, a genre whose tighter plotting and "rounder," more individual characters were supported by print and the reader's ability to reread text. Novels written by and for women also reflected the differences between upper-class men's classical education and middle-class individuals' vernacular education. As I have noted, poetry changed as well, becoming more specific and more concerned with individual experience as well. The ballad with its characters and storyline was more of a transitional form. Interestingly, the drama may have always been grounded in literacy as, even in ancient Greece, plays were written down before they were performed. (I'm not sure about Greek actors, but later actors in England were *not* literate, so this topic may bear investigating.)

Orality & Literacy is a difficult book, in part because it touches on so many different aspects of culture and language. It is not limited to English-language or even Western culture as Father Ong brings in examples from South America and Africa, but I found his discussion of Homer's epics to be especially useful. It may be too soon for you to read Orality & Literacy, but I would recommend your reading it if you plan to continue your literary studies or to become a teacher. I wish that I had read this book *before* finishing my dissertation!!

1000 Years of Popular Music...Crossposting from EN 201 Blog

Last night, while my husband and I listened to Ajay Parham, a young jazz vocalist, perform at HR 57 (a club in DC), I pondered the title of Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music, and I wondered what Parham would have included on a similar CD. What would the members of my favorite band Los Lobos (www.loslobos.org) have included?

Then I began to have a few qualifications about the idea of 1000 Years of Popular Music. This evening I've written down my qualifications, that is, the material in parentheses. First of all, the songs that Thompson & his musicians cover are mainly from the UK, the USA, and Australia, with the exception of one song that is in Italian. There is no mariachi, tango, or calypso, to name three types of music I have in my CD collection. There is no reggae. There is nothing by Brecht and Weill.  Technically, one song sounds a little Indian, but would you count a song written by a British person who was influenced by Indian musicians as non-Western music? And there's no Chinese opera either. Secondly, all of the songs on Thompson's CD have lyrics. Apparently, Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing!" [or insert your favorite instrumental] didn't make the cut.

Nevertheless, 1000 Years of Popular Music helps us think about what it means to consider an anthology of works from other cultures--and times and then the way that these works all fit together to make, in one case, (popular) music and, in another, world literature. OK, I admit that we are at an advantage over Thompson since, in making up his list, he has to factor in what he can play and what he can afford to play. (Somehow I don't think "Sing, Sing, Sing" works without a horn section although, if anybody could make that song work with a guitar & drums, perhaps Thompson could.) In EN 201, we're more like someone who is burning a CD or two, but, like Thompson, we are still thinking about why it's important to examine older works from different traditions rather than just being content with our own times & traditions.

Which songs would you include in your 1000 Years of Popular Music?

p.s. I hope that you can take a closer look at the cover!! It is not simply a picture of medieval times, but the artist has created a clever collage of musicians from different time periods.  And here is a link to Thompson's own web site.  You may find out more about his ongoing tour and its evolving playlist...and ask him questions about his choice of songs!

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/default.asp

Here are some more pages on the DVD that I showed in class and the tour:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=540

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/1000yrs.asp

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1042743,00.html

August Wilson's Gem of The Ocean

  This photo from Syracuse Stage's 2007 production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean is very striking, but I thought I'd put up some words this evening to go with it.  Also, I'd like to find a few good pictures as well.

Gem of the Ocean is the first play in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle...or Century Cycle, his series of ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century.  Here is the Kennedy Center's site on Wilson's cycle.  It's a good, quick overview with useful links.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showevent&event=titac

For more information on August Wilson, see this extensive obituary from the NY Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/03wilson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Gem of the Ocean is set in the 1900s, a period of time that was as close to the Civil War as we are now to the 1960s.  Two of the characters in the play, Eli and Solly Two Kings, had helped to bring slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.  During the play, Solly tells of his own escape from Alabama, and he is intending to return there to rescue his sister.  Another character, Aunt Ester had been a slave as well (although she is a mystical individual, being 287 years old and able to travel to "The City of Bones.")  In the picture above, Aunt Ester, together with Eli, Solly, and Black Mary (Aunt Ester's protege), is conducting Citizen Barlow, a young refugee from Alabama, to that city so that he can redeem himself despite a death that he was responsible for.  (At the beginning of the play, another young man has drowned himself rather than admit to a crime he did not commit.  Citizen not only committed the crime but also looked on while the young man drowned.)

The productions of Gem of the Ocean & Fences that my husband and I saw at the Kennedy Center were staged readings.  In other words, each of the actors carried with him or her a bound script; however, some barely relied on their scripts and even used them to substitute for various props.  The actor playing Black Mary, for example, held her script as if it were a frying pan.  In Fences, on the other hand, the actors playing Troy and Rose passed a script between them as though it were the baby that he had brought home from the hospital.  Despite the performances being staged readings, the actors usually wore appropriate costumes, and the set design evoked Pittsburgh without being terribly fussy.  In fact, the same blue/black background served for both plays that I saw; only the arrangement of tables and chairs differed.  This is very different from some productions that I have seen; there the set design has been very elaborate, almost museum-quality.  (See the pictures below from "Jitney" and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone.")

However, as Gem of the Ocean contains much magic realism, a museum-quality set might be inappropriate.  After all, Citizen Barlow travels to the City of Bones in a paper boat made from Aunt Ester's bill of sale, and the play's most prosaic character, Caesar, is clearly an interloper.

Here are some reviews of other performances of Gem of the Ocean.  Phylicia Rashad (the mother on The Cosby Show) has played Aunt Ester; she has also directed another production of this same play.

http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=1873

http://www.theaterscene.net/ts/articles.nsf/RP/0E50FE60ABD8EB8D8525709D003F8C5D

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06156/695731-325.stm

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/16/083723.php

DC's Arena Theater also staged Gem of the Ocean in 2006:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2007/02/06/gem-of-the-ocean/


Below is a picture from that production.  The actor playing Citizen Barlow looks quite young!


To finish with, here is another scene from the Huntington Theater's production.  In this scene, Aunt Ester is sending the peddler Rutherford Selig off to find Solly and Citizen before the police constable Caesar finds them.  Here Phylicia Rashad plays Aunt Ester.


There she is with Solly Two Kings.  Anthony Chisolm also played Solly's role at the Kennedy Center's reading. 

Eileen Chang & "Stale Mates"

 

I am going to have track down this book and/or movie, but in the meantime here is an entry on Chinese-American author Eileen Chang's work...which includes both "Stale Mates" and the novella "Lust, Caution."

To begin with, here is Ms. Chang's biography:

 http://www.hellomandarin.com/blog/2009/04/30/chinese-culture-eileen-changs-life-in-brief/

The author's literary executor has also written this essay that provides another perspective:

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050215_1.htm

This 2005 review of Ms. Chang's collected essays (in an English translation) provides more of a literary and cultural context for her work:

http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2005fall/chang.shtml

Irish writer John Self reviews the collection of fiction that contains "Lust, Caution."

http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/eileen-chang-lust-caution/

But about the film...

http://www.filminfocus.com/focus-movies/lust-caution/movie-splash.php


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/02/btchina102.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/10/wlee110.xml

Another collection was Love in a Fallen City, which Haiyan Lee, a professor of Chinese literature at the University of Colorado, reviews here:

http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/lee.htm

Ms. Chang's first novel in English was The Rice-Sprout Song.  Charlie Dickinson reviews it here:

http://charlied.freeshell.org/RiceSproutSong

She also translated Chinese literature into English.  One novel was The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai, which tells the story of nineteenth-century courtesans in that Chinese city.

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-12268-9/the-singsong-girls-of-shanghai

In addition, she wrote screenplays.  Australia's Queensland Art Gallery recently screened both the films that she had written screenplays for and those that others have made from her novels, novellas, and short stories:

http://apt5.asiapacifictriennial.com/cinema/hong_kong,_shanghai_cinema_cities/eileen_chang

At least one of these films may not have aged well (or have been that good to begin with):

http://www.brns.com/pages4/drama263.html

However, Eileen Chang's work in different media is very much worth exploring. 

Our Visit to the Freer Gallery (March 29)

  Now that I have a little bit of time this morning, I'd like to post a quick entry on last Saturday's trip to the Freer Gallery and, of course, thank those of you who were able to venture out to the city on a Saturday, a very crowded Saturday!  For those of you who weren't able to venture out, fortunately, most of what we saw was from the permanent collection, so it's likely that you'll be able to see some of what we saw on our trip.

On the other hand, we did have a docent who gave us a tour.  I highly recommend it as he had visited many of the countries whose art we saw and he was able to slow us down!  Speaking from experience, I've found that it is easier and easier to dash through a museum and see nothing.   More importantly, though, the docent emphasized sculpture and illuminated manuscripts, types of art that I am usually not drawn to but that are important to an understanding of Asian culture.  So, here is a link to the Freer and Sackler Galleries' information about their tours.

http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/tours.htm

Again, I highly recommend going on one of these tours, especially if you are new to museumgoing, but also if you are experienced.

But back to our tour...we began by examining an enormous guardian figure from a Japanese temple.  The docent explained that at one point the figure had been painted but that over the years the paint had worn away.  He also informed us that the figure had been made in parts.  Then he showed us that the figure's arms were mismatched.  Unfortunately, the Freer does not have a picture of this particular figure, but here is a link to a picture of a similar figure and information about it:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=11859

Next we moved on to an exhibit on Islamic art where we saw a mihrab, a panel that would have indicated the direction of Mecca to worshippers in a mosque.  Here is a link to the picture of the mihrab.

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=4811

We also looked at pages from the Koran, some dating from the ninth century CE!  The docent explained to us how Arabic script had changed over the years.  Here is an example of one of the earliest manuscripts.  It is written in kufic script, a style that looks very different from modern script!

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=9837

To preserve these manuscripts, the museum severely limits the period of time that they are on display.  A manuscript may be shown for only a month at a time!  In turn, this means that there is always something new and different to look at in this gallery.

We also saw metalwork bowls, one of which combined Christian and Islamic imagery.  This link below is not to this bowl, but it is to a tile that draws on Jewish imagery (the Star of David):

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=1944

Next we saw examples of Buddhist art.  Our docent explained that up until the first century CE artists did NOT depict the Buddha.  Then, at that time, they began to depict him.  Here are outside links to a frieze depicting the Buddha's life:

http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/html/non_west/IND/IND009.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Four_Scenes_from_the_Life_of_the_Buddha_1.jpg/590px-Four_Scenes_from_the_Life_of_the_Buddha_1.jpg

The frieze was carved in Afghanistan, which is not surprising as Buddhism quickly became an international religion.  However, our docent noted that the sculptors of the frieze may have been Greek or Persian as their style was more Greek.  He then pointed out a figure wearing armor that seemed more appropriate to the Iliad than to the life of the Buddha. 

Here is a link from Ohio State about another frieze from India.  This page is quite informative.

http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/studypages/internal/dl/SouthAsia/Buddhist/pgs/u5/DL0209m.htm

We also looked at examples of Hindu art.  Unfortunately, we did not see any figures of Ganesh!  But here is an especially striking bronze of the god Shiva.  It is from the tenth century CE:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=38637

This statue is a bronze of a devout queen as the goddess Parvati.  Our docent noted that a statue in a temple usually would have been garlanded and even clothed.
http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=9849

Finally, here is a later statue of a child saint:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=11802

We also saw some Japanese screens.  These were not on display, but the Freer owns some that depict scenes from The Tale of Genji:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=39454

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=46858

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=46859

Below is a nineteenth-century scroll also depicting a scene from the novel:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=28475

The Freer Gallery also contains the Peacock Room, which was designed by the influential artist James McNeill Whistler.  Did you know that he attended West Point for a year or so?

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=2122

Below are some of Whistler's works that we saw.  Note that they show the influence of Japanese art:

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=1924

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectId=151

To compare, here is a link to an 1859 work by American painter Frederic Edwin Church:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Church_Heart_of_the_Andes.jpg

This painting by Winslow Homer is from 1876, around the time that Whistler was working on "The Balcony" (see above):

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Winslow_Homer_003.jpg

We concluded with a visit to an exhibit of Chinese paintings with literary themes:

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/talescont.htm

Hope you enjoyed this entry on our visit to the Freer Gallery!