Entry on Sonnets pt. 2 (Aha...I knew that someday I'd teach EN 202)

 

Did you know that poets continued to write sonnets after Shakespeare? The woman pictured above, Mary Robinson, an actress who became a writer and feminist, helped revive this type of poetry in the late 18th century (late 1700s).

Here's a link to some of her sonnets from her book, Sappho and Phaon. Sappho was the Greek poet (or poetess) who is now considered one of the lesbian foremothers. In Robinson's day, Sappho was more noted for her relationship with the young man Phaon. Robinson, in fact, encouraged an identification between herself and Sappho.

http://etext.virginia.edu/britpo/sappho/sappho-poems.html

Here is a link to another more political sonnet, "To Liberty."

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/other/rmd-liberty.html

Below is a sonnet dedicated to Robinson's daughter, Maria:

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/1791/1791-daughter.html

Another late 18th century poet/novelist Charlotte Smith also worked in this form. Below is a sonnet inspired by Goethe's phenomenally successful novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

http://www.engl.virginia.edu/enec981/dictionary/16smithM1.html

She was also known for writing about nature:

http://www.sonnets.org/smith.htm

Nineteenth-century poets wrote sonnets as well. You might recognize this one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who also wrote a novel in verse, Aurora Leigh):

http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/elizabethbarrettbrowning/poems/sonnetsfromtheportuguese/howdoilovetheeletmecounttheways.html

Another poet was Christina Rossetti. Here is a link to her sonnet, "Sappho":

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/sapho.html

She also wrote a "Sonnet of Sonnets." The Great Poetess whom she refers to in her introduction is Barrett Browning. (By the way, you may recognize Christina Rossetti's last name because her brother translated Petrarch's sonnets into English. I think that I linked to some of his translations!)

http://celtic.benderweb.net/cr/cr90.html

Although male poets wrote sonnets at this time as well, like Rossetti, I wonder what Laura -- or Shakespeare's Dark Lady (whether or not she was Aemelia Lanyer) would have made of these later sonnets by women!

Questions on Heart of Darkness

 

Hello again,

I thought I'd post three new quotes of the day from Joseph Campbell, author of Hero with a Thousand Faces and scholar of world mythology:

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. "

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

"What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. "

How do these quotes from Campbell apply to Marlow and Kurtz?  How do these quotes apply to Conrad's character of the young Russian -- or to the character played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now?  Could Willard (Martin Sheen's character) be a hero?

And are we missing the point when we *don't* focus on Heart of Darkness as a quest with a hero--when we focus on Vietnam or the 19th century or colonialsm?  Alternately, are we missing the point when we don't talk about colonialism?  After all, Conrad's novella is set not only in the heart of darkness but also in the heart of the Belgian empire, and all of his characters (Marlow included) are shaped by their role in this empire.

Keep blogging & keep reading Heart of Darkness.  I think you'll find that part 1 is the hardest since it is so descriptive.

By the way, the picture above is from Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, a film inspired by Heart of Darkness.  The actor pictured above is Dennis Hopper.  Hopper plays a photojournalist based on the questing young Russian in Conrad's novel.  By the way, Hopper was also in the trail-blazing 1960s movie Easy Rider.  Now we know him as the fellow in the financial services ads.

Here's a link to a trailer for Apocalpyse Now Redux:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qnfbekbSa0

Dr. Szlyk

Imagine Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness

While I was looking through a blog for another literature course that I had taught, I found an entry on filmmaker Orson Welles' adaptation of Heart of Darkness, one of his many projects that never reached completion for various reasons (political, economic, psychological). 

Welles was working on his adaptation of Heart of Darkness in 1939.  This would have been about the time that Germany attacked Poland, Great Britain entered the war, and the United States was officially neutral.  Even though many Americans were beginning to realize what Hitler was "up to," many others (like Charles Lindbergh, for example) did not believe that we should be involved in Europe's war.  And, yes, Welles' Heart of Darkness appears to have been "political," portraying Kurtz as a charismatic fascist, and, as Clinton Heylin suggests, this film was never made because of its politics.

I guess I had better look a little further for an apolitical Heart of Darkness! 

Until then, here is a link to a site about another of Welles' projects: The Mercury Theater, a radio program whereby he adapted a number of novels, plays, and short stories for performance on the radio.  Conrad's novella was one of the works that Welles adapted.  Oddly enough, it is paired with a lighter story, "Life with Father."

http://www.mercurytheatre.info

For more information about Welles' Heart of Darkness, see this article from The Guardian:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1429851,00.html

Or this entry from a blog on Welles and his art:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=78

WELCOME TO EN 202 (Spring 202)

Watch this space for my blog for EN 202.

The Samurai

As a change of pace, I thought that I'd move onto a new topic, the samurai or the Japanese warrior. Since I have shown the film Ran, and we read a number of epics in class, the samurai (or bushi) is a topic that is well worth exploring.

To begin with, here is a quick overview from Japan Guide:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2127.html

For more information (and pictures of the samurai), go to this art history site:

http://www.artelino.com/articles/samurai.asp

This site is more comprehensive and will eventually include a scholarly journal:

http://www.samurai-archives.com/

But if you are just interested in the history of the samurai, go to this page. It is part of a site on Judo:

http://www.judoinfo.com/samurai.htm

The samurai lived by a code, which was called Bushido or the way of the warrior:

http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/bushido/bindex.html

For more detailed information, see this reprint of the first chapter of Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1905). Note that its author, Inazo Nitobe, is also engaged in clearing up Western misconceptions about Japanese culture:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/bsd/bsd06.htm

The Samurai have figured in popular culture, particularly in film. One of Kurosawa's most celebrated films was The Seven Samurai, which was later remade as The Magnificent Seven.

For more information about Kurosawa's film, see these pages:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047478/
http://www.culturevulture.net/movies/SevenSamurai.htm
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20010819%2FREVIEW...

The Magnificent Seven itself has been remade, but here is a link to the 1960 movie starring Steve McQueen & other 1960s action greats:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054047/

Other films about samurai include Kurosawa's Kagemusha, The Twilight Samurai, and The Last Samurai.

http://www.metalasylum.com/ragingbull/movies/kagemusha.html
http://www.kfccinema.com/reviews/swordplay/twilightsamurai/twilightsamurai.html
http://lastsamurai.warnerbros.com/html_index.php

Not surprisingly, samurai have also figured in anime.

http://www.umich.edu/~anime/genres_samurai.html

http://animemoon.moonmage.net/kenshin.html

http://www.anime-source.com/banzai/modules.php?name=Anime&rop=showcontent&id=785

Japanese Film & Theater

I'm glad that we've gotten a chance to watch Kurosawa's Ran, and I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say about this amazing film on Monday. However, I realized that an entry on Japanese film and theater and therefore acting styles might be useful. Mainstream American acting styles tend to be more realistic, so some of the performances in Ran (especially Tatsuya Nakadai's portrayal of the warlord Hidetora and Mieko Harada's portrayal of the evil Lady Kaede) might have seemed unusual to you, especially since the director Akiro Kurosawa probably was not playing on cultural stereotypes the way that Peter Brook may have been in the Mahabharata. And Kurosawa was clearly operating in a different tradition from the one that Al Pacino was in Looking for Richard.

Here is an American writer's article that puts Kurosawa's work into the context of Japanese film and mainstream film. (The questions are these: did Kurosawa "sell out"? Are his films more Westernized than Japanese?).

http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/kurosawa.html

These two sites discuss Nakadai's performance in a little more detail.
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/kurosawa-akira/ran.html
http://www.criterion.com/asp/in_focus.asp?id=15

Dr. Patrick Crogan's "Translating Kurosawa" examines the director's career overall but does not discuss Ran. Nevertheless, he makes useful points:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/kurosawa.html

For more information about contemporary Japanese film, see these sites:

http://www.csuohio.edu/history/japan/japan15.html

http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Reviews.html

http://www2.shizuokanet.ne.jp/usr/onitsuka/English%20page.html

http://www.midnighteye.com/
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/japanese.html

Here are sites on the history of Japanese film:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reruns/rr0499/PUerr6.htm
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/japan-60-1.jsp

More importantly, here are sites on Kabuki, a popular type of Japanese theater that may have influenced Ran. I hope that the video works! Ironically, samurai were forbidden from watching these types of plays.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/02/bresn/bresn.htm

http://www.us-japan.org/edomatsu/tsukiji/frame.html

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/spotkabuki.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6580589105119878240&q=kabuki

Other types of theater are Noh, Kyogen, and Bunraku. Noh is more tragic whereas Kyogen is comic. Bunraku is a type of puppet theater.

http://www.iijnet.or.jp/NOH-KYOGEN/english/english.html
http://www.artelino.com/articles/noh_theater.asp
http://www.hirohurl.net/kyogen.html
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2002/Articles1202/NohThea...
http://www.bunraku.or.jp/
http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html

The Novel (Cross-posting from EN 201)

Now that we are moving on from the epic to the novel, I thought that I'd put up an entry on this genre.

Here is a brief but limited overview of the novel from a professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Her site emphasizes the novel in English:

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/define.htm

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/origins.htm
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/structure/default.htm

For a more detailed and diverse introduction to the novel and the American novel, see this site from the University of North Carolina Pembroke:

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/amnovel/fall2002/01intro.htm

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/lit/amnovel/fall2002/syllabus.htm

Do Journey to the West and Genji fit into these definitions? It's true that they are much older than the novels that both professors discuss. It's also true that if we go to the Classics department, we'll find that the novel existed in Greek and Roman literature.

http://ace.acadiau.ca/history/Provencal/Clas34232007.htm

http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/ancientnovel/bibliography.htm

http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/ancientnovel/mscott.htm

Here's a summary of one ancient novel, Heliodorus' Ethiopian Story, which was written in the third century BCE, during the Roman Empire.

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/petron/heliodorus.html

But what about the Chinese novel? Here are some sites from Western and Asian writers alike:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1938/buck-lecture.html

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/chinesenovels.htm

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlit.html

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/931209/roy.shtml

And is Genji a novel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Japanese_literature
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCJAPAN/LIT.HTM
http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/smiley100/excerptsGenji.html
http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/explore/language/q1.html

On the other hand, even though the novel is defined as a *prose* narrative, here is some information about Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, a recent novel in verse:

http://poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_golden_gate
http://www.tetrameter.com/seth.htm

Poetry, Poets, & Poetesses

After Lauren's wonderful presentation on women poets in world literature, I thought that I would post a few links.

Here are some sites that show how literary scholars are reviving the term poetess. A number of these sites are fairly specialized, but this is a "hot" topic, and I think that you'll benefit from seeing how literary studies is changing as I type! (See these sites for more conventional definitions of the term poetess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetess

http://www.bartleby.com/68/59/4659.html

http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&cont=show.php&item=569).

The first article, "The Poetess in America," is long but begins with a good definition of the term poetess as it is being revived. The author, Annie Finch, is a poet, translator, and literary scholar.

http://www.ablemuse.com/critique/a-finch_poetess.htm

Here is her website at the University of Southern Maine. She also keeps a blog at this site:

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~afinch/

Here is another academic site, The Poetess Archive, that is edited by literary scholar Laura Mandell. It focuses on English-language poets and the scholars who write about them, but it is not limited to 19th century poets. One poet included here is Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet from the 1950s and 1960s.
http://unixgen.muohio.edu/~poetess/index.html

Prof. Mandell defines the poetess tradition in a detailed essay here. As part of her definition, she considers the extent to which this tradition does or does not include political poetry. She also talks about the distinction between "major" and "minor" poetry.

http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n29/007712ar.html


But has the term poetess ever really gone away? See these sites.
http://www.etsu.edu/writing/studentsamlit/plath.htm
http://www.utep.edu/rgr/poetry6.html

And here are some sites on one of the poetesses that Lauren mentioned (Ono no Komachi):
http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/handbook/hb74.html

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Komachi.html

http://www.classical-japanese.net/Poetry/komachi.html

Here the poetess appears on stage:
http://www.callmekomachi.com/
http://www.sonic.net/~tabine/SAApoem_nikki_noh_fall_2005/saa2005aki_noh_sekiderakomachi.html

For more information about the Indian poetess Mirabai and her work:

http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/mirabai.html

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems/

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/2/
http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems3/


http://www.vistarfoundation.org/repertoire.html#mirabai

Poetry, Poets, and Poetesses part 2

Despite the picture of Ono no Komachi above (although Jane Hirschfield has translated her work), here are a few links on the poets we saw Monday night (and, in the case of Coleman Banks, will see next Monday):

These sites include a biography of Mary Tall Mountain and examples of some of her works:

http://www.freedomvoices.org/tallmountain/mary.htm

http://www.freedomvoices.org/wolf.htm
http://www.npatterson.net/sara/maryjoe.html

This essay from an Indonesian literary journal includes "Good Grease," one of the poems that Ms. Tall Mountain read in the video:

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/fsulimelight/voice.html


These sites include a brief biography of Jane Hirschfield and examples of some of her poems:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/563

http://www.slate.com/id/2120051/
http://www.poetseers.org/contemporary_poets/jane_hirshfield/janep/recalling_a...

This review also contains examples of her translation of Ono no Komachi's poetry. (Here Ms. Hirschfield collaborated with Mariko Haritani.)

http://www.poetrylives.com/SimplyHaiku/SHv4n4/reviews/Hirshfield.html

Below are interviews with Ms. Hirschfield:

http://www.poetrylives.com/SimplyHaiku/SHv4n4/features/Hirschfield.html

http://www.bu.edu/agni/interviews-exchanges/online/2006/towler.html

And these are sites with examples of Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi. (Note that he too collaborates with a translator.)

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Rumilove.html

http://www.elsajoy.com/unseenrain.html

http://www.thrasherqawwal.com/rumi.html

Here is the biography from his website:
http://www.colemanbarks.com/

And, finally, here are the lyrics to Richard Thompson's version of "Bonnie St. Johnstone":

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=845

Before Watching Kurosawa's Ran

I just like this Polish poster. It depicts Hidetora (the old warlord in Ran & Kurosawa's revision of King Lear) so well!

Here is a link to a 2000 review of Kurosawa's film. This site also includes some stills from the film, but they may be difficult to load.

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/reviews/ran/text.htm

Here is another 2000 review of Ran; this one is from Salon:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/09/21/kurosawa/index.html

Ran itself came out in 1985. Here is Roger Ebert's review from that time:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19851225/REVIEWS/51...

Also, here is the NY Times review from 1985:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE5D7153BF933A15751C1A96394...

Here is the British Film Institutes's site on Kurosawa:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/kurosawa/

PBS also did a documentary on Kurosawa and his films:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/kurosawa/kurosawa.html

For more information about King Lear (the play that Kurosawa is reworking), first go to this summary with explanation:

http://www.pathguy.com/kinglear.htm

Here are various eighteenth & nineteenth Western artists' depictions of scenes from King Lear:

http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/LearPaintings.html

These sites link to recent performances of King Lear. The first is in Chicago and stars Stacy Keach:

http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/Production.aspx?tess=906

Ian McKellen is now performing King Lear:
http://www.mckellen.com/stage/lear07/index.htm

Enjoy!