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.
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