Study Guide for the Final (Folktales, Tales, Short Stories)

Above is a still from a 1970 version of "Donkey Skin."  The actress Catherine Deneuve played both Donkey Skin and her mother. 

Orality – proverbs/repetition/cliches, performance/responsiveness to an audience/improvisation or change, flat characters/focus on action, communal/external, conservative, Fr. Walter J. Ong, Milman Parry

“Donkey Skin” – 17^th c. – Perrault partipated in conflict of Ancients (held on to the past, classics stayed classics, not to be changed, Greece/Rome were cultural models) vs. Moderns (improve & revise literature – sonnets, ballads, folktales, local was the model, women writers like Behn)—like Cinderella—princess who had to escape her father (who wanted to marry her)—transgression—she runs away & with help of fairy godmother disguises herself as servant—but she brings along trunk w/ toiletries—on Sunday she catches the prince’s eye & wins him—reunites with purged father—irony & social criticism-- see the morals of this story!

“All Kinds of Fur”—very much 19^th c.—no moral stated – Brothers Grimm’s revision of “DS”—they revised to take out foreign influences and later sexual & other adult references

Von Tieck’s “Fair Haired Eckbert” – not oral but published, product of print culture – witch who follows Bertha around to punish her for running off – Bertha & Eckbert are half-siblings; witch disguises herself as Walther & Hugo—bird & dog—supernatural—darker, protagonist is not a common protagonist -- this story was recently made into an opera by Judith Weir and Kenneth Hesketh:

http://www.theoperagroup.co.uk/productions/more/blond_eckbert_other_stories/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jun/16/classicalmusicandopera1

Balzac’s “Sarrasine”—supernatural in 19^th c. high society (after Napoleon’s fall), narrator & his audience, the de Lanty family, the “ghost,”La Zambinella, Sarrasine, Cardinal, in some ways this story is very grounded  This story as well has been transformed into an opera.  Its composer is Matthew Suttor.

http://www.music.columbia.edu/fest99/festreport/mvmt_sound/Sarrasine/description.html

Below is a 19th c. illustration of Sarrasine with La Zambinella.

Coyote Tales – “Coyote and Bull,” “Coyote as Medicine Man,” and “The Origin of Eternal Death” – also folktales, similarities & differences—Coyote as trickster, Coyote tricked (compare Leslie Marmon Silko’s poem about Coyote)

Tolstoy’s “After the Ball”—tale/short story, frame narrative, the narrator sees his future father-in-law in a new, darker light as he whips a Tartar who has tried to desert the army.  I wasn't able to find an illustration of this story, but the still below is from the 1956 version of War and Peace that starred Audrey Hepburn.

Joyce’s “Araby” – 20^th c. story – Dubliners – epiphany/everyday – particular/local  The picture below is from Dublin around 1900.

Vizenor’s “Ice Tricksters”—Native American literature/short story

Vizenor’s “Shadows”—Native American literature/tale – supernatural, Bagese also became a bear, orality vs. print, game of wanaki, narrator was a professor

The picture below is from National Geographic.

Noa Baum’s performance – good experience to hear the tale being told, a real folk tale to me, 1^st part of story – 1948, still an ongoing conflict, still inflammatory—connection to the land, not what I expected, really important to see/hear her tell the story, this was a true story, her life

The picture below is from Ms. Baum's performance in El Paso, TX.

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!

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!!