Study Guide for Midterm part three (Summer 2009)

This week we had our first presentation: Sean's presentation on the life of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican Black Nationalist, entrepreneur, and Pan-Africanist who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line.    Sean also showed us parts of a documentary on Garvey's life:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-125761695547273887

Below is a picture of members of the UNIA at the Universal Publishing House, one of the organization's businesses.



This week we returned to the novel and moved on to Chinese literature.  (Remember the definition of the novel -- an fictional prose narrative of at least 50,000 words which emphasizes character over plot, focuses on a protagonist with whom we are supposed to sympathize, and has a realistic-seeming setting.  We also talked about mimesis, the extent to which art imitates life.)  Monday we began discussing one of the Four Classic Chinese Novels: The Story of the Stone (written during the 1740s or 1750s and published in 1791).  Its authors are Cao Xueqin (volumes 1 to 3) and Gao E (volumes 4 to 5).  Yes, the English translation of The Story of the Stone is five volumes long.  However, the excerpts that we read are from the first volume.

We began by discussing the frame narrative that takes us back to the beginning of time when the Chinese goddess Nu Wa built the sky but rejected the jade stone that became Bao-Yu, the protagonist of The Story of the Stone.  (Below is a picture of Nu Wa with her husband Fu Xi.)

We also met the Fairy Disenchantment who will appear again in Bao-yu's dream in chapter 5.  Then we met the Buddhist and Daoist monks who carry the stone off to be reborn as a human being, as Bao-Yu.  Next, since this is a fairly extensive frame narrative for a five-volume work, we met Zhen Shi-yi, a man who will become a Daoist monk when his daughter is kidnapped.  However, this part of the frame narrative is not important to the excerpts in our book, but Zhen Shi-yi and his daughter will be important later on as she becomes a servant in Bao-Yu's enormous household.


Once the frame narrative ends, we finally meet Bao-yu and Dai-yu in their human incarnations.  As it turns out, they are cousins.  In the next section we discussed, Dai-yu has come to live with Bao-yu's family.  From the picture above, you may imagine that this family is not only prosperous but also overwhelming.  And yes, we meet Bao-yu, the only boy among all these women.  (Remember that he is the only *living* son and that his brother who died was a perfect young man.)


We also watched the trailer for the recent TV miniseries:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUGdUH-3fI

I mentioned three Chinese religions: Confucianism (some call this more of a political philosophy), Daoism, and Buddhism.

For more information about Confucianism,

http://www.askasia.org/teachers/essays/essay.php?no=38

For more information about Daoism,

http://www.askasia.org/teachers/essays/essay.php?no=40&PHPSESSID=cf3a1e7b0f8e79502f7f76f32db9f031

For more information about Chinese Buddhism,

http://www.hinduwebsite.com/buddhism/chinese_buddhism.asp

http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/bud/5budhism.htm

Below is a picture of a Daoist temple in Sichuan, China.


Tuesday we moved on to chapters 5 and 17.  Chapter 5 covers Bao-yu's dream of initiation where he meets the Fairy Disenchantment, watches her Dream of Golden Days, and marries her sister Ke-Qing.  The Fairy Disenchantment informs Bao-yu that he has "lust of the mind."  We might call him unconventional.  She says that Bao-yu's ancestors have asked her to meet with him.  Do you think that Bao-yu changes his ways after this dream?  Then in chapter 17 Bao-yu's father (Jia Zheng who epitomizes the masculine ideal of his class) tests his son by asking him to name various places in the extensive gardens.  These gardens have been built to host Bao-yu's sister, the Imperial Concubine.  On the surface, Jia Zheng seems to treat his son's suggestions scornfully...yet he will use them.  What do you think of the narrative's depiction of nature?  Or Bao-yu's remarks on nature?  And his father's response?

Below is a picture of the Grandview Garden in Beijing, a tourist site that replicates the garden in The Story of the Stone.



To look at another approach to parenting, masculinity, and nature, we also watched some scenes from the Korean film, Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring Again.  If you would like to watch these scenes from Spring and Fall again, here are links to YouTube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuc-o3KSxBo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8F23jIXrr8


Below is a picture of director Kim Duk-ki in the role of the old monk's adoptive son when he comes back to the monastery after doing his time.


Wednesday Bryan gave his presentation on the history of Liberia, one of the few African countries that was independent during the 19th century.  This country was settled by freed slaves from the United States and elsewhere.  Ironically or not so ironically, these settlers battled with and mistreated the indigenous people.  (Remember the house boys and house girls that Bryan told us about.)  In its history, Liberia has had only one president who was a descendant of the indigenous people, Samuel K. Doe.  Liberia's recent history has also been bloody.

 I am going to try to track down the videos that Bryan showed us, but for now, here are pictures from Liberia:


The picture below is Charlotte Hess' photograph of schoolchildren in Monrovia, Liberia's capital.  The photograph is from the Digital Library of the Commons.


Below is a picture of Charles Taylor, Liberia's former president who is now being tried at the Hague for the crimes that he committed.



We also watched the Chinese film Raise the Red Lantern (1991, dir. Zhang Yimou).  Below are links to YouTube videos of this film in case you would like to watch it again more closely.
(Thank you, Xirui!!)

art 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiQmkpHz5s0

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JabrhH5XVM

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qapbesdj9I

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3BY5gUm_VM

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nE9HvuoUeI

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idKLdJEYWLY

Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idKLdJEYWLY

Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8FcZoeyA_g

Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP9eojD_rck

Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQHe0s8D624

Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB5bA0mx-wE

Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v9ViAWnnsY

Part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-yENcPaDWQ

Part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc4LrUaKGxU

Part 15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRbbjneaPx0

Part 16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBEnaIRWEaI

Part 17: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMhM709-_gE

Part 18: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFoXjpjiw_E

Part 19: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62NDyH9JJsc

Which visual elements jump out at you as you watch the film again?  Which aural elements?  Do you believe that Songlian is a tragic heroine?

Final Prompts

The picture above is from www.treehugger.com, an environmental information site, and specifically from a story about climate change's impact on animals.


Below are the prompts for the take home part of the midterm.  Choose only one prompt, and be sure to include at least one quote from each of our readings that you discuss.  The essay will be due on Wednesday, May 13.

1.  How does the presence of works NOT originally written in English (Candide, Raise the Red Lantern, The Coyote Tales, Mother Courage, A Doll's House, "Donkey Skin," "All Kinds of Fur") affect your definition of world literature?  Which works are you comfortable reading?  Which works are you uncomfortable reading?  Why?  How comfortable should you be in a course like EN 202? Consider the impact of translation, genre, and readers' expectations here.

2.  How does the presence of works from African-American or Native American traditions (the slave narratives, the Coyote tales, Gerald Vizenor's stories, poems) affect your understanding of world literature?  Consider the impact of history, race relations, and readers' expectations.  Consider the impact that reading a more "mainstream" work of American literature might have in a world literature class like ours would have.  Or have the slave narratives entered the mainstream of American literature?

3.  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 or watching the DVD of this play may have helped you understand Nora’s situation better.  Do you think that watching a performance of Mother Courage helped you understand this 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 The Love Suicides, Shintoku-Maru, Current Nobody, Southside, Tartuffe, Gem of the Ocean, and Waiting for Godot.  Also, be sure to read this essay from the City Paper: 
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34341


4.  Discuss folk tales as a genre of literature.  Given your definition of literature, how are these stories literature?  How are they NOT literature?  Discuss the part these stories play in world literature.  Consider that folk tales are often considered to be children's literature.  Should that make a difference?  Consider the role that orality, our beliefs about multiculturalism, and folk tales' local specificity each play.

By the way, here are links to some "local" Coyote stories.  The first is "Coyote's Adventures in Idaho":

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore86.html

Next is the Cheyenne story, "Yellowstone Valley and the Great Flood":

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore29.html

Finally, there is the Flathead story, "Coyote and the Monsters of the Bitterroot Valley":

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore78.html


5.  Discuss at least two poems that we have discussed in class *and* two poems that we have read but not discussed in class.  How do these poems fit into your ideas about poetry, Romantic poetry, modern poetry, or world literature?  How do these poems complicate your ideas?  Explain why.  Consider how each poem sounds as well as how it reads.  Consider the imagery it contains as well as the literary context it fits into.  Feel free to discuss poems in translation as well as English-language poems.

Guide for the Final (part 1)

The following works may be on the final:

Ibsen's A Doll's House  (play and DVD)
Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children
Gerald Vizenor's "Ice Tricksters" and "Shadows"
Coyote Tales ("Coyote and Bull," "Coyote as Medicine Man," "The Origin of Eternal Death")
"Donkey Skin" (Charles Perrault)
"All-Kinds-of-Fur" (Brothers Grimm)
Ludwig von Tieck's "Fair-Haired Eckbert"
Balzac's "Sarrasine"
James Joyce's "Araby"
Leo Tolstoy's "After the Ball"
William Blake's both versions of Holy Thursday
William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and "Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman"
S.T. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
John Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes"
Charles Baudelaire's "The Albatross"
Ruben Dario's "Walt Whitman" and "In Autumn"
Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz"
Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" and "O Captain! My Captain"
Ezra Pound's "A Pact," "In a Station of the Metro," and ""The River Merchant's Wife"
T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
W.B. Yeats' "Easter 1916" and "The Second Coming"
Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal's "We Are Going"
Paula Gunn Allen's "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins"
Leslie Marmon Silko's "Toe'osh" and "Franz Boas' Visit"

Study Guide for the Midterm (Part 2)

Above is a picture from a recent production of Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele's adaptation of Oroonoko.  I hope that this play comes to the D.C. area!

Back to our study guide. 

Oroonoko (1688) -- connections between this novel & Things Fall Apart or Heart of Darkness, Oroonoko as heroic figure, early novel/Behn as pioneering woman/novel author...or is it a novel?!, Oroonoko as Abolitionist text (or not), primitive vs. civilized, myth of the Noble Savage, genre, cultural contact, relationship between Oroonoko & narrator, relationship between Oroonoko & Imoinda, Behn's depiction of Africa, Behn's depiction of Surinam

Candide (1759) -- what is funny?  what is disturbing?, satire exposing problems, satire as a problem/solution paper, picaro, philosophies, initiation as a theme, Candide's humor, objects of satire, Voltaire's depiction of Paris, Candide's relationship with Cunegonde, his relationship with Pangloss, his relationship with Martin, the ending -- why is Candide's commune in the Ottoman Empire?, treatment of women & lower-class in this satire


Recently Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater staged Harriet Jacobs, Lydia R. Diamond's play based on Incidents and Ms. Jacobs' life.  Above is a picture from the play's rehearsal; below is a video of a rehearsal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ilWF-Fjrgk

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)-- life writing, slave narrative, 19th c. vs. 18th c., Virginia Woolf's description of the 19th c. from Orlando, slave narrative as argumentative or persuasive writing, Jacobs' expectations for women, her treatment by her owners, her sense of audience, her narration and use of asides to the reader, ending of narrative, how does she feel about her daughter knowing who her father was?

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) -- life writing, slave narrative, the popularity of this work, slave narrative as argumentative or persuasive writing, Equiano's Christianity, his relationship with Capt. Pascal, Equiano was a slave in Africa as well, Equiano as narrator, Equiano was from what is now Nigeria


Jane Eyre -- what was controversial about this novel, its narrator

"Stale Mates" (1955, written in the US & in English)  -- set in Hangzhou (a picturesque city in Southern China) during the 1920s, the Warlord Era, what does it mean to be modern?, can one be modern?, Zhang Ailing's depiction of polygamy, the narrator and her attitude towards the characters, men & women, depiction of tradition

Raise the Red Lantern (1991, film) -- set in the north of China during the 1920s, what does it mean to be modern?  what does it mean to be traditional?, Zhang Yimou's depiction of women & of polygamy, visual/aural impact, relationship among the wives, relationship between Songlian and her maid Yan'er, is Master Chen a nice guy, a nice jerk, or a jerk?, what do you make of the ending?

The Story of a Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber (written 1740 to 1750, published 1791, the English translation is in five volumes!) -- frame narrative, Daoist novel, extended family, triangle among Bao-Yu, Bao-Chai, and Dai-Yu, Bao-Yu was a stone in a previous life; Dai-Yu was Diamond Pearl, debt of tears, how do we respond to Bao-Yu (he is moody, prefers to be with women, hates to study, and is interested in clothes and makeup), Bao-Yu's relationship with his father, Jia Zheng (a more traditional man, a scholar and civil servant), role of nature, Bao-Yu's relationship with his grandmother

Prompts for Our Midterm

Below are the prompts for the take home part of the midterm.  Choose only one prompt.  The essay will be due on Friday, March 27.

1.  A number of our works so far this semester were originally written in English although not every author was a native English speaker.  How does the presence of these works affect your definition of world literature?  (Consider that both Joseph Conrad and Zhang Ailing wrote in English and that Zhang had written a number of novels and short stories in Chinese.)  How does the presence of works NOT originally written in English (Candide, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of the Stone) change your definition of world literature?  Consider Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiongo's arguments about the language one writes in.  With all this in mind, what role does English-language literature play in world literature after 1650?  What role should it play?  Why?  Why not?  What do works in translation like Candide or The Story of the Stone add to a world literature class? What does a film with subtitles add?  (If you have taken EN 201, feel free to make some comparisons between the classes.)  Consider the concept of World English.


2.   A common focus for a course like EN 202 is Imperialism or Colonialism and Post-Colonialism.  Choose up to three works that we have read so far, and examine how each fits--or doesn't fit into this focus.  Do any works complicate this focus?  Consider that we have also read works about the Ottoman Empire and that The Story of the Stone is set during the last dynasty of the Chinese Empire.  Raise the Red Lantern and "Stale Mates" are set in the aftermath of empire.

3.  Another common focus for a course like ours is geography.  Choose up to three works that are written by someone from a particular part of the world or are written about a particular part of the world.  Examine how each fits--or doesn't fit into the focus.  For example, how does Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart complement or correct Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?  Then what does Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative add to the mix?  If you have read other works from African, Chinese, or Middle-Eastern literature, feel free to bring them in.


4. Consider the novel as a genre.  What do our novels (Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, Oroonoko, The Story of the Stone, Jane Eyre) have in common?  How are they different?  Feel free to bring in other novels that you have read in the past.  How does the novel change from time period to time period?  How does it change from culture to culture?  Also, how are novels different from satires like Candide or autobiographies like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl?

5.  Discuss life writing as a genre of literature.  Given your definition of literature, how is lifewriting (not only autobiographies and memoirs but also biographies, letters, and diaries) literature?  How is it NOT literature?  Could life writing be a more personal form of history? Consider The Turkish Embassy Letters, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as your main examples, but feel free to include other examples from your reading (The Diary of Anne Frank, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Black Elk Speaks, Into the Wild).