Study Guide for Final (Summer 2009) -- part 1

Hmmm...Kristin Chenoweth was certainly a dazzling Cunegonde.  I wonder how she would be as Nora!

That said, let's start part 1 of our study guide for the final.

On Monday, we finished discussing Raise the Red Lantern and talked a bit about "Stale Mates" as it shed light on the film.  Then I introduced drama/theater and Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879).  Remember that drama refers to the written form of the play or the playscript and the playwright's intentions.  Theater refers to the performed form of the play, reflecting the director's intentions, the audience, and the director's central idea about the play.  The central idea is an especially key concept.  Without a central idea, a performance goes all over the place.  With a central idea, the play is definitely worth seeing even if you've seen the play before.

We also talked about realism (psychological, individual) vs. naturalism (sociological, group) as well as Raymond Williams' key terms: dominant (present-day and mainstream), emergent (foreshadowing of the future), and residual (remains of the past).  For example, in A Doll's House, the role that Nora plays in her marriage reflects the dominant idea of True Womanhood.  Mrs. Linden's work for Helmer could be considered emergent as clerical work was not considered to be women's work in 1879.  For more information on these terms, see the following link from Arizona State University:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~kheenan/courses/101/fall00/101analysis.htm#DOMINANT,%20RESIDUAL,%20EMERGENT

We also discussed the term anachronism (something that is out of time like a wristwatch on a Roman warrior). 

We watched some scenes from two film versions of A Doll's House.  Both were from 1973, and I suspect that the central idea for both was to capture the attention of the era's movie audiences.  Joseph Losey's film (starring Jane Fonda and David Warner) took liberties with the play in an attempt to make it a better film and help audiences understand what Nora had done.  Patrick Garland's film (starring Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins) was more faithful to Ibsen even though it did go outside the playscript and show Krogstad with his boys.

I wish that I could have shown this scene!  And I wish that there were a still of Jane Fonda at the confectioner's shop.


I'm afraid that this picture of Parisian macaroons is the best I can do!  They certainly look prettier than the half-price kosher macaroons that my husband and I buy after Passover.


On Tuesday, we continued to discuss A Doll's House, and we looked at a few more theatrical versions of the play. 

Did you know that A Doll's House was written in Norwegian?

These are a few of the links that we looked at:

 First is Mabou Mines' experimental production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHn2FxLJOoI

Next is a more traditional British production starring Gillian Anderson and Toby Stephens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9IU5yvIKkQ

Here is a link to Ingmar Bergman's adaptation set in the 1950s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb3CIsynKa4







For a review of the Mabou Mines production, follow this link:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=950CE4D7103BF937A15752C1A9659C8B63

Here is the Gothamist's interview with director Lee Breuer.  He explains the reasons behind his casting of very tall women and very short men, and then he talks about audiences' responses to this casting:

http://gothamist.com/2009/02/27/director_lee_breuer_mabou_mines_dol.php

For reviews of the production starring Gillian Anderson, see these links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/charlesspencer/5354252/A-Dolls-House-at-the-Donmar-Warehouse---review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/may/24/theatre-review

I can't find a review of The Hunger Artists' version. 

Wednesday we watched Act 3 of Patrick Garland's version of A Doll's House.  Weren't Anthony Hopkins and Claire Bloom amazing!


We also talked about applying stages of moral development to the characters in A Doll's House.

For more information about Carol Gilligan's theory of women's moral development, see this link:

http://www.slideshare.net/drburwell/carol-gilligan

(It's actually a PowerPoint presentation that you may download.)

For more information about Lawrence Kohlberg's theory, see this link:

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

And here is a link to my Multiply entry on A Doll's House with many pictures:

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/20/A_Dolls_House_More_Pictures

As we finish up our quick unit on drama, remember Avery Brooks' comparison:

films tell stories; theater is a place to explore ideas

Below is a scene from Oregon State University's production of A Doll's House.  Yes, yes, yes, it is set in the 1950s.


Thursday we discussed the French author Voltaire's satire, Candide (1759).  Candide is very much a product of the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason (1649-1789), a time when philosophers, scientists, and writers began to question authority and received wisdom.  Keep in mind that, though, that the French king was an absolute monarch and that people still believed in the divine right of kings there.  (Voltaire's king was Louis XIV.)  A satire not only holds up a mirror to nature and indicates problems in society but also proposes a solution.  (What did you make of Voltaire's solution in chapter 30?)  Satires may take various forms.  Candide is the story of a picaro who wanders around the world and has a series of adventures.  Some other satires are Gulliver's Travels (in the form of a travel narrative) or The Colbert Report (in the form of a right-wing commentator's show). 

For more about the Colbert Report, see this link:

http://www.colbertnation.com/home

To get an idea of the picaro, here is a video from My Name Is Earl:

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

Or you may find that Candide is more like Wile E. Coyote.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfAlyLNBG5Y


Finally, here are some YouTube videos of Kristin Chenoweth as Cunegonde.  The first is her performance of "Glitter and Be Gay."

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

The next is her performance of "You Were Dead You Know," a duet with Candide:

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

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

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: