Showing posts with label studyguides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label studyguides. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Study Guide for Final -- pt. 3 -- EN 190 -- Summer 2012


The picture above is of Walt Whitman as a younger man.  The picture is from the 1855 edition of his Leaves of Grass.


Here is a list of terminology that may be on the exam:

silent film/movie

poem/poetry

free verse

blank verse

organic form

formal verse 

sonnet -- Shakespearean and Petrarchan

villanelle

iambic pentameter

stanza

alliteration

assonance

onomatopoeia

octet

sestet

line break:  full stop, end of phrase, enjambment

Below Petrarch contemplates his muse Laura.


 Below we see Shakespeare with the Dark Lady, subject of his poems.

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Monday, August 6, 2012

Study Guide for Final -- pt. 2 -- EN 190 -- Summer II 2012

 Above is Edgar Degas' "At the Races" (1877-1880).  Below are pictures of Detroit in the 1940s.

 This week's readings include the following:

Below are links we looked at in class today, starting with Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California":

Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is here:

Sherman Alexie wrote "Defending Walt Whitman":

Let's look at Shakespeare's Sonnet #73:

We'll conclude with Philip Levine's "M. Degas..."

You may find this blog entry to be interesting: 
But be sure to scroll down to the entry for July 19, 2008.

This links to part of a literary map of Detroit:

The translations we looked at follow:

Let's start with Petrarch:

A.S. Kline's translation of Sonnet 3 is here, together with Petrarch's original and the MP3 of Moro Silo reading it:

Mark Musa's translation is here:

Next we looked at Sonnet 140.  Again, we will start with Kline's translation and the original:

The literal translation by Patrick Cruttwell is below:

See this link for the version by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542):

The translation by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911) is actually of Sonnet 294.  Again, we'll start with Kline's translation and the original:

Higginson's version is here:

We'll finish with A.M. Juster (1956-).



On to Li Bai's "Drinking Alone With the Moon."

We'll start with Ezra Pound's translation:

Note that he did not know Chinese although he popularized Chinese poetry and used it as a predecessor to modern poetry.

Then we'll move on to linguist Arthur Waley's version:

Stephen Owen's translation is more recent:

Vikram Seth's translation was the last we looked at:

But I would like to include another by Xu Yuanchong:

The last version will not be on the test, but I think that you may enjoy reading it, too.


Presentations:
Sharon Ossi -- white elephants
Yuehshen Huang -- manga
Adrian Watson -- faces of the 1960s
Renee Rodriguez and Chau Nguyen -- Koji Suzuki
Melissa Mittleman and Sandrine Mbonwo -- NYC in the 1940s
Gizachew Elcho -- Tsegaye Gebre Medhin
Joel Feussi -- The Fables of LaFontaine


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Study Guide for Final -- EN 190 -- pt. 1

Above is a picture from a 2010 production of The Dumb Waiter at Chicago's TUTA Theater.  Below is a link to a review of this production:   http://chicagotheaterbeat.com/2012/07/23/review-the-dumb-waiter-tuta-theatre-chicago/

Now for our readings -- and viewings.  Below are pictures from the Unexpected Stage Company's productions of The Dumb Waiter and Trifles.


Trifles 
The Dumb Waiter
See the link here for a BBC version:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYV0sbzEIJQ

Nosferatu (1922, dir. F.W. Murnau)

Poems:
Robert Hayden -- "Those Winter Sundays" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjosL9VpXjY
Gwendolyn Brooks -- "We Cool"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyKF2e2CiMk
Maxine Kumin -- "The Sound of Night"
William Carlos Williams -- "The Red Wheelbarrow"
Allison Joseph -- "On Being Told I Don't Speak Like a Black Person"
Robert Bly -- "Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter"
George Herbert -- "The Altar"  http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Altar.html
(Note that Mr. Herbert wrote during the 1600s!)
Howard Nemerov -- "Found Poem" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16512
(Note that his sister was the photographer Diane Arbus.  Below is one of her photographs.)

"A Primer of the Daily Round"  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20008

Other found poetry is available here:  http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/

Dylan Thomas' villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377

Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1TD1saNCqA

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 read by Alan Rickman 

Li Young Lee's "Eating Alone"

Charles Bukowski's "my old man"

Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll"

We watched an interview with former Poet Laureate Rita Dove on the anthology that she edited:

We also watched an interview with US Poet Laureate Philip Levine and UK Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy:

We also watched Stephen and Ashley's presentation on Alfred Hitchcock's films.  The PowerPoint is at MyMC.



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Friday, July 20, 2012

Study Guide for Midterm -- pt. 3 -- EN 190 -- Summer II 2012

I hope that this photo stays on this blog!  It's from the 1985 movie Smooth Talk that is based on "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" with Laura Dern and 
Treat Williams.  Here is a clip from the film:

And the review is here:  


I'll start with a bit about orality.  Orality refers to characteristics of a culture before writing is invented.  Some characteristics are stories that begin in medias res (the middle of things), a reliance on episodes rather than a narrative arc, a reliance on externals and action rather than on interiority, performance, improvisation, and key words like "wine dark sea" and "dawn's rosy fingers."  Relevant figures are Milman Parry (researcher) and Father Walter J. Ong (theorist).

These terms are relevant to fiction:

short story
novella -- 50 to 100 pp.
novel -- over 100 pp.
graphic fiction
genre fiction

plot--
plot vs. story
narrative arc
flashback
foreshadowing
conflict (person vs. person, person vs. self, person vs. society, person vs. nature)
epiphany
exposition
chronological order
reverse chronological order

character -- 
round vs. flat (E.M. Forster)
dynamic vs. static
ways of depicting character: telling, showing, saying, thinking
interiority
protagonist
antagonist
minor

point of view
narrator
narrative
3rd person (omniscient, limited, central consciousness)
stream of consciousness
2nd person (Bright Lights, Big City)
But there are more examples of this trick:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative
1st person (naive, reliable, omniscient)

theme -- an implied thesis statement (subject + predicate) assigned by the reader (not the writer); as a result, a work may have more than one theme!
abstraction and limitations of theme

setting -- includes place, time, circumstance

symbol -- is concrete and meaningful...may be categorized as private, literary, conventional or traditional, cliche, or archetypal

style -- diction, sentence structure, rhythm, voice

irony

tone

motives: act, actor, scene, agency, motives

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Study Guide for Midterm -- pt. 2 -- EN 190 -- Summer II 2012

As a change of pace, since we have so many pictures of Brooklyn and the theater, I thought I'd post a picture of LA.  Here is a more idyllic picture, reflecting what older people may think of when they hear about LA or California.

On to the terms and links!

drama vs. theater 

drama -- playwright, script, characters, stage directions, setting, plot

theater -- director, actor, audience, performance, set, sound, lighting

 As promised, here is a link to Erikson's stages of development.  
 http://fac.hsu.edu/langlet/lectures/dev/Erikson/erik_erikson.htm

You may also find Kohlberg's theory interesting as well:

Michael Morrison provides a Christian perspective on development:

Or is Carol Gilligan's theory more appropriate to Linda?
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/handbook/Gilligan.html

Other approaches to literature include formalist (focusing on elements of the text), historical, economic, gender (male OR female), racial, and ethnic.

Ways of categorizing literature include genre, historical period, language, nation, culture (including academic or youth), and theme.


Here is my entry on Miller's life and career:
You may also find this interview to be interesting:

For more information about DoaS' time and place, see this entry:

Take a look at other versions of DoaS:
The latest version is here:  http://www.broadway.com/shows/death-salesman/

To be fair, you ought to look at the reviews, too:


And here is the link to the entry on the Beijing production:


For more information about Trifles, see this entry:

Below is a picture of Glaspell's Provincetown Theater in NYC.

After a scare in 2008, it is still open:
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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Study Guide for Midterm -- pt. 1 -- EN 190 -- Summer II 2012































Above is an image from the Orange Tree Theatre (UK)'s evening of short plays by Susan Glaspell.  For more information about this production, see these links:


But more importantly, which readings/viewings will be on our midterm (July 27)?

Death of a Salesman -- text, DVD of 1985 production, and the following clips:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdbM9YSCq4 (2000, with Brian Dennehy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnTqlxajQ5Q (1996, BBC, with Warren Mitchell)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nYKpvtYPG4 (2008, DC's own Arena Stage)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJNaEDrtjug (2009, with Charles S. Dutton)

Trifles -- text and the following clips  
Below are links to the videos we watched.  If you have more patience with opera, you may start here:

Otherwise, these are the movies:

"A Jury of Her Peers" is here:

Here is one clip from one version of Sophie Treadwell's Machinal:


"Love in L.A."

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

"The House on Mango Street"

"Everyday Use"

"Why I Live at the P.O." -- http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html



I wouldn't mind living at the Gulfport, MS P.O. below!

 Readings continue below:

"Hills Like White Elephants"

"The Things They Carried"

"Bad Neighbors"

"The Lesson"

"This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona"

"The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"

"The Christmas Pies"

Here are clips from Smoke Signals that we watched:

We also watched the following video of a Native American storyteller:
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Friday, May 4, 2012

Study Guide for Final -- pt. 2 -- EN 230 -- Spring 2012

Above is a picture of American artist Bob Rauschenberg's Radioactive I (1964).  It is initiating us into the more avant-garde section of the semester.  As you may remember, Rauschenberg's work inspired contemporary playwright Charles Mee's bobrauschenbergamerica, and Anne Bogart whose books I've reviewed directed the play's premiere.



And here are some links to videos that we've seen in class:

Below are links to the performances that we saw, starting with Hedda.

Here is the review of the production:

Let's look at Charles Mee's bobrauschenbergamerica:

Next is Suzan-Lori Parks' The America Play:

Finally, we have a scene from Tarell McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays, the ones that I consider more enjoyable to read.

What do the playwrights and directors seem to be trying to do in these plays?

See this blog entry.  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/apr/19/noises-off-theatre-safe-risks
Are we trying to make drama and theater too safe?  Should we embrace productions like Hedda?

The picture below is from the NYC production of Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet.



Yikes!  I forgot Trifles.  The link to my entry on this play is below:


Here are links to the movie versions that we saw:


Below are theatrical versions of this play:

If only there had been a video of the 2005 production at Theatre Unbound!


Let's move on to Brecht and The Good Person of Szechuan:

Here is the definition of the alienation effect:
http://faculty.washington.edu/cbehler/glossary/alienationeffect.html

See this link for more about epic theater:
http://pages.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

Let's start with our clips from The Threepenny Opera (words, Brecht; music, Weill)


Below is a poster for the 1931 film version of Brecht and Weill's play.


Mother Courage is another of Brecht's plays.  Recently Tony Kushner translated it.  Meryl Streep has starred in a production that used his translation.


Here is a song from Mother Courage (but from a different production and translation):

On to the Good Person of Szechuan!

Below is a picture from a 2010 production staged in Berlin, Germany.


Here is a trailer (much music, no words) from this production:

We'll finish up with Waiting for Godot.


See this link for my Multiply entry on this play:

Here is a link to Beckett's Film with Buster Keaton:
(and here is a film with Keaton:

These are the links to versions of Waiting for Godot:


How has watching these videos helped you with Waiting for Godot?

Here are some clips of other plays by Beckett:

And here is an entry on The Metamorphoses:

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Study Guide for Final -- EN 230 -- pt. 1

We may not be able to watch the 2008 production of The Good Soul of Szechuan, but the picture above is of Jane Horrocks' performance as Shui Ta.

The plays that will be on the objective final include the following:  Pygmalion (play & film), The Taming of the Shrew (performance only), Hedda Gabler, Trifles, The Good Person of Szechuan, Waiting for Godot, and The Metamorphoses (performance only). 

Let's start with The Taming of the Shrew.

Here is the Globe Theater's quick summary of The Taming of the Shrew:
The Summary of Taming of the Shrew
This drama is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The play starts with the Induction where a trick is played by a nobleman on the drunkard Christopher Sly who arranges for an acting troupe to perform a play called The Taming of the Shrew...

The beautiful and gentle Bianca has no shortage of admirers (Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio) but her father insists that she will not marry until her shrewish sister, Katharina, is betrothed. Bianca's suitors persuade fortune-seeker Petruchio to court her. The suitors pay for any costs involved and there is also the goal of Katharina's dowry. Petruchio marries Katharina and he carries Katharina off to his country house with his servant Grumio. Petruchio intends to browbeat Katharina into submission and he denies her food, sleep and her new clothes, whilst continuously singing her praises. Katharina is tamed. They return to Padua where Lucentio has won Bianca. At a banquet they wager on who has the most obedient wife. Each wife is issued with commands but only Katharina obeys and promptly lectures everyone on the importance of wifely submission.

Here is the trailer for the movie version of The Taming of the Shrew:

You may watch more of this movie here:

To compare, here are links to stage versions:

This link is more informative:

 

Let's move on to Pygmalion (play and film).

We'll start with what's on Multiply:

Here is a link to the 1938 film starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller:
Do you think that this play from 1913 is still worth staging today?   




Next up is Hedda Gabler.  Earlier this year I saw a production of Ibsen's play, but until I write up my review, the picture above and this entry will have to do:

This entry has various links to versions of this play:


We watched several scenes from the 1981 Yorkshire Television production starring Diana Rigg.


The end is more compelling:

Below are links to the 1970s version with Glenda Jackson and Patrick Stewart.







Stage actor Janet Suzman played Hedda to Ian McKellan's Tesman:






More recently, there has been the Broadway production starring Mary Louise Parker.


and  the University of Washington's production of Hedda:


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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Study Guide for Midterm -- pt. 2 -- EN 230 -- Spring 2012

Doesn't Prior look like he is studying?!

Let's start with links to the Multiply entries on Angels in America:




See this link for the HBO version of Kushner's play:


These are key scenes:



How do you feel about historical characters appearing on stage?  How does Kushner handle the task of incorporating historical figures in his fictional play?  Consider these accounts of the Rosenbergs' story:

Here is Harper with "Mr. Lies," played by the same actor who plays the nurse Belize.

On to M. Butterfly!

This play is David Henry Hwang's reworking of the opera Madame Butterfly.  Here are some scenes from this opera by Puccini.

Well, let's start with Maria Callas although we don't have video of her performances:


These versions are live-action:

Here are some reviews of the film M. Butterfly.  Do you believe that these critics have understood the film?  Have they understood the play?  How do they help you to understand the film and its context better?  Each is from 1993, when the film was made




On the other hand, here are reviews of the play.  How do they help you understand it more fully?  Which elements of the play do the reviewers focus on?  How do they deal with Gallimard's not knowing that Song is male?  Or with Hwang's cultural politics?  Note that only the first review is from the 1980s.  The other two are from the 2000s.




Here are the theatrical versions that I wanted to show.  Which elements of Hwang's play do they emphasize?  Which do they gloss over?  
 

See this link for reviews of M. Butterfly:


Finally, we will move on to A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams' 1947 play.  Critic Robert Brustein argues that Williams is the only great modern playwright in America.



What do you make of the play's ending....and the change that was made to the film?  Here is a little information about the Hays Code.  


Consider that the Hays Code applied to film, not theater.  How might a code of censorship affect film?  How might it affect the ways that plays could be adapted to film?  Or the way that audiences would respond to plays and films?

Let's look at the 1994 version of Streetcar with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin:

Or at the 1985 version with Ann-Margaret and Treat Williams (thank you, Dongpei!)

These are theatrical versions of Streetcar.


What seems to change as we move to the theater?  

Finally, here is a link to the video we watched at the end of class:

See this link for an entry on reviews of Streetcar:

More video clips are here:


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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Study Guide for Final -- pt. 3 -- EN 190


I think that it's time for part three of our study guide!

Monday's presentations were as follows:

Grant's presentation on Jules Verne, focusing on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Ismail's presentation applying Erikson's theory of development to Death of a Salesman

Pamela's presentation on Cuban poet and painter Armando Vallardes

Inhae's presentation on the Brothers Grimm

Liliana's presentation on Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa

The picture below is of Vargas Llosa with his first wife, Julia.

We also discussed the ballad, a form present in both poetry and song.

Here are a few more links for you:

 In the 1960s, Simon and Garfunkel put E.A. Robinson's poem "Richard Cory" to music.  Here is a link to the poem although it is in our anthology:
Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action. The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these. Two characteristics of the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza. Incremental repetition repeats one or more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action. The ballad stanza is four lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet. Ballads often open abruptly, present brief descriptions, and use concise dialogue.
      The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal. The literary ballad deliberately imitates the form and spirit of a folk ballad. The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

Tuesday we saw the following presentations:  Hubert's presentation on Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, Wajiha & Jonathan's presentation on Eminem's "Mockingbird," Aurelie's presentation on Victor Hugo's "Demain des l'Aube," and Dexter's presentation on the Beijing production of Death of a Salesman. 




We looked at some other forms of poetry.  The first is the tanka or waka, a very concise form from Japanese literature.  It is actually quite old, dating from the 700s CE (or the 8th Century), and one of its leading lights was a woman, Ono no Komachi who lived during the 9th Century.  At that time, upper-class Japanese women were encouraged to pursue literature in Japanese.  The men, on the other hand, read and wrote Chinese.  Here is the link we looked at:
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/japan/literature/ono-no-komachi/

Her picture is above.  She commonly appears in Japanese prints as an archetypal poetess and seductive woman.

One poem was translated by Arthur Waley, a noted translator from the early 20th century.  Two were translated by Jane Hirschfield, an American poet, and Aratani Mariko, a Japanese poet.

The second is the bop, a new form developed by African-American poet Afaa M. Weaver. 

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5773

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22359

Scroll down this link to find another example of the bop poem:

http://jstheater.blogspot.com/2007/04/random-musings-poem-lyrae-van-clief.html

I've also attached Evelyn N. Alfred's bop poem, "flashes: a bop for bix b."  Enjoy!

We listened to another one of Afaa M. Weaver's poems.  This one is not a bop, and it takes place in Taiwan:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20050

The picture below is of Taipei's most famous "night market."

We finished up with the following presentations:

Joe & Lizzy on 1950s pop culture
Nahom on the American Dream & Death of a Salesman
Clifford on music as literature
Karen, Shennekia, & Jason on song lyrics as poetry

You may also watch Mauricio's video on Cesar Vallejo, the Peruvian poet, here:


Thanks for a great semester!



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