Singing the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Link

Thank you, Michelle :)

If you don't know Gilligan's Island, see these links:

http://www.gilligansisle.com/

http://www.thewb.com/shows/gilligans-island/marooned-pilot/8ae27d25-b203-491a-92fb-2343b8542256

Final Prompts for EN 202 Summer 2010

Below are the prompts for the take home part of the midterm.  Choose only one prompt.  The essay will be due to me by Monday, August 16

The picture above is of Arthur Hughes' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," yet another British artist's response to Keats' poem.

1.  Must the protagonist of a story, poem, or film from the second part of the session (from Songlian onwards) follow the hero's journey (Joseph Campbell's monomyth)?  In what ways does he *not* follow this monomyth?  How does this affect the plot of the story, the character's coherence and believability, and the genre of the work?  How does this affect the audience's response?  Consider alternate models for narrative: tragedy, naturalism, Achebe's depiction of society, etc..

2.    How does the presence of works NOT originally written in English (Candide, Raise the Red Lantern, Leopold Sedar Senghor's poems, Baudelaire's "The Albatross," the stories by the Brothers Grimm, Ruben Dario's poems, Nosferatu, Petrarch's sonnets, Hans Christian Andersen's story) 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.  Note that technically Fitzcarraldo was filmed in English although we saw the German version.

3.  Discuss the role that masculinity and/or femininity play in up to four of the works we've read so far.  (At least two works must be from the second part of the session, which began with Raise the Red Lantern.)  Consider the role that history, culture, and even genre play in defining what appropriate masculinity and femininity are.  Consider the impact of the author or filmmaker's gender.  Also, consider your viewpoint as a 21st century man or woman. 


4.    Comment on Chinua Achebe’s statement: “Art is more than just good sentences; this is what makes this situation tragic. The man is a capable artist and as such I expect better from him. I mean, what is the point in that book? Art is not intended to put people down. If so, then art would ultimately discredit itself.” How does it apply to up to three of the works we've read or watched this session? How does it not apply?  Consider the purpose of satire.  Does Achebe's statement apply to Candide?  Should it apply?

5.    How do you define literature?  Support your definition with four separate works from various genres and cultures.  Two works must be from the second part of the session.  Also, be sure to consider what is NOT literature. You may discuss the folktale as a genre of literature.  Consider the role that orality, performance, and audience may play.  Should it matter that today's storytellers' audiences are often children?  You may also discuss the idea of film as literature.  Again, consider the role that print, audience, and performance plays.  Note the distinction between silent film and movies with sound.  Does it matter whether a film is based on an earlier work of literature?  Or whether this piece of literature is worthwhile?   I encourage you to discuss poetry as literature, considering the role of form, rhyme, meter, and translation.

6.   This session we are watching a number of older, more slower-paced films without CGI as well as reading older works (18th & 19th century). These films and texts also come from cultures other than America's.  How are these films and texts different from the films and texts that you are used to?  How are they similar?  What do they add to your understanding of films and film history?  to your understanding of world literature?  Be sure to justify your reasons with examples from the movies that we have seen.  At least one film must be Raise the Red Lantern or Nosferatu.  At least one text must be from the second part of the session.

Readings for the Rest of Session II -- Summer 2010

Here are the readings for the rest of our time together.  Those that we discuss in class will be on the final.  I also encourage you to read through the background readings on Multiply!



On Tuesday 8/3, we will finish watching Nosferatu, and we will discuss "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the following poems by Emily Dickinson: "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "They shut me up in Prose," "Much Madness is Divinest Sense," "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--,"  "The Soul has Bandaged Moments," and "I Heard a Fly buzz."  All but the last reading will be in Vol. 5 of our anthology.  See this link for the last poem:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15393



For Wednesday 8/4, we will read Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Vol. 5) as well as Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (Vol. 5.  Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" will be an extra reading for those who have the time:
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/eveofstagnes.html .)
You may also like to read Charles Baudelaire's "Albatross" in Vol. 5.



Thursday (8/5) is the beginning of our unit on folk tales.  
For Charles Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood," see this link:   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#perrault
See the following link for the Brothers Grimm's "Little Red Cap":   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm026.html
"The Goose Girl" is here:   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm089.html
"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" follow:  http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/twelvedancing/index.html
See the following link for two versions of "Hansel and Gretel":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html
"The Girl Without Hands" follows:  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm031.html



These readings may spill over onto Monday 8/9.  We will add "Godfather Death":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html.
as well as I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool":  http://salvoblue.homestead.com/gimpel.html

For Tuesday 8/10 and Wednesday 8/11, we will read Voltaire's Candide in Vol. 4.



Then on Thursday 8/12, we will finish up with some modern poetry. 
Let's start with Mary Ellen Solt's "Forsythia":  http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Solt-Mary-Ellen_Forsythia.html
Since we've already read poems by Emily Dickinson, we'll read some by Walt Whitman.  First is his "I Hear America Singing":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15752

Next is his "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20006

Last is his "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20270

I'll add Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California": http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306

Let's finish with Gwendolyn Brooks' "the rites for cousin vit":  http://www.tcsn.net/jackie/Archive/gwendolyn_brooks.htm

and Ruben Dario's "Walt Whitman," "Autumn," and "Theodore Roosevelt":
http://faculty.tamucc.edu/stalley/2335Resources/DarioWhitman.htm

http://www.dariana.com/R_Dario_poems.html#in_autumn

http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/dario.html



The final will be a take home, due to me by Monday 8/15.

Shefali's Summary of Song of Lawino and Ocol

Link

Please see the link above for Shefali's summary.  Thank you.  :)  This is the entry I'd make if I had a little more time.

Here are some videos of Acholi music and dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPn6aM2slPw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdQv9-ShnmE&feature=PlayList&p=E57C32A5E8280C77&playnext=1&index=38

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH2Ceo6UnMI&feature=related

Study Guide for Midterm in EN 202 Summer 2010, pt. 2

Today (7/21) we moved on to African literature, specifically Things Fall Apart.  I'm pleased that I was able to find an image from the movie that we saw today.  Having been done in 1987, the movie (or mini-series) is just old enough not to have much about it on the internet.  Below is a link to an interview with Pete Edochie, the actor who played Okonkwo.  Underneath the bombast and politics he does talk about the experience of filming Achebe's novel:

http://www.thesourceng.com/Thingsapartseptember8.htm

OK, I've found a good summary of the entire series from African Movies Direct:
http://www.africanmoviesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=43036

Below are the scenes that we watched in class:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MEDIAFRICTV#p/u/49/5ZijfjuYftw

http://www.youtube.com/user/MEDIAFRICTV#p/u/48/qBy0-08uw3o

In addition to watching these scenes from the 1987 Nigerian mini-series, we also discussed Achebe's depiction of Africa, Igbo society, and Okonkwo as an individual.

Leopold Sedar Senghor's "Black Woman" and "Prayer to the Masks" will also be on the exam.  See the following link for his obituary:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1722156.stm
The BBC also has some interesting links to articles about France's relationship to its former colonies as well as to information about Senegal.

Here is the original French of "Black Woman" or "Femme Noire":
http://www.clubsoleil.net/beaute_noire/senghor.htm

See the link below for the original "Prayer to the Masks" or "Priere aux masques":
http://poemasenfrances.blogspot.com/2004/11/lopold-sdar-senghor-prire-aux-masques.html

Below is a map of Senegal.

On Thursday (7/22), we continued discussing Things Fall Apart.  I mentioned the Soviet theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) who is a useful theorist for reading Achebe's novel.  Bakhtin considered the novel to be the apex of literature because it could include many different voices.  I called this polyphony, but it may also be called heteroglossia.  In fact, that is the term that Bakhtim used.  Sandy Kuo's outline is fairly technical, but it is among the more useful sources I could find:

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/marxism/Bakhtin_heteroglossia.htm

This page from the University of Singapore is also useful; plus, it is more concise:

http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/theory/maslin/The_Novel_716.html

After I introduced Bakhtin's idea, we looked at how heteroglossia plays out in Things Fall Apart, specifically when the third-person narration moves to Ikemefuna.  However, as you pointed out, there are other parts where we hear voices other than Okonkwo or the omniscient narrator ('voice of God").

We watched the following videos of Igbo dance:

The first is of dancing at an Igbo funeral.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xvnjo8xckQ&feature=related

These dancers wear masks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrWu7Dp3Ea0

These we used to look at the funeral in chapter 13. 

How would you respond to Okonkwo's accident in chapter 13?  How does Achebe wish us to respond?  Consider Oberieka's thoughts at the end of chapter 13, another moment of heteroglossia.

We talked about Okonkwo's exile in his mother's hometown.

We concluded by considering Things Fall Apart as a tragedy and as a naturalistic novel.  For the definition of tragedy that I used, see the following link:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/tragedy.html

For the definition of naturalism, see this link:
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap6/6intro.html

Okonkwo's conflict with his father and his son Nwoye are also important.  Consider that at the time when Achebe wrote this novel Freudian psychology had much credibility and currency.  A man's conflict with his father (the Oedipus conflict) was seen as an inevitable stage of a male child's life.  (Note that Oedipus is a key figure in tragedy.  Perhaps he is the ultimate tragic hero.)

Today (7/28) we finished up Things Fall Apart.  We began by looking at the impact of orality.  Orality encompasses the characteristics of a culture without a system of writing.  Once a culture has a system of writing, it is literate.  Once it has printing, we may refer to it as a print culture.

For more detailed information about Orality and Literacy, a key study by Father Walter J. Ong, S.J., see the link below:

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/51

Art Bingham's review is more detailed.  It essentially outlines the book:

http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/ong_rvw.html

Or you may find Prof. Mindy McAdams' slide show to be useful:
http://www.slideshare.net/macloo/orality-and-literacy

Given that Things Fall Apart is a novel, a genre that epitomizes print culture, how does Achebe's depiction of Igbo society reflect its orality?  (Consider elements such as performance, the practical past, fullness of expression, use of proverbs, and perhaps even Igbo attitudes towards the law and forgiveness.) 

We also looked at law & forgiveness in TFA, the performance of authority, and Achebe's depiction of Christianity & Christianization.  What did you make of the ending?


We then discussed the language of TFA.  Does it matter that Achebe wrote his novel in English?  (Thanks for the background information about Igbo & Achebe's own translation of TFA into his dialect of that language, Michelle & Natalia!)  Of course, translation is less of an issue when an author can be his (or her) own translator.



We finished up this part of EN 202 Summer 2010 by talking about Acholi/Ugandan author Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol.  Lawino is a traditional African woman responding to the contempt of her husband, Ocol.  Ocol wishes to be more "modern," to assimilate into Afro-European culture.  Lawino is illiterate and worships her people's gods.  Ocol is literate and Christian.  In the original book-length poems, we see that Ocol is interested in another woman, the young, Westernized Clementine or Tina. 

How does Song of Lawino reflect orality?  How does Song of Ocol reflect literacy?

Do you believe that Lawino is a woman speaking with a woman's voice?  (p'Bitek was a man.)

Below are Acholi dancers.

And of course, the picture below is a map of Uganda.

Study Guide for Midterm in EN 202 Summer 2010, pt. 1

Did you know that you can stay at the Casa Fitzcarraldo the next time that you are in Iquitos, Peru?  (The picture above is from this hotel's website.  The daughter of Walter Saxer, Fitzcarraldo's executive producer, owns and operates this hotel.)

On to our study guide!

On our first day of class, we watched the following videos on the DR Congo, the current name for the setting of Conrad's novel:

Today we watched the following videos.  The first is part one of Al Jazeera English's documentary on the DR Congo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d4dFYiIzK8

The next is the presentation on King Leopold II of Belgium:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qU5IIiVW-E

I had intended to show the following video from Burden of Dreams, a film about the making of Fitzcarraldo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0

On July 13 and 14, we watched Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) with Klaus Kinski in the title role, Claudia Cardinale as his partner Molly, the Brazilian actor Jose Lewgoy as the robber baron Don Aquilino, and Huerequeque Enrique Bohorquez, a non-actor, as Huerequeque the cook.  Note that Herzog did *not* use CGI or models and that his actors pulled the boat up and down the mountain and into the river.

Here is the IMDB page for Fitzcarraldo:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083946/

Roger Ebert's 1982 review is here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19820101/REVIEWS/201010325/1023

Ebert revisited the movie in 2005:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050828/REVIEWS08/508280301

On Wednesday we discussed the differences between novels and films as genres.  Novels' characters have interiority, and we often get much more exposition and back story in a novel.  We also talked about the roundness and flatness of characters.  Films draw on visual and aural elements--but is a picture worth a thousand words?.  They are collaborative (and commercial) whereas novels are more individual.  (However, oddly enough, Jane Austen wrote all over her novels in her family's parlor and not in a private study.) 

The picture below is Werner Herzog at work on Fitzcarraldo as his native actors look on.  (How does Herzog depict these natives and their culture?  How does Fitzcarraldo treat the natives?)  Further below is a picture of the British author George Orwell at work alone.


On Thursday (7/15), we discussed Fitzcarraldo and the beginning of Heart of Darkness.  We went over Joseph Campbell's monomyth ("The Hero's Journey") as it pertains to both Herzog's film and the beginning of Conrad's novel.  See this link for the outline that we used:
http://orias.berkeley.edu/hero/JourneyStages.pdf  However, there are more detailed outlines, so feel free to refer to them if you write about the hero's journey for your paper or the subjective exam.  It is ironic that Campbell's monomyth applies to Fitzcarraldo almost as well as it applies to more commercial movies such as Star Wars or Mulan. 

The picture below is from Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, his televised conversations with journalist Bill Moyers.


We also discussed the journey from the center to the margins.  This journey is especially important in thinking about colonialist and post-colonialist writing.  Note that, in Conrad's time, London was very much the center of empire whereas the Congo was quite marginalized.  Does Fitzcarraldo make the same kind of journey from the center to the margins that Marlow does? 

Also, Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" will be on the midterm:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html

I didn't know that this poem was inspired by the Spanish-American War.  This war heralded the U.S.' entry into imperialism as it took over several of Spain's colonies: the Phillippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, for example. 

We also discussed the impact of historical context.  Note that over eighty years separate Heart of Darkness and Fitzcarraldo.  These more than eighty years include both World Wars, independence for a very many former colonies, and the Civil Rights movement.  Then we can also look at cultural differences.  Conrad was a former Russian subject who chose to become a British citizen.  Herzog was born during WWII, grew up in West Germany, and now lives in Los Angeles (but is not an American citizen).  One might also call him a citizen of the world as his work transcends the category of German or American cinema.

Note that Heart of Darkness has a frame narration.  An unnamed Englishman narrates the frame story.  In this story, his friend Marlow tells about his journey on the Congo River to rescue Kurtz, an agent for the Belgian company that Marlow once worked for.  Can we trust the unnamed Englishman?  Who is he?  Can we trust Marlow? 

Below is a picture from Apocalypse Now.  Here Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando, the shaven-headed man) and Willard (Marlow's name in the film) are conversing.

On Monday (7/19), we continued our exploration of Heart of Darkness, using Joseph Campbell's monomyth, Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa," and Werner Herzog's comments on the jungle to help us get further. 

How does Marlow's story follow the hero's journey?  And, if it does, what is Marlow's elixir?  How does it not follow the hero's journey?  Is he a hero?  Would Campbell consider him to be a hero?  Or is he more of an anti-hero?

Below is Dr. Kenneth Wheeler's definition of an anti-hero:

ANTIHERO: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, ugly, or clownish. Examples here might include the senile protagonist of Cervantes' Don Quixote or the girlish knight Sir Thopas from Chaucer's "Sir Thopas." In the case of the Byronic and Miltonic antihero, the antihero is a romanticized but wicked character who defies authority, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar rejection of virtue. In this sense, Milton presents Satan in Paradise Lost as an antihero in a sympathetic manner. The same is true of Heathcliffe in Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights. Compare with the picaro {or "knave or rascal who is the protagonist in picaresque novels" or novels about a young man's misadventures}.

Below is Gustave Dore's illustration of Satan in Paradise Lost.  Dore was active during the 19th century.

We also began to look at Marlow's depiction of women, beginning with his aunt (one of his helpers) and moving onto Kurtz' African mistress and his European fiancee.  Why does Marlow depict these women (especially his aunt) the way he does?  Why does he take pains to say that women are removed from the "world" and that they should not run things?  Why does he lie to Kurtz' Intended (the fiancee) about her beloved's last words? 

Here are some pictures of the New Woman (1890s/1900s).  The first is from 1911 and was part of a paper published in ...Nineteenth Century Gender Studies.  See the link below for the paper itself:  http://ncgsjournal.com/issue32/roundtable.htm

The other pictures are earlier, dating from the 1890s.  Although we take for granted women's ability to work outside the home and to exercise, these activities were once radical!  Again, remember what I said about the corset, which physically deformed and confined women.

 

We then examined some passages from Heart of Darkness, using Achebe's essay and Herzog's comments to find the effects of racism and the jungle.  Could Herzog's comments be in and of themselves racist or imperialist?  How might Marlow's fireman look from another perspective?  (The picture below is from Mother Jones and depicts Congolese "dandies.")

 

Note the effect that work has on both Marlow and his subordinates.  (You may also want to see what he says about the Europeans and their attitude towards work.)

 I'll conclude here with notes from Tuesday (7/20) since we finished up Heart of Darkness and we will be beginning Things Fall Apart on Wednesday (7/21).

At the beginning (or near beginning of class), Michelle gave her presentation on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories (i.e., The Hound of the Baskervilles) *and* The Crime of the Congo, an expose of Belgian (mis)rule.  Unlike Conrad, ACD was a very prolific, popular writer.  As Michelle pointed out, he wrote not only the Sherlock Holmes stories but also science fiction, romances, and non-fiction.  He trained as a physician and went to Africa as a ship's doctor, but he chose to write instead of practice medicine after his return to Great Britain.  ACD wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1909 after both Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad turned the assignment down.  Not only did ACD write this book but he also publicized it, meeting with world leaders and lecturing on it to the public.

Below is his portrait from 1897.

I will be posting Michelle's PowerPoint as soon as I am able to.  In the meantime, here is a link to the site where The Crime of the Congo is posted.

http://www.kongo-kinshasa.de/dokumente/lekture/crime_of_congo.pdf

We finished up our discussion of Heart of Darkness.  We explored whether or not Marlow had changed over the course of his story.  Of course, one could also think about whether or not he had changed since the events of the story.  Had he realized certain things as he brooded over what had happened in the Congo?  We also looked at whether or not Kurtz had affected him and why his responses to him swung wildly.  We briefly talked about Marlow's response to the young Russian's hero worship of Kurtz.  (Later we saw Dennis Hopper's performance in Apocalypse Now.)  We concluded by comparing Kurtz' mistress and his fiancee.



Then we watched the following clips from Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's transformation of Conrad's novel about the Congo into a film about Vietnam...or one that was Vietnam.

Marlow's meeting with the Army brass follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iw1KobfPwk&feature=related

Next is a link to Dennis Hopper's scenes.  He plays an American photojournalist, and this person is Coppola's equivalent of Conrad's young Russian. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGKSuDleYVU

You may also want to look at these other scenes:

I like how Willard (Marlow's name in the film) states that he is waiting for a mission.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzM4D2_uOP0&feature=related


Here is a link to the infamous Ride of the Valkyries.  Robert Duvall plays Kilgore, a colonel who is relatively unscathed by the war.  Perhaps he is Coppola's equivalent of the Accountant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjWDCX1Bdw

These are scenes from the boat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kT8rTsaHI4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cueJbgGa5-Y


Finally, see this link for scenes with Marlon Brando's Kurtz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqloFdNq2Y