Map of Candide's Journey that Michelle Found

Link

Johann's "Happy-Go-Lucky" Trailer

Link

How does Poppy compare to Candide?

Thank you, Johann!

Ram's Summary of Girl Without Hands

Link

Thank you again, Ram :)

Ram's Summary of Goose Girl

Link

Thank you, Ram :)

Study Guide for Final in EN 202 Summer 2010, pt. 4

The painting above is Henry Meynell Rheame's watercolor La Belle Dame sans Merci (1901). It really is amazing how many British painters were inspired by Keats' poem.  Here are just a few that we looked at.  Let's start with J.W. Waterhouse's painting from 1893:

 
There is also Sir Frank Dicksee's 1902 interpretation.

  I could go on forever....but there are other interesting angles to find.  Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner" are both in ballad format.  See Conrad Geller's article on the ballad form:  http://www.writing-world.com/poetry/ballad.shtml

Here is Prof. Lilia Melani's definition of the ballad:

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 ballad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

See these links for lyrics to the ballads that we listened to.

Here are links to Thompson's songs:
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=585
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

More importantly, though, Coleridge and Keats' poems are both part of Romanticism.  Poets writing in this literary style emphasized feeling, the poet's receptiveness, more everyday language, and the revival of once-popular forms.  Poets downplayed elitism and classicism although they might engage in medievalism or the imitation of medieval art and poetry.  Coleridge attended but did not graduate from Cambridge University.  Keats trained as a doctor at a time when that profession was not as prestigious as it is today.

Here is a picture of Coleridge:


Ben Whishaw played Keats in the recent Bright Star.


Ballads also rely on orality:

Effects of not having a system of writing
Performance - depends on the audience/ occasion
Repetition

For more information about orality, see these links:
http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/51
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orality

I'd like to juxtapose our folk & fairy stories with the ballads.

See these links for background on the Brothers Grimm:
http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/146
http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/147

These are the stories we covered. With the exceptions that are listed, all stories below are from the Brothers Grimm's collections.  Note that their stories changed as Wilhelm edited them to suit children.

"The Goose Girl" is here:   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm089.html

"The Girl Without Hands" follows:  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm031.html

"Godfather Death":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html

Charles Perrault's "Donkey Skin":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html

I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool":  http://salvoblue.homestead.com/gimpel.html

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier":  http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheSteadfastTinSoldier_e.html



Have you looked at the presentations that have been given during the second part of the semester?  Check your inbox!

Betel presented on the Hamer of Ethiopia.

Lisa presented on Hans Christian Andersen.

Theresia presented on Chinua Achebe.

Danielle presented on horror films and Gothic stories.

Johann presented on Impressionism in art and Joseph Conrad.

Shefali presented on Voltaire & the Enlightenment.

Ram, Natalia, and Mike presented on vampires in film.

Below is a scene from Bram Stoker's Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola's film.

Study Guide for Final in EN 202 Summer 2010, pt. 3

Now I'd like to move on to women's writing: Emily Dickinson's poems, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the concept of True Womanhood.  The picture above refers to Elaine Showalter's recent study on women's writing in America from Puritan New England's Anne Bradstreet to contemporary author Annie Proulx.  (Here's a link to Katha Pollitt's review of Prof. Showalter's study: 
http://www.slate.com/id/2213111 .)

For information about Raise the Red Lantern and "Stale Mate," see this link:
http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/168

More information about Emily Dickinson (1830-1885) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) follows. 

We read the following poems by Emily Dickinson:
"They shut me up in Prose," "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--,"  and "I Heard a Fly buzz."  All but the last reading are in Vol. 5 of our anthology.  See this link for the last poem:

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

For reviews of recent books on Emily Dickinson, see the following links:

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/150/White_Heat_The_Friendship_of_Emily_Dickinson_Thomas_Wentworth_Higginson

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/151

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/170

I also want to link to Higginson's translation of Petrarch's sonnet here:

http://www.sonnets.org/petrarch.htm#010

Contemporary poet A.M. Juster's translation may be found here:

http://www.amjuster.com/poem14.html

The picture below is the cover of Brenda Wineapple's recent White Heat, which retells the correspondence between Emily Dickinson and editor T.W. Higginson.

The painting above is Maria Spartali Stillman's depiction of Petrarch's first glimpse of Laura, the woman he addressed in 365 of the 366 poems in his Canzionere.  She may well be a symbol of love and beauty as the two never really met.

I also want to include a map that shows where Amherst, Emily Dickinson's hometown, is.

We also talked about "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a story about a woman's experience of postpartum depression and as a horror story.  For more information about postpartum depression, see this link:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/postpartum-depression/DS00546

For more information about the "rest cure" that the narrator and Perkins Gilman underwent, see this link:
http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/reflections/fall2008/rest.html

This article from the American Psychological Association discusses the rest cure and its successor, the work cure:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/05/cures.aspx

The picture above gives you an idea of what the yellow wallpaper might have looked like.  Victorian decor was known for its elaborateness and, as some say, tastelessness.

  However, if one tones it down, the Victorian style can be quite colorful and cozy.

Here is the information about True Womanhood.

True Womanhood (19^th c.)

Purity

Piety

Domesticity - Domestic Science

Submission

Hannah More - the exception that proves the rule (she helped promote the doctrine of separate spheres and female submission, but she made her living as a writer and educator.)

Women wrote literature to instruct morally more than intellectually.

Angel in the House (Victorian era) - woman as moral influence

Separate spheres (man--public; woman--home)




This picture appears to be from the early Victorian era (1830s/1840s) when attitudes towards women were most conservative.

By the 1860s, dresses became quite unwieldy.  This woman below is wearing a dress of crinoline, an extremely heavy fabric.  Between the circumference of a woman's dress and reliance on candles & wood-burning stoves, this type of dress sometimes caught fire, killing the woman wearing it.

The final picture below dates from 1895, shortly after The Yellow Wallpaper was written. 

Compare the outfit from 1924 that the woman below is wearing.  Note that she is depicted with a set of golf clubs.  It would have been impossible for the Victorian woman to play golf.

See this link for my review of Clever Maids, a book about the women who provided the Brothers Grimm with their stories:

http://worldlit2.multiply.com/journal/item/147

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