Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 4b (poetry in English & song)

And then there are the poems written in English...I'm not sure where the poems from the Nuyorican anthology would fit, and I forget whether Michael Ondatjee wrote his poems in English or another language.

We began our unit on poetry, discussing some Romantic poets and their poems (excerpts from Lord Byron's mock-epic Don Juan, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Keats' beautiful "Eve of St. Agnes"--the image above is Holman Hunt's painting of a scene from that poem).  In the section of "Don Juan" that we read, Juan has landed on an island where he and Haidee, the daughter of a pirate king, will fall in love.  Juan is no innocent as he is escaping from his (discovered) affair with an older woman.  Byron plays with the conventions of the epic, especially as he goes off track, discoursing on "wine and women, mirth and laughter."  We also discussed Coleridge and Keats' narrative poems.  Although I did not mention it that day, the concept of medievalism is important here.

We moved onto Walt Whitman's poetry from Leaves of Grass, a collection that he revised throughout his adult life (Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892).  Two poems that we looked at were "I Hear America Singing," for its inclusiveness (that Ruben Dario later plays on) and  "O Captain!  My Captain," a more conventional eulogy to Abraham Lincoln.  We discussed whether or not these poems could be sung with accompaniment.  (We had just watched the tape of Coleman Barks' performance.)  "O Captain!  My Captain!" also seems like it would be easy to memorize!

For a contrast, later, we looked at poems by Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko.  These seemed to be harder to read, and it became harder for us to say what was poetic about them.  These poems were Gunn Allen's "Pocahontas, to her English Husband, John Rolfe" and the ironic "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins" (about the poet's taking a guest to see her mother and her grandmother at their high rise apartment) as well as Marmon Silko's excerpt from The Storyteller in which she retells a Coyote tale told by her white great-grand father.  This time Coyote is not a male trickster but a female victim of another figure's trickery, and her pups die of thirst because of this trickery.  As I reflect on these poems, I remember Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay on the importance of writing African literature in African (i.e., native) languages.   Should Leslie Marmon Silko or Paula Gunn Allen write their poems in Keresan (the language of the Laguna Pueblo)? 

Mary also brought in some of Billy Collins' poems as well as reading one of her own.  (Her poem, by the way, is in the Advocate.  Congratulations!!)

We also looked at the relationship of poetry and music/popular song, figuring in the concept of orality and the effect of print culture.  Songs that we listened to included three from Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music (the medieval "Sumer is Icumen In" [also parodied by Ezra Pound at one point], the 18th century ballad "Bonnie St. Johnstone," and a cover of Britney Spears' "Oops...").  Here are links to the lyrics of the first two songs:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=428

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

We also listened to English-language and Spanish-language songs by Los Lobos.  Here is a link to the lyrics of the English-language song, "One Time, One Night" from 1987:

http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/los_lobos_lyrics_5296/by_the_light_of_the_moon_lyrics_16979/one_time_one_night_lyrics_196225.html

These are the Spanish lyrics of their version of "Volver, Volver":

http://www.lyricsdir.com/los-lobos-volver-volver-lyrics.html

We also listened to songs by The Mighty Sparrow, a famous calypso singer from Trinidad.  Is he a trickster or an acute social observer?

Here is Billboard.com's catalog entry for Early Flight, the album that I brought in.  (We listened to "Sailor Man," "Dear Sparrow," and "Russian Satellite.")

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?JSESSIONID=DK1KH51JV1XMm1zXTgqTHdYFLnWy1bXQPTmY9b4pm0hdvLTzxy1d!87636624&pid=3875&aid=742126

I will let you look for his videos on YouTube!  Good night!

At last! The Final Prompts for EN 202 (Spring 2008)

[The picture above is from a 2007 production of The Country Wife, an intriguing Restoration comedy that hasn't been staged in this area for a while except (this weekend only) at American University!]

1.         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, watching that performance, or going to Chesapeake Shakespeare’s performance of that play may have helped you understand Nora’s situation better.  Do you think that watching a performance of Mother Courage or The Love Suicides at Amijima might have helped you understand either 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 Shintoku-Maru, Current Nobody, Southside, Gem of the Ocean, and (I hope!) Fences. 

 
2.  Discuss film as a genre of literature.  Given your definition of literature, how is film literature?  How is it NOT literature?  If you were to teach a film and literature course, which films would you include?  Why?  In this type of course, is it more important for a film to be a groundbreaking film (like Citizen Kane or Apocalypse Now) or for a film to be based on an important work of literature (like Jane Eyre, The Taming of the Shrew, or A Doll's House)?  Why?  How should you handle a film like Raise the Red Lantern or Ran that is not in English?  How would you handle a silent film like one of Charlie Chaplin’s or Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?

 

3.                  Discuss folk tales as a genre of literature.  How do stories like the Coyote Tales, Aesop’s Fables, or the tales that the Brothers Grimm collected fit into your ideas about literature?  How do they complicate your ideas?  Should our anthology have included stories about Rabbit, Raven, or Anansi the Spider?  Should our anthology have included additional stories about Coyote (“Coyote and Hen” or “Coyote’s Adventures in Idaho”) or “Godfather Death”?  How would a reworked story like Charles Perrault’s “Donkey Skin” or his “Cinderella” or Somerset Maugham’s “Appointment at Samarra” fit into your ideas about literature?  Conversely, compare one of our folk tales to an authored work like John Keats’ “The Eve of St. Agnes,” S.T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Ludwig Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert,” or the poems by Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko.  How does the folk tale help you understand the authored work better?  How does the authored work help you understand the folk tale better?  Which does each type of work do better? 

4.  More of the works we’ve studied in the second half of the semester were originally written in a language other than English.  How does the presence of works NOT originally written in English (“Sarrasine,” Mother Courage, “Fair-Haired Eckbert”) or the Chinese-language film Raise the Red Lantern change your definition of world literature?  Or what about works like the Coyote Tales that were originally told in languages other than English?  Should EN 202 be a multilingual course?  (Feel free to bring in some of the works you read during the first part of the semester.)  Remember African authors Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s essays on a writer’s choice of language.  Should Joseph Conrad should have written in Polish and relied on translators for his English or French audience?  Should the Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Cheryl Savageau, and Gerald Vizenor try to write in their tribe’s language?  Why?  Why not?

 

5.            Complete at least one of the following statements (apologies to Samuel Johnson):

            If (poem/poet/song/musician/rapper) be not poetry/a poet, what is poetry?

AND/OR

            If (poem/poet/song/musician/rapper) be poetry/a poet, what is poetry?

 

Support your argument with quotes from your poet, musician, or rapper as well as analysis of these quotes and your definition of what poetry is and what it is not.  Consider this statement by British poet Basil Bunting:  “Compose aloud.  Poetry is sound” as well as Robert Frost’s jab at free verse, Ezra Pound’s call to “make it new,” or the older statement from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas that the poet is “not to number the streaks of the tulip.”  Consider the extent to which music relies on a singer’s voice and the producer’s arrangement and to which rap relies on a rapper’s persona and his/her authenticity.

 

           

 

   

Coyote (and Other Tricksters)

Native American literature is known not only for creation myths but also for trickster figures such as Coyote, Raven, and Rabbit. The picture of the coyote above is from Wikimedia Commons.

To begin with, here is the site where I found the Mayan tale "Coyote and The Hen" and the story of "Coyote's Adventures in Idaho" as well as stories about the other tricksters.  I really like that this site notes where a number of tales come from. 

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

To find out which stories come from our area, here is a map.  Click on each state to find out which tribes, for example, lived in Maryland.

http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm

On the other hand, this page lists the names of the tribes. 

http://www.native-languages.org/languages.htm#alpha

Here a professor from Pittsburg State University in Kansas discusses the trickster in Native American culture.  This site also contains links to various tribes' stories about Coyote. 

http://members.cox.net/academia/coyote.html

The author of this site from the College of the Siskiyous in California discusses Native American traditional prose narratives in general:

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/index.htm

(The picture above is from Trinity University's online journal on trickster studies.)

For more detailed information, see Wyman P. Meinzer's contribution to a 1995 symposium on the coyote in the American Southwest:

http://texnat.tamu.edu/symposia/coyote/p30.htm

Here are a few more stories about Coyote:

http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/wa.html

http://www.shoshoneindian.com/legend_001.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/flood.htm

http://www.siskiyous.edu/Shasta/fol/nat/coyote.htm

  

Other trickster figures are Raven and Rabbit.  As you will see below, different tribes in different regions had their tricksters.  The picture of Raven is from the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation's website:

For more information about Gordon Miller's watercolor, see this link below: 

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/nwca/nwcam11e.shtml

In the Southeastern U.S., Rabbit was the trickster.   The picture below is from Professor Tina L. Hanlon's web page on Appalachian Animal Tales/Native American Tales from Appalachia at Ferrum College in Virginia.

Here is a link to Professor Hanlon's article: 

http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/rabbitotter.htm

Then once you move to Africa and the Caribbean, the trickster is Anansi the Spider.  In South Carolina, this figure is called Aunt Nancy.  I wish that I could find a picture of her!

Tricksters appear in other cultures' stories as well.  Reynard the Fox, a figure from French folktales, is depicted below.  (The picture comes from Wikimedia Commons, but it originally appeared in a children's book from the 1860s.)

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 5 (folktales)

As much as I love this picture, I need to put up some text. 

We began this unit with the French writer Charles Perrault's "Donkey Skin," an eighteenth-century adaptation of a folktale about a beautiful princess who has to flee her incestuous father and win the heart of a young prince...despite her necessary disguise.  Her fairy godmother, however, helps her do both.  Perrault was a "Modern."  In other words, he believed that people could improve on what the  Greeks and Romans had done.  "Ancients," on the other hand, believed that we could not.  Perrault, by the way, wrote the original Mother Goose tales.  This story is an interesting blend of magic and the mundane, clothing the heroine in radiant dresses and ending with the "moral" that "clear water and brown bread are sufficient nourishment for all young woman provided that they have beautiful clothes" and the "observation"  that "there is not a damsel under the skies who does not imagine herself beautiful and somehow carrying off the honors in the famous beauty contest between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena" (37). 

The Brothers Grimm, folklorists from 19th century Germany,  collected and edited another version of this story.  It was called "All Kinds of Fur."  It does not have the classical references or the "moral" that Perrault added to his story.  Indeed, the Brothers Grimm's version (that again they collected and edited) spends less time at the father's fabulous palace and at the mother's deathbed and more time on the princess' escape and her efforts to attract the young prince's attention.  (However, as our anthology's editors noted, most of the people whom the brothers interviewed were NOT peasants, and the brothers later edited the stories so that they would be more appropriate for children.  Ah, the 19th century...the age of Bowdler who censored Shakespeare so that his plays could be read aloud in Victorian homes...the age of nationalism.)

I want to give you a link to the Brothers Grimm's "Godfather Death":

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html

Would you read this story about the poor man who chooses Death (rather than God or the Devil) to be his thirteenth child's godfather and about the young doctor, Death's godchild, who tries to trick his godfather, to your neice or nephew?  What do you find interesting about this story?  What do you think that the German peasants who originally listened to this story found interesting about it?

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 4a (poetry & translation)

  Here will be the study guide on poetry that we discussed in class.  Again I would like to thank Mary, Katie, Juan, and Edwin for bringing in poems and songs to share with us!  I always enjoy hearing what people like; moreover, it may end up on next semester's syllabus! 

The picture above is 19th century artist Marie Spartali Stillman's painting of Petrarch and Laura's initial meeting. 

Let's begin with a few quotes:

Even though I did not mention it when we began our unit on poetry, this quote from British poet Basil Bunting is appropriate:  "Compose aloud.  Poetry is sound."

Ezra Pound has called for us to "make it new!"

William Carlos Williams has urged "no ideas but in things." 

Robert Frost, on the other hand, compared free verse to playing tennis without a net.

William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman both called for the poet to be "a man among men."

In Rasselas, Samuel Johnson argued that it was not the poet's job "to number the streaks of the tulip."  Elsewhere, in his criticism, he asked, "if Pope be not a poet, then what is poetry?"

Indeed...consider the poets we covered in class and the others you mentioned in your blog entries.

In a world literature class, translation is important.  Without it, we could not read poems such as Petrarch's, sonnets that have been enormously influential to English literature.  I read selections from Petrarch's Canzoniere, his poems to his beloved Laura; these translations from the anthology that I use for my EN 201 class do not rhyme!!  Then I read Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt," a sixteenth-century translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets.  See here for a link to this sonnet--complete with a little backstory:  http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/whosolist.htm  As you noted, this translation's language sounds archaic (it predates Shakespeare and the hind whom the poet refers to may be Anne Boleyn), and it's a very tight, compact poem.  Then I read two of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's translations ("Soleasi Nel Mio Cor" and "Qual Donna Attende a Gloriosa Fama") from the nineteenth-century.  (By the way, Higginson corresponded with Emily Dickinson and attempted to regularize her poetry.  He was an editor for the Atlantic Monthly.)  Here is a link to Higginson's passionate and deft translations with their Italian titles:  http://www.sonnets.org/petrarch.htm  Finally, I read A.M. Juster's elegant contemporary translations...that rhyme yet evoke an entirely different mood than Wyatt's or Higginson's translations do.  For Juster's translations, see this link:  http://www.amjuster.com/poem14.html  Feel free to compare these translations.  What do they show about each translator's attitude towards poetry, especially love poetry?

We also looked at some translations of the Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi's work.  He composed aloud as he whirled, this action being a prominent activity of Sufi worship.  In addition, his poetry was composed in the aftermath of his teacher Shams al-Tabriz's disappearance and possible murder.  From my EN 201 anthology, I read Iranian-American scholar Amin Barani's translation of "Who'll Take Us Home Now, Now That We've Drunk Ourselves Blind?".  We also watched some of American poet Coleman Barks' performances of his translations of Rumi's poetry.  He was accompanied by the Paul Winter Consort.  Unfortunately, Barks' approach was a little off-putting as he spoke about mysticism. 

We also listened to the original poems of American poet Jane Hirschfield who, with Mariko Aratani, has translated Ono no Komachi's poems.  See this link for examples of these women's translations of her poems:  http://www.geocities.com/diwakerr/komachi.html
As you see, these wispy poems make Petrarch's sonnet seem wordy and sweaty and clunky.  Hirschfield's own poems call us to play close attention to the world around us.  In her interview with Bill Moyers, she discussed the role that this attentiveness plays in her life and her poetry.  (The poet, by the way, spent some time as a Buddhist nun; during this time, she did not write poetry.)

Among the poems Mary shared with us were translations of the Russian author Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry. 

We also discussed the Nicaraguan poet and founder of Modernismo (a Spanish-American school of poetry) Ruben Dario (1867-1916), focusing on his reverent "Walt Whitman" and his political "To Roosevelt."  Here is a link to a slightly different translation of "To Roosevelt":  http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/dario.html

How does it compare to the version that is in our anthology and that I read aloud?

This past Friday (4/25) Edwin and Juan gave a presentation on Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938), reading his poem "Los Heraldos Negros" in Spanish and English!  Edwin and Juan also mentioned a recent translation of The Complete Poems of Cesar Vallejo that won an award from the American Academy of Poets.  They noted the translator (Clayton Eshelman)'s observation on the challenge of translating Vallejo's poems because of his word play and his invention of new words. 

Here is a link to Clayton Eshelman's recent essay on translating Vallejo's poems:
http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/onvallejo.htm

Ten other poems written by Vallejo and translated by Eshelman were also included in this issue.

http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/vallejo1.htm

Each of these poems are late poems whereas "Los Heraldos Negros" is fairly early.

Although we did not discuss Ghalib's ghazals, feel free to mention them if you choose to write about the essay prompt on poetry or on translation.

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:

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 2 (film)

Before the midterm, we watched some films that were based on English-language novels.  These films included Apocalypse Now, the 1944 Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles, and the 1999 David Copperfield with a very young Daniel Radcliffe.  (Note: the version of David Copperfield that we saw was a TV miniseries and not intended for theatrical release.)  However, English-language novels are not the only literary sources that filmmakers draw on!

One could also adapt a play by Shakespeare as director Franco Zeffirelli and two other authors did with The Taming of the Shrew in 1967.  (Zeffirelli has also directed two direct adaptations of Shakespeare's plays: the 1968 Romeo and Juliet that you may have seen in high school as well as a 1990 Hamlet starring Mel Gibson as well as a 1996 theatrically-released version of Jane Eyre and film versions of various operas such as Otello and La Traviata.)  Although, as we saw, The Taming of the Shrew was filmed in the studio,  the set designer and the director did enough to counteract the staginess that older films based on plays often have.  Many scenes take place outdoors.  We first glimpse the "good" sister Bianca at a festival in the town square where students serenade her and lift up her veil.  Later on, Kate and her bridal party wait for Petruchio on the stairs into the cathedral, and the newly married couple are caught in the rain.  This film version contains a good deal of physical comedy as Petruchio pursues Kate, even on the rooftops, and they plunge into a bed of feathers.  As Kate, Elizabeth Taylor rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at Richard Burton's Petruchio.  Kate is introduced with a really intriguing shot as she looks out through a keyhole at her sister's would-be suitors.  Later on there is another shot where Bianca looks out through a keyhole.  I wish that we had been able to watch the scene where Kate gives her speech on a wife's duty.  How did Ms. Taylor perform that speech?!

EN 202 being a course in world literature, we also watched Chinese director Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, a film from 1991, just two years after the events in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.  Raise the Red Lantern is  based on Su Tong's 1990 novella Wives and Concubines.  (I have just ordered this book from Amazon!) Zhang Yimou has also directed the historical films Red Sorghum and To Live as well as The House of Flying Daggers, a more action-oriented film.  In Raise the Red Lantern, university student Songlian (played by Gong Li) travels to northern China to become the fourth wife (or Fourth Mistress) of Chen.  She lives in a compound with Chen's other wives although each woman has her own house.  This compound is in the country, but we do not see much of the countryside, except in the very beginning of the film as Songlian walks to the compound.  The other wives are the older and psychologically distant First Mistress, mother of Chen's older son; Zhouyan, the second wife who appears to be very friendly and cheerful but is plotting against the others; and Meishan, a former opera singer who is the mother of Chen's younger son as well as the mistress of Doctor Gao.  Raise the Red Lantern takes place in the 1920s, a time of unrest throughout China although the Chinese Civil War did not begin until 1927.  The scene pictured above is of the lighting of the red lanterns, which signifies the house where Chen will spend the night.  In the film, it is a family tradition; therefore, Chen does not wish to question it.  Above Songlian is shown with her maid, Yan'er, who had had hopes of becoming the Fourth Mistress and, as we see, has hung red lanterns in her room.  (Or has Chen hung them there?)  After Songlian's ruse to feign pregnancy is discovered, and she betrays both Yan'er and Meishan, acts that result in their deaths, Songlian has a breakdown.  In the next to last scene, she is observed by Chen's new bride, the Fifth Mistress.

What did you make of the ending to Raise the Red Lantern?