Johann's Summary - "An Image of Africa"

Link

Please see the link above for Johann's summary of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa."  The summary is a Word attachment, so you will need to open or download it.

By the way, below is a picture of a young Achebe with Langston Hughes.  It is from Hughes' 1962 visit to Lagos, Nigeria.

 

 

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

Raise the Red Lantern

Link

See the link above for an old entry on Raise the Red Lantern!

Also, here is a history of Chinese opera:

http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/cinema/archives/a_short_history_of_chinese_opera.php

This former student has an video of this type of opera posted at his Multiply site:

http://xxiaojoex.multiply.com/video/item/1/Chinese_Peking_Opera?replies_read=1

Midterm 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 on Tuesday, July 27.

The picture above is from Brussels!  The building is the Centre for Fine Arts.

1.  How well does one of the following characters (Marlow, Kurtz, Fitzcarraldo, Okonkwo) 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? 

2.   One theme that we've talked about this session is Imperialism or Colonialism and Post-Colonialism.  Choose up to three works that we have read or viewed so far, and examine how each fits--or doesn't fit into this focus.  Do any works complicate this focus?  Also, how have authors' and readers' attitudes changed over time?  Consider that Leopold Sedar Senghor is from the Francophone culture, Werner Herzog is (West) German, and Okot P'bitek originally wrote his poems in Acholi, an African language.  Feel free to choose one of the interviews or essays that I have assigned as one of your three works.

3.  Discuss the role that masculinity and/or femininity play in up to three of the works we've read so far.  Consider the role that history, culture, and even genre play in defining what appropriate masculinity and femininity are.  Also, consider your viewpoint as a 21st century man or woman.


4.  I have assigned a number of optional essays along with our required readings.  In addition, we have seen various videos in class--as well as Fitzcarraldo.  Choose up to three essays and/or videos.  How have they helped you understand our readings better?  How have they helped you understand world literature better?  How have they gotten in your way?  What have they added to your understanding?  How have they complicated it?

5.   As genres, novels, films, and poems each have different qualities and constraints.  Choose one genre.  Based on what you've read in our class as well as what you've read (or written) elsewhere, how would you characterize this genre?  How do the works so far add to your understanding of this genre?  How do they complicate it?  Note that understanding of and responses to genre change not only from time to time but also from culture to culture.  We have read and viewed works from a few different and even distinct cultures. 

6.   This session we are watching a number of older, more slower-paced films without CGI.  These films also come from cultures other than America's.  How are these films different from the films that you are used to?  How are they similar?  What do these films 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.

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.

Theresita's Summary of Fitzcarraldo

Summary of Fitzcarraldo.
7/19/2010

The Movie Fitzcarraldo is a film directed and produced by a German filmmaker Werner Herzog.The story of an obsessed impresario whose foremost desire in life is to bring both Enrico Caruso and an opera house to the deepest jungles of South America.In order to raise the money for the opera house, Fitzcarraldo buys a broken down steamboat and plans to sail it up a tributary off the Amazon, pull the boat over a mountain and drop it into a neighboring tributary, so he can access the wealth of rubber trees there. To get there, though,he will have to brave raging rapids and tribes of hostile natives that are known to make shrunken heads out of foreign intruders.

Summary of "The White Man's Burden"

Link

Above is Shefali's summary of "The White Man's Burden," the poem by Rudyard Kipling.  This poem was published about the same time that Heart of Darkness appeared in Blackwood's Magazine.

The picture above is of Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, the calvary unit that he commanded in Cuba.  About three years after this picture was taken, Roosevelt became President of the U.S..  He succeeded William McKinley who had been assassinated.