Reminders!!! And a link to Sean dancing :)

• If you haven't already, please declare your plans for the final by posting on the final exam post.
• We will discuss section II next class (Tuesday), and the remainder of the book must be read by next Thursday.
• Sean dancing....enjoy! http://youtu.be/MhOTm-9Jlqg

Reading assignment for 5/21

• Read Part II of Beloved for 5/21

Final exam for 12 H

And, one last thing….

Over the course of this year we have read about men turning into bugs, people stuck in hells with gauche furniture, coins endlessly coming up heads, and the problem with mothers marrying uncles, to name just a few of the situations we have encountered. While some anonymous sage has commented that “truth is stranger than fiction,” it is difficult to imagine a world stranger than some of those that we have encountered in the fictional plays, poems and dramas that we have read.

            As strange as these stories are, the purpose of stories is to speak to us and to our experience. No one knows when story telling (or literature) began, but it is safe to say that as soon as men and women emerged from the primordial muck, storytelling was not far behind. In ninth grade you read The Odyssey, a story that predates our own language and a story that is still being read, albeit sometimes grudgingly, by people around the world. And we are still telling stories. In fact, we are obsessed by stories: stories in novels; stories in children’s books; stories on the evening news; stories in movies; and blogs, as well as the stories we pass around the dinner table, the locker room and the cafeteria.  

            Many writers and thinkers have developed reasons why stories, both fictional and non-fictional, are so instrumental to peoples’ lives. And there are numerous theories (among them Marxist, Feminist, New Critical, Post-colonial etc…) that attempt to explain why stories are so important and what they provide for us individually and culturally.

            In class, we’ve articulated some of the questions that are encompassed by the study of literary theory, and they include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

• Why do we read?
• Why do we write?
• How should we find meaning in text? Where in the text do we find meaning?
• What is “literature”?
• What makes a text valuable? Worthy of being read, valued and studied?
• Does or how does identity influence reading? Writing?
• Does culture influence our reading? How?
• Does the meaning of texts change?
• How does language work? What are its limitations?
• Is there relationship between texts and “real life”?  If so, what is it?
• What is the relationship between texts and our identity? (both individual identity and cultural identity?
• How do the genre and the structure of the text affect meaning?
• What is real?
• What is true?
• Who am I?
• Who’s there?
• What’s the purpose?

 

 

 

Project 1

The first response option is an analytical paper in which you do the following:

• Develop your own theory of the purpose of literature. You should draw from your own experience as well as the experience of writers, theorists and thinkers. At least one of the sources that you discuss in your paper should be your outside reading for fourth quarter. For example, Thoreau in his chapter “Reading” has a theory of literature, and the theorist Robert Scholes expresses his own theory in his book Textual Power. Toni Morrison, Plath, and T.S.Eliot and many other writers have written on this topic. There are a wide variety of books in the library written by writers on writing. I can help you with suggestions, or you could simply find a several essays about the purpose of literature from writers you respect and develop your theory from these essays.
• Then, you would support your view of the value and purpose of literature using examples from pieces that we have read this year, and from pieces that you have read on your own.
• The final paper would be about 5-8 pages in length and include a final annotated works consulted page.

OR

 

The second response is a small group assignment, which would require you to write and perform an original drama. The drama should put people and characters that we have met in class in dialogue with each other in order to ponder a question that has been central to the course. For example, Sartre, Gregor, Hamlet and Virgil might be put in a dramatic situation that forces them to consider the feasibility of free will, or the purpose of literature. Groups can be as large as four people, but no longer. All group members are required to participate in both the writing and the acting, failure to participate in both aspects of the exam will result in a failing grade for the exam.

 

The creative piece would be about fifteen pages in length, and it must include a one to two page discussion of why you have chosen the characters, situation, issues and setting. The drama should allow you to “talk back” to the literature you’ve studied this year, in much the same way that “Prufrock” talks back to Hamlet, and “The Dead” and Heart of Darkness talk back to Dante, who in turn talks back to Virgil.

 

 

Grading

Your paper will be graded on the quality of your analysis of the literature, your insight, development and the quality of the writing. The paper is due on June _____.

 

Performances will be scheduled for the final week of classes and for the final exam period. This is your final examination grade. No late papers will be accepted.  If a group member is absent for the presentation the entire group will need to schedule a performance time during exam week to make up the final exam work.

 

Post your Beloved questions (reading assignment part 1) here

Homework for the weekend

Remember to finish reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for Monday. Have a nice weekend!

Homework for Friday

On Friday we will complete our discussion of "Love song". Please remember that this will be a third quarter grade. If you are absent please be sure that you speak to me and make up the assignment ASAP.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/173476

There is an audio file in the link above

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T. S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Source: Poetry (June 1915).