Nombre EROULLA Apellidos DEMETRIOU DEMETRIOU D.N.I.

UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
MEMORIA FINAL DE PROYECTOS DE INNOVACIÓN DOCENTE
CONVOCATORIA CURSO 2010/2012
DATOS DEL/DE LA SOLICITANTE
Nombre
EROULLA
Apellidos
DEMETRIOU DEMETRIOU
D.N.I.
75116031-D
Centro
FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES Y Teléfono 83551
E-mail
eroulla@ujaen.es
CC. DE LA EDUCACIÓN
Departamento
Categoría
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA
PROFESORA TITULAR DE UNIVERSIDAD
DATOS DEL PROYECTO
Título
ELABORACIÓN DE MATERIALES DIDÁCTICOS PARA LA
ENSEÑANZA DE LA LENGUA INGLESA A TRAVÉS DE LA
LITERATURA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA Y DE
OTROS PAÍSES DE LA COMMONWEALTH
Línea de actuación
PROYECTO DE INNOVACIÓN – PROYECTO PARA
ASIGNATURAS
Departamento/s implicados
Asignatura/s implicada/s
Titulación/es implicada/s
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA
- TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA
INGLESA
- ESTILÍSTICA DEL INGLÉS
- APRENDIZAJE Y ENSEÑANZA DE LA
LENGUA EXTRANJERA I
ESTUDIO
SELECTIVO
DE
LA
LITERATURA DE LOS EEUU
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA, FILOLOGÍA INGLESA +
TURISMO, MÁSTER DE PROFESORADO DE
ENSEÑANZA
SECUNDARIA
OBLIGATORIA,
BACHILLERATO, FORMACIÓN PROFESIONAL
Y ENSEÑANZA DE IDIOMAS
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Curso/s implicado/s
3º y 4º DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Y DE
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA + TURISMO, Y MÁSTER
DE
PROFESORADO
EN
SECUNDARIA
ENSEÑANZA
OBLIGATORIA,
BACHILLERATO, FORMACIÓN PROFESIONAL
Y ENSEÑANZA DE IDIOMAS
Nº de alumnos afectados
30-50 ALUMNOS
MEMORIA DEL PROYECTO
Justificación
La justificación de esta memoria es dar cuenta de las actividades realizadas
desde que se nos concedió este proyecto de innovación docente en 2010.
Objetivos conseguidos
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
-
Hemos establecido un banco de actividades útiles y realistas para el
aprendizaje y refuerzo de estrategias orales y escritas a través de la
literatura escrita en lengua inglesa en los Estados Unidos de América
y en otros países anglófonos de la Commonwealth de diversos periodos
y nacionalidades.
-
Hemos analizado las estrategias y dificultades encontradas por el
alumnado de lengua inglesa al enfrentarse al estudio de la literatura
norteamericana y de otros países de la Commonwealth.
-
Hemos profundizado en el conocimiento de la literatura
norteamericana y de la Commonwealth en lengua inglesa por parte del
alumnado de Filología Inglesa, Filología Inglesa + Turismo y de
posgrado, sobre todo en las siguientes asignaturas:
-
TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA (Fil. Inglesa);
ESTILÍSTICA DEL INGLÉS (Fil. Inglesa y Fil. Inglesa + Turismo);
APRENDIZAJE Y ENSEÑANZA DE LA LENGUA EXTRANJERA I (Máster de
Profesorado de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria, Bachillerato, Formación
Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas);
ESTUDIO SELECTIVO DE LA LITERATURA DE LOS EEUU (Fil. Inglesa y Fil. Inglesa
+ Turismo)
-
-
Hemos intentado fomentar el interés de los estudiantes por la
literatura norteamericana y de la Commonwealth en lengua inglesa
como forma de disfrute y de enriquecimiento personal, cultural, y
ético y como puente de acercamiento a otras culturas.
-
Hemos intentado buscar formas de adaptación de las asignaturas de
lengua y literatura inglesas (inclusive la literatura norteamericana) a
los nuevos tiempos y necesidades sociales y culturales desde una
perspectiva novedosa y enriquecedora.
-
Contenidos desarrollados
Actividades de aprendizaje de lengua inglesa a través de la poesía
norteamericana y de otros países de la Commonwealth.
-
Actividades de aprendizaje de lengua inglesa a través de la narrativa
norteamericana y de otros países de la Commonwealth
Descripción global de la experiencia
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Debido a que la adquisición de libros especializados en literatura
norteamericana, canadiense, sudafricana, australiana y neozelandesa ha
sido difícil, muchos de ellos ya descatalogados, y habiendo sido muy
reducida la lista de libros finalmente adquiridos, no hemos visto obligados a
reducir la investigación a los recursos a los que de facto hemos tenido
acceso. Aun así, hemos dedicado la mayor parte de nuestro presupuesto a
adquirir material bibliográfico necesario para elaborar materiales docentes y
a sufragar los gatos de publicación del CD-Rom A HANDFUL OF LITERARY
RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF
AMERICAN AND COMMONWEALTH LITERATURES. Aun así, la experiencia
ha sido positiva y fructífera tanto para nosotros como para, esperemos, el
alumnado de las respectivas asignaturas a las que se refieren directamente
los logros alcanzados durante nuestra investigación.
Metodología empleada
(sesiones de trabajo, actividades, recursos didácticos, cronograma, etc)
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
-
Hemos realizado un análisis crítico de las obras especializadas sobre
la enseñanza del inglés a través de la literatura de los EEUU y otros
países de la Commonwealth, así como de los métodos existentes que
traten la enseñanza del inglés desde esta perspectiva. (Marzo-2011 /
junio-2011: Lectura y análisis crítico de dichas obras. Puesta en
común entre los miembros del grupo de impresiones).
-
Hemos adquirido un número de libros especializados con el fin de
realizar un contraste entre ellos y así conocer el estado de la cuestión
en asuntos relacionados con la enseñanza del inglés como segunda
lengua/lengua extranjera a través de la literatura norteamericana y de
otros países de la Commonwealth, con especial interés en los últimos
avances en la didáctica de la lengua. (Diciembre-2010 / febrero-2011:
Localización de fuentes secundarias especializadas así como de obras
ya publicadas para el aprendizaje del inglés a través de la literatura.
Familiarización con tendencias y aspectos fundamentales.). VER
ANEXO I: LISTADO DE LIBROS ADQUIRIDOS.
-
Hemos confeccionado un banco de actividades para los distintos
niveles y necesidades del alumnado universitario interesado en cursar
asignaturas de inglés en distintas carreras de letras. Confección de
actividades de poesía y narrativa de distintos niveles (Noviembre 2011
– abril 2012).
-
Actualizaremos en breve las asignaturas impartidas previsiblemente,
durante el curso próximo que tengan relación con la enseñanza de la
lengua inglesa y de la literatura en dicha lengua, con especial
incidencia en aquellas que permite el uso de textos norteamericanos y
de otros países de la Commonwealth. Esto tendrá lugar a partir de
septiembre de 2012.
-
A partir de octubre/noviembre 2012: Aplicación de los resultados de
nuestra investigación en nuestras clases.
Resultados obtenidos
(los materiales o documentos que se hayan producido en la experiencia deben
presentarse en forma de anexo)
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
-
Realización de las correspondientes y preceptivas memorias
descriptivas en las que se describa el trabajo realizado y los logros
obtenidos por los miembros del presente proyecto de innovación
docente.
-
Exposición en congresos especializados organizados por terceros las
conclusiones y logros obtenidos.
-
Publicación del material confeccionado a partir de nuestra
investigación en un CD-ROM para uso del alumnado y del profesorado
interesado. Su publicación ha sido ya aprobada por Consejo del
Departamento de Filología Inglesa con fecha 18 de julio de 2012. Su
título es A HANDFUL OF LITERARY RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES
FOR
UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS
OF
AMERICAN
AND
COMMONWEALTH LITERATURES. Sus autores son Eroulla
Demetriou, José Ruiz Mas y Pilar Sánchez Calle. Esta obra sería
continuación de la ya publicada en 2010 en CD-Rom, titulada
HANDFUL OF LITERARY RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES FOR
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (Jaén:
Universidad de Jaén), de los mismos autores.
VER ANEXO II: CONTENIDOS DE LA PUBLICACIÓN EN CD-ROM.
Proyección e Impacto
(transferencia de los resultados y mejoras en el aprendizaje demostrables)
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
-
Publicación del material confeccionado a partir de nuestra
investigación en un CD-ROM para uso del alumnado y del profesorado
interesado. Su publicación ha sido ya aprobada por el Departamento
de Filología Inglesa. Su título es A HANDFUL OF LITERARY
RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF
AMERICAN AND COMMONWEALTH LITERATURES. Sus autores
son Eroulla Demetriou, José Ruiz Mas y Pilar Sánchez Calle.
-
Índice de contenidos:
INTRODUCTION
1. NOVEL, SHORT STORY AND POETRY IN THE USA: HERMAN MELVILLE,
EDGAR ALLAN POE AND WALT WHITMAN.
2. DIDACTIC UNIT: EDGAR ALLAN POE.
3. HUMOUR IN AMERICA: MARK TWAIN.
4. HENRY JAMES AND COSMOPOLITISM.
5. THE LOST GENERATION.
6. DIDACTIC UNIT: PEARL S. BUCK.
7. A BRIEF LITERARY PANORAMA OF THE USA FROM 1945 TO THE
PRESENT DAY.
8. THE LITERATURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH.
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evaluación del proceso y Autoevaluación
(instrumentos y recursos empleados)
-
Hemos reflexionado con detenimiento sobre el grado de cumplimiento
individuales y como grupo.
-
Hemos venido aplicando (y seguiremos haciéndolo) un amplio número
de actividades en las respectivas asignaturas para observación del
grado de satisfacción del alumnado.
Otras consideraciones
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Creemos que nuestra investigación y los logros obtenidos a partir de ella
pueden ser de utilidad, no solo para el alumnado de las asignaturas
mencionadas, sino también para el alumnado de los primeros cursos del
Grado de Estudios Ingleses, de Magisterio Lengua Extranjera (Grado de
Educación Primaria, mención Lengua Extranjera) o para cualquier persona
interesada en la literatura norteamericana y de los países de la
Commonwealth.
Gastos generados en el segundo año
Fungibles
------
Inventariables
Adquisición de libros especializados: 445’86 euros
Pendientes de recibir libros por valor de aprox. 40
euros.
Viajes/Actividades
Otros
-------
Costes de la publicación del CD-Rom: 100 euros.
Total gastado: 545’86 euros
Justificación
Total pendiente de pago: (aprox.) 40 euros
Total inicialmente concedido: 1500 euros.
Total a devolver: 914’14 euros.
DATOS DE LOS MIEMBROS DEL GRUPO
Nombre
EROULLA
Apellidos
DEMETRIOU DEMETRIOU
D.N.I.
75116031-D
Centro
FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES Y Teléfono 83551
E-mail
eroulla@ujaen.es
CC DE LA EDUCACIÓN
Departamento
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA
Asignatura impartida
ESTILÍSTICA
DEL
INGLÉS;
APRENDIZAJE
ENSEÑANZA DE LA LENGUA EXTRANJERA I
Y
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Curso
3º Y 4º DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Y DE LA DOBLE TITULACIÓN
DE
FILOLOGÍA
INGLESA
PROFESORADO
EN
Y
TURISMO
ENSEÑANZA
Y
MÁSTER
DE
SECUNDARIA,
BACHILLERATO, FORMACIÓN PROFESIONAL Y ENSEÑANZA
DE IDIOMAS (2011-12) RESPECTIVAMENTE
Categoría
PROFESORA TITULAR DE Firma
UNIVERSIDAD
DATOS DE LOS MIEMBROS DEL GRUPO
Nombre
PILAR
Apellidos
SÁNCHEZ CALLE
D.N.I.
24217269-V
Centro
FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES Y Teléfono 81827
E-mail
psanchez@ujaen.es
CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN
Departamento
FILOLOGÍA INGLESA
Asignatura impartida
TEXTOS
LITERARIOS
EN
LENGUA
INGLESA
(FILOLOGÍA INGLESA); ESTUDIO SELECTIVO DE
LA
LITERATURA
DE
LOS
EEUU
(FILOLOGÍA
INGLESA Y FILOLOGÍA INGLESA + TURISMO)
Curso
4º DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Y 3º/4º DE FILOLOGÍA INGLESA +
TURISMO RESPECTIVAMENTE
Categoría
PROFESORA TITULAR DE Firma
UNIVERSIDAD
DATOS DE LOS MIEMBROS DEL GRUPO
Nombre
JOSÉ
Apellidos
RUIZ MAS
D.N.I.
26460121-R
Centro
FACULTAD
E-mail
DE
FILOSOFÍA
jrmas@ugr.es
Y Teléfono 646826237
LETRAS
Departamento
FILOLOGÍAS INGLESA Y ALEMANA, UNIVERSIDAD DE
GRANADA
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Asignatura impartida
APRENDIZAJE Y ENSEÑANZA DE LA LENGUA
EXTRANJERA (MÁSTER DE PROFESORADO EN
ENSEÑANZA SECUNDARIA, 2010-11)
Curso
MÁSTER DE PROFESORADO EN ENSEÑANZA SECUNDARIA,
BACHILLERATO, FORMACIÓN PROFESIONAL Y ENSEÑANZA
DE IDIOMAS, UJA
Categoría
PROFESOR
Firma
CONTRATADO DOCTOR
VºBº de Coordinador/a
Fdo.: Eroulla Demetriou Demetriou
Jaén, a 31 de julio de 2012
VICERRECTOR DE ORDENACIÓN ACADÉMICA, INNOVACIÓN DOCENTE Y FORMACIÓN DEL
PROFESORADO DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Anexo I
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
ANEXO I: LISTADO DE LOS LIBROS ADQUIRIDOS
TITULO
STFACTURADOTUS
The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature / edited by Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller
FACTURADO
The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature / edited by Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller
CANCELADO
The Development of Australian Literature (1898) / by Turner, Henry Gyles
A history of Australian literature: pure and applied / H.M. Green
PENDIENTE
(aprox.26€)
CANCELADO
The literature of Australia / edited by Geoffrey Dutton
CANCELADO
Australian literature / edited by Elizabeth Webby
Writing South Africa: literature, apartheid, and democracy 1970-1995 / edited by Derek Attridge and
Rosemary Jolly
A Land apart: a contemporary South African reader / edited by André Brink and J.M. Coetzee
Pagado el
20/05/2011
Fecha
Factura
16/05/2011
Cantidad
Pagada
103.32
FACTURADO
18/05/2011
12/05/2011
23.62
FACTURADO
20/05/2011
16/05/2011
28.69
White writing: on the culture of letters in South Africa / J. M. Coetzee
PENDIENTE
(aprox. 14€)
CANCELADO
From puritanism to postmodernism: a history of American literature
FACTURADO
13/07/2011
06/07/2011
12.20
Survival: a thematic guide to Canadian literature / Margaret Atwood
FACTURADO
14/09/2011
05/09/2011
10.93
American literature to 1900 / Teresa Gibert
FACTURADO
18/05/2011
16/05/2011
39.00
A study guide for American literature to 1900 / María Teresa Gibert Maceda
FACTURADO
18/05/2011
16/05/2011
28.00
The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life/ Harold Bloom
FACTURADO
06/06/2012
01/06/2012
20.00
A Visit from the Goon Squad/ Jennifer Egan
FACTURADO
18/06/2012
12/06/2012
25.00
Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic/ Terry Eagleton
FACTURADO
06/06/2012
01/06/2012
25.00
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Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital/ Catherine Hakim
FACTURADO
06/06/2012
01/06/2012
24.00
A Journey Through American Literature/ Kevin J. Hayes
FACTURADO
14/06/2012
08/06/2012
15.00
Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo: Narratives of Everyday Justice/ Jason S. Polley
FACTURADO
20/06/2012
14/06/2012
60.10
Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism/ Stephen J. Burn
FACTURADO
20/06/2012
15/06/2012
31.00
TOTAL GASTADO
445.86
TOTAL PENDIENTE APROXIMADO
40.00
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
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Secretariado de Innovación Docente
Anexo II
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
ANEXO II: CONTENIDOS DE LA PUBLICACIÓN EN CD-ROM.
A HANDFUL OF LITERARY RESOURCES AND
ACTIVITIES FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF
AMERICAN AND COMMONWEALTH
LITERATURES
Eroulla Demetriou∗
José Ruiz Mas∗∗
Pilar Sánchez Calle∗
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. NOVEL, SHORT STORY AND POETRY IN THE USA: HERMAN MELVILLE, EDGAR
ALLAN POE AND WALT WHITMAN.
2. DIDACTIC UNIT: EDGAR ALLAN POE.
3. HUMOUR IN AMERICA: MARK TWAIN.
4. HENRY JAMES AND COSMOPOLITISM.
5. THE LOST GENERATION.
6. DIDACTIC UNIT: PEARL S. BUCK.
7. A BRIEF LITERARY PANORAMA OF THE USA FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT
DAY.
8. THE LITERATURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH.
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
*Universidad de Jaén
**Universidad de Granada
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Vicerrectorado de Ordenación Académica, Innovación Docente y Profesorado
Secretariado de Innovación Docente
INTRODUCTION
The contents included in this CD offer an introduction to American Literature
from the 19th century up to the present day. We have also added the chapter “The
Literatures of the Commonwealth” which briefly mentions some features of other
literatures written in English in Canada, India, South Africa and Australia.
Each unit centres on the main authors of the period, pointing out their literary
contributions and their most relevant works. The reader will also find two didactic
units devoted to Edgar Allan Poe and Pearl S. Buck with diverse activities dealing
with vocabulary, grammar, comprehension questions and writing practice among
others. These didactic units may serve as a model for teachers of American
literature who are interested in creating their own teaching material adapted for
their students.
The target audience for this CD is first-year students of Grado en Estudios
Ingleses, students of Magisterio Lengua Extranjera and of Grado en Educación
Primaria (mención Lengua Extranjera) as well as anyone interested in American
literature.
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1. THE NOVEL, SHORT STORY AND POETRY IN THE
USA: HERMAN MELVILLE, EDGAR ALLAN POE AND
WALT WHITMAN
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The literary panorama of American literature during the 19th century is best
represented by Herman Melville, a novelist and fiction writer, Walt Whitman, a
pure poet, and Edgar Allan Poe, both a poet and a fiction writer. The three writers
have made a permanent impact on American, European and universal literature in
general. Their works are still widely read and highly valued nowadays.
1.2. HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)
Herman Melville, one of American literature's greatest figures, was born in
New York City into an established merchant family. His father become bankrupt
and then insane and died when Melville was twelve. At the age of fifteen he left
school and began working to support his family, first as a bank clerk, then as a
teacher and then as a farm labourer. At the age of nineteen he sailed on a
merchant ship to Liverpool. This was followed by several other sea voyages as a
sailor. One of these was a whaling trip during which he jumped ship and lived
briefly among a cannibal tribe called the Typee cannibals.
Although he had no early intentions to become a writer, he was encouraged to
write about some of his more exotic experiences and the result was Typee (1846),
loosely based on his encounter with the natives in the Polynesian. It was half a
travel book, half an adventure tale. It was a big success in spite of not being
artistically perfect, but it showed a great ability to create suspense and define
character.
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Then came Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket
(1850). These early works earned Melville a good deal of acclaim. They also
stirred controversy because of his sympathy with pagan societies, sometimes to
the point of contempt for western attitudes and practices. Omoo, set in Tahiti, is
considered by some to be Melville's best adventure story. He satirises the
missionaries who believed that they were saving the natives, while, in fact, their
"enlightened" ideas were threatening the native social fabric. In Mardi Melville
uses the sea voyage as a symbol of the quest of life's meaning. Mardi is an
imaginary South Seas archipelago presenting many analogous life experiences.
Redburn is based on Melville's first voyage to Liverpool, and White-Jacket
anticipates the more mature Billy Budd. It is based on his outrage of the flogging
and brutality he witnessed on a warship on a return journey from Hawaii.
During this time Melville began to read widely, he met a wide range of
writers and philosophers and in 1850 he and his wife moved to Pittsfield in
Massachusetts, where they became neighbours and close friends with Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Inspired by Hawthorne and his reading, Melville entered into his most
ambitious phase. In 1851 he published Moby Dick.
Moby Dick is considered to be by many the greatest work of American
fiction. Paradoxically, the novel was not well received and from relative popularity
Melville began to fade into obscurity. This novel was published under the name of
The Whale in England, its plot being a very simple one. A young seaman called
Ishmael, the narrator, joins the crew of the whaler "Pequod", whose captain is
Captain Achab. He has made friends with Queequeg, a native harpooner from a
Pacific island, a literary depiction of a noble savage. "Call me Ishmael" are the
novel's first words, where the narrator introduces himself. After setting out to sea
Achab announces that the purpose of the voyage is to search for and kill Moby
Dick, the legendary white whale who on a previous voyage had sheared off his
leg. The novel recounts the hunt for Moby Dick and ends when the great whale
destroys the ship and all the crew, except for Ishmael, who survives to tell the
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world the story. The novel, in spite of its apparent simplicity, contains religious and
political allegories, parables and commentaries as well as vivid descriptions of the
whaling trade and whale captures.
Melville's next book was Pierre (1852), a psychological and moral study of
the protagonist, Pierre, based on his own childhood. For the first time Melville
keeps one of this works removed from the ocean setting of most of his other
fiction. Pierre conveys grand images of pessimism, destruction, suicide and incest
and was hardly read at all in the 19th century.
At odds with his public and deprived of his friend Hawthorne, who had
moved to Concord, Melville turned increasingly to shorter fiction. He published a
collection of short stories called The Piazza Tales (1856), which included two of
his most famous short stories: "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno".
"Bartleby the Scrivener" resembles a Kafka atmosphere and the literature of the
absurd. "Benito Cereno" is about a slave ship which seems to be in the control of
its captain, Benito Cereno, but which is really controlled by the slaves, led by
Babo. They have revolted and massacred the crew and are holding the captain
prisoner. The narrator, Captain Delano, is telling the story through his
consciousness. He finds himself initiated into an awareness of evil and the
unreliability of appearances. In his innocent self-confidence and trust in his own
perceptions, Delano is incapable of drawing logical conclusions from what he
sees. Thus he dismisses Captain Cereno's alternating moods of indifference or
hysteria as derangement. One lesson he eventually learns, however, has
particular significance today: no race will willingly serve another without
resentment and eventually it will rebel.
At the age of forty Melville turned almost exclusively to poetry. Long after
his death his reputation began to revive and his unfinished tale Billy Budd was
published posthumously in 1924. The protagonist of Billy Budd is the "Handsome
Sailor" of sailor folklore. He is recruited on a man-of-war ship during the war
between England and France in 1797. He is a favourite of the crew but becomes
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the target of the envious and cruel master-at-arms, Claggart. Claggart concocts a
plan of mutiny and accuses Billy Budd before the ship's commander, Captain Vere
of being involved in it. Unable to answer the accusation due to a chronic stammer,
Budd strikes Claggart out of fury and kills him. Although Vere realises the
falseness of the charges he fears a reaction from the crew if Budd is not punished
for assaulting a superior. Therefore Budd is tried and found guilty of a capital
crime and is consequently hanged. He dies just after crying out "God bless
Captain Vere!" Vere is later killed by the French, his last murmured words being
Billy's name.
The story raises questions about the relationship between man's law and
God's law, between mercy and justice, between the individual and the larger
social good. Captain Vere has been likened to the Old Testament God and Billy
shows similarities to the figure of Christ. On his death Billy is transfigured into
myth. Mutinous talk on the ship is changed into legends and songs about the
handsome sailor, who was a good patriot and was wrongly accused.
1.3. EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
Poe is the least understood of America's major writers. Acclaimed by
French critics such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valery, in America he has often
been dismissed as an immature, neurotic and pedantic genius, devoid of
permanent literary merit. He was born in Boston to itinerant actors with serious
drinking problems. When his parents died, leaving Poe at three, he was fostered
and brought up by a wealthy Richmond merchant, John Allan. Poe's relationship
with his strict foster father was always very tense. Poe entered the University of
Virginia but after a year he dropped out due to gambling debts that John Allan
refused to pay. He then enlisted in the army under an assumed name ("Edgar A.
Perry") and some years later he managed to enter West Point, but absented
himself from drills and classes and was therefore expelled. Poe tried to make a
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living by contributing in the local magazines and newspapers with articles, essays,
reviews and stories, eventually becoming an editor (of The Southern Literary
Messenger, Graham's Magazine and The Broadway Journal), which gained him
some literary reputation and money, but he wasted it on drinking. In Baltimore Poe
lived his only happy years of adulthood with his aunt Mrs Maria Poe Clemm and
secretly married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm, who died a few years
later from TB, in 1847. Her death was the beginning of Poe's moral and physical
decline. He took to drinking heavily again and was found unconscious in a street
in Baltimore. Three days later he died in hospital.
1.3.1. POE'S POETRY
Poe himself paid for his first book of poems to be published, called
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), but he did so anonymously ("by a
Bostonian"). Later he shortened Tamerlane, revised other poems and added new
ones to make up his second volume, Al Aaraaf, Tamburlane and Minor Poems
(1829), which included such famous poems as "Al Aaraaf" (an Arabic word
meaning "limbo", thought to be the ideal and spiritual haven of poets, where
beauty appears platonically unspoilt), and "Sonnet to Science", a lament for the
loss of beauty on Earth for the benefit of science and technology. The publication
of his third book, Poems (1831), was paid for by his cadet friends and included
such famous poems as "To Helen" (a yearning for women's idealized beauty),
"Leonore" (a lament for the death of a beautiful woman) and "Israfel" (about an
angel, Israfel, considered to be the best singer in a perfect world of unspoiled
beauty).
In fact, Poe's first published volumes were all of poetry and this is the genre
to which he devoted many of his last years of life. There is no consensus on Poe's
success and literary merit as a poet. Nevertheless, his influence on the French
symbolist poets is clear, and it is through these that he influenced successful
American poets such as T. S. Eliot.
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Poe's best-known and most representative poem is "The Raven", included
in his book of poems The Raven and Other Poems (1845). The underlying theme
of the poem (as in many of his poems) is the death of a beautiful woman called
Leonore. To Poe there was nothing as poetic as the death of a beautiful woman.
At midnight the "I" of the poem is reading books in his bedroom in a melancholy
mood as he is full of sorrow for his lost Leonore. He hears a tapping at the
chamber door, he opens and sees nothing. He then opens a window and a raven
comes in and rests on a bust of Pallas and says nothing. The only answer the
poet obtains is "nevermore!"
In a short poem like "Annabel Lee" Poe describes the death of a beautiful
young girl of a distant land, whom the narrator loved, who was killed by cold winds
and underwater demons. The poet lies down by the side of her grave by the sea.
The reminiscences to Virginia Clemm, Poe's prematurely dead young wife, are
very clear.
1.3.2. POE'S CRITICAL REVIEWS AND LITERARY CRITICISM
In his essays "The Philosophy of Composition" and "The Poetic Principle"
Poe explains in full detail the making of a poem. He gives many technical details
and talks about the "effect" that he wants to produce in the reader, but he fails to
specify what "effect" this is. This attitude is typical of Poe in both his tales and
poetry. He gives us an abundance of detail and signs, but no sure clue to their
meaning. For example, "The Raven" may be read as clearly hilarious or as a
melancholic and lugubrious poem. It will not declare itself either way. Our attention
should therefore focus on the language.
Poe was the only serious literary critic of his generation and America's first
real man of letters. He was thought eccentric for spending his whole time writing
literature, but when he started to write literary criticism this was indeed unheard of.
He was the first to recognise Hawthorne's genius in his review of Hawthorne's
Twice-Told Tales and the first to determine the reasons of Dickens' success and
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literary importance. It was however his misfortune to have a very ignorant
audience and very little American literature to work on.
1.3.3. POE'S SHORT STORIES
Although Poe wished to be thought of primarily as a poet, his short stories
brought him far greater fame. He first published a short detective novel called The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), but later concentrated on writing short
tales. These tales were published in two books called Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque (1839) and Tales (1845) as well as in different magazines and journals
for which he contributed as a freelance writer or was editor. His tales are usually
divided into a) tales of horror, b) tales of ratiocination and c) tales of love.
It has been suggested that Poe's tales are gothic, but gothic horror means
that the real world contains terrors that would strike us with horror. But Poe's tales
do not have any relation to reality; their effects are of the imagination only. His
tales are merely constructions of the detailed kind of what goes on in his
imagination. His tales occur in innumerable cellars, darkened rooms and
fantastically decorated chambers. These are places of the mind, located nowhere
in particular, but recognised by every reader. Poe's tales make very poor films,
precisely because those places lose their imaginative charge as soon as they are
assembled for the eye instead of the reader's imagination.
Another source of inspiration for Poe was chess and technology; proof of
this is his essay on a chess machine device invented by someone called Maelzel
("Maelzel's chess player"). He bordered professionalism in cryptography and used
to boast about being able to decipher any secret message encrypted in any code.
His detective stories and his tales of ratiocination are therefore works of Poe's
powerful formal and logical reasoning and capacity of deduction. In "Eureka" he
wrote a prose statement of a theory of the universe.
His most famous tales of horror are "The Black Cat", "The Fall of the House
of Usher", "Hop-Frog", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Cask of the
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Amontillado" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue". As for his tales of ratiocination we
should mention "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Gold Bug". His most
famous love tale is "Ligeia".
"The Black Cat" is narrated by the murderer who assures the reader that he
is not mad. He kills his wife and walls her up in the cellar of their house. But he
has also walled in the cat, which is still alive. The cat reveals the corpse by crying
out just as the police are investigating the scene. The murderer does not feel
remorse after the deed. Poe is more interested in the psychology of the criminal
than his sense of guilt.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered by many critics to be his
best short story. It deals with the last two members of the Usher family, Roderick
and his sister Madelanie. The narrator visits his old friend Roderick in the gothic
castle that is the ancestral home of the family. His sister Madelanie dies and is
buried in the vault of the castle. But she is buried alive and emerges from the tomb
to grasp hold of Roderick, who dies of terror in her arms. The narrator feels horror
too as he witnesses the collapse of the entire house.
“The Masque of the Red Death" was written bearing in mind a cholera
epidemic that hit Baltimore in 1832. Well-off families used to rush to the country to
escape plagues. Prince Prospero takes refuge with his court in a castle
surrounded by tall walls. He offers his guests a fancy dress dance but they all stop
in fright to listen to the twelfth chime of the clock in the ballroom. A Red Death
figure comes into the room. It is not wearing a disguise: it is the very presence of
Death.
"The Gold Bug", the masterpiece of his "ratiocination tales" is a kind of
detective story without a criminal. The hero, accompanied by the narrator and a
black servant, decodes a secret code that leads him to the discovery of a treasure
buried by Captain Kidd and they become rich. In fact Poe was the creator of the
detective story. He created a renowned type of intellectual detective in the
character of Auguste Dupin, a French detective with powerful deducing skills who
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appeared in three of stories: "The Murders of the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of
Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter".
"Ligeia" was Poe's favourite tale and his most famous love story. The
protagonist is deeply in love with his wife Ligeia, who dies. He finally remarries the
fortune hunter Lady Rowena but she dies too. At the end her corpse rises while it
changes into Ligeia in his imagination. This tale or reincarnation may be seen as a
hallucination on the part of the narrator, who is thinking of Ligeia as Lady Rowena
dies.
1.4. WALT WHITMAN (1819-1893)
Walt Whitman was born in Long Island. In 1823 his family moved to
Brooklyn. In 1830 he left school to become a printer's apprentice and then an
itinerant teacher. He returned to Long Island in 1838 as a schoolteacher and
printer and worked in various newspapers. He then began to write poetry and
short stories. In 1848 he travelled south and experienced the vastness of the
American landscape and the variety of its people, a fact that made a deep
impression on him. He returned to New York and turned his attention increasingly
to poetry.
In 1855 Whitman published his first edition of Leaves of Grass, which
contained 12 poems, including an early version of "Song of Myself", his most
representative poem and the one which constitutes the seeds of Leaves of Grass.
It describes the process of universal life. The self grows and assimilates other
forms of life. Leaves of Grass is a metaphor for the beauty and spiritual
inheritance of the natural world. Although Whitman himself published an
anonymous review praising his book, the book received little attention. It was,
however, praised by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Whitman decided to print its
second edition in 1856 (with 20 poems). Nine different editions of Leaves of Grass
were printed during the poet's lifetime. In each new edition new poems were
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included, up to the number of 293! He worked briefly as a clerk in the Department
of the Interior but when the Secretary found out that he was the author of Leaves
of Grass he was expelled. Soon he began to suffer his recurrent paralytic strokes.
Another major factor in his life and works is his recognition and acceptance of his
homosexuality.
Whitman's verse, with its frequent use of colloquial language, Indian,
Spanish and French words (languages spoken in America) as well as everyday
events, represents a turning point in the history of American poetry. He created a
poetic form made out of a specifically American experience. Whitman tries to
create a literature that was entirely American, away from the polite and formal
European influences.
Some of his finest poems grew out of his personal experience of the
horrors of the Civil War (during which he served as a volunteer nurse in army
hospitals and as a correspondent for The New York Times). In his poetry he
attempted to reconcile the destruction of the war with his visionary idea of
America.
Drum Taps (1865) and its companion volume Sequel (1867) were included
in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass. Sequel was written in the aftermath of
Abraham Lincoln's assassination and includes an elegy for the dead president.
This elegy includes the famous poems "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
and "O Captain! My Captain!"
In "A Song of Myself" the poet celebrates the self. The "I" who signs the
poem is omnipresent and immortal and is Whitman's hero. He talks of a cycle of
life where everything is being constantly renewed and absorbed back into an
essential mass. But all is conserved and is therefore immortal. Despite the
different nature of objects, animals and men, they are all composed of the same
substance and are therefore equal. The "Soul" is not only for mankind but for any
substances and therefore universal. In the poem Whitman touches on different
moments of one's life, from the baby in the cradle to a suicide, isolated moments
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of individual life. At the end of the poem the poet is a mere man travelling on foot
asking for company, thus completing the idea of a "journey of life" that is never
ending.
In the short poem "America" Whitman thinks of America as the centre of
equal daughters and equal sons who are "strong, ample, fair, enduring, and
capable" and who identify themselves with "freedom, law and love". He asserts his
faith in the destiny of the American nation. It demonstrates his love and the
masses, his devotion to democracy and his belief that by using a democratic
process, America is fulfilling a spiritual need of her people.
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2. DIDACTIC UNIT: EDGAR ALLAN POE
Poe is one of the least understood of America's major writers. Acclaimed
by French critics such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valery, in America he has
often been dismissed as an immature, neurotic and pedantic genius, devoid of
permanent literary merit. In fact, Poe's first published volumes were all of poetry
and this is the genre to which he devoted much of this last years of life. There is
no consensus on Poe's success and literary merit as a poet. Nevertheless, his
influence on the French symbolist poets is clear, and it is through these that he
influenced successful American poets such T. S. Eliot.
He was born in Boston to itinerant actors with serious drinking problems. When
his parents died, leaving Edgar at three, he was fostered and brought up by a
wealthy Richmond merchant, John Allan. Poe's relationship with his strict foster
father was always very tense. Poe entered the University of Virginia but after a
year he dropped out due to gambling debts that John Allan refused to pay. He
then enlisted in the army under an assumed name ("Edgar A. Perry") and some
years later he managed to enter West Point, but absented himself from drills and
classes and was therefore expelled. Poe tried to make a living by contributing in
the local magazines and newspapers with articles, essays, reviews and stories,
eventually becoming an editor (of The Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's
Magazine and The Broadway Journal), which gained him some literary reputation
and money, but he wasted it on drinking. In Baltimore Poe lived his only happy
years of adulthood with his aunt Mrs Maria Poe Clemm and secretly married his
thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm, who died a few years later from TB, in
1847. Her death was the beginning of Poe's moral and physical decline. He took
to drinking heavily again and was found unconscious in a street in Baltimore.
Three days later he died in hospital.
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1. IN THE PREVIOUS TEXT THERE ARE A NUMBER OF PROPER
NAMES AND FACTS. WITHOUT LOOKING BACK, TRY TO RELATE
THE NAMES WITH POE’S LIFE FACTS.
Baudelaire
City where Poe was born
Boston
Assumed name that Poe used when he enrolled in the Army
John Allan
French critic that admired Poe’s work
Edgar A. Perry
Poe’s cousin and wife
Virginia Clemm
City where Poe died
Baltimore
Name of Poe’s foster father
2. ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS WITHOUT LOOKING BACK
AT THE TEXT.
a) What opinion did American critics have of Poe before he was acclaimed by
French criticism?
b) Who were Poe’s parents and what was their personal tragedy?
c) What was Poe’s life like while he was living in John Allan’s house?
d) What were Poe’s main addictions?
e) Who was Poe’s first wife and what happened to her?
f) What literary genre did Poe devote his first published books to?
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3. READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT ABOUT POE’S POETRY AND SPOT
THE TWO BIG MISTAKES.
Poe himself paid for his first book of poems to be published, called Tamerlane
and Other Poems (1827), but did so anonymously ("by a Bostonian"). Later on he
shortened Tamerlane, revised other poems and added new ones to make up his
second volume, Al Aaraaf, Tamburlane and Minor Poems (1829), which included
such famous poems as "Al Aaraaf" (an Arabic word meaning "limbo", thought to
be the ideal and spiritual haven of poets, where beauty appears platonically
unspoilt), and "Sonnet to Science", a lament for the loss of beauty on Earth for the
benefit of science and technology. The publication of his third book, Poems
(1831), was paid by his cadet friends and included such famous poems as "To
Helen" (a yearning for women's idealized beauty), "Leonore" (a lament for the
death of a beautiful woman) and "Israfel" (about an angel, Israfel, considered to be
the best singer in a perfect world of unspoiled beauty). His drama included
Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.
Poe's best-known and most representative poem is "The Raven", included
in his book of poems The Raven and Other Poems (1845). The underlying theme
of the poem (as in many of his poems) is the death of a beautiful woman called
Leonore. To Poe there was nothing as poetic as the death of a beautiful woman.
At midnight the "I" of the poem is reading books in his bedroom in a melancholy
mood as he is full of sorrow for his lost Leonore. He hears a tapping at the
chamber door, he opens and sees nothing. He then opens a window and a raven
comes in and rests on a bust of Pallas and says nothing. The only answer the
poet obtains is "nevermore!"
In a short poem like "Annabel Lee" Poe describes the death of a beautiful
young girl of a distant land, whom the narrator loved, who was killed by cold winds
and underwater demons. The poet lies down by the side of her grave by the sea.
The reminiscences to Virginia Clemm, Poe's prematurely dead young wife, are
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very clear. He travelled in Spain by coach and wrote numerous poems about the
country.
4. THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ABOUT POE’S POETRY ARE
FALSE. MAKE THE NECESSARY AMENDMENTS TO MAKE THEM
TRUE.
a) Tamerlane and Other Poems was the first book that he published under his
real name.
b) Al Aaraaf, Tamburlane and Minor Poems was his first published book,
though under the pseudonym of “A Bostonian”.
c) "Al Aaraaf", an Arabic word meaning "hell", was thought to be the place
where incapable poets go when they die.
d) The publication of his third book, Poems (1831), was paid for by his foster
father.
e) "Leonore" is a poem where the author yearns for women’s idealized beauty.
f) In “Annabel Lee" Poe describes the birth of a beautiful young girl in a distant
land whom the narrator will eventually fall in love with.
5. YOU ARE GOING TO READ THE FIRST OR LAST STANZAS OF SOME
OF POE’S MOST FAMOUS POEMS. GIVE THEM EACH A TITLE.
a) SCIENCE! meet daughter of old Time thou art
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Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes!
Why prey’st thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture! Whose wings are dull realities!
b) Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderet bore
To his own native shore.
c) In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
d) And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!
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6. NOW THAT YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED THE NAMES OF THE ABOVE
POEMS, CAN YOU SPOT THE MISTAKES OF THE FOLLOWING
STATEMENTS?
a) In "Sonnet to Science", an exaltation to Science, Poe is of the opinion
that Science should come before beauty.
b) The poem "To Helen" is a lament for the death of a beautiful woman.
c) "Israfel" is about an angel of the same name known for his inability to
sing no matter how hard he tries.
d) In “The Raven” the author tells of his conversation with a friendly bird
who visits him in the middle of the night.
7. IN
ORDER
TO
SPOT
THE
MISTAKES
OF
THE
PREVIOUS
STATEMENTS YOU MUST HAVE READ THE EXCERPTS OF THE
POEMS. WHAT WORDS AND/OR EXPRESSIONS GAVE YOU THE
CLUE TO IDENTIFY THE MISTAKES OF THE STATEMENTS?
a) “Sonnet to Science”:
b) “To Helen”:
c) “Israfel”:
d) “The Raven”:
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8. ALTHOUGH POE WISHED TO BE THOUGHT PRIMARILY AS A POET,
HIS SHORT STORIES BROUGHT HIM FAR GREATER FAME. HIS
TALES ARE USUALLY DIVIDED INTO TALES OF HORROR, TALES OF
RATIOCINATION, DETECTIVE FICTION AND TALES OF LOVE. HERE
IS A LIST OF SOME OF HIS FAMOUS STORIES. PLACE THEM
ACCORDING TO THIS CLASSIFICATION:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – The Black Cat – Ligeia – The Golden Bug
– The Murders in the Rue Morgue – The Fall of the House of Usher – The Pit and
the Pendulum – The Masque of the Red Death – Hop Frog – The Cask of the
Amontillado
a) Tales of horror:
b) Tales of ratiocination:
c) Detective fiction:
d) Tales of love:
9. IDENTIFY THE NAMES OF THE FOLLOWING SHORT STORIES BY
READING THEIR SUMMARISED PLOTS. FILL IN THE BLANKS WHEN
NECESSARY WITH THE TITLES OF THE STORIES.
a) __________ is narrated by the murderer who assures the reader that he is not
mad. He kills his wife and walls her up in the cellar of their house. But he has also
walled in the cat, which is still alive. The cat reveals the corpse by crying out just
as the police are investigating the scene. The murderer does not feel remorse
after the deed. Poe is more interested in the psychology of the criminal than his
sense of guilt.
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b) __________ is considered by many critics to be his best short story. It deals
with the last two members of the Usher family, Roderick and his sister Madelanie.
The narrator visits his old friend Roderick in the gothic castle that is the ancestral
home of the family. His sister Madelanie dies and is buried in the vault of the
castle. But she is buried alive and emerges from the tomb to grasp hold of
Roderick, who dies of terror in her arms. The narrator feels horror too as he
witnesses the collapse of the entire house.
c) __________ was written bearing in mind a cholera epidemic that hit Baltimore
in 1832. Well-off families used to rush to the country to escape plagues. Prince
Prospero takes refuge with his court in a castle surrounded by tall walls. He offers
his guests a fancy dress dance but they all stop in fright to listen to the twelfth
chime of the clock in the ballroom. A Red Death figure comes into the room. It is
not wearing a disguise: it is the very presence of Death.
d) __________, the masterpiece of his "ratiocination tales" is a kind of detective
story without a criminal. The hero, accompanied by the narrator and a black
servant, decodes a secret code that leads him to the discovery of a treasure
buried by Captain Kidd and they become rich. In fact Poe was the creator of the
detective story. He created a renowned type of intellectual detective in the
character of Auguste Dupin, a French detective with powerful deducing skills who
appeared in three of stories: "The Murders of the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of
Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter".
e) __________ was Poe's favourite tale and his most famous love story. The
protagonist is deeply in love with his wife __________, who dies. He finally
remarries the fortune hunter Lady Rowena but she dies too. At the end her corpse
rises as the narrator while it changes into __________ in his imagination. This tale
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or reincarnation may be seen as a hallucination on the part of the narrator, who is
thinking of __________ as Lady Rowena dies.
10. CAN YOU IDENTIFY THE DIFFERENT ENDINGS OF THE DIFFERENT
STORIES? CHOOSE THE APPROPRIATE ONE FROM THE FOLLOWING
LIST:
-
The Black Cat
-
Ligeia
-
The Fall of the House of Usher
-
The Cask of the Amontillado
a) I stirred not – but gazed upon her who was before me. There was a mad
disorder in my thoughts – a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the
living Rowena who confronted me? Why, why should I doubt it? The
bandage lay heavily about the mouth – but then it was the mouth of the
breathing lady of Tremaine. And the cheeks –there were the roses as in
her noon of health –yes, these were indeed the fair cheeks of the living
lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, was it not
hers? –but– had she then grown taller since her malady? What
inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had
reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head,
unloosed, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed
forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long
and dishevelled hair. It was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight!
And now the eyes opened of the figure which stood before me. “Here then
at least, “I shrieked aloud, “can I never –can I never be mistaken–these are
the full, and the black, and the wild eyes of the lady –of the lady Ligeia!”
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b) But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called
aloud–
“Fortunato!”
No answer. I called again–
“Fortunato”
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall
within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew
sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so. I hastened to
make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I
plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of
bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace
requiescat!
c) The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now
shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have
before spoken, as extending from the roof of the building, in a zig-zag
direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened– there
came a fierce breath of the whirlwind– the entire orb of the satellite burst at
once upon my sight –my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
asunder –there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
thousand waters – and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly
and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”
d) Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the
opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained
motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen
stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly
decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the
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spectators. Upon its head, with read extended mouth and solitary eye of
fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and
whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the
monster up within the tomb!
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Solutions to didactic unit on Poe
1.
Boston
City where Poe was born
Edgar A. Perry
Assumed name that Poe used when he enrolled in the Army
Baudelaire
French critic that admired Poe’s work
Virginia Clemm
Poe’s cousin and wife
Baltimore
City where Poe died
John Allan
Name of Poe’s foster father
2.
a) American critics thought he was immature, neurotic and pedantic, devoid of
permanent literary merit.
b) His partents were itinerant actors who had serious drinking problems. They
died when Edgar was three years old.
c). Life with his foster father John Allen was very strict and tense.
d). Poe’s main addictions were gambling and alcohol.
e) Poe’s first wife was his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died only
a few years later of TB in 1847.
f) Poe devoted his first published books to poetry.
3. “His drama included Hamlet, Othello and King Lear“ and “He travelled in Spain
by coach and wrote numerous poems about the country”.
4.
a) Tamerlane and Other Poems was published under the pseudonym of “a
Bostonian”
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b) Al Aaraaf, Tamburlane and Minor Poems was his second published book,
though under the pseudonym of “A Bostonian”.
c) "Al Aaraaf", an Arabic word meaning "limbo", was thought to be the ideal and
spiritual haven of poets, where beauty appears platonically unspoilt.
d) The publication of his third book, Poems (1831), was paid for by his cadet
friends.
e) "Leonore" is a poem where the author laments the death of a beautiful woman.
f) In “Annabel Lee" Poe describes the death of a beautiful young girl of a distant
land, whom the narrator loved, who was killed by cold winds and underwater
demons.
5. Free solutions.
6.
a) In "Sonnet to Science", a criticism of Science, Poe is of the opinion that Science
should come after beauty.
b) The poem "To Helen" is a about a yearning for a women’s idealised beauty.
c) "Israfel" is about an angel of the same name considered to be the best singer in
a perfect world of unspoiled beauty.
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d) In “The Raven” the author expresses his sorrow for the death of a beautiful
woman called Leonore and the raven who visits him in the middle of the night
says nothing but the word “nevermore”.
7.
a). “Sonnet to Science”: “who alterest” “peering eyes”, “prey’st”, “Vulture!”, “dull
realities”.
b) “To Helen”: “thy beauty is”
c) “Israfel”: “None sing so wildly well” and “attend the spell/ Of his voice”
d) “The Raven”: “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,”
8.
a) The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher, Hop-Frog, The Masque of the
Red Death, The Cask of the Amontillado;
b) The Pit and the Pendulum, The Golden Bug;
c) The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; The Murders in the Rue Morgue;
d) Ligeia.
9.
a) The Black Cat
b) The Fall of the House of Usher
c) The Masque of the Red Death
d) The Gold Bug
e) Ligeia
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10.
a) Ligeia;
b) The Cask of the Amontillado;
c) The Fall of the House of Usher;
d) The Black Cat]
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3. HUMOUR IN AMERICA: MARK TWAIN
3.1. INTRODUCTION: HUMOUR IN AMERICA
In the 19th century American humour in literature was fashionable both in
Britain and America. The English had an appetite for authentic literary
Americanism and humour was found to be one of its main characteristics.
American humour was soon known as "Western" or "Frontier humour", although it
was not confined to the West. In fact, many of the most famous humorists of the
time were from the East or had been brought up there (Artemus Ward, Bret Harte,
Joaquin Miller, John Hay, etc).
The origin of American humour must be sought in Frontier life. Frontier life
was dull and lonely. A great deal of exaggeration and hyperbole were needed to
make life bearable in such empty places like the small villages in the middle of
nowhere. The element of fraud became a conspicuous element in American
humour: the folk-heroes of frontier mythology (such as Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill
or Wild Bill Hickok, to name but a few) were in truth very normal people or even
comic figures, but literature made them look like real heroes. Honorary titles such
as Judge, Major, Colonel or General were widely used in myth-making and the
names of small western villages were made to appear as if they were enormous
metropolises. Burlesque names and pseudonyms were widely employed for
anyone who wanted to make a name for themselves (one of whom, for instance,
was Mark Twain). The press was also particularly generous with nicknames for
aspiring politicians.
One of the genres that developed from typically Western humour was the
so called "tall tale". This type of tale normally consisted of the narration of overtly
exaggerated events that meant to entertain the reader. It was normally based on
comic ballads and popular stories. The exaggeration element became a key one
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in Western humour. It is not a coincidence that there were twenty-four American
editions of Baron Munchuausen by 1835. Another popular genre was the satirical
sketch in any of the numerous newspapers and periodical journals that were born
on the Frontier.
But a great deal of Western humour was oral. Ward and Twain were very
successful humorous lecturers. Their monologues were usually in dialect and, if
transcribed in black and white, often deliberately misspelt. The speaker would
pose as a plain uneducated man and would intentionally quote classical writers
wrongly in search of comic effect. But the repetitive puns, the similarity of all tall
tales and the irritating abundance of misspellings made the genre a tiring one to
read after some time. In fact, Mark Twain excepted, not much of American
humour has lasting literary merit. Very little is remembered nowadays of
successful humorists of the time such as Artemus Hart, Bret Harte, Josh Billings,
etc. But humour was now familiar to America, and when Mark Twain started to
write, the way was already prepared for his success.
3.2. MARK TWAIN
3.2.1. MARK TWAIN'S LIFE
Mark Twain (1835-1910) was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the
village of Florida, Missouri, and moved with his family to the Mississippi River town
of Hannibal, to which he has always been associated, when he was a child of 4.
Due to the premature death of Clemens' father, a lawyer from Virginia, his family
was left in rather precarious circumstances. Therefore, at the age of 12 Clemens
left school and started to work as an apprentice printer. At 13, when his brother
Orion, 10 years his senior, established The Hannibal Journal, he became a
compositor for that paper and soon a contributor with humorous sketches which
he signed with the pen-name "Rambler". At 18 he left Hannibal to become a real
rambler. He worked as a printer hired by the day in several American cities such
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as St Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Keokuk (Iowa) and Cincinnati. He went on
writing humorous accounts about his travels ("ramblings") in the Keokuk Daily
Post under the pseudonym of "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass".
Clemens then met a steamboat pilot (Horace Bixby) on his way down the
Mississippi going towards New Orleans who agreed to take him on as an
apprentice river-boat pilot. While a pilot, Clemens met all sorts of people. In 1859,
when he was 24, he became a fully licensed pilot, thus fulfilling one of the dreams
of his youth. However, two years later the American Civil War broke up and the
river was cut across, bringing an end to traffic between the north and south.
Clemens then served briefly in the Confederate Army but his division deserted
and he spent the remainder of the war in Nevada either unsuccessfully looking for
silver and gold with his brother Orion, or being a timber speculator and a journalist
in San Francisco. His peculiar war experiences are chronicled in "The History of a
Campaign that Failed".
In 1863, when Clemens was 27 and working for the Virginia City Territorial
Enterprise and Californian, his famous "nom de plum" "Mark Twain" was used for
the first time to sign a humorous travel account. This pen-name was a river man’s
term that meant "two fathoms deep" (=twelve feet deep) and it was used to
indicate when the water was just barely safe for navigation. In 1865 he made his
pseudonym famous with the tall tale that gives name to his first book of short
stories, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, published in 1867.
The sketch was based on an old California folk-tale. It can be summarised as
follows: Jim Smiley owns a champion jumping frog, Dan'l Webster. A stranger
claims that any frog could beat him and sends Smiley off to catch another one to
have a contest. Dan'l is defeated but only because, as Smiley discovers after the
race, the stranger has managed to fill his gullet with quail shot to weigh him down.
Twain signed up with the Sacramento Union to cover in a series of
amusing letters for which he used a fictional character, "Mr Brown", to present his
often unorthodox ideas. This was an acceptable policy provided that he clearly
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repeated what other people said and did. And this is what Twain did. Twain
became a celebrity almost overnight. His sparkling personality and his witty
quotable phrases caught on fast and he soon began making lecture tours. His
summer and autumn trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 produced his first
major work, a humorous travel book called The Innocents Abroad, or, The New
Pilgrim's Progress (1869). It took shape from letters he wrote to the San Francisco
Alta California and the New York Tribune. The humour of the book usually comes
from the impressions given of the journey by an American who goes to Europe
and Palestine for the first time.
Twain returned to America and settled in the East. In 1870 he married
Olivia Langdon, the physically fragile daughter of a wealthy New York coal
magnate. The couple had three daughters. He often travelled to Europe and
England, where he was received with even more enthusiasm than in the USA.
The Clemens lived in Connecticut for 20 years, this being the most prolific period
of Twain's life. It is called Twain's "Optimistic Period".
3.2.2. TWAIN'S LITERARY WORK
During this happy span of life Twain wrote Roughing It (1872), The Gilded
Age (1873), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The
Prince and the Pauper (1882) and Life on the Mississippi (1883).
Roughing It is a humorous autobiographical narrative of his early travels to
the Far West, including visits to a Mormon community in Utah, to San Francisco
and to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), with special emphasis on the wild
Californian gold frontier. His humour comes from the contrast of the narrator (that
is, himself), a presumably civilized man, and the chaotic and primitive ways he
comes across in the West of the 1860's. But as the story progresses, the narrator
begins to come to terms with and even adopt the Western ways.
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is a satirical novel that Twain wrote in
collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. One year later it was dramatised by
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Twain himself and G. S. Densmore. The novel, set in Missouri, New York and
Washington DC, exposes American business politics in the post Civil War era.
Indeed, it presents various unscrupulous individuals and their dubious financial
enterprises in the atmosphere of the greed, exploitation and economic speculation
during the period of the post-war reconstruction. This era was later named after
the title of the book.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer had an early version written in 1870 called
"A Boy's Manuscript". The novel is about an intelligent and imaginative boy who is
nevertheless careless and mischievous. He lives in the respectable home of his
Aunt Polly and his obnoxious cousin in the Mississippi River town of St
Petersburg, Missouri. His preferred world, however, is the outdoor and parentless
life of his friend Huck Finn. They run away with a third boy after witnessing a
murder and are believed dead. They return to witness their own funerals and are
discovered among much uproar. At the trial of the murder Tom becomes a hero by
accusing drunkard Muff Potter. Later Huck and Tom discover a dead boy as well
as his buried treasure. They return to town as heroic as ever and the riches are
divided between them. Twain was using the rich material of his Hannibal and
Mississippi childhood and youth that constantly ran in his vivid memory and
imagination.
The Prince and the Pauper: a Tale for Young People of All Ages is a novel
set in the last years of Henry VIII's reign in England. Prince Edward and a pauper
boy, Tom Canty, are like two peas in a pod. They exchange clothes and roles and
nobody notices the difference. Tom is treated as a prince and is even about to be
crowned king after Henry VIII's death whereas Edward is abused by Tom's father
and wanders in rags. He becomes friends with an unfortunate knight, Miles
Hendon, who feels pity for his airs and graces and his loud claims of being of royal
blood. Edward manages to make it to Westminster Abbey just before the
coronation and proves his true identity by revealing where the Great Seal is
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hidden. He then becomes king Edward VI and makes sure he always keeps in
mind the injustice and cruelty that he witnessed whilst being a pauper.
Life on the Mississippi combines elements from several genres: history and
geography books, memoirs and travel books. It starts with a summary of the
history of the river from its discovery by the Spanish conquistadores (Hernando de
Soto) in the 16th century up to Twain's time. Twain adds a non-fictional passage
with Huck Finn in Chapter 3 originally meant to have been included in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as if it were a purely historical episode. In the rest
of the book Twain describes his childhood, youth and life as a steamboat pilot.
Several years later he added a second part in which he idealised life in the South
before the Civil War and the changes that the railway brought about to the
country.
In 1884 a heavy investment in a badly managed publishing firm (Charles L.
Webster's publishing house) and in financial speculation, especially in type-setting
machinery, drove Clemens into bankruptcy. Nevertheless, he managed to publish
his best work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has a moral
dimension that is lacking in Tom Sawyer. It took him eight years to write it (187683), with several stops and starts. Although now it is considered by many as the
greatest American novel and certainly the most important one in 19th century
America, at the time, it was believed to be vulgar and unfit for young readers.
Many even called it racist and it was banned in many libraries. The truth is that the
novel is far from racist. Twain never uses the derogative term "nigger" for Jim, the
young black protagonist of the novel. But even Twain himself felt unwilling to go
on writing "another boys' book" and seriously considered burning it or leaving it
aside. However, the book has far exceeded its predecessor in critical acclaim (if
not always in popularity).
The novel is narrated in first person by its hero, Huckleberry Finn (Huck for
short), an uneducated boy of 13 or 14 who runs away from the "sivilizing"
pressures of respectable widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson, but above
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all from his heavy-drinking father. Huck is kidnapped by his father and imprisoned
in an isolated cabin with the intention of catching the treasure that Huck and Tom
had found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huck frees himself by making it
appear as if he has been murdered and then flees to Jackson Island. While hiding
out there he meets Jim, Miss Watson's good-hearted slave who has run away
after overhearing that he was to be sold. When Huck discovers that his own
"death" has been blamed on Jim and that a search party may be on its way to
Jackson Island the two runaways resolve to travel down the Mississippi on a raft.
They are joined by a couple of confidence tricksters who call themselves the King
and the Duke. These con-men exploit the young boys and make a lot of money
along the river journey. Tom Sawyer appears in the book to save Jim from
captivity. When the fugitives go back to St Petersburg, they learn that Miss
Watson and Huck's father are dead and that Jim has been granted his freedom.
At the end of the novel Huck decides to "light out" for the territories rather than
face life with Tom's Aunt Sally, who, he tells the reader, was planning to "sivilise"
him. The novelist recreates recording a vanished way of life in the pre-Civil War
Mississippi valley of his own boyhood and adolescence with obvious nostalgia,
innocence and humour.
Twain followed his literary career with A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court (1889), The American Claimant (1892) and The Tragedy of
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). His intention with these three works was to entertain
the reader, but a deep feeling of pessimism is already quite evident in them. He
also wrote a couple of sequels to Tom Sawyer (Tom Sawyer Abroad, 1894; and
Tom Sawyer, Detective, 1896) where he sought to recapture the innocent fun of
his early works, but he was never quite able to write with his former casual ease
and wit.
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3.2.3. TWAIN'S LAST YEARS AND LITERARY PRODUCTION
Clemens gradually overcame his debts by going on a worldwide lecture
tour. In London in 1895 he received news of the death (due to meningitis) of his
oldest daughter, Susy, and his second one, Jean, was diagnosed an epileptic. He
became increasingly alienated from the good-humoured wit on which his
popularity was based. His works became more and more pessimistic and serious.
When he published Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1895), he even refused
to sign it "Mark Twain" to avoid readers thinking it to be another comic narrative.
His next works, Following the Equator (1897), The Man that Corrupted
Hadleyburg (1900), the philosophical treatise What is a Man? (1906) and The
Mysterious Stranger (published posthumously in 1916), show evident pessimism
and scepticism.
Clemens' health was starting to fail him. He was stricken with grief when his
wife died in Italy in 1904, where she had gone for convalescence due to a long
illness, and when his second daughter Jean passed away in 1909. However, his
profession carried him through and he continued to lecture widely in the USA and
abroad. His opinions on world affairs (like the Belgian atrocities in the Congo and
the American behaviour in the Philippines) were often controversial, but he was
always considered a revered public institution. He was awarded an Honorary
Doctorate of Letters by Oxford University in 1907, for which he was always very
proud. Many of his works, the most famous of which is his Autobiography (1924),
were published posthumously.
Clemens died a bitter man in Redding (Connecticut) in 1910, when he was
75 years old, his birth and his death coinciding with the appearance of Hailey's
Comet on the date that he always said he would die.
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4. HENRY JAMES AND COSMOPOLITISM
4.1. INTRODUCTION
Henry James' career was one of the longest and most productive -and
most influential- in American letters. He was a master of prose fiction from the
beginning and gave it his own personal touch and style. He wrote for 51 years. His
literary production consists of 20 novels, 112 tales, 12 plays, several volumes of
travel and criticism and a great deal of literary journalism. He became an artisan
and master of the "international" or "cosmopolitan novel". His main theme was the
innocence of the New World, the corruption and wisdom of the Old World and the
clash between the two. He had a prophetic sense of America's coming-of-age and
the moral problems that the USA would encounter as a world power in the 20th
century.
4.2. HENRY JAMES'S LIFE
Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843, to a wealthy
Irish immigrant called Sir Henry James, a prominent theologian and philosopher of
the day. Due to Henry James' father's strong views on education, he made an
effort to give his children a cosmopolitan upbringing. Henry and his older brother
William (who became a notable psychologist and an influential philosopher in the
future) were taken abroad as infants and crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic, and
were schooled in Manhattan and in Geneva, Paris and London while they were in
their teens. They acquired languages and an awareness of Europe that few
Americans of their time had. At 19 Henry James enrolled at the Harvard Law
School but withdrew after a year. He devoted his time to reading writers such as
Balzac and Hawthorne and began to write short stories and reviews for journals
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after being encouraged to do so by William Dean Howells. By his mid-twenties he
was already regarded as one of the most skilful writers of short stories in America.
Critics complained of his tendency to write about the life of the mind, rather than of
action. His stories contained echoes of George Sand, H. Balzac, P. Merimée and
N. Hawthorne. He had a thorough apprenticeship for almost a decade before he
attempted a full-length novel: he did not stop writing stories, reviews and articles.
Henry James travelled throughout his lifetime and never married. He was friendly
and an active observer of the literary world and a dynamic participant in society,
but he tended to be "distant" in his relations with people and careful to avoid
"involvement".
Leon Edel, James's biographer, divides the writer's literary career into three
phases: the first culminates with The Portrait of a Lady (1881). His main topic of
interest is the so called "international theme". It takes the shape of the tragic and
comic ordeals suffered by Americans in Europe and by Europeans in America. In
the second phase he experimented with the strong social and political trends of
the 1870s and 1880s, with drama, with the relationship of artists to society and
with the troubled psychology of oppressed children and haunted or obsessed men
and women. In his third phase, also called his "major phase", James returned to
the cosmopolitan or international subjects, though in a more elaborate manner.
4.2.1. FIRST PHASE OF JAMES' LITERARY CAREER
Between 1870 and 1872 James lived in Boston and published his first
significant American-European tale, "A Passionate Pilgrim", recording in it a deep
yearning for historic England. He also published an early novel of Boston life,
Watch and Ward (1871 in serial form and 1878 in volume form). It was then when
his long expatriation in Europe began. James published Roderick Hudson (1876),
the story of an American sculptor's struggle in Rome between his art and his
passions and how these affect his art. It is James' version of "a portrait of the artist
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as a young man". Simultaneously with his novel he brought out Transatlantic
Sketches (1875), his first collection of travel writings.
This travel book was followed by The American (1877) and The Europeans
(1878), two novels centred on the differences between the two continents which
he had written whilst in Paris. The American is about a wealthy American bachelor
who goes to Paris to look for a wife. He falls in love with a widow of an aristocratic
French family who try to prevent his marrying her by being strongly against the
match. He later finds he could bribe her family with information that he has found
out about them, but then chooses not to do so, as he does not want to force the
marriage. His loved one finally becomes a Carmelite nun.
In 1876 James settled in London, which he made his home for the next
twenty years. There he wrote the major fiction of his middle years. In 1878 he
received international renown with his story of an American flirt in Rome, a novella
called Daisy Miller (1879). He became popular in England with some of the
leading Victorians: Lord Houghton, Gladstone, Tennison and Browning, among
others. James published his stories simultaneously in English and American
periodicals. His reputation was founded on his versatile studies of the "American
girl". His witty tales seemed to prove that there were different kinds of them.
In 1881 he published one of his most popular and accessible novels,
Washington Square. It relates the story of Catherine Sloper, a plain, socially
awkward heiress who falls in love with the handsome and charming Morris
Townsend, a fortune-hunter. Her father, Doctor Sloper, tries to prevent the
marriage by threatening to disinherit her. The novel is a battle of wills between
father and daughter that takes place in the exquisite drawing-rooms of New York
society in the 1850's.
James ended this first phase of his literary career with his masterpiece The
Portrait of a Lady (1882). This is the story of a young American lady in England
who becomes rich through inheritance and marries someone who is only after her
money. James offers an appraisal of the American character and embodies the
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American national myth, that is, an ideal of freedom and equality hedged with
historical blindness and pride.
4.2.2. SECOND PHASE OF JAMES' LITERARY CAREER
James turned to new topics during his second phase. In the 1880's he wrote two
naturalistic novels dealing with social reformers: The Bostonians (1886) and The
Princess Casamassima (1886). In the former, a novel of Boston life, James
analysed the struggle between conservative masculinity embodied in a
Southerner living in the North and an embittered man-hating suffragette. In short,
it is a satirical study of the movement for female emancipation in New England. It
is the most rounded American social novel of its time in its study of cranks,
faddists and "do-gooders". In the latter, a novel set in London in the 1880s, he
portrays a range of characters from all social classes. The protagonist, Hyacinth
Robinson, an orphan who saw his mother only once, when she was dying in
prison, whilst learning the trade of a book-binder, meets a proletarian revolutionary
and becomes part of his secret society. He meets Princess Casamassima, now
separated from her Italian husband. She finds the revolutionary movement an
outlet for her energies. Later, when the protagonist realises that he no longer
supports the revolutionary society, he is summoned to carry out the assassination
of a duke. Trapped and in despair he kills himself. These stories of revolutionaries,
reformers and radicals, so very different from his typical "American-European"
characters, were not fully appreciated in his time. James decided to regain his
popularity and finances by turning dramatist.
It was then when James began to toy with writing drama. He wrote seven
plays between 1890 and 1895 but he was so unsuccessful that the audience even
booed at the end of a performance of one of his own plays (Guy Domville, 1895).
He then sought a complete change and began to write quite unique stories such
as The Turn of the Screw (1898), a ghost story in which he teases the reader by
withholding information, making available to him/her only what the characters see.
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He now wrote shorter works in which he experimented with three dominant
subjects: misunderstood or troubled writers and artists, ghosts and apparitions,
and doomed or threatened children and adolescents.
4.2.3. FINAL PHASE OF JAMES' LITERARY CAREER
This has been called his major phase due to three grandiose novels that he
wrote at the beginning of the century. In these novels he tried to remove himself
from being an omniscient and controlling narrator and did his best to become
invisible from the reader's awareness. The more the author withdrew, the more
the reader was forced to join in the creative process. These novels are
"philosophical" studies not only of Western society's modes of survival; they
embody a type of social ethics which suggests that man in the West must cultivate
the moulds and traditions -however defective they may be- that have shaped him
out of chaos, and cherish the artefacts and forms by which he lives. His syntax,
The Wings of the Dove has the following plot: Kate Croy, the daughter of a
social adventurer, is secretly engaged to a journalist called Merton Densher.
During Merton's stay in America Kate becomes a good friend of Milly Theale, a
millionaire. Milly confides to Kate that she will die soon from a mysterious death.
Merton returns from America and Kate encourages him to marry Milly with the
purpose of later marrying Merton as a rich widower. Lord Mark, a fortune-hunter
reveals Kate's secret purpose to Milly. Milly dies and soon after Merton receives a
letter in which he is informed that he has been made rich and that he can now
marry Kate. Merton offers to marry Kate on the condition that she has to refuse his
newly-acquired wealth. Kate declines and the novel closes as they separate for
ever.
The Ambassadors was James's most perfect novel according to him.
Lembert Strether, an American widower, is sent to Paris by Mrs Newsome, a
wealthy widow, to bring her son Chad back home to take over the family business.
If he succeeds in his enterprise, he will be able to marry Mrs Newson. On the way
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to Paris Lembert meets an American expatriate, Maria Gostrey, who introduces
him to sophisticated life in Europe. In Paris Lembert finds that Chad is not willing
to go back to America, no doubt influenced by Madame de Vionnet, a refined
French lady. Lembert feels gradually more and more reluctant to go back himself.
Other "ambassadors" are sent by Mrs Newsome to recover her son Chad.
Lembert now supports Chad's decision to remain in France. He has also
discovered that Chad is intimately involved with Madame de Vionnet. After some
time of reflection, Lembert returns to America.
James remained in London until the late 1890s, when he moved to Lamb
House in Rye (Sussex). His Englishness was so strong that he became a
naturalized citizen in 1915, just after the outbreak of the First World War. Henry
James was later awarded the Order of Merit and died in 1916.
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5. “THE LOST GENERATION”
5.1. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF “THE LOST GENERATION”
The experimental and versatile American writer and feminist Gertrude Stein
(1874-1946) said once to Ernest Hemingway, "You are all a lost generation". She
was referring to a group of American writers who had begun to write in the 1920's.
Hemingway used Stein's remark as an epigraph in The Sun Also Rises (1926), a
novel that depicts the disillusions of the young expatriates living a dissipated life of
alcohol and promiscuity in post-war Paris. The "Lost Generation" included those
young American expatriates in France or Spain born around 1900 who started
their literary careers in the aftermath of World War I, namely Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart
Crane, etc. The term soon caught on and became an appropriate one for this
group of writers. They all had the following circumstances in common:
- Their inherited values were no longer valid in the post-war and therefore
they tried hard to distance themselves from them. Although each one of
them discovered and set new ones, they usually failed to adhere to them.
For example, Hemingway used courage as a code of conduct both as a
man and as a writer, but he ended up committing suicide because he could
not fully comply with it; Fitzgerald tried to make his life into a permanent
party, and ended up an alcoholic; Dos Passos employed experimental
techniques to portray the ever changing trends of modern urban life in the
period from a Socialist point of view, but resulted in disillusion in the labour
movement and an alignment with conservatism.
- They felt unattached to any region or tradition, yet none of them gave up
their American citizenship. Nevertheless, in their early books they tried to
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recapture their long lost childhood and home in an overtly nostalgic
manner.
- They left America to live in exile, for they believed their country to be too
provincial, too materialistic and completely devoid of a cultural and literary
tradition. They criticised President Harding's policy of "back to normalcy"
after the war.
- They all made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the 1920's.
In the 1930's the "Lost Generation" writers followed individual directions,
therefore losing the distinctive stamp of the post-war period. The last
novels considered to belong to the era were Fitzgerald's Tender is the
Night (1934) and Dos Passos' The Big Money (1936), the last part of his
famous "U.S.A." trilogy (1930-36).
5.2. FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September, 24, 1896, in St Paul,
Minnesota. Although his background was precariously middle class, Fitzgerald
was sent to a private school for the rich and to Princeton University in 1913, but he
left without a degree in 1917 to join the army. While posted in Alabama he met
and fell in love with Zelda Sayre, an aspiring writer too. After leaving the army he
worked for an advertising agency in New York and managed to sell his first short
story, "Babes in the Wood" to The Smart Set.
After that he went back to writing his first novel, the one which he had
begun while in the army, This Side of Paradise (1920), originally titled "The
Romantic Egotist". This novel made him rich and famous. He could now marry his
fiancée. This Side of Paradise depicts the disillusionment and moral degradation
of post-World War I in America with many autobiographical elements: like
Fitzgerald himself, the protagonist, Amory Blaine, goes to Princeton, becomes a
member of a literary circle, joins the army, is sent to France, works in an
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advertising agency, has several love affairs, and at the age of 24, also Fitzgerald's
age then, admits to having been too selfish (a romantic egotist) and decides to
give a major turn to his life in search of happiness.
Fitzgerald became the social critic and glamorous chronicler of the flaming
youth of the jazz age (the 1920's) after the publication of two volumes of short
stories, Flappers and Philosophers (1920) and Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). The
latter includes his famous "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz". He was fascinated by
the aristocracy and by rich people and by the magic properties of wealth and the
immunities it could purchase. His second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned
(1922), was not so successful. It is about a young married man, Anthony Patch,
and his wife Gloria, who dilapidate the fortune that Patch's father has reluctantly
bequeathed them. They end up becoming alcoholics in an obvious physical and
spiritual decline.
Fitzgerald and his wife joined the group of American expatriates living in
France in 1924, as it was cheaper to lead their idle lifestyle in Europe than in
America. There he became good friends with Hemingway and Stein. It was then
when he wrote his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925), and some of his finest
short stories, collected in All the Sad Young Men (1926).
The Great Gatsby shows youth, idleness and richness at variance. The
narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to East Egg to spend the summer with his cousin
Daisy, married to Tom Buchanan. Jay Gatsby, a rich young man of a dubious
past, gives lavish parties in his massive mansion with the hope of attracting funloving Daisy to them. Gatsby had had a romance with her years before, but she
had married the rich and ostentatious Tom Buchanan as Gatsby was then poor.
Gatsby had made a fortune only to be able to have access to Daisy and be able to
deserve her. Gatsby does his best to become friends with Nick, Daisy's cousin,
and asks Nick to help him organise a meeting with her. Daisy and Gatsby renew
their love for each other. Tom Buchanan has a mistress, the ambitious and
frustrated Myrtle Wilson, who is married to a poor wretched mechanic. Myrtle is
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accidentally killed by Daisy when she is driving Gatsby's car. Mildred's husband
shoots Gatsby while he is swimming in his pool, not realising that the Buchanans,
and not Gatsby, are the ones to blame for his misfortunes. Nick Carraway, so
critical towards Gatsby at the beginning, admits his superior quality at the end. In
spite of Gatsby's popular parties, no one but Nick Carraway attend his funeral.
During the 1930's the Fitzgeralds constantly travelled from Europe to
America and back. Zelda also constantly suffered from mental illness and spent
her remaining years in a sanatorium (until she died, in 1948). Fitzgerald struggled
to write his last novel, Tender is the Night (1934), after many false starts and
corrections. It is not devoid of auto-biographical elements. Dick Diver, a young
American psychiatrist in Zurich, becomes interested in the case of a schizophrenic
woman, Nicole Warren, and marries her. But their doctor-patient relationship
continues into their marriage and stops him from loving her and from pursuing his
intellectual career. With their two children they lead a life of leisure in the French
Riviera. Diver then becomes infatuated with a young American actress and Nicole
falls for a French mercenary. They divorce. By now Diver, who drinks heavily, has
his medical career on the verge of ruin. His failure reaches its climax when he
returns to America to a small-town medical practice.
Fitzgerald's fourth volume of short stories, Taps at Reveille, was published
in 1935. In 1937 he dedicated his writing skills to film scripts for Metro-GoldwynMayer in Hollywood without much success. In fact, he was fired due to his
alcoholism. He started a relationship with the columnist Sheilah Graham. He also
wrote some confessional essays about his broken health and literary decadence,
some of which were first published in Esquire magazine ("The Crack-Up", "Pasting
It Together" and "Handle with Care") and then posthumously collected together
with some other letters and personal notes in The Crack-Up (1945). Although
alcoholism had already gripped him completely in 1939, he began another novel,
The Last Tycoon, and wrote some more short stories to be collected and
published such as The Pat Hobby Stories as late as 1962. Fitzgerald died from a
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heart attack on 21 December 1940 in Hollywood, leaving The Last Tycoon
unfinished. However, though unfinished, it made its way to publication in 1941.
5.3. JOHN STEINBECK
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. He attended
Stanford University but did not take a degree. Before he achieved literary
success he spent considerable time working as a labourer but also as a druggist,
caretaker, fruit-picker and surveyor. His first hand observation and experience
make his working men characters all the more authentic and real. His first novel,
Cup of Gold (1929), is about Morgan the pirate. Steinbeck achieved popularity
with Tortilla Flat (1935), a story about Mexican-American "paisanos" in Monterey
in a mood of gentle humour. His most famous novels are Of Mice and Men (1937)
and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Steinbeck's works are faithful mirrors of the
Depression decade (1929-39) in his native California.
Of Mice and Men appeared in three versions: as a novel, as a play and as
a film. The play won a drama award. It is about two migrant labourers who yearn
for some sort of home to settle down in. Its theme is similar to that of his later
novels: the essential worth of a man close to the soil contrasted with the
commercial dehumanization that confronts him.
The peak of his career came with his best known novel, The Grapes of
Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. It summed up the bitterness of the
Depression days and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of the migratory
farm workers. It is about an Oklahoma family, the Joads, who seek a new life in
California, hoping to take advantage of what they imagine to be a land of plenty.
The grandparents die on the way. Then they have to bear the hard life of fruit
pickers. During a strike a minister and a good friend of the family, Jim Casy, dies
and Tom Joad kills the aggressor. The family flee and try to hide Tom, but are
exhausted by struggle and starvation. Tom has to leave them and the rest of the
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family struggles on together, although we are not told how. At the controversial
end of the novel the eldest daughter Rose of Sharon, who has just given birth to a
stillborn baby, nurses an anonymous starving stranger with her own milk from her
breast. The novel was made into a notable film in 1940.
Out of Steinbeck's indignation at injustice and his admiration for the poor
came other well-known works such as The Pearl (1947) and East of Eden (1952).
The Pearl depicts the war existing between Mexican natives and white men. The
fisherman Kino and his wife Juana desperately need to find a pearl to pay for a
doctor to see to their son, Coyotito, who has been stung by a scorpion. Kino finds
an extraordinary black pearl which would surely pay for the medical expenses and
guarantee their son's schooling for the future. But the pearl only brings them
enemies and problems. Everyone tries to cheat them when they try to sell it or to
steal it from them. In the end they decide to throw it back into the sea. Steinbeck
wrote the script himself for the film version of the novel.
Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. At the time
of the award his critical reputation was high in Western Europe but had declined in
the US partly because the quality of his work deteriorated after World War II. He
died in 1968.
5.4. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
American novelist and short story writer Ernest Miller Hemingway was born
into a middle-class family of a doctor and a music teacher in Illinois on 21 July
1899, the second of six children. The Hemingways spent much of Ernest’s early
life in Oak Park, in the Great Lakes region, where he became interested in sports,
fishing and hunting.
After graduating from high school, in 1917, he worked as a cub reporter for
The Kansas City Star and then volunteered for service in WWI, but was turned
down due to his poor eyesight. He volunteered instead to be an ambulance driver
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for the American Red Cross and was eventually assigned to the Italian war front in
April 1918. At first he took the experience as some kind of game or adventure. On
8 July he was wounded at Fossalta di Piave by an Austrian projectile but
managed to drag a wounded soldier through machinegun fire back to the
command post, and then collapsed. He was twice decorated for his services by
the Italian government. In a Milan hospital, being 19 years old, he fell in love with
a 26-year-old American nurse, Agnes von Kurowksy, and proposed marriage to
her, but she refused. He returned to America in 1919 and received a hero's
welcome at his birthplace.
Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives (1921),
and worked as a reporter for the Toronto Star on the Greco-Turkish war in 1922.
The Hemingways lived in Paris partly off his income as a journalist and partly off
her inheritance. His first son was born in 1923. While in Paris he was greatly
influenced by a number of expatriate American writers then living there: Ezra
Pound, Ford Madox Ford, and above all, Gertrude Stein.
Hemingway’s first two published works were mainly collections of short
stories: Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923) and In Our Time (1925), both
published in Paris. These works, together with Men Without Women (1927) and
Winner Take Nothing (1933), are proof of Hemingway's great craft and gift for
short story writing. His next novel, The Torrents of Spring (1926), was the first of
his works to enjoy some success. It satirised Sherwood Anderson's style.
However, the first novel to make him famous was The Sun Also Rises
(1926), titled Fiesta in England, based on his stay in Pamplona in 1925 with some
friends. It is a story about rootless expatriate Americans and Britons in Europe
after WWI in search of exotic sensations and a pleasure-seeking way of life to
replace the stable society destroyed by the war. Paris is depicted as a moral
wasteland of drunkenness and promiscuity. Next they travel to Pamplona, where
they go through a purification process by means of the bullfight. The narrator-hero,
Jake Barnes, an American journalist made impotent by a war wound, falls in love
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with the promiscuous Brett Ashley, who returns his love but becomes engaged to
Mike, her bankrupt Scottish fiancé, as she knows that their love can never be
consummated. The circle of friends (Jake, Brett, Mike, Bill, Cohn) travels to
Pamplona in Spain and are all enthralled by the bullfighting and bullfighter alike.
The narrator is angered when Brett runs off with the matador Pedro Romero,
whom she eventually leaves too, but the novel ends on a sustained note of
bitterness. Cohn is left aside from the circle as he does not share the code of
behaviour of the group. To Hemingway, manliness (that is, enjoyment of food,
wine, sex, trout-fishing, skiing, shooting and so on) and dignity in failure is more
important than actual victory, and Cohn lacks it. The novel was made into a
successful film with Ava Gardner and Tyrone Power as protagonists.
Hemingway divorced Hadley and married a Roman Catholic, Pauline
Pfeiffer, his second wife. Hemingway declared that he himself had been baptised
by an Italian priest while he was wounded. Hemingway remained a Catholic all his
life.
Then he wrote A Farewell to Arms (1929) half in Paris and half in America,
where they returned for his wife to have their child. Both wife and baby nearly died
at birth: the experience is included in the novel. Before revising the manuscript for
publication Hemingway found out that his father, depressed due to illness, had
committed suicide. This had a grave effect on the writer: he would also commit
suicide years later. Hemingway got the title of the novel from the title of a poem by
16th century George Peele. The novel was initially published as a serial in
Scribner's Magazine in 1929. It is about Frederic Henry, a young American
lieutenant who volunteers in the Italian ambulance corps in the First World War.
Up near the front he meets and falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine
Barkley, after being wounded in the knee by a shell while eating macaroni and
taken to hospital. By taking part in a general retreat in Caporetto, he comes near
to being shot by the Italian "battle police" accused of desertion. He then decides to
desert. Frederic and Catherine finally escape to Switzerland, but the nurse dies
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from a haemorrhage at childbirth. The baby survives and the novel finishes with
the protagonist's bitter description of the feeling of unhappiness and isolation that
the child has brought about. Hemingway despised the happy ending given to the
Hollywood production of the film, starring Gary Cooper as Frederick and Helen
Hayes as Catherine. In the novel Catherine dies, but not in the film.
During the following years Hemingway lived in Florida and made frequent
trips to Europe and Africa. He was particularly interested in Spain and in the art of
bullfighting, about which he wrote Death in the Afternoon (1932). Here is
described and explained the technical and the emotional appeal of the bull-fight.
There are chapters on individual bullfighters, the techniques of the "corrida" and
pages about the bulls themselves. Woven into the book there are several short
stories and a chapter on the art of writing fiction.
Hemingway also published a volume of stories under the title of Winner
Take Nothing (1933), which again shows his pessimistic view of life. From his
experiences in Africa he wrote The Green Hills of Africa, about his big-game
experiences there, a hobby he had taken up as a young boy in his native Illinois.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out Hemingway went to Spain as a war
correspondent, taking sides for the Republican army. He even wrote a play, the
pro-Republican The Fifth Column (1938), about life in sieged Madrid. But as a
correspondent he did not succeed. His war reports were far too novelesque.
Hemingway did not hide having added a bit of fiction to them. At that time
Hemingway divorced his second wife and married his third, the journalist Martha
Gelhorn.
From his experiences in the war came his successful novel For Whom the
Bell Tolls (1940). The title of the book is taken from a quotation by John Donne
meaning that any loss of freedom anywhere means a reduction of it everywhere.
High in the pine forests of the Spanish mountains, a guerrilla band operating
behind the lines of Franco's army prepares to blow up a bridge. Robert Jordan, a
young American volunteer, has been sent from the Spanish Republic to handle
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the dynamiting. He meets Maria, a young Spanish woman escaped from Franco's
territory, and falls in love with her. Hemingway himself chose Ingrid Bergman and
Gary Cooper as protagonists for Sam Wood's film version of 1943.
At the end of WWII, 1945, Hemingway became a war correspondent again.
He went to Cuba and he married his fourth wife, Mary Welch. His following works
did not contain his usual quality: The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936), To Have and
Have Not (1937) and Across the River and into the Trees (1950). He did not really
write anything up to standard again until 1952, with The Old Man and the Sea,
one of his most acclaimed works, for which he was given the Pulitzer Prize. The
Old Man and the Sea is about greatness in spite of failure: an old Cuban called
Santiago manages to catch a massive sword-fish with great effort. As he pulls the
fish ashore a school of sharks devour it. In spite of his failure, he transpires
dignity.
Two years later, in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
His poor health in the 1950's, the physical consequences of his two plane
accidents in Africa and the decline in his literary career led to mental depression.
In June 1961 he committed suicide. A slim posthumous volume appeared in 1964,
A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his days in Paris in the 1920's. The reason why he
killed himself may have been linked to the fact that he always believed himself to
be a man of action, a man who, many say, was unbearable due to his constant
boasting of his masculinity and courage. He thought himself to be the best at
everything: he thought he was the best writer of the time, the best hunter, the best
fighter, the best drinker, the best lover (indeed, he even once boasted having slept
with over 1000 women, including Mata Hari). Yet, towards his sixties he found he
could not keep pace with his life and art any more. Despite the Nobel Prize, his
later novels, with the exception of The Old Man and the Sea, were not really up to
scratch and he was aware of this. Not only that; his ways with women were also
declining. He finally took his own father's way out.
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5.5. WILLIAM FAULKNER'S FICTION
5.5.1. FAULKNER'S LIFE
William Falkner was the oldest of four brothers born to Murry C. and Maud
Butler Falkner on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, northern Mississippi. His
surname was originally Falkner, but he had it changed to "Faulkner" after a
spelling mistake of an editor. Five years later the Falkners moved to Oxford,
where they ran a farm and a stable and where the writer and his family spent most
of their lives.
Young Faulkner always felt very proud of his Southern origin, his greatgrandfather Colonel William C. Falkner, of the Confederate army, a Civil War hero
and a novelist himself, author of the best selling romantic novel The White Rose of
Memphis, and his black servant, Caroline Barr ("Mammy Callie"), from who he
learnt many stories that dated back to the days of slavery, many of which he used
in his novels. His vivid imagination would did the rest.
Faulkner was never a good student and soon dropped out from high
school. He fell in love with Estelle Oldham, but could not afford to marry her,
therefore he started to work as a bank clerk. It was then when he became fond of
reading English classical and modern literature (Dickens, Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Joyce,
etc) and the works of the French Symbolists (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé)
thanks to the influence of Phillip Stone, a well-read neighbour who worked in his
family's office. When his beloved Estelle married somebody else Faulkner joined
the Royal Air Force Canada in 1918, just before the Great War ended, so he did
not have time to take part in any military action. After the war he enrolled at the
University of Mississippi, apparently more interested in joining a fraternity in order
to publish his poems in their literary magazine than in studying a degree. He left
his university studies without finishing them and worked in odd jobs, the post of
postmaster of the university station being his most permanent one.
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5.5.2. FAULKNER'S APPRENTICE WORKS
Phillip Stone himself paid part of the expenses for the publication of
Faulkner's first book, a book of pastoral poems called The Marble Faun (1924). In
1925 Faulkner joined a literary circle in New Orleans, though he kept a low profile
in it. He then wrote his first novel, Soldier's Pay (1926). It is the story of a
physically and psychologically wounded aviator who returns to his native Georgia
to change the lives of his relatives and friends. It was highly appraised by
Sherwood Anderson, who recommended it to his publisher. In the meantime
Faulkner sailed to Italy and travelled to Paris on foot, until he received news from
the publisher accepting to publish it. He then went back to America. Faulkner went
on earning his living by odd jobs (house painter, carpenter, golfer, sailor and even
smuggler). This did not prevent him from writing.
Faulkner was an isolated man from a social and literary point of view. He
was producing lots of poems and above all short stories, which were all being
passed on to his friend Stone to read. They would then be sent for publication in
literary magazines, but with little success. He managed to publish his second
novel, Mosquitoes (1927), a satirical picture of the New Orleans literary circle, but
had his third novel, Flags in the Dust, rejected. He changed its title to Sartoris,
made some modifications to its manuscript and was finally accepted by another
publisher (1929). It was the first novel to be set in the fictional Mississippi county
of Yoknapatawpha.
5.5.3. FAULKNER'S MATURE WORKS
Faulkner wrote and published The Sound and the Fury in 1929. It
describes the decay of an aristocratic family, the Compson, and indirectly, the fall
of social order from four different points of view. The Compson family is introduced
through the mind of the idiot Benjy. Its innovative narrative technique (the use of
multiple points of view) and the depth of the psychology of the characters make it
the first of his masterpieces. Its experimental nature and its non-chronological
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structure were the possible reasons for its limited popular success. This is the
second novel to fully deal with the imaginary world that he created in his works,
the Yoknapatawpha county (with its fictional county seat at Jefferson), set in the
state of Mississippi. The social atmosphere of the South depicted in Faulkner's
later novels and first presented in Sartoris and The Sound and the Fury is that of
an aristocratic society whose traditional values and economic wealth relies on the
slaves and plantation tradition. In Faulkner's novels Southern society is doomed to
self-destruction.
Faulkner married Estelle Oldham after the failure of her first marriage in
1929. He then started to write Sanctuary, which was at first rejected by the
publisher on the grounds that it would take them all to jail if it were published.
Indeed, Faulkner himself believed that it was the most horrible tale he could
imagine. In the meantime, and while working as a fireman, he wrote As I Lay
Dying (1930). It is about a poor white family, the Bundrens, and their journey
through fire and flood to bury their mother in Jefferson, in the county of
Yoknapatawpha. The novel is composed of 59 monologues by a variety of
characters who gradually reveal their complex ties.
The good reviews that Faulkner was getting for The Sound and the Fury
brought attention to his short stories: his famous "A Rose for Emily" (1930) was
the first of many to be published in a national magazine. From then on his literary
production became impressive. Between 1930 and 1942 he published two
collections of short stories, his second and last book of poems (A Green Bough,
1933), nine novels and dozens of film scripts for Hollywood, the most famous of
which are Hemingway's version of To Have and Have Not (1945) and Chandler's
The Big Sleep (1946).
In 1931 Faulkner finally managed to publish Sanctuary, his most popular
success, though some of its original horror had been deleted. His next novels
were Light in August (1932); Pylon (1935); Absalom, Absalom! (1936); The
Unvanquished (1938); The Wild Palms (1939); The Hamlet (1940), Go Down,
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Moses (1942), and the short story "The Bear". All these novels have in common
three novelties as far as American fiction is concerned: the events depicted in the
narrations are determined by a sense of place, a sense of history and a sense of
community. In fact, Faulkner serves as the spokesman of the voice of the
community. However, in each novel he adopts a completely different approach or
method to solve the problem with which he himself has begun the novel. These
methods were usually a consequence of the influence that the Modernists or the
Symbolists had on him. This is for example the case of the interior monologue or
stream of conscience, which he borrowed from Joyce. But Faulkner developed it
in his own personal way. These interior monologues were for example often those
of idiots or insane characters.
By 1945 Faulkner had virtually been forgotten in America (though not in
France, thanks to the superb quality of the translations of his works). In order to
make a living Faulkner felt forced to accept writing film scripts in Hollywood.
The most interesting of his mature fictional production is Absalom, Absalom!,
which concerns the frustrated attempts of Thomas Sutpen to found a Southern
dynasty in 19th century Mississippi. The story is told by Quentin Compson, a
character taken from The Sound and the Fury. Compson is obsessed by the
South's failure in the interracial relationships of its inhabitants, a fact that gives rise
to the misfortunes of the Sutpen family.
5.5.4. FAULKNER'S LATE WRITING
Faulkner's revival came in 1946 with the publication of The Portable
Faulkner, which presented the Yoknapatawpha saga as a whole. Publishers and
the public took a deeper interest in his work. In 1948 he published a relatively
successful novel, Intruder in the Dark, about a white boy who saves a proud
Negro, Lucas Beauchamp, from being lynched.
In 1949 Faulkner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. The National Book Award was given to him for Collected Stories (1950).
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Soon after, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1949). He travelled
extensively abroad representing his country in spite of his shyness and showed
open sympathy for the cause of the blacks, a fact that provoked some scandal in a
segregational country like the USA. This did not prevent Faulkner from declaring
his pride in the South and its lifestyle.
In 1951 Faulkner published his only drama, a play of three acts called
Requiem for a Nun, staged in some European venues with little success. Each act
is accompanied by a narrative prologue that gives the play the effect of a novel.
In 1954 he published his longest novel, A Fable. It is a pessimistic and ambiguous
book about the reincarnation of Christ in a French corporal in the First World War.
It won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1955. In his last fiction, The Town (1957) and The
Mansion (1959), Faulkner continues with the Yoknapatawpha story, but in a kinder
and less demoniac tone. The Reivers (1962), his very last novel, is a comical
recreation of youth published only one month before his death in an Oxford
hospital on July, 6, 1962.
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6. DIDACTIC UNIT: PEARL S. BUCK 1
1. PRE-ACTIVITY: ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ORALLY.
a) What do you know about David Bowie?
b) What does he look like?
c) Where is he from?
d) Why do think he is relevant in a unit on China?
2) PRE-ACTIVITY: BRAIN-STORMING: THE VIDEO CLIP OF THE SONG
“CHINA GIRL” IS FULL OF CLICHÉS ON CHINA. CAN YOU ANTICIPATE
WHICH ONES? TELL YOUR TEACHER AND YOUR CLASSMATES. WRITE
YOUR OPINIONS ON THE BLACKBOARD AND SEE WHERE YOU
COINCIDE WITH THE VIDEO CLIP.
3) LISTEN TO THE SONG, SPOT THE MISTAKES AND CHANGE THEM FOR
THE RIGHT WORD(S).
China Girl
David Bowie
-
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
1
Our special thanks to Ms Rui Ma for her kindness to allow us to use some activities from her
research, for having shared some interesting ideas with us and for her availability to answer any
doubts on China and her culture.
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I could escape this feeling, with my China Girl
I feel a wreck without my little China Girl
I hear her heart beating, loud as thunder
Saw the waves (STARS) crashing
I'm OK with my little China Girl (I`M A MESS WITHOUT)
Wake up in the morning. Where's my, little China Girl?
I hear our heart's beating, loud as thunder
I saw the stars crashing down
I'm feelin' tragic like I'm Marilyn Monroe (MARLON BRANDO)
When I look at my China Girl
I could pretend that nothing really meant too much
When I look at my China Girl
I stumble into town just like a sacred mouse (COW)
Visions of swastikas in my head
Plans for everyone
It's in the pupils of my eyes (WHITE)
My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you videos (TELEVISION)
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the planet (EARTH)
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your face (MOUTH)
She says... shh
She says... shh
She says
She says
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And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth
She says... shh
She says
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
[Lyrics from http://www.metrolyrics.com/china-girl-lyrics-david-bowie.html]. Consulted on 29
June, 2010.]
4. READ THE LYRICS OF THE SONG AND LOOK FOR THE FOLLOWING
TERMS IN THE TEXT:
a) A synonym of SPOIL (verb): ruin
b) An antonym of CLOSE (verb): shut
c) A synonym of MASTER (verb): rule
d) An antonym of LOW (adjective): loud
5. WATCH THE VIDEO CLIP OF DAVID BOWIE’S “CHINA GIRL” TWICE.
IDENTIFY THE CHINESE CLICHÉS THAT YOU SEE AND TELL THE CLASS
ABOUT YOUR FINDINGS.
-
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-
6. POST-ACTIVITY: WHICH OF THE CLICHÉS MENTIONED BY THE
STUDENTS IN ACTIVITY 4 COINCIDE WITH THE CLICHÉS THAT APPEAR
IN THE VIDEO CLIP?
-
7. PRE-ACTIVITY: BEFORE WATCHING THE FILM “THE LAST EMPEROR”
IN ENGLISH, WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES, ANSWER THE FOLLOWING
QUESTIONS ORALLY.
a) What kind of film do you expect to watch? A comedy, a tragedy, an
action film, a thriller, a biography, a historical film?
b) What do you know about the life of an emperor?
c) Brainstorming activity: What do you know about China’s dynasties?
Tell your teacher to write your ideas on the blackboard as you tell
him/her and comment on them.
d) What do you know about Mao Zedong’s revolution?
8. DURING ACTIVITY: WATCH THE FILM AT HOME (YOUR TEACHER WILL
PROVIDE YOU WITH A CD COPY) OR WATCH SOME EXCERPTS CHOSEN
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BY THE TEACHER. DO NOT FORGET TO TAKE NOTES ON ASPECTS
THAT ATTRACT YOUR ATTENTION.
9.
POST-ACTIVITY:
AFTER WATCHING
THE
FILM,
ANSWER
THE
FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ORALLY.
a) Where does the story take place?
b) What was the emperor’s name?
c) How old was the last Chinese emperor when he inherited the throne?
d) How many wives did the emperor have?
e) What effect did Mao Zedong’s revolution have on the emperor’s life?
f) What was the ex-emperor’s last job?
g) Food for thought: The Chinese say that if you wish to be happy for one
day, you should get drunk; if you wish to be happy for one year, you
should get married, and if you wish to be happy all your life you should
be a gardener. Do you think the protagonist was happy at the end of the
film? Reason your answer.
10. PRE-ACTIVITY: YOU MAY NEED TO LEARN NEW WORDS IN ORDER
TO WRITE A SUMMARY OF THE FILM. MAKE A LIST OF TERMS AND
EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU THINK YOU MAY NEED AND LOOK THEM UP IN
A DICTIONARY OR ANY OTHER REFERENCE BOOK (INCLUDING
DICTIONARIES IN THE INTERNET).
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11. WRITE A SUMMARY OF THE FILM IN 150 WORDS APPROXIMATELY.
HAND IT TO YOUR TEACHER FOR HIM/HER TO MARK IT. IF YOU CAN,
STICK TO THE FOLLOWING GUIDELINES:
- Include the title and the production year of the film.
- Do not retell the complete plot.
- Make your summary as appealing to the reader as possible.
- Write the summary thinking of your likely readers (that is, people who have not seen the film).
- Do not forget to add your opinion of it at the end.
12. POST-ACTIVITY: COMPARE YOUR CORRECTED SUMMARY WITH
THAT OF A CLASSMATE’S. HAVE YOU WRITTEN A SUMMARY WITH THE
SAME MAIN IDEAS? HAVE YOU MADE SIMILAR MISTAKES? STUDY BOTH
SUMMARIES AND DEBATE ON THEM.
13. PRE-ACTIVITY: ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ORALLY.
a) Do you know the name of a Nobel Prize for Literature?
b) Do you know the name of an English-speaking Nobel Prize for Literature?
c) Do you know the name of a woman Nobel Prize for Literature?
d) Do you know the name of an English-speaking woman Nobel Prize for
Literature?
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14. READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT ON PEARL S. BUCK AND ANSWER THE
FOLLOWING WRITTEN COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS (intensive reading).
PEARL S. BUCK
(Also known by her Chinese name “Sai Zhenzhu”)
(Chinese: 賽珍珠; pinyin: Sài Zhēnzhū)
Beloved by millions of readers,
The Good Earth has been one of the
most popular novels of this century
since its publication in 1931. The book
won the Pulitzer Prize and the William
Dean Howells medal for fiction. For
over 30 years, Pearl Buck's novel
played
a
major
role
in
shaping
Western attitudes towards China.
Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia,
in 1892 to an ill-matched pair of
Southern Presbyterian missionaries,
Pearl Sydenstricker was taken to
China at the age of three months and lived there for forty years. A rarity among
white American writers, she spent her childhood as a minority person, an
experience that had much to do with her lifelong passion for interracial
understanding.
Raised in Chinkiang, a small port city in Kiangsu province (China), by the
time she was four she spoke and wrote Chinese as well as English. Upon her
mother's insistence, Pearl was educated at Randolph-Macon Women's College
in Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1917 she married Lossing Buck, a Cornell Graduate
working in China, and spent the next several years in Nanhsuchou, a barren
rural village, home to several thousand impoverished farmers. She became
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intimately familiar with the daily lives of China's poorest inhabitants, and a
decade later the village would provide the primary setting for her first stories of
China, including The Good Earth. She would publish over seventy books during
her long, productive career, including many bestsellers, most of them about
China, her culture and her people, but The Good Earth would prove to be her
most enduring.
In 1935, Pearl divorced Lossing Buck in order to marry her publisher and
editor, Richard Walsh. They moved to Green Hills Farm in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. In 1938 she became the first American woman to win the Nobel
Prize for literature; it would be fifty-five years before another, Toni Morrison,
would win. In essays, lectures, and novels, she was an active supporter of the
Chinese in their war against the Japanese invasion. She and Walsh raised
millions of dollars that were sent to China for medical relief. Along with her
tireless efforts on behalf of the Chinese, Pearl was also active in the campaigns
for African-American civil rights, the equal rights amendment, and a nuclear test
ban. After World War II, she found herself under attack by Senator Joseph
McCarthy and other right-wing politicians for her liberal views, and became a
target of F.B.I. surveillance which began in 1938 and continued to the end of
her life.
In 1949, Pearl founded “Welcome House” in order to find homes for
thousands of mixed-race children who had been fathered by American
Servicemen in Asia. In the last twenty years of her life, she established the
“Pearl S. Buck Foundation” to provide foster care for Asian-American Children
who could not be adopted by American families.
Eventually she moved to the small New England town of
Danby, Vermont where she died in 1973 at the age of
eighty.
Pearl lived half her lifetime in the East, half in the
West. She began in poverty and ended her life as a
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millionaire, along the way winning the most coveted literary prize in the world.
She played a leading role in major twentieth-century struggles for human rights
and established herself as one of the most powerful women of the century. In all
of this, she left a legacy far larger than her classic novel, The Good Earth, and
her other writings. She is buried as she had instructed, at Green Hills Farm,
beneath a large ash tree. Her tombstone, which she designed, does not record
her name in English; instead the Chinese characters representing the name
Pearl Sydenstricker are inscribed.
By Peter Conn
[From http://www.michaelbutler.com/cyberbil/pearl2/pbbio.html. Consulted on 28 June 2010]
15. ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS WITH INFORMATION TAKEN
FROM THE PREVIOUS TEXT.
a) How many times did Pearl S. Buck get married?
b) Where did Pearl S. Buck base the setting of her first novels?
c) Why was she criticized by Senator McCarthy? d) What did “Welcome House”
do for mixed-race children?
16. READ THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS AND DECIDE IF THEY ARE
TRUE OF FALSE ACCORDING TO THE INFORMATION GIVEN IN THE
PREVIOUS TEXT. JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWERS.
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a) For many years The Good Earth has contributed to spreading an image of
China internationally. [TRUE. Lines 7-10: “For over 30 years, Pearl Buck’s
novel played a major role in shaping Western attitudes towards China.”]
b) Pearl S. Buck was 55 years old when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
[FALSE. Lines 55-59: “In 1938 she became the first American woman to
win the Nobel Prize for Literature; it would be fifty-five years before
another, Toni Morrison, would win.”]
c) The authoress started as a poor woman but became rich at the end of her
life. [TRUE. Lines 98-102: “She began in poverty and ended her life as a
millionaire …”]
d) On the tomb where Pearl S, Buck is buried you can read her name in English
and Chinese. [FALSE. Lines 117-122: “Her tombstone, which she designed,
does not record her name in English; instead the Chinese characters
representing her name Pearl Sydenstricker are inscribed”.]
17. TRANSLATE THE FOLLOWING TITLES OF PEARL S. BUCK’S NOVELS
INTO SPANISH. YOU CAN WRITE THE TRANSLATIONS OR TELL YOUR
CLASSMATES ORALLY. COMPARE YOUR TRANSLATIONS WITH THOSE
OF YOUR CLASSMATES. FIND OUT IF THEY HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED
INTO SPANISH AND COMPARE YOUR TITLES WITH THOSE GIVEN IN THE
PUBLISHED SPANISH VERSIONS.
East Wind:West Wind (1930)
The House of Earth (1935)
o
The Good Earth (1931)
o
Sons (1933)
o
A House Divided (1935)
The Mother (1933)
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This Proud Heart (1938)
The Patriot (1939)
Other Gods (1940)
China Sky (1941)
Dragon Seed (1942)
The Promise (1943)
China Flight (1943)
The Townsman (1945) -- as John Sedges
Portrait of a Marriage (1945)
Pavilion of Women (1946)
The Angry Wife (1947) -- as John Sedges
Peony (1948)
The Big Wave (1948)
A Long Love (1949) -- as John Sedges
Kinfolk (1950)
God's Men (1951)
The Hidden Flower (1952)
Come, My Beloved (1953)
Voices in the House (1953) -- as John Sedges
Imperial Woman (1956)
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Letter from Peking (1957)
Command the Morning (1959)
Satan Never Sleeps (1962)
Death in the Castle (1965)
The Time Is Noon (1966)
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (1967)
The New Year (1968)
The Three Daughters of Madame Liang (1969)
Mandala (1970)
The Goddess Abides (1972)
All Under Heaven (1973)
The Rainbow (1974)
18. BEFORE READING PEARL BUCK’S THE GOOD EARTH IT MIGHT BE A
GOOD IDEA TO READ THIS BRIEF PRESENTATION.
The novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932.
It became a best-seller in the US and was surely a reason for her winning the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes Songs (1932)
and A House Divided (1935).
It is about the life of a family in a Chinese village before the 1949 Revolution. The
novel helped prepare the American citizenship of that decade to see China as an ally in
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WWII against Japan. It was made into a successful film in 1937. It would certainly be a
good idea to watch the film after reading the novel.
19. NOW THAT YOU HAVE READ PEARL BUCK’S THE GOOD EARTH,
READ THE FOLLOWING PLOT SUMMARY OF THE BOOK, THERE ARE
SELECTED MISTAKES IN BOLD TYPE. CORRECT THEM BY OFFERING
THE RIGHT WORDS OR EXPRESSIONS.
The story begins on Ling Fong’s wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his
fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby
town, and Wang Lung's wife is a slave there. As the House of Hwang slowly declines
due to the consumption of cannabis and the spending and borrowing of too much
money, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife, O-Lan, slowly
earns enough to buy land from the Hwang family. Chee Tang delivers two sons and
two girls, the first becomes mentally retarded as a result of starvation during the famine.
Wang Lung feels sorry for her and calls her "Poor Fool". O-Lan kills her second baby as
soon as she is born and the little corpse is left out to be eaten by a wolf by Wang Lung.
During the famine and drought, the family must emigrate to the Southern City in search
of work. Wang Lung's evil grandfather offers to buy his possessions and land, but for
much less than their real value. The family sells everything except the land and the
house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south on foot, contemplating how the
family will survive, when he discovers that the “Wind Boat”, as the locals call the
newly-built train, takes people south for a fee.
While in the city, O-Lan and the children turn to juggling while Wang Lung pulls a
rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money and spends the time
looking at the city. They find themselves like strangers among their inhabitants of the
city who look different and speak in a fast accent. They do not go hungry any more, due
to the charitable meals of rice gruel that they receive for only one dollar, but still live in
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poverty. Wang Lung dreams about going back to his homeland. When soldiers approach
the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise because he is afraid of being
called to the army. When a food riot erupts, a mob breaks into the house of a slim and
kind poor man who offers Wang Lung all of his money in exchange for his life.
When he returns home, Wang Lung buys an elephant and farm tools, and even hires
servants to help him work in his beloved land. In time, more children are born. Using
money O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung is able to buy the
House of Hwang's land. He is eventually able to send his sons to be educated and learn
to the trade of a barber. As Wang Lung becomes richer, he buys a concubine named
Lotus. O-Lan dies just after her first son's wedding. Wang Lung and his family move
into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang Lung, now an old man, wants peace
and a quiet life, but there are always arguments among his sons and their wives. Wang
Lung's third son runs away to become a magician. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung
learns that his sons are planning to sell the land and he tries to convince them not to.
They tell him not to worry, as they will not sell the lands, but their real intention is to do
it all the same.
20. WRITE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN REMEMBER FROM THE FOLLOWING
CHARACTERS FROM THE BOOK. CHOOSE A MINUMUM OF FIVE OF
THEM.
a)
Wang Lung—
b) O-Lan—
c)
Wang Lung's father -
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d) The Poor Fool—
e) Second Baby Girl—
f) Nung En (Eldest Son)—
g) Nung Wen (Middle Son)—
h) Eldest Son's Wife—
i) Middle Son's Wife—
j) Youngest Son—
k) Youngest Daughter—
l) Wang Lung's Uncle—
m) Uncle's Wife—
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n) Uncle's Son—
o) Ching—
p) Lotus—
q) Cuckoo—
r) Pear Blossom—
21. COMPETITION: PREPARE 4 DIFFICULT QUESTIONS (AND THEIR
ANSWERS) ABOUT THE BOOK, AND ASK YOUR PARTNER THEM.
22. READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT AND ANSWER THE FOLLOWING
QUESTIONS.
Suddenly, it seemed to Wang Lung that he was a very old man. He did not want
to do anything except sit in the sun or talk to the little slave called Pear
Blossom. Pear Blossom comforted him and he felt that she was like a daughter
to him. Wang Lung was very kind to her and, because of his kindness, she was
kind to the poor fool. This pleased Wang Lung. Many times he had wondered
what would happen to the poor fool when he died. Who would look after her?
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His son’s wives did not care about her and his sons were too busy with other
things. Wang Lung had even bought a little bundle of white poison from a
medicine shop. He thought he would give her this just before he died. But, ever
since he had bought it, he had been very anxious at the thought of giving it to
her. It worried him even more than the thought of his own death. (Pearl S. Buck,
The Good Earth)
a) Why did
b) Why had Wang Lung bought a little recipient of white poison?
c) Why was Wang Lung worried about Pear Blossom?
23. WRITE QUESTIONS TO THE FOLLOWING ANSWERS:
a) _______________________________? He only wanted to sit in the
sun or talk to the little slave called Pear Blossom.
b) _______________________________? He bought a little bundle of
white poison.
c) _______________________________? It worried him even more
than his own death.
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24. WRITE AN ESSAY OF ABOUT 150 WORDS ON ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING TOPICS:
a) Any aspect of China that you find interesting.
b) Did you like Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth? Why (not)?
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Solutions to Didactic unit on Pearl S. Buck
1) Students’ free answers.
Answers:
a) He was a famous singer during the 1970s, 80s and early 90s;
b) His looks were very eccentric. His eye pupils were famous for being of two
different colours;
c) He is British;
d) He sang a very famous song in the 1980s called “China Girl”. Its video was
banned by the BBC because it showed some mild nudity, but the result was that
it increased the sales of the record.
2) Students’ free oral answers.
3) China Girl
David Bowie
-
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
I could escape this feeling, with my China Girl
I feel a wreck without my little China Girl
I hear her heart beating, loud as thunder
Saw the waves (STARS) crashing
I'm OK with my little China Girl (I`M A MESS WITHOUT)
Wake up in the morning. Where's my, little China Girl?
I hear our heart's beating, loud as thunder
I saw the stars crashing down
I'm feelin' tragic like I'm Marilyn Monroe (MARLON BRANDO)
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When I look at my China Girl
I could pretend that nothing really meant too much
When I look at my China Girl
I stumble into town just like a sacred mouse (COW)
Visions of swastikas in my head
Plans for everyone
It's in the pupils of my eyes (WHITE)
My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you videos (TELEVISION)
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the planet (EARTH)
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your face (MOUTH)
She says... shh
She says... shh
She says
She says
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth
And when I get excited
My little China Girl says
Oh baby just you shut your mouth
She says... shh
She says
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
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Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
Oh oh oh ohoo little china girl
4)
a) A synonym of SPOIL (verb): ruin
b) An antonym of CLOSE (verb): shut
c) A synonym of MASTER (verb): rule
d) An antonym of LOW (adjective): loud
5)
Possible answers: protagonists eating with chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant;
male protagonist joking with the Chinese girl about her almond eyes; Chinese
girl working at a restaurant, posing at the entrance of a restaurant; Chinese girl
holding a bowl of rice, Chinese girl dressed up in the traditional Chinese
manner, Chinese girl with long nails, Chinese girl dressed in revolutionary
clothes carrying a red flag, etc.
6)
Possible answers: protagonists eating with chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant;
male protagonist joking with the Chinese girl about her almond eyes; Chinese
girl working at a restaurant, posing at the entrance of a restaurant; Chinese girl
holding a bowl of rice, Chinese girl dressed up in the traditional Chinese
manner, Chinese girl with long nails, Chinese girl dressed in revolutionary
clothes carrying a red flag, etc.
7)
a) It is a mixture of a biography and a historical film with some tragical
elements.
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b) Student’s free answers.
c) Student’s free answers.
d) Student’s free answers.
8) Students own notes
9)
a) The story takes place in China and in occupied Manchukuo.
b) [His name was Puyi.]
c) [He was four years old.]
d) He had two official wives.
e) The emperor was dethroned, judged and converted into a normal
citizen, like everybody else.
f) He was a gardener.
g) Student’s free answers.
10)
Student’s personal list of words and expressions.
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11)
Student’s personal summary of the film.
12)
Students’ oral analyses of their work and debate on their mistakes.
13)
Students’ possible answers: a) Presumably students will say the names of the
Spanish Nobel Prize winners: José Echegaray (Literature), Santiago Ramón y
Cajal (Medicine), Juan Ramón Jiménez (Literature), Severo Ochoa (Medicine),
Vicente Aleixandre (Literature), Camilo José Cela (Literature), Mario Vargas
Llosa (Peruvian nationalized Spanish); b) Students’ free answers; c) Students’
free answers, although someone might say Marie Curie; d) Students’ free
answers. Regrettably, they are not expected to mention Pearl S. Buck.
14)
Students read the text.
15)
a) Twice.
b) She based it on the rural village of Nanhsouchou.
c) She had liberal views on political issues.
d) It provided houses for them.
16)
a) For many years The Good Earth has contributed to spreading an image of
China internationally. [TRUE. Lines 7-10: “For over 30 years, Pearl Buck’s
novel played a major role in shaping Western attitudes towards China.”]
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b) Pearl S. Buck was 55 years old when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
[FALSE. Lines 55-59: “In 1938 she became the first American woman to
win the Nobel Prize for Literature; it would be fifty-five years before
another, Toni Morrison, would win.”]
c) The authoress started as a poor woman but became rich at the end of her
life. [TRUE. Lines 98-102: “She began in poverty and ended her life as a
millionaire …”]
d) On the tomb where Pearl S, Buck is buried you can read her name in English
and Chinese. [FALSE. Lines 117-122: “Her tombstone, which she designed,
does not record her name in English; instead the Chinese characters
representing her name Pearl Sydenstricker are inscribed”.]
17)
Students’ translations.
18)
Students read.
19)
The story begins on Ling Fong’s [WANG LUNG’S] wedding day and follows the rise
and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in
the nearby town, and Wang Lung's wife is a slave there. As the House of Hwang slowly
declines due to the consumption of cannabis [OPIUM] and the spending and borrowing
of too much money, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife,
O-Lan, slowly earns enough to buy land from the Hwang family. Chee Tang [O-LAN]
delivers two sons and two girls, the first becomes mentally retarded as a result of
starvation during the famine. Wang Lung feels sorry for her and calls her "Poor Fool".
O-Lan kills her second baby as soon as she is born and the little corpse is left out to be
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eaten by a wolf [DOG] by Wang Lung. During the famine and drought, the family must
emigrate to the Southern City in search of work. Wang Lung's evil grandfather
[UNCLE] offers to buy his possessions and land, but for much less than their real value.
The family sells everything except the land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the
long journey south on foot, contemplating how the family will survive, when he
discovers that the “Wind Boat” [“FIRE WAGON”], as the locals call the newly-built
train, takes people south for a fee.
While in the city, O-Lan and the children turn to juggling [BEGGING] while Wang
Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money and
spends the time looking at the city. They find themselves like strangers among their
inhabitants of the city who look different and speak in a fast accent. They do not go
hungry any more, due to the charitable meals of rice gruel that they receive for only one
dollar [CENT], but still live in poverty. Wang Lung dreams about going back to his
homeland. When soldiers approach the city he can only work at night hauling
merchandise because he is afraid of being called to the army. When a food riot erupts, a
mob breaks into the house of a slim and kind poor man [FAT AND FEARFUL RICH
MAN] man who offers Wang Lung all of his money in exchange for his life.
When he returns home, Wang Lung buys an elephant [OX] and farm tools, and even
hires servants to help him work in his beloved land. In time, more children are born.
Using money [JEWELS] O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung
is able to buy the House of Hwang's land. He is eventually able to send his sons to be
educated and learn to the trade of a barber [MERCHANT]. As Wang Lung becomes
richer, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan dies just after her first son's wedding.
Wang Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang
Lung, now an old man, wants peace and a quiet life, but there are always arguments
among his sons and their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a
magician [SOLDIER]. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung learns that his sons are
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planning to sell the land and he tries to convince them not to. They tell him not to
worry, as they will not sell the lands, but their real intention is to do it all the same.
20)
a) Wang Lung: He was a poor, hard-working farmer, born and raised in a small
village of Anhwei. He follows morals and Chinese traditions: filial piety and
duty to family. He believes the land is the source of happiness and wealth. He
later becomes a very successful man and possesses a large plot of land which he
buys from the House of Hwang.
b) O-Lan: Wang Lung’s first wife. She used to be a slave in the house of
Hwang. She doesn’t speak much. She is not particularly clever but she is
valuable to Wang Lung. She is hardworking and is prepared for any sacrifice.
c) Wang Lung's father : He would like his grandchildren to respect and keep
him company when he is old. He gradually becomes more and more dependent
and behaves like a child.
d) The Poor Fool: First daughter and third child of O-Lan and Wang Lung. She
becomes mentally with age. Her mental illness was provoked by starvation in
her childhood. Wang Lung loves her very much.
e) Second Baby Girl: She was suffocated just after she had been born by O-Lan
because the whole family was going hungry and they could not feed her.
f) Nung En (Eldest Son): He becomes a scholar and resembles the sons of
Hwang.
g) Nung Wen (Middle Son): He becomes a merchant: practical and cunning.
He dislikes his elder brother for allowing his wife to be avaricious and eager for
riches.
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h) Eldest Son's Wife: The daughter of a grain merchant and a city woman who
hates the middle son's wife. She is brought to the house before O-Lan dies and is
accepted by her.
i) Middle Son's Wife: A happy country woman. She hates the first son's wife.
Her first child is a girl.
j) Youngest Son: Although Wang Lung had originally planned that he would be
in charge of the farm while his other brothers were educated, he became selfish
and decided to leave the house and join the army.
k) Youngest Daughter: She was the twin sister of the youngest son. She was
betrothed to a merchant's son earlier due to harassment from her cousin.
l) Wang Lung's Uncle: Lazy and cunning man who becomes a member of a
band of thieves. He also becomes addicted to opium.
m) Uncle's Wife: A friend of Lotus and also addicted to opium.
n) Uncle's Son: Wild, lazy and a troublemaker. He leaves to become a soldier.
o) Ching: He is Wang Lung's faithful friend and neighbour. He dies and is
buried near the entrance to the family graveyard. Wang Lung wishes to be
buried by his side.
p) Lotus: A former prostitute and now a fat concubine.
q) Cuckoo: Although she used to be a slave in the house of Hwang, she has
become the madam of the "tea house". She becomes a servant to Lotus. O-Lan
hates her because she used to be cruel to her in the Hwang House.
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r) Pear Blossom: A slave, but she becomes Wang Lung's lover at the end of the
novel.
21)
Student’s free questions and answers.
22)
a) Because he did not want to do anything except sit in the sun or talk to the
little slave called Pear Blossom.
b) Because he thought he would give it to Pear Blossom just before he died.
c) Because his son’s wives did not care about Pear Blossom and his sons were
too busy with other things. He was worried therefore about who would look after
her when he died.
23)
a) _Why did Wang Lung think that he was already a very old man?
b) What did he buy for when he died?
c) Why was he anxious at the thought of giving Pear Blossom the
poison?
24)
Students’ free essays.
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7. A BRIEF LITERARY PANORAMA OF THE USA FROM
1945 TO THE PRESENT DAY
7.1. INTRODUCTION TO THE PERIOD
It is plain to see that the USA has become a completely consumerist
society. This means that in all walks of life, not only literature, things are made on
the basis that they should sell well, and if they do not, they are avoided. In
literature things that have sold well are voices of protest, of man's cruelty to other
men, of female protest against their still unequal position in life, and of ethnic
protest too. If we think that the majority of the American cultured population is
female and that females are more likely to study arts, then it is easy to conclude
that the majority of readers in America are women. If we add to this the fact that
the US is made up of different ethnic communities, the "melting pot" images come
dramatically to life.
7.2. NOVEL
7.2.1. JEROME DAVID SALINGER (1919-2010)
For some years the voice of the post-war generation seemed to be that of
J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Salinger speaks for the
young urban American of middle class parentage. In his world no one is starving
or concerned with what might be called public issues. The people he most
admires are above all "sincere". His ideal people are children, the next best are
adolescents, but few of his adults emerge intact from the corruption of growing up.
The verdict is that he produces a modern version of Huckleberry Finn in The
Catcher in the Rye, and then fizzled out as a writer.
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7.2.2. SAUL BELLOW (1915-2005)
Saul Bellow is perhaps the best-known American writer nowadays. His first
and best novel, Dangling Man (1944), is the chronicle of a young man who is
waiting to be called up for military service. He has left his civilian job and month
after month goes by before the army summons him. He is in limbo, a city drifter, a
frequenter of afternoon movies, whose liberty becomes increasingly burdensome.
Bellow has a reputation as an interpreter of the struggle of urban dwellers to
define their roles and responsibilities in the modern world.
His most famous novel is Herzog (1964). It is basically the portrait of Moses
Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, moaner and charmer. Although his life
disintegrates around him -he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and
has lost all the affection of his wife to his best friend- Herzog sees himself as a
survivor. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous
people, revealing his bitter and clever perceptions of the world and the secrets of
his heart.
Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, and died in
2005. Like Norman Mailer, Bellow was Jewish, as are a high proportion of
America's best novelists, artists and critics.
7.2.3. NORMAN MAILER (1923-2007)
Mailer excels at what has been called "the new journalism", a form which
he helped to create. He takes actual events and submits them to imaginative
transformation. In this mode he registered the transformation of American
sensibility in An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967). He
is also sexually blatant in his novels, something that has become a literary trend.
7.2.4. VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1889-1977)
This Russian nationalised American novelist and a prestigious expert on
butterflies is best known for his polemic novel Lolita (1955), about the obsessive
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passion that an adult named Humbert feels for a twelve-year-old girl, who he calls
"a nymphet". The protagonist gives a first-person narrative of his confession from
jail of his step-daughter, Lolita, whose boyfriend he murders.
7.2.5. KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007)
In Slaughterhouse Five (1969) Kurt Vonnegut shows his outrage at the
bombing of Dresden by the Allies, which he experienced himself while a prisoner
of the Germans, and the gratuitous destructiveness that he believes is
characteristic of humankind. Our inhumanity and the capacity for destruction
provided by twentieth century technology and his interest in anthropology are
themes present in all his novels: Deadeye Dick (1982) on nuclear power,
Galapagos (1987) and Hocus Pocus (1990) on genetic manipulation, etc. He is
also a pioneer in using science fiction in his novels, like in Cat's Cradle (1963).
7.2.6. TRUMAN CAPOTE (1924-1984)
Truman Capote is most famous for In Cold Blood (1965) and Breakfast at
Tiffany's (1958). The former is about the investigation of the apparently motiveless
murder of a Kansas City family by two youths. The latter is basically a comedy of
life in New York City.
7.2.7. WOMEN NOVELISTS
With the increasing rise and success of the women's liberation movement,
American women are perhaps the leaders in modern-day fiction. It is not only a
strictly political "feminist" literature but also one that is essentially female,
describing hardships and liberties that have been won and a new society of
equality. Not only this, we also have female writers from different ethnic
backgrounds that show real changes in the American female "melting pot".
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7.2.7.1. MARGE PIERCY (1936-)
Marge Piercy is one of the earliest women writers of this century. Most of
her work reflects the consciousness of women's assigned place in a maledominated society and the form that relationships take as a result. One of her best
and most famous novels is Vida (1979). She has also been involved in other
issues apart from the women's movement, such as civil rights, the New Left and
the anti-nuclear movement.
7.2.7.2. ALICE WALKER (1944-)
Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) was extremely popular, not less so
because it was made into a film directed by Steven Spielberg. It shows an inner
vision of the Black community and how its struggles are survived by Celia and
Nettie, two sisters. Celia is made pregnant by the man she believes to be her
father and is made to marry someone older who she despises. The novel is made
up of Celie's despairing letters to God and to her sister Nettie who has gone to
Africa as a missionary, and of Nettie's letters to Celie. The film as well as the novel
itself is a real tear-jerker.
7.2.7.3. TONI MORRISON (1932-)
Toni Morrison is another American black woman writer, who won the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1993. The black plight, a poor woman's segregation not only
in society for being black but also for being a woman is shown in all her works.
The Bluest Eye (1970) shows how a black girl nearly goes insane thinking of the
blue eyes of a white girl's doll. It also talks of the girl's incestuous relationship with
her father and her subsequent pregnancy.
7.2.7.4. ERICA JONG (1942-)
Erica Jong represents no ethic minority (even though she is a Jewess
herself). She represents the liberated female American woman who has broken
out and is scared of nothing and no one. Her outrageous Fear of Flying (1974)
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was a pioneer in its brashness, blatentness, eroticism and lack of inhibition. We
have a woman who talks continually and openly about sex and her fantasies
about a zipless dalliance on a train. Recently she has published Fear of Fifty, an
autobiographical work.
7.3. DRAMA
As far as drama is concerned, since 1945 there have been two outstanding
American playwrights: Tennessee Williams (1911-83) and Arthur Miller (19152005). Williams was born in Mississippi in 1911 and after working in a factory and
as a waiter, he managed to finish his university education. He is best known for
The Glass Menagerie (1944), which is set in the slums of St Louis, A Streetcar
Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). The first two plays show
Williams' sympathy for the lost and self-punishing individual. Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof is about the intricacies of southern families and southern culture. His plays
have been made into successful films, so adding to the author's popularity but
they have often caused much controversy, particularly in Britain and Ireland,
where they were banned.
Arthur Miller, apart from being famous for marrying Marilyn Monroe, is
renowned for his modern tragedy Death of a Salesman (1949), a play that gives a
portrait of the unsuccessful Jewish salesman Willy Loman. The Crucible (1953)
relates the issues of the 1692 Salem Witch trials to those of the era of McCarthism
in America.
7.4. POETRY
Perhaps the three most outstanding poets of 20th century America were
James Russell Lowell, William De Witt Snodgrass and Sylvia Plath. Lowell wrote
magnificent apocalyptic poems about the stormbound New England coast. He
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also wrote verse translations of the French poet Racine. Snodgrass's poetry is
characterised by its autobiographical subject matter, his use of traditional verse
forms and his sensitive, often delicate tone. Plath studied with Lowell and her work
has clear affinities with confessional poetry. Her experiences as a daughter, wife
(to the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes) and her suicide attempts are all present
in her poems: there is an undercurrent of terror in her poetry.
American Nobel Prize Winners:
1930: Sinclair Lewis
1936: Eugene O'Neill
1938: Pearl S. Buck
1948: T. S. Eliot
1949: William Faulkner
1954: Ernest Hemingway
1962: John Steinbeck
1976: Saul Bellow
1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (wrote in Yiddish)
1987: Joseph Brodsky (wrote in Russian and English)
1993: Toni Morrison
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8. THE LITERATURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH
9.1. LITERATURE IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.
The Australians and New Zealanders have created a literature of their own
from a combination of British, American and native sources. It has been described
as going "from colonial to Commonwealth, from Commonwealth to cosmopolitan".
First it was crudely imitative of English writing. Now it has its own identity. The
interest of these writers is the history and traditions of their respective countries,
as seen, for example, in the novels of Nellie Scanlan, Brian Penton or Miles
Franklin.
Traditionally Australian literature has been considered as little else than a
little sister to British and American literatures, a literary sibling who has only
recently come of age and therefore hardly deserved to be closely read and even
considered as an independent relative. Indeed, up to 1898, when Henry Gyles
Turner and Alexander Sutherland published The Development of Australian
Literature, a first serious attempt to systematise the literature from down under,
Australian literature was still virtually unthought-of in the books of any literary
critic. And this has almost been the case up to only a few decades ago.
Australian literature had not managed to attract much attention either until some
meritorious handbooks saw the light in the second half of the 20th century,
namely A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied (1961), by H. M.
Green; The Literature of Australia (1964 and 1976), by Geoffrey Dutton; The
Oxford History of Australian Literature (1981), edited by Leonie Kramer; The
Penguin New Literary History of Australia (1988), by Laurie Hergenhan et al.;
and The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000), by Elizabeth
Webby, to name but a few of the best known. Scholars’ increasing interest in
postcolonial studies during the last decades has encouraged the publication of
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new works on Australian literature and other English-speaking national
literatures.
So far, most analyses of Australian literature –quite numerous of latehave been carried out by Australian scholars and university lecturers, who are
only naturally concerned about studying and dissecting their own literary
production and constructing a canon. It was only fairly recently, in 1963, that a
first professorship of Australian literature was created at Sydney University and
only a handful of Australian scholars have made it possible since then to
maintain an interest for pro-Australian literary studies. But apart from local
literary critics, Australian literature had not managed to attract much interest
internationally until 1973, when Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature, the first Australian writer to do so.
The main Anglophone literatures (British, American and to some extent
Canadian) have already established a canon; Australian literature is on the way
to doing so; and this book is evidence of this. Australian writers and literary
critics are in the middle of a strenuous process of “glocalization” of Australian
literature within a massively unstoppable and unavoidably globalised world. In
other words, they are searching for a specific literary identity within a globalised
concept of the literary phenomenon, an identity that differentiates them from the
heavy cultural and political influence of the ex-metropolis.
9.2. ENGLISH CANADIAN LITERATURE
Not all English-Canadian writers are Canadian by birth and some who are
Canadian by birth do not write of Canada at all. The most famous Canadian fiction
writer in the mid twentieth century was Morley Callaghan. In his The Loved and
the Lost Callaghan touches what is perhaps the most significant theme in modern
Canadian literature: the existence of two cultures of English and French Canada.
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The Canadian problem has been described as a kind of Canadian apartheid that
has produced as much literature as the South African species.
9.3.
ANGLO-INDIAN LITERATURE.
By Anglo-Indian literature (also known as Indo-Anglian or Indo-British
literature) we refer to the literature written by Indians or Pakistanis in English after
the independence of both India and Pakistan. These writers usually are able to
write in Hindu or Urdu too, but do so in English to reach a wider range of readers.
Before these countries were part of the British Empire the term "Anglo-Indian
literature" usually referred to the literature written by those British residents officials, missionaries, soldiers- in the Indian continent who dealt with local issues
in their writings but from a western point of view, for, after all, they were still British
and felt British, not Indian.
9.4.
SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH.
Writers such as Roy Campbell, a self-exiled South African poet and
translator who wrote poetry on the Spanish Civil War, is well-known in literary
circles for his excellent translations of St John of the Cross and García Lorca into
English. But more recent South African literature is particularly strong in the field of
realistic fiction, usually with political implications. This is particularly perceivable in
Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) and Nadine Gordimer's novels.
There has also been lots of literature written about the living symbol of the social
and racial injustice of apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela.
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9.5. DORIS LESSING (1919- )
Doris Lessing was born in Iran to British parents and grew up on a farm in
Rhodesia. After two failed marriages she left Africa for England, where she tried,
successfully, to publish The Grass is Singing (1950), a powerful novel about a
white woman's obsession for her black servant, demonstrating the writer's interest
in the private action of the mind which was to distinguish many of her later novels,
what she would later call "the space within". Her second novel, Martha Quest
(1952), became the first part of a five novel sequence collectively entitled The
Children of Violence.
In her novels Lessing usually presents societies rigidly governed by
convention and prejudice (including man's dictatorship over women) and presents
the protagonists' struggle (usually women) to challenge these conventions by
dominating their own mental power. She is a fervent political feminist and has also
been deeply involved in experimenting with literary forms and therefore uses the
formal aspects of notebooks, memoirs, archives and all types of documents in her
novels. Experimental fiction is a recurrent interest in Lessing's work, as can be
seen in The Golden Notebook (1962) and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), or
Canopus in Argos: Archives, consisting of five parts (1979-83), among others.
In later novels Lessing returned to realistic narrative (as opposed to
experimentalism) with two works originally published with the penname of "Jane
Somers": The Diary of a Good Neighbour (1983) and If the Old Could (1984),
where she deals with the privations of old age. In her very last novels she has
written about terrorism: The Good Terrorist (1985) and Prisons We Choose to Live
Inside (1987).
9.6.
NADINE GORDIMER (1923 -).
Nadine Gordimer is a South African novelist born in Trasvaal. In her novels
and in her short stories she has concentrated on attacking apartheid and racial
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misunderstanding from the point of view of a privileged white member of the South
African society. Although her novels depict the economic, social and legal
divisions and tensions existing in South Africa between the white and the black
communities, she does not write from an overtly political point of view. She was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
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9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
BANK, Stanley, ed. (1969): American Romanticism. A Shape for Fiction. New
York: Capricorn Books.
BERCOVITCH, Sacvan, ed. (1974): The American Puritan Imagination. Essays
in Revaluation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
BERCOVITCH, Sacvan, (1975): Puritan Origins of the American Self. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
—— (1988): “The Puritan Vision of the New World.” Columbia Literary History of
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