Week XIV: The Handmaid's Tale

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2008

Week XIV

Helen Todd as Aunt Lydia in a theatrical production of The Handmaid's Tale

This week's blog entry should focus on how the "Historical Notes" section of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale retroactively reframes our reading of Offred's narative. How do the historian's remarks make us question the authenticity of the story as well as Offred's accuracy about the regime? How does his desire for "for even twenty pages or so of print-out from Waterford's private computer" give us a new perspective of Offred's version of events in Gilead? Does she over-emphasize the personal over the political? Why does Atwood make us reconsider the entire narrative with these "historical notes" in relationship to what Offred decides to discuss? How do you think Atwood might be responding to Virginia Woolf's call for a literary emphasis on the private, emotional, and domestic sphere instead of the epic, political, military narratives during the early part of the twentieth century? Lastly, how do all of these elements speak to the feminist maxim "the personal is political"?

Week XIII: Chronicle of a Death Foretold/ The Handmaid's Tale

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2008

Week XIII

Portraits of Gabriel García Márquez and Margaret Atwood (Atwood by Christian Cardell Corbet)

Use this week's entry to tie together this week's discussions by comparing and contrasting Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Your post should follow one of the following prompts:

Narrative style. How do both authors roll out the plot in terms of chronology? From whose perspective and what narrative point of view is the novel told? Are they a reliable narrator? Why do these authors choose to use this style?

Setting. How does each novel's setting affect the reader's understanding of the way the characters respond to their setting? Does the identity formation of the narrators reflect their given setting - in terms of space, environment, cultural context, peers, etc.?

National/Regional Background. How does each novel reflect the national/regional background of the author? How does The Handmaid's Tale reflect the victimhood/survivalist theme Atwood describes as a major feature of Canadian literature? How does Chronicle of a Death Foretoldreflect elements of magical realism? Do the novels reflect their larger cultural literary context in the same way?

Week XII: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2008

Week XII

Screen caps from the 1987 Italian film version of the novel, 
Cronaca di una morte annunciata

Gabriel García Márquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold lets readers know from the first sentence that Santiago Nasar will be murdered. Instead of simply leading readers up to a climactic death scene (although the murder is still pretty climactic), Márquez takes us on a tour around town to meet different townspeople in order to ascertain their motivations about how they choose to respond to the news of the impending murder. In doing so, Márquez weaves in criticisms about various social justice issues such as poverty, the inequitable distribution of wealth, superficial talk versus action, and the limited opportunities for women in the town.

For this entry, choose one of the novel's characters, even Santiago, and close-read one passage about the character. In your close-reading analysis discuss how Márquez's treatment of the character - through characterization, dialogue, imagery, etc. - incorporates discussion/reflection/criticism of one of the social justice issues explored in the novel.

Week XI: Passing

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008

Weex XI

Palmer Hayden, Midsummer Night in Harlem (1938)

This week's blog entry will focus on Nella Larsen's Passing. Use one of the following prompts/questions to guide your response:

1. Why do you think Larsen chose to include an excerpt from Countée Cullen's poem "Heritage" as the novel's epigraph? How does it highlight the novel's themes?

2. How does this novel reflect elements or concerns of the Harlem Renaissance and its writers? Likewise, how is it representative of the modernist literary movement?

3. In what other ways do characters pass - especially Irene?

4. Expand on why Larsen chose to write the ending as opaquely as she did. Even if you are certain that Irene pushed Clare, why does Larsen not make it more explicit? How does it retrospectively inform our reading of the novel and Larsen's decision to use the limited omniscient point of view with Irene's tale?

Week X: Dulce et Decorum est/ Passing

THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2008

Week X

African-American WWI Soldiers

You can use this week's blog entry to discuss one of the two following prompts:

Analyze Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est" from a formalist perspective and discuss how he uses imagery, syntax, diction, and various points-of-view to create a call-to-action for readers. How are the soldiers described and how are we supposed to feel in relation to them? How does he bring the message home in the final stanza when he addresses us as his "friend"? Are we supposed to feel guilty, ashamed, or complicit in sending these men to war? Again, focus on how Owen accomplishes these goals through his use of language.

or

Although we didn't have enough time to thoroughly discuss Part I of Nella Larsen's Passing, select a passage or event from Part I that you feel is pertinent to one of the novel's main elements. Examples include the idea of double consciousness, the way Larsen uses the limited omniscient narrator to examine Irene's reluctance to remember certain events, or how Irene and Clare function as opposing yet complementary doubles of each other.

Week IX: Jacob's Room

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2008

Week IX

Collage of British WWI Propaganda Posters

Today's discussion on Woolf's description of Jacob representing a new, "modern" generation was particularly illuminating in respect to the passage on pages 24 and 25 that showcase Jacob's self-assuredness despite the repressive obstacles he faces as a young man. Take the time to find other passages in Jacob's Room that exhibit "heightened moments of awareness" for characters. Quote and cite one passage and then explicate how it expands our understanding of certain characters or the novel's themes.

Or

Analyze a passage from the novel that deals with communication between characters or between one character and the larger soceity. Quote and cite the passage and then expand on how Woolf explores her ideas about communication as a creative and sometimes feminine way to bridge differences in contrast to the destructive and sometimes masculine way of resorting to violence - especially as it relates to WWI and critiques of the patriarchal autocracy.

Week VIII: Death in Venice

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008

Week VIII

We discussed the use of leitmotifs in Thomas Mann's Death In Venice to analyze how and why the red-haired characters unsettle Aschenbach and how they function as narrative warnings about the protagonist's descent into the "abyss." Use this week's entry to reflect on the structure of the novella and how Mann uses symbolism, detailed descriptions of the setting, death imagery, or Venice's environment to enhance our understanding of Aschenbach's mental and psychological state as well as the narrator's attitude toward Aschenbach's precipitous change to a person who abandons all self-discipline in the face of beauty and/or lust.

In terms of structure, think about difference between the first three chapters and the chapters that follow his realization that he is staying in Venice in order to be close to Tadzio. Likewise, how do these various elements work to make the reader more aware of how the character changes from the fastidious writer in Germany to the "aging" and "deluded" man in Italy? How do recurrent elements such as unsettling characters and the discussion on beauty and art establish Mann as a master of his craft in terms of being a novelist who controls all aspect of his art along the lines of the musician Wagner?

Think about the progress of the cholera outbreak in Venice and how it mirrors Aschnebach's moral decline. How do descriptions of Venice's Byzantine appearance (East meets West) reflect Aschenbach's struggle with his Apollonian and Dionysian impulses? How do Aschenbach's and the narrator's philosophies of art, artists, and artistic creation in Chapter 2 and in the Socrates and Phaedrus section reflect the protagonist's situation?

CoreyCS said...

One of the larger and probably more weighty and frightening examples of leimotif within Death in Venice that stood out to me were the philosophies of art discussed by Aschenbach and the narrator, and in turn its relationships to intellect and beauty. For throughout the novella art is a constant theme. Of the most notable examples is when Aschenbach recalls, almost as if in a daydream, those passages of dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates. And in these passages, the parallelism between Socrates’ teachings and Aschebach’s situation are quite apparent. 
In the second chapter of the book, the narrator states for us the intellectual career of Aschnebach, and he is portrayed in the manner of being a staunch intellectualist, free of frivolous emotion and passion. He is shown as a disciplined and patient artist, who knows how to get things down. And yet in the teachings of Socrates quoted in the book, he seems to tell us that no matter what, any artist will eventually end up enfolded in passion and beauty. For in the final chapter, Socrates speaks of how poets and artists such as himself and Phaedrus, although they continually speak against and renounce “the abyss”, are naturally attracted to it. This “abyss” seems to be defined as the passion of the human soul, and it’s inherent addiction to emotion and beauty. 
And in the paragraph preceding this final quotation of Socrates’ teachings, the narrator describes all of the accomplishments of Aschenbach’s career: “He sat there, the master, the artist who had attained dignity, … who … had renounced bohemianism and the murky depths, had abrogated his sympathy for the abyss … he whose fame was official, whose name had been ennobled and whose style boys were exhorted to take as a model” (59). And then, in heart-wrenching irony, Socrates states this line: “The master’s pose of style is a lie and folly, our fame and honorable status are a farce, the confidence the crowd has in us couldn’t be more laughable, and education of the people and of youth by means of art is a risky enterprise that ought to be prohibited” (60). He says this because art, no matter how intellectually or profoundly it is portrayed, will always lead even the most noblest of men to committing “horrifying crimes of the passion”. This is huge, because it tells that everything that Aschenbach has built up in his life career amounts to nothing. He is to be laughed at and ridiculed. And it shows us that in his giving in to passion, in his addiction to beauty, to Tadzio’s beauty, and the resulting decay of his intellectual self, he has finally fallen head first into the abyss.

March 2, 2008 8:47 PM