Week 5

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theater. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

"The Lady with the Dog" 

 a short story by Anton Chekhov first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. 

The story comprises four parts:

part I describes the initial meeting in Yalta

part II the consummation of the affair and the remaining time in Yalta 

part III Gurov's return to Moscow and his visit to Anna's town

part IV Anna's visits to Moscow. Vladimir Nabokov declared that it was one of the greatest short stories ever written.

Themes

Death and Disease

Disease features prominently in Chekhov's stories, and his protagonists often suffer tragic and untimely deaths. It is unsurprising that the author seems haunted by the notion of infirmity, since he was plagued by tuberculosis for most of his adult life and died of the disease at the age of forty-four. Often—as in The Black Monk and The Grasshopper—disease acts as a physical representation of a character's psychological turmoil. Osip sickens in The Grasshopper because he is depressed about his wife's infidelity, while Chekhov subtly blends the symptoms of Kovrin's mental illness with those of tuberculosis in The Black Monk. But the author's recurring use of this theme is neither pathological nor self-pitying; Chekhov recognizes man's subservience to forces greater than his or her own will. The author uses the symbolic power of his dying protagonists—such as Kovrin in The Black Monk or Rabin in Ward No. six—to emphasize life's transience as well as humankind's subservience to the whims of fate. Chekhov also examines disease as a reflection of social degeneration. For example, Kovrin's psychosis— which ruins his marriage, kills his father- in-law and wrecks Yegor's prized orchard—seems to symbolize the disintegration of society at large. Chekhov thus focuses on disease to indicate individual frailty as well as the growing conflicts within society.

Disillusionment and Failed Ideals

Chekhov's stories examine many kinds of disappointment and failed ideals. Often the protagonists are disillusioned by events that force them to reevaluate their personal philosophies and understanding of the world, and this disillusionment usually occurs toward the end of stories. Such climaxes range from the mildly pathetic—as when the narrator in The Night Before Easter sees Jerome in daylight and realizes that he is just an ordinary man, to the monumentally tragic—such as Rabin's incarceration in Ward No. six and his subsequent nervous breakdown. The protagonists of The Darling and My Life also tackle frustrated dreams, loneliness, and the breakdown of romantic ties, but they never fundamentally alter their view of the world. Consequently, we see that Chekhov's tales conclude with either a moment of revelation or anti-climax (these endings have been termed "zero" and "surprise" endings, respectively.) His protagonists are either crushed by their sense of disillusionment with the world, or they hold out hope in a better future.

The Breakdown of Aristocratic Society

In 1861, when Chekhov was one year old, Tsar Alexander II liberated Russian serfs. This act seemed to herald the dawn of a new age and the collapse of aristocratic privilege, although, in reality, peasants were still impoverished, disempowered, and tied to the land. Many intellectuals began to discuss ideas on liberty and the rights of all social classes to land and education. Although Chekhov did not openly speculate on the fall of the old social order, his writing shows that he was caught up in the debate. Many of his stories examine the effect of change on a prevailing social or familial hierarchy. For example, My Life focuses on a young member of the gentry who defies his father and social convention by working as a laborer. But Chekhov is very subtle in his treatment of change. Most often, the revolutions one witnesses in the stories are neither positive nor negative; they are simply alterations to established systems. In the Ravine deals with a mercenary, Grigori Tsybukin, who is ousted from his position of power when his cunning daughter-in-law takes over the family business. Similarly, Rabin's confinement in Ward No. six shows how professionals as well as peasants can be subjected to social coercion. The only obvious change for the worse occurs in The Black Monk, when Yegor's orchard passes into the hands of a younger generation and is ruined. In most of his stories, therefore, Chekhov deals with the breakdown of an old social order with characteristic moral ambivalence.

Narration 

the use of—or the particularly chosen methodology or process (also called the narrative mode) of using—a written or spoken commentary to convey astory to an audience. Narration encompasses a set of techniques through which the creator of the story presents their story, including:

• Narrative point of view: the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal "lens") through which a story is communicated
• Narrative voice: the format (or type presentational form) through which a story is communicated
• Narrative time: the placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the present, or the future

A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator of the story develops to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot. The narrator may be a voice devised by the author as an anonymous, non-personal, or stand-alone entity; as the author herself/himself as a character; or as some other fictional or non-fictional character appearing and participating within their own story. The narrator is considered participant if he/she is a character within the story, and non-participant if he/she is an implied character or an omniscient or semi-omniscient being or voice that merely relates the story to the audience without being involved in the actual events. Some stories have multiple narrators to illustrate the story lines of various characters at the same, similar, or different times, thus allowing a more complex, non-singular point of view.

Narration encompasses not only who tells the story, but also how the story is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration). In traditional literary narratives (such as novels, short stories, and memoirs), narration is a required story element; in other types of (chiefly non-literary) narratives, such as plays, television shows, video games, and films, narration is merely optional.

The Reader

The Reader (click to the link)

In post-WWII Germany when teenager Michael Berg becomes ill and is helped home by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her. The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but secretive affair.

Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to and their physical relationship deepens. Hanna is enthralled as Michael reads to her from "The Odyssey," "Huck Finn," and "The Lady with the Little Dog." Despite their intense bond, Hanna mysteriously disappears one day and Michael is left confused and heartbroken.

Eight years later, while Michael is a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is stunned to find Hanna back in his life this time as a defendant in the courtroom. As Hanna's past is revealed, Michael uncovers a deep secret that will impact both of their lives. 

"The Reader" is a haunting story about truth and reconciliation, about how one generation comes to terms with the crimes of another.

Literacy

traditionally understood as the ability to read and write. The term's meaning has been expanded to include the ability to use language, numbers, images and other means to understand and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture. The concept of literacy is expanding in OECD countries to include skills to access knowledge through technology and ability to assess complex contexts.

The key to all literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Reading development involves a range of complex language underpinnings including awareness of speech sounds (phonology), spelling patterns (orthography), word meaning (semantics), grammar (syntax) and patterns of word formation (morphology), all of which provide a necessary platform for reading fluency and comprehension. Once these skills are acquired, the reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to apply to printed material critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought. The inability to do so is called illiteracy or analphabetism.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society".

Week 4

Alice Ann Munro 

a Canadian short story writer and Nobel Prize winner. Munro's work has been described as having revolutionized the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario. Her stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style. Munro's writing has established her as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction," or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov." Munro is the recipient of many literary accolades, including the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work. She is also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction and was the recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada's 1996 Marian Engel Award, as well as the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway.

"Boys and Girls" 

a short story by Alice Munro.

Synopsis: Whenever she shares her daily routine farmwork with her father, the young narrator is taken to be a boy by visitors. She tries to keep away from any work in her mother's range of tasks because she does not really take any interest in that kind of work. The narrator remembers that by the time she was eleven years old she was faced with more and more expectations of what a girl should be like and what she should do or not do. Her role in the family began to change, and the narrator concludes with telling the story of an event in which she behaved according to her intuition, is squealed on by her younger brother and subsequently is being assigned the new gender role by her father. The narrator's last comment reads: ″Maybe it was true.″

Thomas Hardy

 an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens was another important influence. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society.

While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd(1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). Hardy's poetry, though prolific, was not as well received during his lifetime. It was rediscovered in the 1950s, when Hardy's poetry had a significant influence on the Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s, including Philip Larkin.

Most of his fictional works – initially published as serials in magazines – were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances. Hardy's Wessex is based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom and eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented 

a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in acensored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891 and in book form in 1892. Though now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel and possibly Hardy's fictional masterpiece,Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England.
Stonehenge(2 miles west of Amesbury and 8 miles north of Salisbury.)- where Tess lies down to rest on an ancient altar in the novel. 

Nelle Harper Lee 

better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Though Lee had only published this single book, in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. Additionally, Lee received numerous honorary degrees, though she declined to speak on those occasions. She was also known for assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). Capote was the basis for the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children. The novel was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

Another novel, Go Set a Watchman, was written in the mid-1950s and controversially published in July 2015 as a "sequel", though it was later confirmed to be To Kill a Mockingbird's first draft.

To Kill a Mockingbird

The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."

As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses issues of class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book is widely taught in schools in the United States with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets.

Reaction to the novel varied widely upon publication. Literary analysis of it is sparse, considering the number of copies sold and its widespread use in education. Author Mary McDonough Murphy, who collected individual impressions of To Kill a Mockingbird by several authors and public figures, calls the book, "an astonishing phenomenon". In 2006, British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as one "every adult should read before they die". It was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote. Since 1990, a play based on the novel has been performed annually in Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.

Others:
Romeo Juliet- 
"It is nor hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
and for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself."

Song:

Oh Danny Boy - Irish Tenors (click for the link)

Glossary:

1.Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art.

2.Ode is a type of lyrical stanza. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist. It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.

Greek odes were originally poetic pieces performed with musical accompaniment. As time passed on, they gradually became known as personal lyrical compositions whether sung (with or without musical instruments) or merely recited (always with accompaniment). The primary instruments used were the aulos and the lyre (the latter was the most revered instrument to the Ancient Greeks).

There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular. Pindaric odes follow the form and style of Pindar. Horatian odes follow conventions of Horace; the odes of Horace deliberately imitated the Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon. Irregular odes use rhyme, but not the three-part form of the Pindaric ode, nor the two- or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode.

Week 3

Edith Wharton 
a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.


Roman Fever
a short story by American writer Edith Wharton. It was first published in the magazine Liberty in 1934, and was later included in Wharton's last short-story collection, The World Over.

Summary:

The protagonists are Grace Ansley and Alida Slade, two middle-aged American women who are visiting Rome with their daughters, Barbara Ansley and Jenny Slade. The elder women grew up in Manhattan, New York, and were friends from childhood. A youthful and romantic rivalry led Mrs. Slade to nurture feelings of jealousy and hatred against Mrs. Ansley.

In the opening pages of the story, the two women compare their daughters and reflect on each other's lives. Eventually, Mrs. Slade reveals a secret about a letter written to Mrs. Ansley on a visit to Rome many years ago. The letter was purportedly from Mrs. Slade's fiancé, Delphin, inviting Mrs. Ansley to a rendezvous at the Colosseum. In fact, Mrs. Slade herself had written the letter, in an attempt to get Mrs. Ansley out of the way of the engagement by disappointing her with Delphin's absence (and, it is implied, to get Mrs. Ansley sick with Roman Fever). Mrs. Ansley is upset at this revelation, but reveals that she was not left alone at the Colosseum—she responded to the letter, and Delphin arrived to meet her. Mrs. Slade eventually states that Mrs. Ansley ought not to feel sorry for her, because "I had [Delphin] for twenty-five years" while Mrs. Ansley had "nothing but a letter he didn't write." Mrs. Ansley responds, in the last sentence of the story, "I had Barbara."

Discussion of textbook (pg.1~9 Introduction)

1. What is Literature?

2. What does Literature do?

3. What are the Genres of Literature?

4. Why read Literature?

5. Why study Literature?

Conclusion: Three tips

I. Take a literary work on its own terms.

-Adjust to the work; don't make the work adjust to you. Be prepared to hear things you do not want to hear. Not all works are about your ideas, nor will they always present emotions you want to feel. But be tolerant and listen to the work first; later you can explore the ways you do or don't agree with it.

II. Assume there is a reason for everything.

-Writers do make mistakes, but when a work shows some degree of verbal control it is usually safest to assume that the writer chose each word carefully; if the choice seems peculiar, you may be missing something. Try to account for everything in a work, see what kind of sense you can make of it, and figure out a coherent pattern that explains the text as it stands

III. Remember that literary tests exist in time, and times change. 

-Not only the meanings of words, but whole ways of looking at the universe vary in different ages. Consciousness of time works two ways: Your knowledge of history provides a context for reading the work, and the work may modify your nation of a particular age.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) 

a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. It follows the lives of several characters through these events. A Tale of Two Cities was published in weekly installments from April 1859 to November 1859 in Dickens's new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. All but three of Dickens's previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments.

Dickens's famous opening sentence introduces the universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted within:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Harold Bloom 

is an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Bloom came to public attention in the United States as a commentator during the Canon wars of the early 1990s

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature. It is his best-known book alongside The Anxiety of Influence, and was a surprise bestseller upon its release in the United States. In the book, Bloom defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon:

• William Shakespeare
• Dante Alighieri
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Miguel de Cervantes
• Michel de Montaigne
• Molière
• John Milton
• Samuel Johnson
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• William Wordsworth
• Jane Austen
• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickinson
• Charles Dickens
• George Eliot
• Leo Tolstoy
• Henrik Ibsen
• Sigmund Freud
• Marcel Proust
• James Joyce
• Virginia Woolf
• Franz Kafka
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Pablo Neruda
• Fernando Pessoa
• Samuel Beckett

The book argues against what Bloom calls the "School of Resentment", in which he includes feminist literary criticism,Marxist literary criticism, Lacanians, New Historicism, Deconstructionists, and semioticians. The book also contained four appendices that listed works that at the time he considered canonical, stretching from earliest scriptures to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Bloom would later disown the list, saying that it was written at his editor's insistence and distracted from the book's intention.

Pachelbel - Canon in D Major

(click to the link)