Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Seminar on Language and Literature-Title Submission

As agreed, this week you will submit your topic for your thesis proposal. If you have a couple of topics in mind, but are not sure which one is the most interesting and workable, you may submit 2-3 topics. To do this, just click comment !

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

END-OF-TERM EXAM, PMA CLASS

Answer the following questions in at least 200 words each. Do NOT copy the words from the references. Instead, use your own words to show your understanding of the issues.

Work individually. Any similar answers may cause failure in PMA class.


  1. The Hollywood actor Will Smith suggests that American movies are significant in revealing multiculturalism by stating that each movie tells the world that America is a country that evolves through social and political and religious differences. Explain what he means by using three examples of movie titles.
  2. What American values are reflected in American sports movies?
  3. How is multiculturalism in America reflected in Indigenous or East-Asian literature?
  4. How does American government manage to give social safety to its people in terms of health?

Possible references:

1. Articles in the CD
2. Two e-journals found in the links in the previous post
3. Other printed/internet sources

Due on Friday, June 12, 2009; 1 p.m. (handwriting or print-out accepted)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

AMERICAN SOCIETY (PMA) CLASS

Follow the links to get to two e-journal articles on American movie business and Multiculturalism in American Literature. While it would be very interesting to read the whole parts of the articles for your knowledge, it would be wise to focus on some chapters to get prepared for the Final Exam.

American Movie Business
http://www.america.gov/media/pdf/ejs/0607.pdf#popup

Assigned sections:
What’s American about American Movies?
Field Dreams:American Sports Movies

Multiculturalism in American Literature
http://www.america.gov/media/pdf/ejs/0209.pdf#popup

Assigned sections:
We are a Nation of Many Voices
Indigenous Americans
East-Asian Americans

Besides the above reading assignments, chapters 9-12 of the Portrait of the USA (CD materials)will also be parts of materials for the Final Exam.

Good luck with the reading!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Themes to explore for Final Paper (LA Prose and Theory of Literature I)

Please find the following themes to write a paper of about 8-10 pages. The topic you choose should be different from the one you used for your group presentations (both for The Scarlet Letter and The Bluest Eye). Otherwise, you will be penalized.

The paper should be written using A4-sized paper, Times New Roman 12, 1.5-spaced. The due date is June 19, 2009 (print-out and soft copy, please).

Well, have fun researching!

Daisy Miller

1. Value Differentiation
2. Freedom versus repression
3. Social class
4. Social status
5. Self-actualization


The Scarlet Letter

1. Alienation
2. Breaking Society's Rules
3. Appearance vs Reality
4. Love Triangles
5. Religious Communities
6. The Nature of Evil
7. Identity and Society

The Bluest Eye

1. White Beauty Standard
2. Sexual Initiation and Abuse
3. The Power of Seeing and Being Seen
4. Parenthood
5. The Effect of White Cultural Values on Black Culture
6. Satisfying Appetites vs Suppressing them
7. Acceptance of Anger within Oneself
8. Self-Hatred
9. Self-esteem/self-concept

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Theory Literature I Midterm Test

Instructions:

Click the above title to go to the National Geographics site, then do the following:

1. "Read" the picture shown in the site using a semiotic perspective.
2. Read the article following the picture and attempt to make a summary of various signs of beauty.
3. Use your summary as the source of a semiotic analysis.

Due date : Friday, May 1, 2009, 15.00

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Themes to explore in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Discuss one of the following themes found in The Bluest Eye to get prepared for next week's presentation. This time, let's do something more challenging. Find some theoretical explanations to support the theme, and, as usual, relate the extrinsic elements to the intrinsic ones (characterization, setting, motifs, symbols, etc.)

Here is a list of interesting themes in the novel:

1. White Beauty Standard
2. Sexual Initiation and Abuse
3. The Power of Seeing and Being Seen
4. Parenthood
5. The Effect of White Cultural Values on Black Culture
6. Satisfying Appetites vs Suppressing them
7. Acceptance of Anger within Oneself
8. Self-Hatred

Also, read the following summary of motifs that frequently occur in the novel and see how these motifs help reveal the theme.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes.


The Dick-and-Jane Narrative

The novel opens with a narrative from a Dick-and-Jane reading primer, a narrative that is distorted when Morrison runs its sentences and then its words together. The gap between the idealized, sanitized, upper-middle-class world of Dick and Jane (who we assume to be white, though we are never told so) and the often dark and ugly world of the novel is emphasized by the chapter headings excerpted from the primer. But Morrison does not mean for us to think that the Dick-and-Jane world is better—in fact, it is largely because the black characters have internalized white Dick-and-Jane values that they are unhappy. In this way, the Dick and Jane narrative and the novel provide ironic commentary on each other.


The Seasons and Nature

The novel is divided into the four seasons, but it pointedly refuses to meet the expectations of these seasons. For example, spring, the traditional time of rebirth and renewal, reminds Claudia of being whipped with new switches, and it is the season when Pecola's is raped. Pecola's baby dies in autumn, the season of harvesting. Morrison uses natural cycles to underline the unnaturalness and misery of her characters' experiences. To some degree, she also questions the benevolence of nature, as when Claudia wonders whether “the earth itself might have been unyielding” to someone like Pecola.


Whiteness and Color

In the novel, whiteness is associated with beauty and cleanliness (particularly according to Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove), but also with sterility. In contrast, color is associated with happiness, most clearly in the rainbow of yellow, green, and purple memories Pauline Breedlove sees when making love with Cholly. Morrison uses this imagery to emphasize the destructiveness of the black community's privileging of whiteness and to suggest that vibrant color, rather than the pure absence of color, is a stronger image of happiness and freedom.


Eyes and Vision

Pecola is obsessed with having blue eyes because she believes that this mark of conventional, white beauty will change the way that she is seen and therefore the way that she sees the world. There are continual references to other characters' eyes as well—for example, Mr. Yacobowski's hostility to Pecola resides in the blankness in his own eyes, as well as in his inability to see a black girl. This motif underlines the novel's repeated concern for the difference between how we see and how we are seen, and the difference between superficial sight and true insight.


Dirtiness and Cleanliness

The black characters in the novel who have internalized white, -middle-class values are obsessed with cleanliness. Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove are excessively concerned with housecleaning—though Mrs. Breedlove cleans only the house of her white employers, as if the Breedlove apartment is beyond her help. This fixation on cleanliness extends into the women's moral and emotional quests for purity, but the obsession with domestic and moral sanitation leads them to cruel coldness. In contrast, one mark of Claudia's strength of character is her pleasure in her own dirt, a pleasure that represents self-confidence and a correct understanding of the nature of happiness.


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

It's The Scarlet Letter Time!

The Scarlet Letter is one of the best works of American Literature, and it's really worth reading. As the first novel to be discussed in our LA Prose class, it's a good idea to focus on several themes. These are some common themes that appear in The Scarlet Letter:

1. Alienation
2. Breaking Society's Rules
3. Appearance vs Reality
4. Love Triangles
5. Religious Communities
6. The Nature of Evil
7. Identity and Society

Work in groups of four, and select one of the above themes and specify your topic for next week's presentation. Use powerpoint slides, and as always, use some quotations from the novel to support your analysis. Well, good luck researching!

VALERIE MINER IS COMING TO OUR CAMPUS

It's a great honor for our Department to receive a request from The U.S. Consulate as the host of an academic talk with a prominent writer and artist from USA. Prof. Valerie Miner is coming to talk on Creative Writing and Pedagogy in our Lidah Wetan campus, Wednesday, April 1st, 2009, at 1 p.m. All students of Literature Study Program (particularly, those taking Creative Writing and Theory of Literature I classes) are greatly encouraged to attend. Make use of the upcoming event to know more about the world of literature and creative writing. To get better acquainted with Prof. Valerie Miner, visit her website, http://www.valerieminer.com/.

STRUCTURALISM: Surface Structure and Deep Structure

Here's the upcoming theory for Theory of Literature I class discussion. Click the above title to get the article. While reading the article, also have this poem with you to see how Structuralism is used for the analysis in the article.

The Garden of Love by William Blake

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briers my joys and desires.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

THEORY OF LITERATURE I

Theory of Literature I class focuses on intrinsic approaches to literature. Some theories that are discussed in the class are:

1. New Criticism/Russian Formalism
2. Structuralism
3. Semiotics
4. Post-Structuralism


New Criticism/Russian FormalismReading with an Eye on Form: an Introduction to New Critics and Russian Formalists

Why We Read
For formalists, literary criticism is distinct from other forms of analysis in that it focuses on how language works. It's quasi-scientific in that there are no "extrinsic" concerns. Just as an astronomer looks at the stars for the sake of intellectual curiosity and "innocent knowledge," a formalist wants to study the methods and techniques of literary texts. Although Russian Formalists and American New Critics emphasize different aspects of a text, as formalists they share a desire to understand the inner workings of a text, or as Steven Lynn says, formalists "attend to how a work means, not what it means." In other words, formalists study how literature works, not what literature is about.Admittedly, formalists believe that some benefit occurs when we study literature, but some often hesitate to offer specific benefits beyond becoming a "good" reader of "great" texts and enjoying the pleasure that comes from seeing how different parts come together to make a coherent whole. Othersbelieve that literature offers truths that other forms of language like science, philosophy, sociology, and biology cannot provide. Michael Ryan points out that for formalists, "art provides access to a different kind of truth than is available to science, a truth that is immune to scientific investigation because it is accessible only through connotative language (allusion, metaphor, symbolism, etc.) and cannot be rendered in the direct, denotative, fact-naming language of the sciences." Important, universal truths cannot be experienced empirically, only alluded to through poetic language. These truths are also often revealed through the process of defamiliarization, the act of "makingstrange" a common object, experience, feeling, action, place, or something we take for granted.

What We Read
Generally speaking, formalists championed modernist literature because of its attention to language itself, but they had a penchant for metaphysical poets. However, the bottom line is that we should read "literary" works ("literary" = works that have no practical application, are "imaginative," and draw attention to themselves), and we ought to spend time on those "literary" works that are "worthy" of our attention (i.e. mega-complex works).

How We Read
You may want to consider these principles as well as note what Arnason says on his "New Criticism" web-page:

• Above all, separate literary criticism from the study of sources, social background, history of ideas, politics, and social effects. Formalists are not interested in an author' intentions or in how a work affects readers. These are "extrinsic" concerns. The formalist says, "if you want to talk about social class, go take a sociology course." Focus exclusively on "literary" concerns like narrative strategies and structure, setting, character, figurative language, allusion, rhyme, point of view, diction, syntax, meter, tone, etc. See "Elements of Fiction" and "Elements of Poetry."

• Explore the form or structure of the work. How do form and content work together? How does each little part connect with other little parts and how do they all connect with the whole? You must harmonize or reconcile everything. Or as Arnason puts it, "the responsibility of the reader is to discover this unity. The reader's job is to interpret the text, telling in what ways each of its partscontributes to the central unity." The more harmonized the incongruities, the better the text and the interpretation. Try to create the one true reading that subsumes all others.

• As you work to interpret and harmonize everything, pay extra close attention to individual words and their multiple nuances, ambiguities, associations, etc.

• Ultimately, you want to discuss these different elements and arrive at a "theme." As Arnason says, "a work is good or bad depending on whether the themes are complex and whether or not they contribute to the central, unifying theme."

• The job of the critic is to judge the text as one judges an object or machine, to determine whether it works efficiently.

• Convey an attitude of objectivity during this process. You are, after all, only seeing "what's really there." There is nothing personal about the text or about the process of interpretation.



Writing Suggestions:
Part One:
Reading Closely

Option One: Suggest a Theme...
There are several ways to begin. First, you could begin your analysis with a bold claim about the text's theme. Robert DiYanni explains that a "theme" is a text's "idea or point formulated as a generalization. The theme of a fable is its moral; the theme of a parable is its teaching; the theme of a short story is itsimplied view of life and conduct." It may help to talk about theme if you use these kinds of verbs: suggest, imply, point out. Use those verbs! "Cisneros suggests... Kafka implies... Morrison points out..." (i.e. "[The author] uses imagery, rhyme, and repetition to suggest that one must lose one's life to gain one's life.")

Option Two: Reveal a Tension, Paradox, Irony, or Reconcilable Ambiguity...
Second, you could organize your argument by identifying a fundamental tension, paradox, irony, or ambiguity. Pose and answer questions like... "What elements are in tension in this work? What unity resolves this tension?" Pay particular attention to paradox, irony, unity, complexity, and ambiguity.(i.e. "A core theme in [the text] is the struggle between innocence and knowledge." Or, "The battle between the universal and the particular is resolved in the form of the poem itself." )

No Matter What: Discuss Specific Literary Elements
After you suggest a theme or point out a tension, discuss how the author uses elements like plot, setting, characterization, tone, diction, point of voice, figurative language, imagery, syntax, word choice, rhythm, meter, etc. To create certain effects or achieve the author's apparent goal. For example, talk about plot or narrative structure first by dividing the text into separate parts(i.e. "The poem is divided into four parts. Part one works by indirection... Part two is a kind of transition... Part three offers direct confrontation... Part four resolves the paradox..." etc.)

Once you have a sense of the overall structure, discuss each formal element, one at a time, explaining to the reader how each element builds on and connects with the previous element. (i.e. "The contrast evident in the narrative structure is echoed in the imagery which suggests barren and fertile characters, thus reinforcing the larger tension between innocence and knowledge." "[The author's] juxtaposition between convoluted and simple syntax conveys the tension between innocence and knowledge as well."). Imagine that you are putting together a puzzle or creating a chain, and yourtask is to connect one part with the existing parts. The parts of a "good" text will go together well, and the parts of a "poorly written" text won't.

Remember... your task as a critic is to show how seemingly errant parts actually fit together nicely. Formalists often move from surface to deep interpretations, so you might want to organize your insights what that hierarchy in mind. A variation of this strategy is to move from the easy insights to the difficult ones, from the "easy to harmonize" parts to the "difficult to harmonize" parts. Try to resolve the tension, explain the paradox, note the irony, and demystify the ambiguity.

Remember, you must demonstrate how the text works without any reference to the author, historical context, your reaction, etc.

Part Two:
Evaluating the "Machine." Does the Pudding Taste Good?
As we already noted, many formalists do evaluate what they read. So here you need to evaluate and defend your judgment. In their essay "The Affective Fallacy," Wimsatt and Beardsley point out that "judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work."

Does your text "work" well? Efficiently? Are there any lumps or bugs? (Remember that you need to avoid writing something like ... "It works well considering who wrote it or when it was written," for that would drag in "extrinsic" concerns.) Remember as well that when you evaluate, you don'tconsider how readers respond to the question, or whether you like it, or whether anybody else likes it. More to the point, you need to ask, "Do the different literary elements work together well in the attempt to convey the theme, or is there something amiss? (i.e. Is there a quick and happy endingwithout adequate preparation; an unbelievable coincidence, an unresolved paradox; an unnecessary inclusion of an event, character, setting, action, etc.). Arnason also provides a helpful criteria for evaluating a text according to its depth, complexity, and meaning. Check out "Evaluating a Text."

Source: http://www.mesastate.edu/~blaga/formalism/formx.html

Reading Assignment for LA: Prose class

LA: Prose class (4 credit hours) aims at assisting the students to analyse literary works (fiction in particular) from both intrinsic and extrinsic elements. The following is a list of reading assignments for the class:

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." (2 sessions).
2. Henry James' Daisy Miller (4 sessions)
3. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (7 sessions)
4. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (7 sessions)
5. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (7 sessions)

The students are expected to have read the work in advance to be better prepared for class discussions.

To get Henry James' Daisy Miller, follow this link:
http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/1100/