Following up on our feminism discussion...

Ms. Huffman just forwarded a link to me that follows up some of our discussion yesterday in class about feminism, and the questions that feminism asks us to ask of our world. Here is an example of a country (Yemen) where young girls are frequently married at 8 and 10 years of age. Take a look at the CNN story and ponder what types of questions arise when you put on your feminist lenses.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/09/26/heroes.shada.nasser/index.html

Food for thought...

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

- Bono, rock star and anti-poverty activist. (Source: The American Prospect blog)

First Thoughts on Poetry...

I thought you guys would like this quotation from Brian McLaren's book The Story We Find Ourselves In.

McLaren writes: "Language is the best tool we have, but it keeps getting in the way. So in science, we revert to mathematics. And in theology, we revert to poetry. Mathematics and imagination are two ways of talking about things beyond normal language."

Based on your experiences with poetry in previous years, and in the beginning of our new unit, comment on this excerpt. Here are some questions to get you thinking: Can mathematics and poetry be linked in this way? Why does language get in the way? If it gets in the way, why is the language of poetry more apt to tap into truth than other forms of language (prose, etc.)? Is it possible to "part the veil", to "see beyond" our experience through the medium of words - the words of poems in particular? Is McLaren suggesting the languages of poetry and mathematics are holy in some way?

(By the way, does anyone recognize the interior of the church in this photograph?)

Pondering Postmodernism...

After Chuseok we will begin exploring the poetry of Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson. Get ready for some fantastic discussions! In preparation for Atwood and Plath's poetry, in particular, I'd like you to read the following article about postmoderism. It's a bit academic and heavy, but there are some very good explanations in this article of the philosophies of moderism and postmoderism. The author also begins to explore why feminist theorists have been drawn to postmodern thinking (the type of thinking that is predominant in our culture, in so many ways). Please read through this and post a brief comment that summarizes what postmodern thinking is. A few sentences will be sufficient. Hit the highlights of what you think defines this paradigm of thinking.

http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html

(By the way, this art is a piece by M.C. Escher. If you've never checked out his artwork, do a google images search and see what you can find. It's fascinating!)

(Another aside: there are two links posted on the Web links list on the right-hand side of the blog that provide some interesting information about poverty and modern-day slavery. It's interesting to read these sites while digesting the conversations we've been having in the HL class about In the Skin of a Lion and in the SL class about Death of a Salesman. Have fun exploring!)

Thinking of the betterment of humankind...

Each year an author is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the medal for the award is pictured above.

The medal of the Swedish Academy represents a young man sitting under a laurel tree who, enchanted, listens to and writes down the song of the Muse.

The inscription reads:

Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes

It is loosely translated as "And they who bettered life on earth by their newly found mastery."
(Word for word: Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art.)

The words are taken from Vergilius Aeneid, the 6th song, verse 663;

Lo, God-loved poets, men who spake things worthy Phoebus' heart;
and they who bettered life on earth by new-found mastery

The question you are asked to ponder is: Based on what we have learned about Ondaatje and his novel In the Skin of a Lion, do you think it would qualify for the Nobel Prize? Why or why not?

Creation, Fall, Redemption...

We know this is a powerful pattern in literature. Why? Using your thoughts from class today (Monday, Aug. 25), post your responses about how Ondaatje uses elements of creation/fall/redemption to enhance the message of his novel.

Is That a Symbol?

(From chapter 12 of Thomas Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor)

Is that a symbol?

Sure it is.

That's one of the most common questions in class, and that's the answer I generally give. Is that a symbol? Sure, why not. It's the next question where things get hairy: what does it mean, what does it stand for? When someone asks about meaning, I usually come back with something clever, like "Well, what do you think?" Everyone thinks I'm either being a wise guy or ducking responsibility, but neither is the case. Seriously, what do you think it stands for, because that's probably what it does. At least for you.

Here's the problem with symbols: people expect them to mean something. Not just any something, but one something in particular. Exactly. Maximum. You know what? It doesn't work like that. Oh sure, there are some symbols that work straightforwardly: a white flas means, I give up, don't shoot. Or it means, We come in peace. See? Even a fairly clear-cut case we can't pin down with a single meaning, although they're pretty close. So some symbols do have a relatively limited range of meanings but in general a symbol can't be reduced to standing for only one thing.

If they can, it's not symbolism, it's allegory. Here's how allegory works: things stand for other things on a one-for-one basis. Back in 1678, John Bunyan wrote an allegory called The Pilgrim's Progress. In it, the main character, Christian, is trying to journey to the Celestial City, while along the way he encounters such distractions as the Slough of Despond, the Primrose Path, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Other characters have names like Faithful, Evangelist, and the Giant Despair. Their names indicate their qualities and, in the case of Despair, his size as well. Allegories have one mission to accomplish - convey a certain message, in this case, the quest of the devout Christian to reach heaven. If there is ambiguity of a lack of clarity regarding that one-to-one correspondence between the emblem - the figurative construct - and the thing it represents, then the allegory fails because the message is blurred. Such simplicity of purpose has its advantages. George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is popular among many readers precisely because it's relativeley easy to figure out what it all means. Orwell is desperate for us to get the point, not a point. Revolutions inevitably fail, he tells us, because those who come to power are corrupted by it and reject the values and principles they initially embraced.

Symbols, though, generally don't work so neatly. The thing referred to is likely not reducible to a single statement but will more probably involve a range of possible meanings and interpretations.

Reading literature is a highly intellectual activity, but it also involves affect and instinct to a large degree. Much of what we think about literature, we feel first. Having instincts, though, doesn't automatically mean they work at their highest level. Dogs are instinctive swimmers, but not every pup hits the water understanding what to do with that instinct. Reading is like that, too. The more you exercise the symbolic imagination, the better and quicker it works. We tend to give writers all the credit, but reading is also an event of the imagination; our creativity, our inventiveness, encounters that of the writer, and in that meeting we puzzle out what she means, what we understand her to mean, what uses we can put her writing to. Imagination isn't fantasy. That is to say, we can't simply invent meaning without the writer, or if we can, we ought not to hold her to it. Rather, a reader's imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another.

So engage that other creative intelligence. Listen to your instincts. Pay attention to what you feel about the text. It probably means something.