Weeks I & II:

Terms:

Definition of narrative as a genre
Narrative Conventions:

• Setting
• Language and dialogue
• Narrator's position
• Tone

"Strawberry Spring" (Stephen King, 1978)

• setting
• position of narrator
• transformation of the real into the surreal
• creation of suspense--placement of "clues"

• setting
• irony of title
• Joy-Hulga's hubris
• moment of epiphany
• similarities between Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman--social conventions
• Bible salesman's duplicity
• connections between Mrs. Freeman and the Bible salesman
• the role of "misfits"
• use of violence (psychic, emotional, physical)

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" (Flannery O'Connor, 1953)

• setting
• the realism of the story: family trip, quarreling, etc
• the grandmother's sense of herself and her perceptions of the world
• The Misfit's perceptions of the world
• moment of epiphany
• crisis of faith
• use of violence (psychic, emotional, physical)
• which world-view--the grandmother's or The Misfit's--prevails?

Aspects of the Harlem Renaissance/New Negro Renaissance:

• Pride in African heritage
• Creation of and celebration of black American heroes
• Racial propaganda - wanting to create a positive image for African Americans; wanting to "educate" both whites and blacks about African and African American history and culture
• Realistic representations of African American life and culture
• Drawing on the resources of the black folk art tradition: use of spirituals, the blues, jazz, vernacular language (dialect)

• use of dialect and slang
• use of setting
• use of irony
• use of religious language and symbolism
• ambiguous endings
• need for both central characters to escape aspects of their lives - searching for freedom

Tracks - Louise Erdrich (1988)
Background:

• Dawes Act of 1887 / Burke Act 1906
• Doctrine of Manifest Destiny
• concept/definition of  "cultural damage"

• structure: dual narrators; multiple titles for each chapter
• the ongoing conflict(s) between Native and Anglo cultures
• attitudes towards assimilation: positive, negative, ambivalent, etc
• Nanapush's role as storyteller--stories as a way to preserve history and tradition
• Pauline's "religion of negation"
• importance of the image of the "ugly design of bruises" (113)
• family/kinship groups as a mode of resistance
• the links between powerlessness and violence
• the links between Fleur and the land
• the need to know the past in order to understand the future
• the power (both positive and negative) of sexuality

"Song of Myself," from Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman (1891)

Connections between the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass edition and "Song of Myself":

• United States as a poetic subject
• the role of the "bard" or poet
• the ordinary people
• responding to the "now" rather than the mythic past

• hero
• setting
• style
• structure
• subject
• plot/action

• Importance of seeing Leaves of Grass as an ongoing project (first edition 1855, last edition 1891)
• Poem's celebration of copias: multitudes, cataloging all of the United States
• Poet as a "kosmos"
• Whitman's "barbaric yawp"
• Connections between the poet and the people he describes
• Celebration of the physical world and the physical body
• Significance of the various images of grass
• Importance of allowing for contradictions
• Whitman's transcendentalism
• Whitman's use of language and imagery

• Structure of a sonnet
• Lyric
• Use of nature
• Connections between poetic structure and poetic theme(s)

• Definition of a conventional comedy (see chart handed out in class)
• Definition of satire
• Shaw asserts that his art is didactic: what does this mean and how is it illustrated by the play?

• What sort of commentary is Shaw making about such a rigidly structured society?
• What distinctions, if any, seem to exist between “ladies” and “flower girls,” for example?
• Think about some of Eliza’s speeches about these differences, excluding what she says in Act V

• Think about his “undeserving poor” speech
• His speech in Act V, where he protests against becoming a member of the middle-class

• Look at the speeches they make to Mrs. Higgins as well as how they treat Eliza after she “rebels” after the Embassy Ball.

• Higgins’s speech in Act V, in which he says that a person should have “the same manner for all human souls…”  and his speech about having “never sneered in his life.”
• Eliza’s speech about “selling herself”
• Shaw’s comments in the epilogue about the economic problems facing Freddy and Liza

What comments does this play make about women’s roles in society?

• Consider Mrs. Higgins’s remarks to Henry Higgins
• Liza’s “declaration of independence” to Higgins, which leads him to declare his admiration for her
• Higgins’s statements that he wanted Liza to become “her own woman”: does he seem happy to relinquish control over her actions?
• For most of the play, Higgins and Pickering see Liza as a kind of “doll”: do they appear to see her differently by the play’s conclusion?

Shaw challenges the conventional endings expected from comedies:

• Liza’s economic self-sufficiency
• Her choice of husband and the reasons behind that choice

Master Harold...and the boys--Athol Fugard (1982)

Elements of tragedy, in the classical tradition:

• Emphasis on a heroic figure who is larger than life, but flawed
• Hero fails in his course of action but retains dignity, nevertheless
• We recognize our own potential for failure--and greatness--in the hero
• Actions of the play create a catharsis: release of emotions, generally a combination of pity and fear
• Ending of the play is unhappy but leaves the audience with a sense of affirmation
• At the conclusion of the play, a corrupt society is healed but at great cost

• Role of society
• Is society changed, by the conclusion of the play?
• Dynamics of Hally and Sam's relationship

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Last updated December 1