haiku for today

somewhere in oakland
a poet called sinister
is reading your blog

Faulkner's Nobel Prize Speech

Here's the link to William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, 1949.
Please read this in addition to "A Rose for Emily" for Thursday's class.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

pic credit: http://nighthawknews.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/faulkner2.jpg

Poetry: Literary Form Terminology

The exam will draw from this list of poetry terms. We can do a quick review Tuesday if you like. Remember that the exam will ask you to define terms and to name a text that uses it, so try to prepare with that in mind.

Scansion
Rhythm
Meter
Foot
Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
End Rhyme
Stanza/Strophe
Couplet (Heroic, Closed)
Sonnet
Villanelle
Enjambment
Free Verse
Blank Verse
Haiku

Easing the transition

I noticed a few of us with tears welling at the close of our last day on poetry, so to make the passage into fiction a bit easier, here's a video made by a Cumbria Lake District tourism organization to make traveling to the landscapes of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter hip for the Youtube generation.



Link to Wordsworth's poem: http://www.bartleby.com/106/253.html

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, TZ version

Compliments of Youtube, here, in 3 parts, is Robert Enrico's 1962 film version of Ambrose Bierce's short story:

Introduction Examples

A few of you have had follow up questions about the kinds of Introductions I've asked you to write. Here are a couple of samples from student drafts in a previous term:

A Key Line:

The first time the imagery of fire appears in Felicia Hemans’s poem, “Casabianca,” it is a figure of illumination: “The flame that lit the battle’s wreck / shone round him o’er the dead” (3-4). Not only does this fire literally make the scene of the boy, the ship, and the battle scenario visible, but it also illuminates the poem itself from within. In other words, the poem suggests within its own text one way of reading and interpreting it. This essay traces the ever-present yet subtly shifting image of fire in “Casabianca” as a means of constructing a compelling interpretation of the poem. The hypothesis is that following the flame will reveal Hemans’s text to be a symbolic critique of war.


An Outside Image:

There’s a moving scene in the recent blockbuster film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean, in which a young boy demonstrates amazing courage in the face of death when all the adults around him are acting like cowards. What is striking about this image is not that it is something new, but, rather, that it is so familiar because it can be found in many texts, especially about boys and the sea. From Peter Pan to the children in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island to so many children’s movies today, there are numerous accounts of young boys demonstrating courage in juxtaposition with cowardly adults. But if this is just a simple image of a child’s surprising courage, it seems unlikely that the image would be so long-lasting. There must be something more complex to this, and this essay explores these complexities.

John Updike

Letting you know about the recent passing of an American literary icon.

pic credit: http://www.popculturemadness.com/Entertainment/Books/images/Updike.jpg

Blog writing on Poe: Due January 29th

Some narrators (the person telling the story) are more trustworthy than others. Do you find Montresor a trustworthy narrator or not? Do you trust that he is telling the truth in all instances, some instances, or in no instances? Give evidence from the text to support your points--in other words, point out the bits of text that give you the impressions of his levels of trustworthiness.

300-400 words. Please draw on evidence from the text to support your points.


pic credit: http://www.wineintro.com/movies/amontillado/amontillado.jpg

The Math Poem

“The Square Root of 3” by Kumar Patel

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
A three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath a vicious square root sign,
wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic
I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality
When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
And love for me has been renewed.

Blog Assignment: Introductions, due Jan. 26

In class today I presented you with several strategies to create a good introduction opening for an essay on literature.

Open with a significant line, word, phrase, sentence that you can do a bit of close reading analysis with to lead the reader into your thesis rather than confronting the reader with your thesis from word one.

Open with a question or two that provokes the reader to think about a broad issue that your analysis of the text will engage with in a more specific way.

Open with an initial and/or apparently obvious response to the text that you will work against in your essay. "At first glance TEXT A appears to say ___ about TOPIC X, but a closer look reveals it might actually be saying ______ about TOPIC X."

Open with a quote from another text, possibly a quote that can be extended or complicated by your analysis of the literary text you are working with, or a quote that can be undermined by it. You could use a quote by the same author in a different text, or by a totally different author.

Open with a cliche or "common knowledge" generalization that your analysis of the text will challenge.

Open with a scene or anecdote from outside of the text you're analyzing. Maybe you want to open with an anecdote about a real life experience of the situation that is taking place in the poem or about the issue the poem engages. Maybe you want to open with a reference to an encounter you've had with the text in daily life--in a tv show, film, or conversation with roommates.


The Assignment: Choose one poem we've read so far and choose one Intro strategy. Write up a solid, revised Introduction to an essay on that poem. 300-400 words.

MLA Citation Resource Online

Here's the link to the MLA citation site hosted by Purdue. It's got explanations of all the format and style rules you need to know, plus lots of helpful example papers to show you what the rules look like in practice.


http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/

Blog Writing: Due January 22

As I mentioned in class, this blog post shifts gears a bit from analytical to strictly creative writing.

In the spirit of Bucky Sinister's Bruce Wayne poem, you should write either a sonnet or a villanelle with a fictional character playing a role in your poem. This poem can be written simply about the character; it can be written from you to the character, or from one fictional character to another. You have a lot of creative latitude with your approach.

In addition to the poem, please write a paragraph explaining the choices you made and why you made them. This is a good place to comment on how the form you chose works with the content.

Lastly, please post a pic of the character or characters.

Pic credit: http://www.quizilla.com/user_images/F/fades2scarlet/1098945697_brian06.gif

Poem Link: "The Other Universe of Bruce Wayne"

Link to the poem: http://sporkpress.com/2_2/Pieces/Sinister.htm


pic source: http://www.batmanwallpaper.net/backgrounds/the-joker/batman-joker-card.jpg

Blog Assignment on William Blake: Due Jan. 20th

First, I'm offering a few thoughts on the poem:

Blake's trochaic tetrameter gives the poem the rhythmic feel of a song, chant--you could read it like a cheerleader, or nursery rhyme. As such, there is a childlike quality to it.

Other aspects that lend to this childlike or puerile quality: obsessive and repetitive questions like a small child is always asking adults, a sense of wonder--the tiger isn't just an animal but a ferocious and mysterious creature, and the feeling that the poem is giving us a kind of moral message in the lines asking if the same God who made the Lamb made the Tyger.

Now some paradoxes or contradictions: If the tyger is holy--all that lives is holy for Blake--how do we rectify it being constructed through the industrial processes he is opposed to? Why would the poem describe an organic living animal as created by industrial processes? Are these descriptions coming from a child's mind so we should read the poem as the utterances of a child? Are they from Blake's mind as a poet? From both? And, is the poem more impressed with the tyger than the lamb when it asks if the same God made both? Does this question imply a binary of good/evil--something Blake would not likely agree with???

With all these paradoxes, what is the effect of the final stanza of the poem--it repeats the first one??


For your writing, 300-400 words, please address one or several of these paradoxes. As part of your writing, I want you to incorporate as evidence for your ideas some interpretation of Blake's illustration for the poem. Why the robotic/idiotic tyger?

I've pasted in the pic above, but you can search for more if you're interested at the William Blake Archive, the original source for the pic above. http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/

Poe's birthday

Each year on January 19th a mysterious person dressed in black appears in the graveyard where Edgar Allan Poe is buried and leaves precisely three red roses and a half-bottle of cognac.




Check out this link for Poe-celebration activities, including a wine-tasting related to the short story we'll be reading in a few weeks...

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20090109_Boston__Philly__Baltimore_go_toe-to-toe_over_Poe.html

pic credits: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Edgar_Allan_Poe_2.jpg

Blog Assignment on Pound's Poem: Due Jan. 15th

For Thursday, in addition to your reading and coming with responses to all the poems, here's your blog writing assignment. 300-400 words. Please spend half your writing (1-2 paragraphs) making a case that we can read Pound's poem as a pro-modernity poem--in favor of urbanization, technology, etc. Spend the other half making a case for the poem as an anti-modernity poem. Remember to use evidence from within the poem itself. Think about imagery, rhyme and/or other sonic qualities, the relationship between the two lines, and anything else you see in the poem. No need to research Pound as a person/poet for this.

Also, in the spirit of Pound's two-line structure, please post 2 pics and/or embed videos that you relate to the poem.

Blog Pics for Rich, Hemans, and Frost

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/MatrixHumanField.gif
http://pelogifam.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/child-soldier.jpg
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/Hera_f/mermannn.jpg

Gwendolyn Brooks "First Fight. Then Fiddle."

As we ran out of time for a sustained discussion of Brooks's poem, here are a few thoughts for you to consider. Feel free to leave a comment on this entry if you've got thoughts you'd like to share, but you are not required to.


A bit of context: the poem was written in 1949 and Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer prize.

Some questions:
The poem opens by calling the musical instrument a "fiddle," which matches the title, but in the last line calls it a "violin." What might this indicate? What has changed from the start to the end of the poem?

Where is the volta? If this diverges from the conventional location of an Italian sonnet volta, why did she do so? Try to get specific on what effects this has on the argument or theme of the poem.

The title states that fighting must precede music/beauty, but does the form of the poem follow this? Is the initial "Octet" about violence and the "Sestet" about music? Is this fight then fiddle formula present within any specific lines--in other words, are there any lines that start with violence and finish with music? Are there lines that invert the order? What do all these variations within the poem tell you in relationship to the very clear title?

Photo Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/81273/57802/Gwendolyn-Brooks-1950

Assignment due January 13th: Poetic Imagery

There are 3 parts to this writing/blog assignment. 300-400 words. You need to have it posted before we meet for class.

1. This part can be relatively brief. Take note of the various images in one of the poems assigned for class on January 13: Frost's "Design", Hemans's "Casabianca", or Rich's "Diving into the Wreck". Are some images more prominent and/or dominant than others? Are some images subtle? Do some images recur within the poem--and if so do they change or stay the same?

2. This part should comprise the bulk of your entry: 2 or more substantial paragraphs. Take something you noticed from your image notes in part 1 and use it to formulate an interpretation of the poem. For this assignment, less is more, so try to focus on just one image that recurs, for example, or a very small group of images that relate to each other. As an illustration, if I had assigned this for last class, you could have written about the 3 different images in the separate quatrains of Shakespeare's sonnet, discussing the compression of scale and the varieties of lightness/darkness, cyclical/terminal nature, etc.

3. Post 1-3 pictures with your writing. Be creative and have fun with this. Also, it's good practice to include links to the websites where you found them or to give yourself credit if they are your pics.

Bloggers' etiquette

As I mentioned in class, some future assignments will involve you writing comments to classmates' blog posts. I also encourage you to leave unassigned comments on your own if you find people's entries thought-provoking.

For any and all comments, though, let's follow good blog etiquette: primarily keeping a respectful and appropriate approach to our writing. Profanity is considered inappropriate, as is criticizing a person--posting your differences is absolutely encouraged, but articulate your different readings/interpretations/ideas in relation to others' ideas rather than in opposition to them as people.

Here's a link with good etiquette to follow: http://lifehacker.com/software/top/special-lifehackers-guide-to-weblog-comments-126654.php

A couple of New Media Literature examples

Here are links to the Facebook versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. They are not required reading but for those interested in looking at a current intersection of New Media and literature.

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/7/30schmelling.html

Course Syllabus

ENL3-015 Introduction to Literature--Winter 2009

T/R 8-9:50am, Wellman 115
CRN: 32337
Andrew Hageman
Office: 320 Voorhies
Office Hrs: T/R 10-11am & by appointment
email: achageman@ucdavis.edu
course email: enl3mornings-w09@ucdavis.edu

"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries" ---Stephen King.



Required Text: The Norton Introduction to Literature, 9th edition, media version
Prerequisite: You must have already completed the “Subject A” requirement to take English 3.

Course Description and Objectives:
During the Thanksgiving holiday last quarter, two of my college-age cousins were asking my input on a debate about the best Stephen King novel: Pet Semetary versus The Dark Tower. I helped them articulate considerations of King’s explorations of desire in relation to the undead and improper burial in Pet Semetary and his abilities to synthesize multiple literary genres, to reference and incorporate other literary works, and to build an epic series with The Dark Tower. Just as we agreed that each text had its unique merits and that naming one superior would be falling into an apple-orange comparison, their dad/my uncle couldn’t help asking if I was taking his sons’ debate seriously or just playing along—after all, he quipped, surely Stephen King doesn’t count as literature.
This short anecdote and the self-deprecating Stephen King quote included above raise some issues that will be central to this Introduction to Literature course: What defines literature? Which works are or are not literature—and why or why not?? Is literature just a means of escape and/or enjoyment or something else? And underlying these questions is the matter of how does literature still matter in our present moment?
In this course, we will take up these questions by considering literature as something quite complicated. Literature can be related both to luxury and to social concern and even change, and if we read literature closely and rigorously, it can reveal things about how we think and talk about life and all the issues that comprise it. Furthermore, we will study literature with a notion that it is not only content that causes our responses to literature, but that form—the structures and strategies of literary language—does too.
This class embraces these ideas and takes as its main objective teaching a core set of skills required to analyze, appreciate, and enjoy works of literature with an interest in content, form, and context. You will develop these skills through close reading a wide range of literary works in a variety of genres, and by writing responses as well as more formal pieces about those works that pique your interest.
Throughout this quarter, you should strive to obtain and cultivate the following abilities:

Develop a thoughtful, informed, and sophisticated perspective on any given literary text.

Examine the reasons for your responses to texts.

Situate your perspective in the context of the university, the field, and/or the conversation at hand.

Communicate your perspective clearly through writing to the appropriate audience.

Cultivating these habits of mind is our aim this quarter, so let’s peel open our first text!



Course Assignments:

Blog Writings and Projects
You will create and maintain a blog for this course. There will be weekly writing assignments and/or projects to be completed and posted on your blog by the deadlines indicated. These writings contribute to the 6000-word writing requirement for this course and will range from informal to formal style and will be evaluated based on the requirements established for each assignment.

Reading Quizzes, Attendance, and Participation
There will be regular short reading quizzes at the beginning of class meetings. These quizzes will be given at the start of class meetings, so be prompt in order to give yourself the full time to complete them. In addition, you are expected to attend class regularly and to arrive having completed the reading. Significant absences or late arrivals will lower this portion of your grade.

Formal Paper and Draft Workshop:
You will write a substantial evidence-based, thesis-driven essay at the end of the quarter. This essay will include a portfolio that demonstrates how the essay develops ideas and issues you have raised in your blog. Your essay will also go through a draft workshop in which you will evaluate others’ drafts in order to revise your final version. Attendance is required at the workshop—failure to attend or failure to bring a substantial draft will result in an automatic 1/3 reduction of your grade for that paper (i.e. a B becomes a B-). Please also note that I never accept drafts or final papers via email, so plan ahead and ask early for assistance in drafting.

Midterm and Final Exams:
The midterm exam will be on Thursday, February 5th in class, and the final will be Wednesday, March 18th, 1-3pm.


Grading/Evaluation Policies:

Blog 30%
Reading Quizzes/Part./Att.: 10%
Formal Final Essay 30%
Midterm Exam: 15%
Final Exam: 15%


Submitting Your Final Essay:
Your essay portfolio must be handed in at my Voorhies 320 office on Friday, March 13th before noon. DO NOT submit any papers to the English or University Writing Program department offices. They do no accept student papers. In case of medical or other emergency, contact me before the due date to discuss an extension; extensions are not otherwise granted. Late papers will receive a 1/3 grade reduction for each day past the due date, and no papers will be accepted after the final examination.

Office Hours:
You are greatly encouraged to visit me in my office hours early and often! I have found office hour meetings significantly beneficial to students, whether in the brainstorming phases of writing, working through a challenging literary work or idea, or in the midst of final essay revisions. If your schedule precludes you from coming to my scheduled office hours, I am willing to make an appointment. I do not accept drafts over email, so do stop by to see me.

Course Requirements and Policies:

 ENL3 has a 6000-word requirement. You must complete every graded written assignment, including the final exam, in order to fulfill the requirement and pass the course. If you are missing any formal assignment at the end of the quarter, I cannot pass you.
 You must earn a C- or better in order to pass, even if you have turned in all the work.

Academic Honesty:
With regard to plagiarism, don’t do it! Whether the work of others is submitted through purposeful mendacity or for lack of familiarity with what constitutes plagiarism, it is a serious academic offense that you will do well to avoid. Suspect papers will be submitted to the UC Davis Student Judicial Affairs to follow university procedures regarding academic honesty. I am happy to help you avoid this issue, so bring any question to class or office hours before the assignment is due. A complete outline of university policies and guidelines for avoiding plagiarism can be found at http://sja.ucdavis.edu.

Disclosures:
If you require any accommodation in the course due to a disability, please acquire formal documentation of the disability from the UC Davis Disability Resources Center. You may then notify me by providing the documentation so I can make arrangements to meet your needs.


Modifications:
Course schedule subject to change with notification from instructor. Course policies will be modified only if absolutely necessary.

ENL 3: Introduction to Literature: Winter 2009
Schedule of Reading and Writing Assignments

You are expected to complete assignments for the day on which they are listed. You will be notified of any changes to this schedule well in advance both in class and electronically.

Tue., Jan. 6 Course Introduction
First reading and writing. Establishing our blogs.
Key Concepts: Defining “Literature” and How & Why to Write About it

Thu., Jan. 8 “What is Poetry?”
Read Shakespeare “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”, Wordsworth “Nuns Fret Not”, Brooks "First Fight. Then Fiddle"
Key Concepts: Line, Stanza, Rhyme, Rhythm, Metre, The Sonnet form
Writing: Evidence and Claims 1

Tue., Jan. 13 “A dimpled spider, fat and white”
Read Frost “Design”, Hemans “Casabianca”, Rich “Diving into the Wreck”
Key Concepts: Imagery and Symbolism
Writing: Evidence and Claims 2

Thu., Jan. 15 “Form and Content, Form versus Content, Form as Content”
Read Emily Dickinson “I dwell in Possibility”, Pound “In a Station on the Metro”, Blake “The Tyger”
Key Concepts: Couplet, Ambiguity, the Dash—
Writing: Introductions—making a first impression

Tue., Jan. 20 “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”
Read Hopkins “God’s Grandeur”, Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, Sinister “The Other Universe of Bruce Wayne”
Key Concepts: Pace, Texture, Punctuation, Repetition
Writing: Formulating your thesis

Thu., Jan. 22 Student Poetry Presentations

Tue., Jan. 27 “Poet on the Peaks: Gary Snyder in Context”
Read Poetry Handout of Snyder’s poems
Key Concepts: Reading poems in the context of the author and his/her historical/social/cultural contexts. Conclude poetry segment.

Thu., Jan. 29 “What is Narrative?”
Read Bierce “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Poe “The Cask of Amontillado”
Key Concepts: Basic Structures of Story & Plot—Fabula & Syuzhet



Tue., Feb. 3 “There are no longer problems of the spirit.”
Read Faulkner “A Rose for Emily” and Nobel Prize Banquet Speech (online)
Key Concepts: Narrative persona, characterization, revelation-suggestion-suppression
Writing: Conclusions

Thu., Feb. 5 Midterm Exam

Tue., Feb. 10 “Won’t you please empathize? I prefer not to.”
Melville “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Key concepts: Focalization, POV
Writing: Organization—at the local and global levels of your writing

Thu., Feb. 12 “Opacity, Transparency, and The Human Condition”
Read Alexie “Flight Patterns”
Key Concepts: Characterization, Interiority/Exteriority, (In)Direct Speech
Writing: Development—extending your ideas into longer writings

Tue., Feb. 17 “Technotale”
Read Cumming “The 21 Steps” (online) & Handout on technology & literature.
Key Concepts: Setting & imagery, technology and narrative. Conclude Narrative Segment

Thu., Feb. 19 Initiating the Final Essay

Tue., Feb. 24 “What is Drama?”
Read Sophocles Antigone lines 1-402 (pp. 2074-83)
Key Concepts: Acts, Scenes, Lines, Stage Directions
Writing: Revisions: strategies and priorities

Thu., Feb. 26 “There are a lot of dreadful things in the world…”
Read Antigone lines 403-End (pp. 2083-2105)
Key Concepts: Drama & Genre
Writing: Process and Product—thinking through the portfolio

Tue., Mar. 3 “Pulling out of the Station”
Read A Streetcar Named Desire, scenes 1-2 (pp. 1539-55)
Key Concepts: Plot elements, mise en scène, diegetic levels
Writing: One-pager due

Thu., Mar. 5 “Strange Humanities”
Read A Streetcar Named Desire, scenes 3-8 (pp. 1556-87)
Key Concepts: Dialogue and/vs Action, Dialogue and Gender
Writing: In-Class Draft Workshop

Tue., Mar. 10 “How We Go On”
Read A Streetcar Named Desire, scene 9-End (pp. 1588-1602)
Key Concepts: Dramatic Conclusions and/or Closures

Thu., Mar. 12 “Of Last Things”
Review for Final Exam
Writing: Final Paper Due: Friday March 13th by Noon in my office.



Wednesday, March 18th Final Exam: 1-3pm