Unit 5: LITERATUREUnit 5: LITERATUREHU 300HU 300

Aimee B. JamesAimee B. James

Seminar Outline Unit Overview

Learning Outcomes

Learning Activities

Seminar Discussion

Project Information

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Learning Outcomes Unit Outcomes

Analyze the tools authors use when creating literature and what they communicate to readers

Investigate a range of poets and poetry

Examine reading in 21st century America

Learning Activities Reading

“The Lost Beautifulness”

Literacy articles

Discussion “The Lost

Beautifulness”

Two poems

Seminar DiscussionSeminar Discussion

Literacy How have reading

habits changed over time? (Go way back!)

What about your own personal reading habits?

What trends do you see today?

How has technology impacted literacy?

Central Connecticut State University, America’s Most Literate Cities Study -- http://www.ccsu.edu/page.cfm?p=8140

Reading in America In 2004, the National

Endowment for the Arts put out a study called “Reading at Risk,” about the decline of reading in America. In 2007, another study showed that 1 in 4 adults read no books in 2006. (Fram, 2007)

What do you think of these findings? Do they seem accurate to what you observe?

What might a decline in reading say about a culture?

“One in Four Read No Books Last Year”

AP-Ipsos Poll

Who were the most avid readers?

What were the people who did read reading?

Regional differences

Ethnic differences

“Unexpected Twist: Fiction Reading is Up”

For the first time since the NEA began surveying American reading habits in 1982 -- and less than five years after it issued its famously gloomy "Reading at Risk" report -- the percentage of American adults who report reading "novels, short stories, poems or plays" has risen instead of declining: from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent in 2008 (Thompson, 2009).

(Note: Nonfiction is excluded from the study)

What might explain the increase of reading in the last 6 years?

Which books/authors Which books/authors do you enjoy? Which do you enjoy? Which have inspired you?have inspired you?

Poetry In our unit we

discussed poetry, which is rarely a best-seller. Why might poetry be less popular than fiction?

Where are some places that poetry does exist and thrive in our culture?

Why Poetry? What are some of the unique

benefits poetry can offer to the reader or listener?

“The Lost Beautifulnes

s”Anzia Yezierska

Sketch of the author Anzia Yezierska accompanying an article in the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, March 5th, 1921.

The Quick History of The Quick History of LiteratureLiterature

Otherwise Known as The Chapter on Literature in Your Text!Otherwise Known as The Chapter on Literature in Your Text!

The Epic of Gilgamesh—fromTablet 1 Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,

he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull. He walks out in front, the leader,and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions.Mighty net, protector of his people,raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone!Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection,son of the august cow, Rimat-Ninsun;... Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.It was he who opened the mountain passes, who dug wells on the flank of the mountain. It was he who crossed the ocean, the vast seas, to the rising sun, who explored the world regions, seeking life.It was he who reached by his own sheer strength Utanapishtim, the Faraway, who restored the sanctuaries (or: cities) that the Flood had destroyed! ... for teeming mankind. Who can compare with him in kingliness? Who can say like Gilgamesh: "I am King!"? Whose name, from the day of his birth, was called "Gilgamesh"? Two-thirds of him is god, one-third of him is human. The Great Goddess [Aruru] designed(?) the model for his body, she prepared his form ... ... beautiful, handsomest of men, ... perfect

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/

Literature as History

The Iliad Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of

Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html

Literature as History

Catallus—Carmen 5 Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,

and let us judge all the rumors of the old mento be worth just one penny!The suns are able to fall and rise:When that brief light has fallen for us,we must sleep a never ending night.Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,then another thousand, then a second hundred,then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.Then, when we have made many thousands,we will mix them all up so that we don't know,and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds outhow many kisses we have shared.

Translation © copyright 14-5-1997 by Rudy Negenborn

http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e5.htm

Poetry

Sappho—Hymn to Aphrodite Peer of the gods, the happiest man I seem

Sitting before thee, rapt at thy sight, hearing

Thy soft laughter and they voice most gentle,

Speaking so sweetly.

Then in my bosom my heart wildly flutters,

And, when on thee I gaze never so little,

Bereft am I of all power of utterance,

My tongue is useless.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sappho/sappho0.htm

Poetry

Petrarch--Soleasi Nel Mio Cor She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,

A noble lady in a humble home,

And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,

'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.

The soul that all its blessings must resign,

And love whose light no more on earth finds room,

Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,

Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;

They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf

Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,

And naught remains to me save mournful breath.

Assuredly but dust and shade we are,

Assuredly desire is blind and brief,

Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. http://www.sonnets.org/petrarch.htm

Poetry

Shakespeare—Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.O no, it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wand'ring bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle's compass come,Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom:If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

http://poetry.eserver.org/sonnets/116.html

Poetry

Matsuo Basho Fallen sick on a journey,

In dreams I run wildlyOver a withered moor.

Poverty's child -he starts to grind the rice,and gazes at the moon.

The first soft snow!Enough to bend the leavesOf the jonquil low.

http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/#akutagawa

Poetry

Poetry Emily Dickinson—”I

Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – 

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air – 

Between the Heaves of Storm – 

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – 

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset – when the King

Be witnessed – in the Room – 

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable – and then it was

There interposed a Fly – 

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz – 

Between the light – and me – 

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see – 

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15393

American novelists Washington Irving—”The Legend of Sleepy

Hollow”

James Fennimore Cooper—The Last of the Mohicans

Herman Melville—Moby Dick

Mark Twain

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

The Novel

Edgar Allen Poe

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. (The Cask of Amontillado, 1846)

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. (The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839)

http://www.poestories.com/

The Short Story

No Unit Project!No Unit Project!

Unit 6: Morality Reading: re “Morality”

Discussion: morality in the humanities and whistle-blowing

Seminar: Plato’s “Ring of Gyges” and Kantian Ethics

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