« List of Readings/Associated Topic | Main | Art Education Advocacy/Wildcard Blog »

April 26, 2006

Presentation Talking Points:

Formal Oral Presentations -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)Here are some things I hope to cover tonight:

1. Comparison/Contrast: An “essential method” according to Roberts (187) for COMPREHENSIVE EXAM QUESTIONS
a. “...select and articulate a common ground for discussion" (Roberts 184)
b. The inherent nature of this type of discussion is that it allows perspective and stifles mere plot summary (if done properly)
c. Decide on your goal-is your paper an equal elucidation of both works, a discussion of your preference of one, or an explanation of a method or an idea?
d. Compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges
i. Ideas/Themes/Subjects
ii. Character/Character Development/Character Depiction
iii. Setting functions
e. Things to avoid:
i. Plot Summary
ii. Lumping
iii. the “Tennis-Match” method: 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2
f. Useful vocabulary: Common, share, equally, both, parallel, similar, also, while, whereas, different, dissimilar, contrast, although, except, despite, along with this, in these ways, etc.
2. The Adding Machine/Expressionism - 1922
 Definition: “In literature, expressionism is often considered a revolt against realism and naturalism, seeking to achieve a psychological or spiritual reality rather than record external events in logical sequence” (infoplease).
 Dark world view/nihilistic
 Contrary to hedonism of 1920’s
 Moeller: “If Expressionism is objective seeing, as all observation must be, it is subjective projection; that is all the half-understood ‘hinterland’ thoughts, all the yearnings and unknown suppression of the mind, are exposed… in spite of character…”(ix)
 white-collar drone is so far removed from happiness and meaning in this life that they will never be able to enjoy paradise, even if they do make it to heaven
 Expressionism (visual arts) –1905-1940’s-moves away from “mirror up to nature” to expressing emotions of the artist.
 most characters have names that are “numbered”
 Why is this called Expressionistic literature and not Dadaistic or Surrealistic?
3. Paper #3
a. My initial opening paragraph (includes thesis):
O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", "A Circle in the Fire", "The Displaced Person" and "Good Country People" all have similar structure, characters and themes. In each story, a single or widowed female landholder with a defective daughter is visited by refugee males who eventually cause upheaval. Given O'Connor's immersion in Catholicism, the archetypal reading of this theme is that the visitors are disguised messenger angels who have come to inspire the female characters to examine their lives and repent their sins. Unfortunately, it is a message that none of the characters heed. O'Connor uses character, action, and dialogue to both fulfill and reverse the archetypal theme that we should show kindness to strangers.
b. Changed to:
O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own ”,“ A Circle in the Fire ”,“ Good Country People and “The Displaced Person” all have similar structure, characters and themes. In each story, a flawed single or widowed female landholder is visited by transient males who eventually cause upheaval. Based upon a mixture of secular and religious literature, an archetypal reading of O’Connor’s design is that each visitor is a personified opportunity for the prominent female characters to examine their lives and repent their selfishness. But because O’Connor’s stories often end before the reader knows whether the main female characters have evolved, the onus of growth transfers from the flawed female characters to the audience, who are warned against being greedy, insincere, prideful and distrustful.

I may need to include Bailey from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” as a defective child, so I deleted the whole defective daughter issue. (By the way, is a “Bad Man easy to Find?) I also could not imagine Mr. Shiftlet, the boys in “A Circle in the Fire”, “Manley Pointer” as angels (Mr. Guizac may have gotten away with it, but probably only because he didn’t know much English). Furthermore, I could not locate 1 iota of respected literary criticism about angels in Flannery O’Connor’s work- (“America” magazine and www.thezodiac.com don’t count), so I thought about the archetype more, coupled with O’Connor’s motivations, and came up with the whole “onus of growth on the reader” idea and dropped the kindness to strangers theme.

Because I didn’t want to completely lose the kindness to strangers idea because I think that this is where the archetype lies, I changed to:

O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own ”,“ A Circle in the Fire ”,“ Good Country People and “The Displaced Person” all have similar structure, characters and themes. In each story, a flawed single or widowed female landholder is visited by transient males who eventually cause upheaval. Based upon a mixture of secular and religious literature, an archetypal reading of O’Connor’s design is that each visitor is a personified opportunity for the prominent female characters to examine their lives and repent their selfishness. But because O’Connor’s stories often end before the reader knows whether the main female characters have evolved, the onus of growth transfers from the flawed female characters to the audience, who are warned against being greedy, insincere, prideful and distrustful. In doing so, she leans on the teachings of her faith and conveys the lesson that we should be kind to strangers.

I still wasn’t comfortable with the “…audience, who are warned against being greedy, insincere, prideful and distrustful” line, so the present version is as follows:

O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own ”,“ A Circle in the Fire ”,“ Good Country People and “The Displaced Person” all have similar structure, characters and themes. In each story, a flawed single or widowed female landholder is visited by transient males who eventually cause upheaval. Based upon a mixture of secular and religious literature, an archetypal reading of O’Connor’s design is that each visitor is a personified opportunity for the prominent female characters to examine their lives and repent their selfishness. But because O’Connor’s stories often end before the reader knows whether the main female characters have evolved, the onus of growth transfers from them. In doing so, she leans on the teachings of her faith to convey the belief that we should be kind to strangers.
Besides Trojan Horse, Aesop fables, and Snow White-any other stories that include a malicious visitor?
Do you think that the female landowners each have a fatal flaw?

Example MLA style:
BOOK:
Aesop. Aesop's Fables. Trans. John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating. Lexington, KY: The
University Press of Kentucky, 1993.
ARTICLE:
Collins, Caroline. "Jilted Southern Women: The Defiance of Margaret Cooper and
Her Twentieth Century Successors." Studies in the Novel 35.2 (2003): 178-
89.
The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. Toronto: Thomas
Nelson & Sons, 1966.
WEB SITE:
"expressionism: In Literature." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. © 1994, 2000-
2005, on Infoplease. © 2000–2006 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease.
26 Apr. 2006 .

Posted by BrendaChristeleit at April 26, 2006 5:20 PM

Comments

As I said in class, Brenda, this was an impressive study guide. You have many excellent ideas for your paper, and your questions sparked a great discussion. If you feel the tragic flaw is important, you might spend more time looking at the genre of tragedy. If you feel the identity of the protagonists as landowners is important, you should look more into economic determinism (is this an agrarian/industrialization tension?). If you feel their identity as women is important, then gender studies is the way to go. If you still want to focus on mythological/archetypal, then delving deeper into the "felix culpa" that we talked about in class will help.

You don't have to choose one and drop all the others, but you are in a situation where you have so many attractive paths to follow that it's not clear to me which one is likely to result in the best paper -- all are strong ideas that show you have really internalized the *point* of literary analysis.

I'm sure you'll do fine, and I'd be happy to continue discussing with you what your next step might be.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at April 26, 2006 8:27 PM

Thanks! I appreciate your support, Dr. Jerz!

Posted by: Brenda Christeleit at April 28, 2006 11:05 AM

I think an approach that mixes gender studies and mythology/archetypes would be particularly fruitful, since women and men typically serve different mythological/archetypal roles. Males are typically representative of raw physical power, for instance, whereas women are more often representative of keen, manipulative, intellectual power.

Posted by: ChrisU at May 1, 2006 4:13 PM

Post a comment




Remember Me?