Friday, October 29, 2010

For Tuesday: Kipling's Kim, Chs. I-V (pp.1-78)

Artwork by Kipling's father based on Kim
Kim is Kipling's best known novel and the only one to gain complete critical admiration (his first novel, The Light That Failed, is largely considered a failure, and his other big one, Captains Courageous, is considered children's lit and rarely discussed).  The novel follows the education of Kim, a half Indian, half Irish orphan who attaches himself to a Buddhist lama who adopts Kim as his "chela" (pupil, but in a religious sense).  Kim eventually ends up in English hands and becomes an agent in "The Great Game," which was the struggle between England and Russia for control of Asia (Russia threatened to invade India for some time, and like England, was mired in endless skirmishes in the mountains of Afghanistan--sound familiar?).  One general thing the novel asks is what path will Kim (as a representative of India, half "English," half "Indian) ultimately take: will he choose the East or the West?  England or India?  Tradition or Empire?  
Other ideas to consider...

* How is the lama portrayed in the early parts of the novel?  He is seen by some critics as wise, representing Kipling's deep love for Indian/Eastern spirituality; to others he's a clown, a buffoon, and mere comic relief.

* Why is Kim drawn to the lama?  What does he see in him? 

* How does Kipling contrast the lama with Mahbub Ali?  Why do they both appreciate Kim--but for different reasons?

* Examine the narrator's tone/perspective in these opening chapters; do we hear an imperialist giving a condescending 'tour' of India, or is it more in the style of Kipling's travel writings such as "Edge of the East?"  Consider this passage from Chapter II: "All India is full of holy man stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue to the end" (Longman, 27).  Note that Chapter II opens with a quotation from the poem featured in "Edge of the East."

* How does Kim respond to the Indian landscape/people?  Is he aloof from it like an Englishman, or does it, as Kipling writes in "Home," "[speak] with a strong voice, recalling many things; but the most curious revelation to one man was the sudden knowledge that under these skies lay home and the dearest place in all the world" (Longman, 256)? 

* What do you make of the poems heading each chapter, all of which are drawn from Kipling's own verse?  How do they comment on the themes/actions of the chapter? 

* Why does the lama give up Kim to the English?  Is this part of the 'comedy' of his character, or there something else at work here? 

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

For Thursday: Kipling and Kim (readings in Longman edition)

Kipling in his study, writing "Kim"

For Thursday's class, I want you to read some supplementary readings introducing Kipling and the background of Kim (1900).  You will find these readings at the end of the Longman edition beginning on page 255.  Here are the readings I want you to read and respond to for Thursday's class:

* from "Home" (255-258)
* from "The Edge of the East" (258-261)
* from "Something of Myself" (262-263)
"Lispeth" (281-285)
"The Mark of the Beast" (286-296)

In responding to these writings, consider Kipling's role as an English writer who is from India and intimately understands its languages, characters, and customs (unlike Conrad, for example, who came to Africa as an outsider).  Where does an imperialist voice clash with a 'native' voice?  Are his works 'racist'?  How does he depict Englishmen?  Indians?  What tone or point of view does the narrator offer? 

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Exam on Tuesday: The Take-Home Essay

For your essay on Tuesday, you will have 3 short answer questions and one longer essay question.  The topics will be focused on Conrad, Tutuola, and the theoretical ideas that inform their work, such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Brantlinger, and Freud.  Below is the take-home essay question which you can get a head start on now if you wish.  It will be due the Tuesday after you take the exam. 

PART III: Take-Home Essay (or, a rough draft for the Final Paper)

For your take-home essay question, I want you to basically lay the groundwork for your final paper.  This will ultimately be a 5-6 page paper using at least two works from class along with secondary/theoretical sources.  But that’s for later.  For now, I want you to respond to the following prompt in a 2-3 page essay that will form the rough draft of your future paper, meaning it will be the basis for what you adapt into a larger, more researched paper. 

THE QUESTION:
In Reader-Response Criticism, critics often refer to an intended reader that is implied by the narrative voice.  This is a reader who is more or less created by the text, and who we must in some sense become to understand the work.  As Ross C. Murfin explains in “What is Reader Response Criticism?” (in our edition of Heart of Darkness),

“Only “by agreeing to play the role of this created audience,” Susan Suleiman explains, “can an actual reader correctly understand and appreciate the work”…Gerard Genette and Gerald Prince prefer to speak of “the naratee,…the necessary counterpart of a given narrator, that is, the person or figure who receives a narrative,”…Iser employs the term “the implied reader,” but he also uses “the educated reader”… (120). 

Using either Conrad or Tutuola, consider what the narrator assumes or asks of the reader: who are “we”?  Are we English?  Male?  What ideas, biases, assumptions, fears, or desires do we have?  What knowledge do we share?  What insights and secrets are we privy to?  What do we know that other characters in this world do not?  What relationship do we share with the narrative voice?  Conversely, who might not be addressed by this narrator…and how intentional is this? 

No sources are required for this, but you must quote from the book in question to support your reading.  Also, be specific; the less specific you are, and the more you generalized, the less points I can give you for your essay.  Good luck! 

Friday, October 15, 2010

For Tuesday: Finish The Palm-Wine Drinkard

I want you to find your own way through the maze of this mythic dreamscape as much as possible; however, following from our discussion on Thursday, consider some of the following ideas:
* Other colonial symbolism in the work (along the lines of the "complete gentleman")

* Elements of traditional oral epic and myth: what parts of the work seem to reach back into a prehistoric past before books and European colonization

* Addresses and asides to his audience: who IS his audience? 

* Recurring imagery, especially babies, eyes, feet, etc. 

* The overall moral or "quest" of the work: how might the work be a modern attempt to explain the world (much as ancient epics used myth to explain the seemingly supernatural)?  How do things come together through the storyteller's art? 

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

REMEMBER...

The Amos Tutuola book most of you purchased has TWO novels in it.  The first one is called "My Life in the Bush Of Ghosts."  DON'T read this one.  Read the SECOND novel, "The Palm Wine Drinkard."  I mentioned this a few times in class, but I want to remind you just in case.  The other novel is great, too, but it's not the one we're reading. 

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

For Thursday: The Palm-Wine Drinkard (read to roughly page 67-ish, when it says "The Work of the Faithful-Mother in the White Tree"

NOTE: This is a potentially difficult text, since it is so outside English/European novelistic traditions.  Indeed, it seems to exist in a world where the English novel never existed, so unaware is the author of the narrative conventions of the genre.  Some approach the work as a transcribed folk-tale, full of unstranslatable ideas and imagery; others consider it a wildly modernist work that dives into the collective pool of myth and the collective unconsciousness.  The ultimate question is how conscious was Tutuola of writing within (or against) the English tradition, or if he was more or less oblivious to this tradition's existence.

Some questions and ideas to consider...

* What passages or sections of the text seem to be calling attention to themselves as translations?  Why might Tutuola want this to read like a translation? 

* In what way is this story like a folk or fairy tale?  Consider the main character, his quest, and his relations/conversations with other characters along the way. 

* What kind of character is the narrator?  Is he reliable—do we believe he truly has superhuman powers and abilities?  Or is this merely a “tall tale” spun out to amuse local villagers and those gullible enough to listen?  


* Where do English/European ideas and words intrude into the text?  How do we understand these seeming anachronisms?  For example, time is often mentioned in English terms, as is distance.  Why not remove this European frame of reference?

* How might this work respond to Ngugi’s arguments about language and nationalism in “The Language of African Literature”?  What do you feel is Tutuola’s view on the purpose of African fiction in preserving indigenous culture? 

* What do we make of the demons and spirits the main character encounters on his journey, such as the “Skull” that borrows human body parts, or the demonstrative and all-powerful baby?  What do these horrors reveal about cultural values, morals, and terrors? 

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

No Class Tomorrow (Thursday)

I've become increasingly ill today, and would rather not stumble through class tomorrow in a haphazard fashion.  So take the day off and plan to discuss Ngugi on Tuesday (the post below gives you some reading suggestions--and the handout is in my box if you need it).  You might also want to start reading Tutola's The Palm Wine Drinkard which we'll officially start next Thursday.  See you next week! 

For Thursday: Handout: Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's "The Language of African Literature"

Read this work in light of Achebe's criticims of Conrad and Kincaid's A Small Place, both of which works are informed by Ngugi's ideas.  The except is part of Chapter 1 of his book, Decolonizing the Mind (1986).  If you missed class, you can find the handout in the box on my door, 336C.  As usual, here are some ideas to ponder or write about:

* What is the true power of language for him?  Why is language so important to a child (or a culture's) mental universe?  What, to him, is the danger of speaking and writing in the colonizer's tongue? 

* Related to this, what does he mean when he writes, "Learning, for a colonial child, became a cerebral activity and not an emotionally felt experience?" (17).

* How does he enter into the debate as to what constitutes "African" literature?  For him is it birth, race, nationality, language, or some other quality? 

* Related to the above, how might he disagree with Achebe's views on literature and art?  How does he criticize Achebe specifically?

* Why, to him, is learning the colonizer's tongue tantamout to betraying one's culture and values? 

* How does storytelling change when you remove one's native tongue?  Why might a story in English not have the same resonance or "lessons" for a child who grew up speaking Gikuyu? 

* What does he mean when he writes, "Language as culture is thus mediating between me and my own self; between my own self and other selves; between me and nature" (15)?

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Daniel Defoe, Pirates & Colonialism

 

Captain Avery, infamous English pirate
  
NOTE: The reading assignment for this week is in the post below this one. 

Do you ever wonder what we professors do with our spare time?  Do we read books?  Write essays?  Or just make you guys do it?  Well, here's your answer...

I've just published an article related to our class, in that it explores colonialism, English nationalism, and trade/slavery in the 'pirate novels' of Daniel Defoe.  If you're interested in seeing how I use the very arguments/ideas we discuss in class in my own critical writing, this essay may somewhat somewhat interest you, especially if you like pirates!  In general, the article is about how Daniel Defoe used real-life pirates to create a model for the English tradesman, as someone who had the "artistic license" to plunder both domestic and foreign ships in the interest of trade (a trade that would ideally open up foreign markets in "dark" places).  In one work, The King of Pirates (1719), he writes two letters based on the real-life exploits of Captain Avery, a notorious English pirate who raided the treasure ships of the Great Khan and founded a pirate 'utopia' on Madagascar.  In the other work, Captain Singleton (1720), he creates a fictional pirate who rises through the ranks to become one of the most ruthless, yet economically sensible of English pirates with the help of his right-hand mand, William the Quaker (a Quaker pirate!). 

Click here to read the article in Digital Defoe: http://english.illinoisstate.edu/digitaldefoe/

And yes, you can even grade it and offer me comments for revision!

Friday, October 1, 2010

For Tuesday: Brantlinger's essay, "Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism?" (277-296)

Patrick Brantlinger: critic of Darkness
Brantlinger's essay sums up some of the modern readings of Heart of Darkness, most notably Chiuna Achebe's charges of HOD as being a racist text that participates in an imperialist discourse.  As you read, consider some of the following ideas and questions:

* What does Brantilinger mean when he calls Conrad an "impressionist" writer?  How does this help us understand the composition/meaning of HOD?

* Can a writer be somewhat racist in real life yet as an artist write free of racial bias, and indeed, critique the very institutions of racism?  How does the essay discuss this?

* In the story Conrad wrote with Ford Madox Hueffer, The Inheritors, he writes that "The old order of things had to live or perish with a lie" (281).  How might this statement inform how we read parts of, if not much of, HOD?

* How does the essay define "commodity fetishism," and how might this relate to the events and characters of HOD?

* Why does Brantlinger argue that "evil is African in Conrad's story" (285)?  How might Conrad's use of imagery and symbolism suggest racist tendencies and, according to Achebe, an underlying imperialist agenda?

* Why does Brantlinger, citing the words of Fredric Jameson, call Conrad a "schizophrenic" writer?  What specifically does this term explain about his writing?

* Brantlinger quotes the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who implicates 19th century imperialism in the rise of Fascism and the Nazi party.  Why might this reading work well with Conrad's depiction of Kurtz?

* On page 291-292, Brantlinger quotes critic Lionel Trilling, who sees Kurtz as something of a heroic, Nietzchean figure.  Does Brantlinger agree with this characterization? 

* Brantlinger suggests that Kurtz is not only a mirror for Marlow but for Conrad (and his story) himself.  Why is this?  How might there be a little of Conrad--and his ideas--in Kurtz?