Writing Across Cultures

Today, after our writing prompt (Character sketch), we will take a look at a section from Antoine de Saint Exupery's The Little Prince . Alternate assignment (optional for extra credit this marking period): write a short children's story and illustrate it. Include elements of fairy tales or adventure or morals as you see fit. Remember that most children stories deal with young protagonists growing up. Afterward, we will check out Candide from the library and begin research on Voltaire and the Enlightenment . Please read the basic information for these items from the links provided, then continue your own research. Find some aspect of these topics to write about. Take notes and brainstorm ideas in your journal/notebook. Take a look at this video discussing America's relationship with France when you get a chance.

After our quiz and discussion on Blood Wedding , let's review an archetype. The Archetypal Fairy Tale • Stories, often told to children, to entertain, instruct or teach • Often used to illustrate the problems that children and young people face as they become adults • The characters in fairy tales represent part of our own “psyche” or inner self Common themes in fairy tales include: • Metamorphosis • Transformation • Imprisonment • Love • Good versus evil (overcoming obstacles) • Death or transition • Illusion or misunderstanding • Rules or authority There are often boy and girl fairy tales. These differ in plot. • Boy fairy tale plots focus on exploration, discovery, and include a climax which separates the boy from his childhood. Usually by the end, the boy has grown into a man. • Girl fairy tale plots focus on discovery as well, but also abduction, outside threats, powers beyond their control, and falling in love. Usually by the end, the girl has grown into a wom...

Today we will complete our Spanish Culture reports. With the time remaining, please begin to use the notes to create a 1-5 page creative draft. Use Spanish culture and your notes to create a theme, character, plot, setting, etc. You may also read Blood Wedding . Please complete this play for Tuesday.

We are going to conduct our cultural reports today. As you listen and watch reports, take notes on Spanish Culture. You are preparing a writing project in which you weave Spanish culture into the plot, theme, setting, character, or other various aspects of a story, play, poem, script, memoir, etc. With time remaining, we will continue reading Blood Wedding . Please complete Blood Wedding for Friday. There may be a quiz.

Today, after our writing prompt, please turn in your homework (see below). We will then screen Un Chien Andalou , discuss it, then move on to Blood Wedding by Frederico Garcia Lorca. More information about Surrealism, Lorca, and Bunuel is below. Please check it out if you haven't done so already. It will be helpful in understanding this section. HOMEWORK: Please complete Blood Wedding for Friday.

Salvador Dali Here's a few of his paintings & photographs of the artist. Surrealism (developed in the 20th-century as a literary and artistic movement) gained its popularity in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement , which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism emphasis supposedly was not on negation but on positive expression . "The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European culture and politics in the past and had culminated in the horrors of World War I." The French poet André Breton published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924 and states that Surrealism "was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in ...

Spain has an incredibly old history. From cave paintings found at Altamira to our contemporary period. The Romans and Carthaginians fought over Spain in the 3rd century B.C. Part of the Roman Empire Hispania rises and falls at the same time, being overrun by the Vandals in 409 A.D. (later repelled by the Visigoths who rule until the 8th century, followed by the Arabs). During 711-1492, Christians begin to reclaim the area at first slowly, until the Umayyad loss of power in 1031. You probably know what happens leading up to 1492 with the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1469. Still curious about Spain & Spanish Customs? Watch this. Background for Lorca & Blood Wedding: Frederico Garcia Lorca Blood Wedding Trailer Luis Bunuel The father of cinematic Surrealism and the father of surrealist film, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid t...