Lambent; Portfolio; Cultural Research; Poland & The Baltic States
Lab:
Please continue to prepare your selection for Lambent. Deadline is tomorrow or you will not be included in the magazine (no exceptions!) Remember to include a short 100 word or less bio or a JPG picture of yourself.
Otherwise, please work on your final portfolio (due June 8) and continue your cultural research. See post below.
Period 2:
Today, a smorgasbord of culture & philosophy while you are reading Handmaid's Tale.
For those of you who are not completely exhausted from learning, you may find these resources here helpful in setting your fiction, poetry, plays, and essays in a European setting. Since we are running out of time to cover the entire world in this course, we will only briefly glimpse at a very rich and extensive culture. For your benefit click on these links and learn about these cultures. Some of their literature can be found in the packets of reading as well.
Czeslaw Milosz is one of Poland's best loved poets. His poems can be found here.
Forget by Czeslaw Milosz
Russian Lit sample:
Daniil Kharms "Mini Stories" is poking fun of the fictional form. Each mini-story is constructed like a joke, with a powerful punch line at the end. Characters, plot, and conflicts are simply there to create the illusion of importance, significance, and relevance that one expects from a standard story. In this way, Kharms is at once writing meta-fiction (fiction about fiction), but also commenting on the absurdity of human beings and the odd way our brains work. These stories are sprinkled with overstatement, understatement, hyperbole, incongruity, non-sequitars, and often: situational irony. We laugh because the cause and effect we have come to study in plot is illogical or missing. We laugh because characters we hardly know come to tragic ends in odd ways. We laugh because there is something at once true, albeit absurd, hidden within the lines of these short stories.
HOMEWORK: Work on your cultural research. Portfolios are due June 8. Submit to Lambent by tomorrow (Friday, May 25); continue reading The Handmaid's Tale.
Please continue to prepare your selection for Lambent. Deadline is tomorrow or you will not be included in the magazine (no exceptions!) Remember to include a short 100 word or less bio or a JPG picture of yourself.
Otherwise, please work on your final portfolio (due June 8) and continue your cultural research. See post below.
Period 2:
For those of you who are not completely exhausted from learning, you may find these resources here helpful in setting your fiction, poetry, plays, and essays in a European setting. Since we are running out of time to cover the entire world in this course, we will only briefly glimpse at a very rich and extensive culture. For your benefit click on these links and learn about these cultures. Some of their literature can be found in the packets of reading as well.
Czeslaw Milosz is one of Poland's best loved poets. His poems can be found here.
Forget by Czeslaw Milosz
Forget the sufferingLearn a little about Poland! and Polish Culture and some cuisine...
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.
Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.
The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.
Russian Lit sample:
Daniil Kharms "Mini Stories" is poking fun of the fictional form. Each mini-story is constructed like a joke, with a powerful punch line at the end. Characters, plot, and conflicts are simply there to create the illusion of importance, significance, and relevance that one expects from a standard story. In this way, Kharms is at once writing meta-fiction (fiction about fiction), but also commenting on the absurdity of human beings and the odd way our brains work. These stories are sprinkled with overstatement, understatement, hyperbole, incongruity, non-sequitars, and often: situational irony. We laugh because the cause and effect we have come to study in plot is illogical or missing. We laugh because characters we hardly know come to tragic ends in odd ways. We laugh because there is something at once true, albeit absurd, hidden within the lines of these short stories.
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