Animal Studies

Question: How do "Likeness" & "Othering" affect the cultural perspective of Anthropocentrism when encountering animal representations in Literature?

Ecocriticism

Test question: What would be a reading in an eco-centric perspective in the following excerpt of Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller?

(Uncle Ben, carrying a valise and an umbrella, enters the forestage from around the right corner of the house. He is a stolid man, in his sixties, with a mustache and an authoritative air. He is utterly certain of his destiny, and there is an aura of far places about him. He enters exactly as Willy speaks.)

WILLY: I’m getting awfully tired, Ben.

(Ben’s music is heard. Ben looks around at everything.)

CHARLEY: Good, keep playing; you’ll sleep better. Did you call me Ben?

(Ben looks at his watch.)

WILLY: That’s funny. For a second there you reminded me of my brother Ben.

BEN: I only have a few minutes. (He strolls, inspecting the place. Willy and

Charley continue playing.)

CHARLEY: You never heard from him again, heh? Since that time?

WILLY: Didn’t Linda tell you? Couple of weeks ago we got a letter from his

wife in Africa. He died.

CHARLEY: That so.

BEN (chuckling): So this is Brooklyn, eh?

CHARLEY: Maybe you’re in for some of his money.

WILLY: Naa, he had seven sons. There’s just one opportunity I had with that

man...

BEN: I must make a tram, William. There are several properties I’m looking at

in Alaska.

WILLY: Sure, sure! If I’d gone with him to Alaska that time, everything

would’ve been totally different.

CHARLEY: Go on, you’d froze to death up there.

WILLY: What’re you talking about?

BEN: Opportunity is tremendous in Alaska, William. Surprised you’re not up

there.

WILLY: Sure, tremendous.  (Miller, 30 - 31)

Criteria: Students should be able to apply the key concepts of Ecocriticism such as anthropocentrism, outdoor environment (wilderness, scenic sublime) or balance and imbalance in the excerpt and use evidence from the text to support their answers.  It is also useful relate these concepts to Marxism.

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” - Richard Siken

Test Question: Considering the poem of Richard Siken, can you find any homosexual aspects coded within it or some degree of internalized homophobia?
Criteria: The students should identify the elements, or key words that portray these terms in the text, and find explicit or internalized discrimination based on the views of the binary oppositions between heterosexual and homosexual, and then determine which one is being undermined.

Feminist Criticism

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' "(1.118)

In this excerpt of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fritzgerald we can see that Daisy is dissapointed about having a girl. In a feminist approach, why would you say that she is dissapointed and why does she hope she will become only a "beautiful little fool"?

Postcolonialism

Test Question: Identify elements within the following excerpt of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid that could support a postcolonial reading of it.

“I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. You want to get rid of your fish’s tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince may fall in love with you, and that you may have an immortal soul.” And then the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly, that the toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay there wriggling about. “You are but just in time,” said the witch; “for after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year. I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.”

“Yes, I will,” said the little princess in a trembling voice, as she thought of the prince and the immortal soul.

“But think again,” said the witch; “for when once your shape has become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father’s palace again; and if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake, and to love you with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another your heart will break, and you will become foam on the crest of the waves.”

“I will do it,” said the little mermaid, and she became pale as death.

“But I must be paid also,” said the witch, “and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm the prince with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the best thing you possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own blood must be mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.”

“But if you take away my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what is left for me?”

“Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the powerful draught.”

“It shall be,” said the little mermaid.

Criteria: Students should be able to link concepts of Postcolonialism such as mimicry, identity crisis, colonial oppression or Eurocentrism with the excerpt and use evidence from the text to support their answers.

Cultural Studies

Question:
Regarding the movie "Invictus" (2009), create a thesis statement based on Cultural Studies' approach complementing with another literary approach at the same time, in order to validate your thesis.
+++We encourage you to go beyond the Marxist theory to support your thesis (that's the easiest way to do so).

Criteria:
The thesis must be acquainted with the context of the movie; there must exist a distinction of at least one of the problematics present on the story and also, a brief reflexion on the social struggle between the two classes.

Post-structuralism

Question: Having in mind the plot of "The Hunger Games", write a thesis statement that destroys the unity of the text. For this, apply the theory of deconstructivism and provide examples where the author contradicts herself.


Criteria: The thesis statement should focus in a specific part of the text/movie and the examples could show any of the three stages of deconstruction, such as verbal, textual or linguistic.

Marxist Criticism

Read the following adaptation from the song "The Magnificent Seven" by The Clash and do a close reading of it from a Marxist perspective. Identify the ideology. What is the author criticizing? (support with quotes)

                                           

 ...

Ring! Ring! It's 7:00 A.M.!

Move y'self to go again

Cold water in the face

Brings you back to this awful place

Knuckle merchants and you bankers, too

Must get up an' learn those rules

Weather man and the crazy chief

One says sun and one says sleet

A.M., the F.M. the P.M. too

Churning out that boogaloo

Gets you up and gets you out

But how long can you keep it up?

Gimme Honda, Gimme Sony

So cheap and real phony

Hong Kong dollars and Indian cents

English pounds and Eskimo pence

You lot! What?

Don't stop! Give it all you got!

...

Working for a rise, better my station

Take my baby to sophistication

She's seen the ads, she thinks it's nice

Better work hard - I seen the price

Never mind that it's time for the bus

We got to work - an' you're one of us

...

It's our profit, it's his loss

But anyway lunch bells ring

Take one hour and do your thanng!

Cheeesboiger!

What do we have for entertainment?

Cops kickin' Gypsies on the pavement

Now the news - snap to attention!

The lunar landing of the dentist convention

Italian mobster shoots a lobster

Seafood restaurant gets out of hand

A car in the fridge

Or a fridge in the car?

Like cowboys do - in T.V. land

…

So get back to work an' sweat some more

The sun will sink an' we'll get out the door

It's no good for man to work in cages

Hits the town, he drinks his wages

You're frettin', you're sweatin'

But did you notice you ain't gettin'?

Don't you ever stop long enough to start?

To take your car outta that gear

...

Karlo Marx and Fredrich Engels

Came to the checkout at the 7-11

Marx was skint - but he had sense

Engels lent him the necessary pence

...

You can be true, you can be false

You be given the same reward

...

Adaptation, Retrieved from AZ Lyrics http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/clash/themagnificentseven.html

Psychoanalytic Criticism: Lacan

TEST QUESTION: In the text "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", how can the characters' desires be connected with Lacan's ideas on psychoanalysis? Think about Mabel's transformation after she was saved from drowning herself.

Criteria: The answer must mention the importance that the Symbolic Order has in influencing what the characters, specially Mabel after being rescued, must desire in order to get closer to the ideal connection to the mother that existed in the Imaginary Order.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

TEST QUESTION: How could the following excerpt from Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio represent the conflict between the id and the super-ego, according to Freudian psychoanalytic theory? 

On reaching home, he found the house door half open. He slipped into the room, locked the door, and threw himself on the floor, happy at his escape. But his happiness lasted only a short time, for just then he heard someone saying: 

"Cri-cri-cri!" 

"Who is calling me?" asked Pinocchio, greatly frightened.  

"I am!" 

Pinocchio turned and saw a large cricket crawling slowly up the wall.  

"Tell me, Cricket, who are you?" 

"I am the Talking Cricket and I have been living in this room for more than one hundred years." 

"Today, however, this room is mine," said the Marionette, "and if you wish to do me a favor, get out now, and don't turn around even once."  

"I refuse to leave this spot," answered the Cricket, "until I have told you a great truth." 

"Tell it, then, and hurry." 

"Woe to boys who refuse to obey their parents and run away from home! They will never be happy in this world, and when they are older they will be very sorry for it." 

"Sing on, Cricket mine, as you please. What I know is, that tomorrow, at dawn, I leave this place forever. If I stay here the same thing will happen to me which happens to all other boys and girls. They are sent to school, and whether they want to or not, they must study. As for me, let me tell you, I hate to study! It's much more fun, I think, to chase after butterflies, climb trees, and steal birds' nests." 

"Poor little silly! Don't you know that if you go on like that, you will grow into a perfect donkey and that you'll be the laughingstock of everyone?" 

"Keep still, you ugly Cricket!" cried Pinocchio. 

But the Cricket, who was a wise old philosopher, instead of being offended at Pinocchio's impudence, continued in the same tone:  

"If you do not like going to school, why don't you at least learn a trade, so that you can earn an honest living?" 

"Shall I tell you something?" asked Pinocchio, who was beginning to lose patience. "Of all the trades in the world, there is only one that really suits me." 

"And what can that be?" 

"That of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and wandering around from morning till night." 

CRITERIA: Students should be able to identify the cricket as a representation of the super-ego, the set of culture-dependent rules that restrict and criticize Pinocchio's hedonistic impulses, which represent the id. 

Reader Response Theory

(We recommend downloading the image to see it in full detail. )

TEST QUESTION: Considering the Affective Stylistics branch of Reader Response Theory, how would you apply the theory (phrase by phrase analysis) to the poem Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas? (Excerpt from the poem below)

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Criteria: Students should refer to the experience created by the words chosen in the poem (alliteration, for example) and how these words contribute to the central theme of the poem. Students should emphasize the idea that words create an experience and not a fixed meaning.

Structuralism (Manterola & Martínez)

Test Question: What is the main purpose of structuralism? How does it apply to literature?

Criteria: Answer needs to include that structuralism is used to find the underlying principles among a sample of objects and that for literature it is used to find common patterns in order to establish a theory about a certain type of story, character, theme, genre, etc.

Welcome!

Dear STUDENTS,

Welcome to our class blog. In this blog, you should upload your theory summaries on a one screenshot graphic organizer or mind/concept map. Remember you can also include a challenging yet plausible test question, follow up comments and discussion questions.