HONR 102

FINAL

Sor Juana’s writing career

She was very intelligent and had many good points but they were to advanced for her time. In the end she was silenced.

Sor Filotea

The pseudonym that a bishop (of Puebla) gave himself so that he could write a critique on Sor Juanas critique on a Sermon from 40yrs before.

Letter from Sor Filotea

The letter is incendiary as it criticizes Sor Juana for writing and studying secular subjects. Calls her ungrateful.

Opens with the parable of the talents, praises Sor Juana, but makes her abilities finite and “detrimental“ to her life.
Sor Juana says in return that shew is just using the gifts that God gave her.

What order is SJ’s response in?

Exordium- intro

Narratio- Context

Proposito and Partitio- Claim and argument

Confirmatio and Refutatio- gives the possible refutations and your counter argument

Peroratio- summer and call to action

Exordium

Adresses her response, Sor Juana knows who it is, there are times when she does speak up in the text and times when she doesn’t

Narratio

Uses the word narration in the first section, her outline. Teacher who taught her, cheese, haircuts, entering the convent.

Intellect and the Body

She doesn’t eat cheese bc it causes stupidity. Her body intrudes on her learning. Will punish herself if she doesn’t learn enough.

Claim and Argument (Proposito and Partitio)

God gave her the inclination to study, she is made to excel by God but hated for her excellence. This is beyond her control, she is passionate for learning, others have tried to stop her but she cannot.

Confirmation and Refutation (Confirmatio and Refutatio)

+&- support. She emphasizes certain traits that can be connected back to women on the Bible and other virtuous women. Community of women supporting each other and inspiring one another, she is arguing for women’s education.

How she defends her writing

Uses the story of Moses to call the Bishop a princes, mocks the effort the bishop went through to publish her work - tone is conciliatory, tolerate and love your enemy.

Summary of discourse (Peroratio)

Goes back to addressing letter and says they God gave us these talents and we must use them bc they are GIFTS from GOD. The generous creator gave the poor debtor what is needed to satisfy the debt.
She concludes with an apology bc whole she was addressing Sor Filotea/The bishop she was informal (she know his rank but still didn’t care) - apology for the tone she used and calling him señora.

Giacomo Puccini

First opera was rejected bc ppl couldn’t read his writing. Studied in Milan, he was a smoker who died form cancer.

Leit Motif

German composition technique → character object or mood is represented

Difference in Opera Styles

Italian - orchestra supporting a solo dinger or focus

German - voice w/ orchestra (tend to be longer)
French - focus on text, has bold scenes
5 and 8 note scales are traditionally Japanese which is seen in this opera

Themes

America/Starspangled - every play of the star spangled banner gets shorter and shorter

—at this point in time the SSB was a novel Anthem

Syncopation

rhythm stress is in between the pulses of the music → making love throughout the music

Details of Goro and Pinkertons and Butterflys relationship

Goro - Epstein like character
Sharpless- comes back at the end to say I told you so
For 16min P and B r alone to bond after her disownment, where their love developed

When P comes back B isn’t a kid anymore she is 18

Act 2

Sounds different, Bach style. Suzuki is the connection to B’s past. The music oscillates representing B’s emotions → will he / wont he

Sharpless - simple not a deep thinker

Prince Yamadori - could have ended the play early

Humming chorus ends act 2 → passage of time

Act 3

Lays out the theme of FATE

Kate knows why she is there and that makes it hard to like her

Ends with a big loud note but it is an unresolved chord

Types of Art in Interpreter of Maladies

Ancient art, knitting, cooking, building a life with someone or in a diff country, seduction, religious, and losing

A Temporary Matter

Candle, Beauty, Seasons, Beauty, Love, life
The past tense is used to speak to what is temporary

Rituals

Mark transitions, good and bad. This might be a way for Shoba to mark the time, 8 pm light candles eat dinner and tell a secret

The Bradfords

Older married couple, maybe represents the life Shoba and Shukumar could have had.

Mrs. Sen’s

Major theme of loneliness

Elliot is a source of stability, he offers to help with food prep with is a communal event back in India among the women.

Mrs. Sen tries to befriend Elliott mom offering homemade food and inviting her into her apartment.

E’s mom does not like the food, does that stem from insecurity?

Mrs. Sen

Her and Elliot give a child vs. adult perspective

What does she have to even take photos of

Cant drive to to her home

Similarities from the first two

Both stories have moments of the women opening things and being overwhelmed and sometimes throwing stuff. Processing emotions?
Are both of these scenes the women putting their dreams in a pile, ready to throw out or leave behind

S3XY (knowit did not like this word)

These are ways that Art is expressed in the story:

Clothes as a different identify and costume. Writing her name in Bengali → drawing more than writing and is a way to be a diff person.

Rohin asks Miranda to draw his portrait → wanting to remember?

He draws an airplane → using art to process his dads affair

Story Structure

1st Pg is like the story in miniature and the past Pg is setting up a parallel.

Definition of s3xy is

loving someone you don’t know

Simmilartyies in s3xy and Madama Butterfly

Infidelity while wife is on another continent

Willingness to salvage the relationship?

This Blessed House

Sanjeev wonders of he loves twinkle and if she loves him
Love and Hate, and Love and irritation is a thin line

Art in the story

Honeymoon souvenir

classical music CD’s

memories of wedding

Twinkles clothes, makeup, jewelry, and shoes → she is a work of art

Twinkle

Kinda like a goddess or divine feminine energy

she has some descriptions that are similar to Hindu gods i.e. Shiva → “mask is blue”,

Art of the Party

prepping the lawn, partying is approaching - the feeling of that, eating with your fingers, horror of guests coming to your home, and the peach of finally being alone

Interpreter of Maladies

Mr. Kapasi is a lot like Mrs. Das but not in the way they think.
There is formality in the story, snacks, dreaming, and smell

Tower of Bable

Connection to the tower of Bable interference to Mr. Kapasi’s job, people wont know if he is telling the truth or real symptoms

Can science ever be pure?

maybe not bc of languages and interpretation

Mr. K’s 3 fantasies

Medieval love, princess and the knight type au

exchanging letters

touch

Mr. K

He desires emotional intimacy but that got in the way at the end.

He is an unreliable narrator

The art of translation

a translation is an original work of art, you inhabit the authors mind

The Third and Final Continent

Immigration story, connections u have to make, proper behavior, clothes, and customs, living alone, acclimating, etc

Narrators Marrage

His marriage to Mala is an arranged marriage that turns into love.

Mrs. Croft says that she is the prefect lady → blessing their marriage though her approval

Mrs. Croft and rituals

She has rituals, her commands of saying “splendid” are similar to that of a liturgy, also like answering questions when learning a new language.

Mrs. Croft and time travel

She is 103 so she is from a content that does not exist anymore. This is a more temporal way to think about distance

Jhumpa Lahiri

Writing and reading are ways to transcend loneliness

Ethics of Ambiguity - Simone de Beauvoir

This was written in Paris during WWII

About existential ethics

Existentalism

Existence precedes essence, we define ourselves through choices and actions not bc of God, nature, or others

We are condemned to be free → no one thing defines us, we take on freedom, which is often not fun - this realizations can cause anxiety and nausea

Good Faith

Choosing fairness, sincerity, authenticity, and honesty about your own limitations

Respect for others dignity

EX. Principal of charity

Bad Faith

faux self deception or or being disengenuine

failure to take responsibility for ones own actions, situational limitation, and failing to treat others as rational humans worthy of respect

Serious and Play

Children explore freedom and imagine responsibility without the anxiety

Facticity and Immanence

elements of self and life that one doesn’t choose, thing that are just because it is the way it is

recognizing others facticity and the constrains one own freedom in the world

Willing Facticity

knowing u are free and choosing unfreedom as the motivation for actions → is a kind of bad faith, avoiding agony of freedom and or exploiting others

recognition

Freedom and self-consciousness can only be found though being in relations of viewing others Self-consciousness

— freedom

Universal capacity to will freedom

The freedom to say no

empty of content, universal, freedom from authority or limitations

+freedom

Willing freedom and disclosing being

using negative freedom to become someone → using the arbitrary and making it concrete
needs — freedom to exist but this is the only ethical freedom

Ambiguity

Being open to different interps

Uncertainty/ inexact → acting amidst ambiguity and uncertainty

Antimony(s) of action

real or apparent contradiction between two conclusions, both seem justified

Pure negativity

freedom if negation, destruction, absorption, taking in

Creativie negativity

constructive freedom of negation, perusing expansion of existence

The Festival

Holds the future in the present/ stops time

Pure negativity can not maintain itself for long, it must be constantly excited (always having to seek something new and exciting)
The morning after: detachment, joy is exhausted, drunkenness turns into fatigue, you cant possess the present or hold it

this is what makes festivals pathetic → chasing something you cant hold or own

Ch2

at some point u just kinda grow up

who we want and dont want to be like

we trap subliminal messages

Existential Ethics

Action is good if it advances fundamental freedom and acknowledges the real living embodied limitations of circumstances

Double-consciousness

Being yourself as a person (usually a person of color) but having to live in a world where white people observe our every action

WEB DuBoise - wrote about in the failure of reconstruction

black solders in Europe were treated a LOT better

Claude Mckay

Wrote “America”, “If We Must Die“

Countee Cullen

Heritage - what is Africa to me…
Iambic pentameter → what people think of when they think poetry

Passing - Nella Larson

As a child she was registered in a women’s refugee camp

Larson wrote this and never published again

Came back from Europe and had to deal with her broken marriage

Celebrities in Hollywood have passed

white beauty frames the novel

Ch1

Ethical passing? Irene wanted to enjoy herself but had to see herself from another persons perspective. Irene has race pride, she does not like Clare but something about her draws her in

Passing and Tea

Rene does not not care about colorism, assumptions are made, Rene has an instability in her identity due to her passing

Brian

Irenes husband, does he like women, calls sex a joke, Rene is controlling him, he is restless and irritable

Leitmotif

A theme that follows a character throughout the peice

Mikado

Japanese emperor

Soshi

Italian version of Japanese Shoji or paper screne

12 Bar Blues

Typical blues format, also can be 8-bar and 16-bar

Field Hollers

Solo singer with free form, slow style, usually wordless

Ma Rainey by August Wilson

Black music in white recording industry
Differences in fan bases

Blues

Not respectable, bold lyrics, not kid friendly

help you through your trouble not help you forget

Band members

Cutler - guitar and trombone, leader
Slow Drag - bass, have fun, chill guy

Toledo - Pianist, can read, redemption through HIST

Levee - trumpet, younger, artsy, and angry → not a full diva yet

Ma

She does what she wants and knows how to work the system/ make it work for her.

Demanding , difficult, and exploiting, knows her roots

didn’t hide her bisexuality

Structure

Focused on Waiting, where is power held → controlling time and who is wasting it

Levees Speech and his charcter

Emotional core of play, overcompensates for his helplessness as a kid

he represents the cycle of violence that eventually turns inward

Guilt for having to have his mom help him after she was attacked

Who has the most Power?

• Economic - The white execs with Ma after

• Racial - ‘‘

• Social - ‘‘

• Physical - Levee, especially once we learn about the rage he carries

• Intellectual - Toledo, he is the one one able to read and offers philosophies to the others

Themes in Ma Rainey

Waiting, language and male banter, black masculinity as disempowered, Gods absence, Ma the diva

Waiting

Language

Raw, layered, and strategic → plays into the banter b/w the men

Levee’s Speech

Emotional core, his anger and its source, the why of his overcompensation, prob due to his guilt and helplessness as a kid

Cycle of violence turned inward

Ma as Diva

She is demanding and difficult but it is to protect her self and the people she cares about

Knows that ppl are using her but keeps true on her promises

Dreams Differed

what happens to black identity under oppressive systems → some survive and some are broken

everyone is shaped by things larger than themselves

Two Versions of Ma’s story

The police - ma is at fault, stole a car and hit a guy

Ma - she tried to get into her car and a taxi driver thought she was sealing it and called the cops

Teasing levee

the others tease levee for teasing up to Sturdyvant, Levee wants what Ma has, during some of the banter levee is to threatened to let it slide

Revenge and rage

Levees father goes out to kill some of the men that r*ped his mother, this is passed on to Levee, his anger passes on to other black men

Ma as Diva and Boss

She knows that shew is being used but uses it to her favor, if i am gonna be used might as well be treated how i want to be.

She is a boss and bossy but ultimately she cares for thoes around her

Levees blastmaphy

His rage is built up and he blames it on God, but eventually this leads him to killing Toledo.

God in his mind is who is responsible for his suffering and the suppering of other black people, also his mother

Shoes and Songs

His authorship, ownership, and future were taken from him

His shoes represent his dreams and his hope for his status, but a scuff of them ruins his image (like murdering someone)

Bartleby

does a lot of writing at first, have variations of his passive “no“, something about him disarms the lawyer
He is blank → do we project onto him?

Dead letter office

Is B one?
this is where letters that cannot be sent or returned go to be burned - what does reading these letters do to a person?

Themes in Bartleby

Isolation - in modern big citys

lack of creativity

blankness

Performance

The lawyer puts up with it bc he values what the people bring to the workplace as well as their well being

Responsiable

Occupant means in a legal way but the lawyer think about it in a moral way

Denying

The lawyer denies B three times and calls him his friend twice
Similar to Peter denying Christ three times

Providence

The time B spent with the lawyer changed him → it was not a mere mortal

Immortal B

In the end B may be dead but his story will live on