Lesson #1: What is “Literature”?

WHAT IS “LITERATURE”?

1^st Assumption: Literature over the plural literature “literatures”

•  it gives the impression that there is only one kind of literature governed by so-called timeless standards that are universally applicable, that is, despite high degrees of contextual differences in cultures and timeframes

World Literature

• is a collected of the best writings from all over the world

• more often than not, what we have come to absorb as “universal” definitions of good literature are not universal at all, but cherished ideas held by select (usually dominant) group/s of people with context-specific views

Context

• includes the genre, more or form in which the work was written, or the set of conventions an artist grapples within producing a work of art

• it also includes the historical, cultural, social, economic, political, affective, and other materials condition that have bearings on the writings, publishing and reading of literary text

2^nd Assumption: Literature with the big “L”

•  literature with the big “L” brings up the concept of the literary canon, the idea that some works deserve to be included in a kind of literary hall of fame, hence the big “L”, while others are relegated to “literature” or “literatures”

3^rd Assumption: The word “literature” between quotation marks

• putting quotation marks around the words foreground that constructedness of their meanings

THE GENRES AND THEIR ELEMENTS

Literariness

• “literary” means the artistic written expression as opposed to traditional forms like myths, epics, folktales, legends, ballads, proverbs, folk drama, which had oral culture as their life and basis

Fiction

• prose narrative, its distinctive feature being the centrality of plot action

• example: A Storm of Swords by George R.R Martin

• like the rest of the series, A Storm of Swords is told from multiple perspectives following every significant character’s individual plot lines. This novel just happens to cover the best ones.

• Modes of Fiction:

Creative Nonfiction

• Lee Gutkind defines it as a literary work that “can be an essay, a journal article, a research paper, a memoir or a poem; it can be personal or not, or it can be all of these.”

• this is a genre that incorporates elements of fiction and poetry in the retelling of a personal experience

• example: My Other Name by Gilford Doquila

“I was five when I learned I had another name, besides what my parents gave me. The name was first born out of my younger sister’s anger who never understood my  difference–which for her and other kids was unusual and difficult to comprehend. For them, the world operated in black and white. Dolls are for girls; cars and toy guns are for boys. I wouldn’t blame them, we were taught to see the world in such banality and convenience. ‘But growing up was tough if you happen to be in the gray area.”

Poetry

• poems are primarily relished as words as the building blocks of this art–how their meticulous selection, arrangement, and calculated interplay deliver ideas, feelings, perspectives, shades, flavors, and layers of meaning

• example: Text  by Carol Ann Duffy

I tend the mobile now

like an injured bird

We text, text, text

our significant words.

I re-read your first,

your second, your third,

look for your small xx,

feeling absurd

The codes we send

arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,

their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press

will ever be heard.

Drama

• like poetry, drama is also an ancient form of communal expression

• unlike modern fiction that encourages reflective isolation and individuation in the act of reading, poetry, and drama are best enjoyed when performed (or read aloud rather than using just the eyes), with the sounds and rhythms in poetry heard and the spectacle in drama seen by embodied audience

• example: Hamilton (2015)

• lin-manuel miranda’s hip-hop musical about the birth of a nation and the rise to power of “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and a scotsman” was hyped to the skies

• It justified the drum-beating through its pulsating energy, dexterous lyrics and celebration of America’s overwhelming debt to immigrants. Only time will tell if it has a major impact on the musical form but, in performance, it proved an exhilarating rollercoaster of a show

Lesson #2: Year’s End

YEAR’S END

Jhumpa Lahiri

• Author of Year’s End

Comprehensive Questions

1. What does Kaushik feel about Chitra even before he makes the trip to Massachusetts to meet her and her daughters?

2. Kaushik was disturbed by the idea of his father marrying Chitra since his father was “tired of coming home to an empty house”. Does this suggest that the father has betrayed the memory of his dead wife? Explain

3. Which instances from the story demonstrate the differences of Kaushik’s family and Chitra’s when all of them are Indians?

4. How did Rupa and Piu react upon seeing Kaushik after a long time remembering the last time they were with him?

5. What are the effects of having immigrant experience to the characters? Did it somehow bring growth and success to them? Explain.

6. What are the effects of having immigrant experience to the characters? Did it somehow bring growth and success to them? Explain.

Lesson #3: Silk Brocade

SILK BROCADE

Tessa Hadley

• Author of Silk Brocade

Characters:

• Ann Gallagher

• Kit

• Nola

• Dona Ross

• Sally

Summary:

• There is to be a June wedding and a dress to be made

• Ann invites Nola in for an impromptu fitting 

• Ann finds Nola a bit austere and too plain, yet Nola turns out to be sweet with a soft disposition and quite malleable in the expert hands of Ann and Kit, whose attentions improve when they learn that Nola is to marry a wealthy, young man whose estate goes back to many generations

• Ann has a personal philosophy:

Ann was really convinced that if you could only find the right clothes you could become whatever you wanted, you could transform yourself

• The final two columns of the story change perspective to the of Ann’s daughter Sally, years later

• At sixteen, Sally Ros knows the story of the silk brocade meant to be used for  a wedding thaw was never realized

• Ann’s philosophy of renewing oneself may help her survive her marriage. She and Sally project transformation together: makeovers, outings, diesting, and redecorating, but ultimately these will never change the choices Annmade. Still, there is the hope of generation

• The silk brocade jacket links the past, the present and the future. Tessa Hadley has a way of turning the usually mono-chronological thought of time sequence inside out, weaving possibility, shedding light, and discarding with the old to construct the new

Lesson #4: Seek Ye Whore

CRITICAL ISSUES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Gender and Sexuality

• Sex refers to the anatomical structure of our bodies, whether male or female; Gender refers to the values and norms assigned by social convention to those bodies, "womanhood" for females and "manhood" for males

• Gender conventions tend toward a binary logic.

• For example, in patriarchal cultures, a woman's place is assigned to the home, while that of a man is in the workplace.

• Who are usually more physically strong?

• Who must show better handwriting?

• Who can do better in Mathematics?

• Who usually handles clerical works?

• Who are usually more talkative?

• Who must earn more income in the family?

• Can you think of other expectations that set women and men as binary opposites?

• thankfully, because of feminism, oppressive structures that privilege the male body, gender, and associated values are now (in enlightened societies at least) routinely put in question.

• Women’s liberation movements have made possible, through long and painful struggles, the availability of education to women, the ratification of women’s rights, criminalization of domestic abuse, rape, and other forms of harassment.

• Feminism as a revolutionary movement eventually lost steam, understandably, due to internal differences that led to the breaking down of the movement into factions.

• huge and oftentimes irreconcilable differences between first world women and third world women, white women and women of color, middle class women and working class women, straight women and homosexual women, etc.

• With the expanded term LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer, intersex, asexual, and more) now being circulated.

How a Filipino bakla differs from the Western gay:

• the Filipino ‘bakla’ tends to see himself as a “woman trapped inside a man’s body”

• while the Western gay would define gayness as a sexual rather than a gender preference as a man who desires sex with another man (Manalansan, 2006)

SEEK YE WHORE

Yveter Natalie U. Tan

• Author of Seek Ye Whore

Comprehensive Questions:

1. What is the critical issue presented in the story which gives specific importance to women and women’s perspectives, values, categories, and experiences?

2. In any given literary work, what does it mean to be a woman? What is the impact of having female characters in the story?

3. How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

4. Did the story strengthen the society’s standard criteria of a woman’s role or it rather give highlight to one’s understanding of Feminism?

5. Do you believe that Foster will surely have the same fate as Donovan? Prove your answer.