Fictional autobiography_Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hello,

 Next Friday's class will draw upon Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, a fictional autobiography about the quest for a voice.

Please consider some key topics to read this text, such as gender, language, race, and the journey towards independence/finding a voice.

After our presentation, we would like to have a brief exchange of ideas on what can we say about the title of the book. It is only referred twice, when the hurricane Okeechobee hits Florida. Take a look at the following quotes and consider these questions — What idea do these excerpts evoke? What is the meaning of the novel's title?

                                    "The time was past for asking the white folks

                                         what to look for through that door. Six

                                          eyes were questioning God." 

                                 "... their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny

                                      might against His. They seemed to be staring at the

                                       dark, but their were watching God."

Gastão Pereira dos Reis; Sofia Paulo

Ernest Hemingway

Dear classmates,

On the 15th of November we are going to present Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants". We would like to invite you to start by reading the short story and then focus on the following topics:

1) Abortion;

2) Female vs. male perspective;

3) Agency.

Furthermore we would like to open the debate by having you answer the following questions:

1) Do you think that the male character's behaviour is accepttable?

2) How is abortion considered in Portugal?

In addition, we invite you to take a look at Paula Rego's works on abortion, such as the triptych reproduced below.

Paula Rego (1935-), Triptych (1998)
Pastel on paper, mounted on aluminium (110 x 100cm). Image here

We also suggest you to listen to the artist talk about her stance on this topic (here). You may find some criticism on Rego's politics of sexuality here.

And, if you go to Cascais, visit Casa das Histórias, Paula Rego's museum.

Thank you for your attention!

Raquel Garcia Pérez, Fabrizio Consiglio, Enrica Spiga

William Carlos Williams

Hello everyone!

                                Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel, The Elder (c. 1525-1530-1596)

On the 8th of November we will present "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus," by William Carlos Williams. We thus invite you to think about the following topics:

- William Carlos Williams and his search for a fresh, raw American idiom and rhythm;

- Poetry and painting as "interchangeable mediums;"

- The modernist poet as a fragile, indecisive, unsure author.

To introduce you the subject, here is the Greek myth that inspired both the painter and the poet:

Icarus was the son of Daedalus (an ingenious and creative man, known by his manual labors) who constructed the labyrinth (at the behest of Minos, king of Crete) where the Minotaur was imprisoned. But since Daedalus had helped the daughter of Minos to run away with her lover, he and his son were both imprisoned in their own labyrinth as a punishment. In order to escape, Daedalus invented a pair of wings ​made by feathers of different birds and beeswax. He advised Icarus not to fly too high since the wax could melt, nor too low for the sea could wet them. But the boy got dazzled by the sun and, feeling attracted by it, he flew too high, his wings melted, he fell and died.

Félix Ribeiro
Francisco Gaspar
Inês Pereira

Wallace Stevens

Hello everyone,

Next Friday we will be presenting “The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain”, by Wallace Stevens.

We ask that you read it and think of the following topics:

- Reflections about the poet’s life in the poem;

- The connection between God/mankind;

- What is real and what is imagined.

Have a nice weekend!

Alice Silva, Ana Almeida, Mariana Durão 

Amy Lowell

Like Ezra Pound and H.D., Amy Lowell was into the Imagist movement. Next class (Wednesday) we will be presenting one of her poems "Madonna of the Evenings Flowers" (here) and leave some topics for discussion:

• religious symbols 
• spiritual experience
•  the majestic beloved

Y'all shall not miss class!!!

Bruna Mateus; Francisco Baranda; Marco Amado

H.D._"Eurydice"

Dear classmates,

H.D. had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry was often inspired by Greek mythology. Next Friday, we will be discussing one of her poems, "Eurydice". If you would like to know more about the poem before we look at it, you might want to read about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (here, for instance: http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/orpheus.html).

  Ary Shefer, Orpheus Mourning the Death of Eurydice (1814)

 

Here are the three questions for you to think about: 

- How is Eurydice portrayed in this poem, in comparison to the traditional myth?

- What symbols does the poet use to make the contrast between life and death?

- How does the voice of the poetic subject change throughout the poem? 

This is a really interesting and powerful poem. Enjoy!

Daniela Cabrita
Inês Guedes
Rita Silva

Ezra Pound's “In a Station of the Metro”

Tokyo Metro by Shteuf on DevianArt

In light of next class' presentation on Ezra Pound's poem “In a Station of the Metro”, we would like to share some topics for you to reflect upon and then discuss with us:

• Firstly, What do you see in this poem? What image strikes you the most?
• How does this poem manage to capture a moment, an “apparition”?
• How can this poem connect with the dichotomy individual/collective brought up by P. Howarth in “Why Write like This?”

Until then, have a nice weekend!

(Bianca Burlacchini, Francisca Matos e Pedro Noronha)

TS Eliot's - "The Waste Land" Presentation

For Friday's class, we will be presenting "The Burial of the Dead", T.S. Eliot's first section of The Waste Land. Taking in account the poem's extension -and as advised by the teacher- we will mostly consider the first two stanzas.

However, analyzing such a complex poem, even the first two stanzas do require a longer discussion; therefore, if you want to prepare for our presentation, we suggest you to focus (mostly) on these three themes that tend to occur often in The Waste Land:

• Life-Death(-Rebirth?);
• Sense of decay;
• Critical view of the modern culture.

P.S. If, for some reason, you forgot to watch or write down the title of the video mentioned in class, here you have it.  

- Ivo Rolo

  Caio Ishikawa

  Rafael Galrão

Sessão com James Ragan

A pedido da professora, posto aqui o meu esquema da sessão com James Ragan, para futura referência.
(Carregar com botão direito do rato e escolher "abrir imagem num novo separador" para melhor visualização)

Filipa Vieira, nº46566

Eudora Welty, "The Whole World Knows"

   

          Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she attended the Mississippi College for Women, graduated from the University of Wisconsin (1929) and studied advertising at Columbia University for a year. Her first short story appeared in 1936, and gradually she began to be published in small, then regional and general circulation magazines. She published collections of her short stories and began publishing novels, as well.

Soon after her first novel was published, she stopped writing to care full-time for her family for fifteen years: for two brothers with severe arthritis and her mother who had had a stroke. After her mother died in 1966, she returned to writing.

She was a 6-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Stories, and her many awards include the National Medal for Literature, the American Book Award, and, in 1969, a Pulitzer Prize.

She was also an accomplished and published photographer. But it is for her fiction, usually set in the rural South, that she's known as the First Lady of Southern Literature.

The Golden Apples (1949) includes seven interlocking stories that trace life in the fictional Morgana, Mississippi, from the turn of the century until the late 1940s. When Welty began writing the stories, however, she had no idea that they would be connected. Midway through the composition process, she finally realized that she was writing about a common cast of characters, that the characters of one story seemed to be younger or older versions of the characters in other stories, and she decided to create a book that was neither novel nor story collection. It is perhaps the greatest triumph of her distinguished career, an unmatched example of the story cycle.

We are going to make a presentation about the story" The Whole World Knows"
The story is told by Randall McLain and through his callings to his father we imagine a suffering ,regretful man.But is he so?
These quatations are from the very end of the story.

      ''And I showed I had the pistol.I said, 'I want the whole bed'  I told her she hadn't needed to be here. I got down in the bed and pointed the pistol at her, without much hope, the way I used to lie cherishing a dream in the morning, and she the way Jinny would come pull me out of it.''
....................

      ''In a minute she put her hand out again, differently, and laid it cold on my shoulder. And I had her so quick. I could have been asleep then. I was lying there.''
....................
      "So i slept"
Can a regretful man sleep easily after raping 18 years old girl?

                                                                                                            Elif KALYONCU

                                                                                                            Gizem GÜNÇİÇEK

    

William Faulkner - "That Evening Sun"

William (Cuthbert) Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was one of the most important and prolific writers in Southern literature, in the United States. He was born in the state of Mississippi and therefore profoundly influenced by the southern culture and history, but also by the education in arts and literature provided by his mother and maternal grandmother. His Nanny, Caroline (Callie) Barr provided a huge background on the African-American tradition and history, from which, we could assume, derives his great dismay on the huge social, political and economic misfortunes (for lack of a stronger word) of that community.

William Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature for “his powerful and artistically unique contribute to the Modern American Novel”. He also won two Pulitzer Awards, one in 1955 for A Fable and the other in 1963 (posthumous) for The Reivers. In 1951 he received a US National Book Award for Collected Stories and another in 1955 for A Fable.

In 1927 Faulkner created the setting for most of his novels and short stories – a small region in Northern Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha County, with the town Jefferson in its core. “That Evening Sun” was published in 1931, and the main characters are the Compson children, being Quentin, the older son, the narrator. Like the town Jefferson is the setting of choice of the author, also The Compson family plays a main role in many of Faulkner’s novels.

This short story depicts the racial, social and moral contrasts in the southern society, and is marked by the stern criticism of Faulkner towards  the white community's relation with the African-Americans. It’s narrated by Quentin, when he is 24 years old and starts remembering something that happened during his childhood, 15 years earlier. As the story enfolds, the tone becomes more and more childish, showing the children's incomprehension and empathy to Nancy’s despair and the lack of understanding of the adults in their family.

A brief note to the title — it comes from a black spiritual, whose first line states: “Lord, how I hate to see that evening sun go down”, meaning that after the setting of the sun, death would follow, giving an early indication of Nancy’s fate.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope to read your thoughts and impressions while reading it.

Madalena Athayde - 44440

Their eyes were watching God - by Zora Neale Hurston

Hi guys, on Monday the 26th we will be doing a presentation on Zora Neale Hurston´s Their Eyes Were Watching God

We recommend those of you who have not read the novel yet to watch the movie which you can find on YouTube, because we feel it is very faithful to the novel even though it´s not like reading the actual words. 

We will be focusing our presentation on the storytelling aspects and style of writing that Zora Neale Hurston uses in this very unique novel. 

For those of you who have had the privilege of reading the novel, you will have noticed the unique dialect that Hurston uses throughout the novel to represent the African American culture.

• We would like you to comment on this aspect, whether you enjoyed it, whether you found it difficult etc and why?
• We would also like you to comment on the following excerpt found in chapter 6 and how you think it shows (or not) the storytelling aspect and dialect present throughout the novel.

“Dat mule uh yourn, Matt. You better go and see ´bout him. He´s bad off”

“where ´bout? Did he wade in de lake and uh alligator ketch him?”

“Worser´n dat. De womenfolks got yo´mule. When ah come round de lake ´bout noontime mah wife and some others had ´im flat on de ground usin´ his sides fuh uh wash board.”

The great clap of laughter that they have been holding in, bursts out. Sam never craks a smile. “Yeah, Matt, dat mule so skinny till de women is usin´his rib bones fuh uh rub-board, and hangin´ things out on his hock-bones tuh dry.

We hope you enjoyed the novel as much as we did and we look forward to your input,

Célia Raquel Pestana Martins

Samanta Teixeira de Mello

Their Eyes Were Watching God – by Zora Hurston (1937)

Hello everyone!

On November 21^st we will be presenting on Zora Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” – chapter II, page 8

In our presentation we will be talking about Janie’s development as a character and the influence the following characters have on her growing.

•         Janie’s Grandmother
•        Logan Killicks (1^st husdand)
•        Joe Stark (2^nd husband)
•        Tea Cake (3^rd husband)

“(…) Years ago, she had told her girl self to wait for her in the looking glass. It had been a long time since she had remembered. Perhaps she’d better look. She went over to the dresser and looked hard at her skin and features. The young girl was, but a handsome woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there. She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back again” (page 87)

• -       What does this passage represent on Janie’s life?
• -       What is the symbolism of her hair during the story?
• -       What kind of feelings/reactions the three husbands raise on Janie?

    We are looking forward for your comments and ideas!!!

     

    Aurea Teixeira

    Carla Neves

    Tânia Fortunato

William Carlos Williams

Hey everybody!
Next Wednesday we are going to do a presentation on William Carlos Williams. We will be talking about his life, style and will also be discussing two poems, one of which was also discussed during the session with Jeffrey Childs. Feel free to comment and discuss the poems, any suggestions and ideas will be welcomed and helpful!!

A Love Song
(one of the poems discussed in the session with Jeffrey Childs)

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.
The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky. There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world. I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky. See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle. How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?



- what do you think of the title?
- starts and ends with a question
- self-reflexive
- imagery, synesthesia and synecdoche - physical but mainly emotional and psychological impact and effect that an encounter has had on the poetic subject
- automnal atmosphere
- parallelism with a tree - crossing of/between the organic world and the human reality
- "there is no light" - autumn anticipates winter; just like the poetic subject is in the clouds and can already anticipate his own fall
- doubt
- feeling of being lost



The Young Housewife


At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car. Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf. The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
In regards to „The Young Housewife“ we would like to give you a few hints on how to understand the poem, just to give you a direction for the discussion, without telling too much about our own ways of interpreting it:

- poem as a comment on social inequality
- division into 2 spheres (male sphere, female sphere)
- voyeurism and female objectification
- carpe diem/ memento mori
- potential of change (?)

David Klein Martins and Marta Horta e Costa

Langston Hughes (12th November)

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an African-American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue" which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue".

Poem of our choice: Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?

Over There,

            World War II.

                                             

Dear Fellow Americans,

I write this letter

Hoping times will be better

When this war

Is through.

I'm a Tan-skinned Yank

Driving a tank.

I ask, WILL V-DAY

BE ME-DAY, TOO?

I wear a U. S. uniform.

I've done the enemy much harm,

I've driven back

The Germans and the Japs,

From Burma to the Rhine.

On every battle line,

I've dropped defeat

Into the Fascists' laps.

I am a Negro American

Out to defend my land

Army, Navy, Air Corps—

I am there.

I take munitions through,

I fight—or stevedore, too.

I face death the same as you do

Everywhere.

I've seen my buddy lying

Where he fell.

I've watched him dying

I promised him that I would try

To make our land a land

Where his son could be a man—

And there'd be no Jim Crow birds

Left in our sky.

So this is what I want to know:

When we see Victory's glow,

Will you still let old Jim Crow

Hold me back?

When all those foreign folks who've waited—

Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated.

Will I still be ill-fated

Because I'm black?

Here in my own, my native land,

Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?

Will Dixie lynch me still

When I return?

Or will you comrades in arms

From the factories and the farms,

Have learned what this war

Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,

Will I be safe from harm—

Or will you do me

As the Germans did the Jews?

When I've helped this world to save,

Shall I still be color's slave?

Or will Victory change

Your antiquated views?

You can't say I didn't fight

To smash the Fascists' might.

You can't say I wasn't with you

in each battle.

As a soldier, and a friend.

When this war comes to an end,

Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car

Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man

At home and take your stand

For Democracy?

That's all I ask of you.

When we lay the guns away

To celebrate

Our Victory Day

WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?

That's what I want to know.

            Sincerely,

                GI Joe.

We shall talk about:

-          * The way the poem is written, being as it is in the form of a letter directed to the “White Americans”;

-                    *  Where it is placed in time, which is World War II;

-                  * The poetic subject’s wish to be free from the “Jim Crows birds” (during our presentation we will explain the meaning of this and how it affects this poem in particular);

-                  * How this poem may influenced the appearance of the American Civil Rights Movement;

We think it is a simple poem that reaches to all of us. It is the struggle of an African-American that wishes him and his “brothers” to have the right to be as much of citizens of America as the “White Americans”.  To have the right to truly call themselves “free”.

Enjoy!

Neuza Machado 

Sara Costa

MARIANNE MOORE

Dear colleges,

This Monday, October 29th, we are presenting Marianne Moore and her "Poetry". Please note that the version of the poem you have in the photocopy brakes the longest lines. Although the poem is written in a free verse, there are planned metrics and a searched rhyme. That’s the reason why we’ve copied the whole poem here bellow:

"Poetry"

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
*****Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
*****it, after all, a place for the genuine.
***********Hands that can grasp, eyes
***********that can dilate, hair that can rise
*****************if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
*****useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible
*****the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
***********do not admire what
***********we cannot understand: the bat
*****************holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
*****a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base-
*****ball fan, the statistician—
***********nor is it valid
*****************to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
*****however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
*****nor till the poets among us can be
***********"literalists of
***********the imagination"—above
*****************insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have
*****it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
*****the raw material of poetry in
***********all its rawness and
***********that which is on the other hand
*****************genuine, you are interested in poetry.

********************************************—Marianne Moore

After having read it, we would like you to think in the following questions. Of course, your answers will always be welcomed and presumably helpful.

1.     Reading the first words, one must realize the irony of the declaration against the poetry, since it is made through a poem. But this sentence is probably not a mere ironic, shocking or comic affirmation, given that appeals to someone who supposedly shares her opinion: “I, too, dislike it [the poetry]”. Could this be an appellation to the reader, who is actually reading poetry? Did you feel identified when you read it for the first time?

2.     The criticism is a main factor of the poem. It seems that the poet is constructing her poetic view by opposition to the poetry she dislikes. Which kind of poetry is the poet referring to? Can we localize textual evidences of that? Does the poem say how the poetry is, or how should it be?

3.     In the third line, poetry is described as “a place for the genuine”. In an interview for “The Paris Review”, in 1967, Moore said she “disliked the term poetry for any but Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s or Dante’s. […] What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category in which to put it”. The terms “place” and “category” are free of aesthetic connotations: do you think they are appropriated to describe poetry?

4.     On the formal analysis, it is clear the use of free verse, the prose-like style, the strange rhyme and rhythm, the unrefined line breaks and the use of common words. What can be the objective or the reason of doing it?

5.     The author published a few versions of this poem. In her Complete Poems, appeared in 1967 (three years before she died), Moore reduced it to three lines:

“Poetry”

I, too, dislike it.
***Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
***it, after all, a place for the genuine.

This was object of a huge amount of criticism: the fans thought the images of the poem were essential. In what sense do you think the short version changes the message of the poem?

Guillem & Pol