Assignment Nº2
MARIANA LOCATELLI - EVANGELINA DICCILLI

ANALYSIS of the POEMS

The Wife’s Lament is a short Old English lyrical poem of 53 lines found in the Exeter Book and generally treated as an elegy in the manner of the Old English woman's song.

It shows the terrible grief a woman feels when she loses her lord because they are forced to be wide apart eternally. As in Romeo and Juliet, and also in Annabelle Lee, the lovers can’t fulfill their dreams together. We can’t imagine how miserable this woman feels without knowing anything about her husband. She waits for him as Penelope on the coast; that is what we tried to represent with the first picture when the Lament talks about the exile. She is alone where her husband told her to dwell, wondering if her lover is alive somewhere in the world. Although she is alive, she is condemned to live in a grave under an oak tree that shows her in eternal mourning. This is what we tried to portray through the last image.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale (extract) is part of Chaucer's most celebrated work: “The Canterbury Tales”. Begun by the 1380s, it was never completed. This tale is a narrative in verse.

The reason we have chosen this extract from the poem The Wife of Bath’s Tale is because we entirely agree with the old woman’s words. Because we too believe one should not feel ashamed of not being rich if one can still enjoy simple and free things as true friendship, love and affection. Sharing a moment of fun with family or friends has a much higher value than having dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town, alone. And this is what we tried to show through the images we picked, the importance of spiritual as opposed to material things.
The tale deals with the subject of authority in married life. The theme of this particular extract is wealth versus poverty.

A dream within a dream is a sonnet written by Edgar Alan Poe and first published in 1827. It consists of 9 couples and 2 triplets as the first 3 lines.

When we read the whole poem we found a kind of revelation of what we have always thought: our lives are a mixture of reality and fantasy: “"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?". And that is what we wanted to show through the surrealist image we found. In this picture we can find a juxtaposition of objects that are impossible to be together unless we put them all in our minds. We need DREAMS to live, they represent our goals in everyday life, and we must sail towards them to make them as real as possible. It is at that point when we overlap the two dimensions: real things and only illusions. And we sometimes see how our dreams slip out of our hands just like sand: “And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand– How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep…” That is what we perceived through the narrator’s words; he seems to feel frustrated because of unfulfilled dreams.

Accurso Agustina, Fijtman Greta and Gallo Antonela

It's the official trailer of a new film based on a fairy tale written by Suniti Namjoshi. It's called Svajamvara. Would you like to watch it? I hope you'll enjoy it!

The author F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby" about his own life and that of his wife Zelda. Learn more about the parallels between his real life and the famous novel with Discovery Channel's "Assignment Discovery."

 

"My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something."
Groucho Marx

I used to strongly agree with Groucho on that quote. I found poetry completely unintelligible. But when I read the unit 2 of Literary Terms and Criticism by John Peck and Martin Coyle I managed to change my mind as regards my feelings towards this genre. They say that there's far more people who find poetry difficult to understand than those who derive pleasure from reading it. And I knew I was part of that first group. What they also say is that "if we have a simple but clear idea of how poetry usually works and what sorts of topics it normally deals with, then we should be in a better position to understand individual poems." and this is completely so. Now that I've dealt in detail with the theory on poetry I feel able to understand it, and why not eager to write it! (Just kidding - but who knows..)

I'd like to share this link that a friend of mine sent me with you. It's a section in the channel mentioned in the title which includes lectures dealing with the American novel since 1945. Hope you find it useful and interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses#g/c/E33BCD966FF96F23

I'll add to "Videos" the one I'm watching right now - analizying Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

You just can't miss this article

'Romeo And Juliet': Just As You Misremembered It by Robert Smith at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121975740

And do listen to the recording

r&jmisremembered.mp3

To continue in a "holiday mood" you could try this Greek Tragedy Performed by Dominos

Anyone else tempted to write their end-of-year post before the year actually ends?

What was the most enriching/helpful/ etc aspect of this class?
I think that the articulation between Literature and Social Studies was very enriching because we could see what was going on in the world in economy, politics, etc, and how people expressed themselves at the same time, having a better and wider view of life in the world and in Britain at the different times in History.

What was the most disappointing/ useless/ etc aspect of this class?
I really must say that I didn't find any useless aspect of Literature, on the contrary, I was very happy with it because I'm very fond of Literature but I haven't got such a great knowledge about the subject and it was very enriching for my personal life.

What have I enjoyed most?
I enjoyed most our dealing with the Wife of Bath, I was really impressed with that piece of work.

What have I enjoyed least?
I would say that I didn't really enjoy dealing with the Elizabethean Sonnet, but that's just because of personal likes and dislikes really.

If I could have changed one thing about the class, what would it have been?
Being completely honest, I wouldn't change anything about the class, I really enjoyed it.

What can I do now that I couldn't do before taking this class? How am I planning to use what I have learnt?
Well as I said before, I found everything I've learnt very enriching and now I am able to look for pieces of work bearing in mind the theoretical knowled I now have.
I mean, if I go to a bookstore I have better tools to know what I want to get or read. Perhaps before I wouldn't know what to buy and just pick books from their cover or what it said in the back.
Apart from that, the way we dealt with the material can be applied to the reading of any book, which makes the reading much more fruitful.

What do I feel I haven't accomplished yet? What am I planning to do about it?
Well, to put it in a simple way I think I have yet a lot to learn about Literature and for the time being I'll do some research on my own. But in the future I'd like to do an Adscripción in Literature or perhaps the Licenciatura.
When I was at school I wanted to study Letras at Humanidades and it's still something I'd like to do, not to get the degree, but to actually learn.

What suggestions do I have for the class for next year?
I haven't got any suggestions, really. I like the way you deal with this class. Personally, I think the class was lively I didn't feel tired by its end, nor by the end of the year.

I believe that the most helpful aspect of this class was the way we approached all the material. Once we read the texts, we had the opportunity not only to clarify our doubts in class but also to share our own perceptions on the different novels. In my opinion, this way of analyzing the novels was really enriching since after discussing the novels we always realized that there were other perspectives which we have not even thought about and which were really valuable.

To be honest, I found the analysis of poems quite difficult but this may be attributed to the fact that I never enjoyed reading poems in general. All the same, I am glad that I learnt how to deal with them as I had no idea about it.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most was the use of technology. I really enjoyed working with the platform and with our TTC meeting place as they both proved to be of great help to enlarge the experience of reading itself. I really took advantage of the net in different opportunities as for example when we got to know about hyper fiction while experimenting with it, or accessing different videos, or reading my classmates’ comments, among others.

This year I found it particularly difficult to cope with my studies, the Practicum and my job at the same time and sometimes it was very difficult for me to finish with the assignments or read the novels in time. However, I’m planning to reread the novels in a more conscious way trying to connect everything we have discussed this year.

All in all, I think that the subject and they way we worked during this year widened my mind and allowed me to analyze a piece of writing not only from one perspective but taking into account different possibilities.

End-of-year post: summing up
• What was the most enriching/helpful/ etc aspect of this class?
I really enjoyed the selection of works because I could reflect upon many aspects of human beings from different perspectives and through different stories. What’s more, I learned to use different Internet tools. I think they would be very useful to use with my students.
• What have I enjoyed most?
Nice work: clever, funny, brilliant.
• What have I enjoyed least?
Poetry
• If I could have changed one thing about the class, what would it have been?
I would have spent less time analysing the poems and much time anlaysing Hamlet.
• What can I do now that I couldn't do before taking this class? How am I planning to use what I have learnt?
After reading all the works I can compare and contrast them and I can see all the theory reflected in them. I will use this knowledge in every work I read from now on.
• What do I feel I haven't accomplished yet? What am I planning to do about it?
I still have difficulties in recognizing or understanding figures of speech. Therefore, I need to read more, enlarge my schema and pay closer attention to words.
• What suggestions do I have for the class for next year?
It usually happens that by the end of the year (especially of this one which has been rather special) teachers rush to finish the syllabus. I have the feeling that we did not have the chance in class to analyse in more depth the works in Unit 3 and 4. However, by the 2nd term and as 4th-year students we can carry the analysis ourselves at home, reading the texts carefully. However, I believe that there are texts like Waiting for Godot or Hamlet that require more attention and discussion in class.

Thanks for your inspiration!
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

Julieta