Below is a sample comparative thesis about Keats and de Castro, using one of the templates we looked at in class.
Although Keats and de Castro both explore the purpose of poetry, asking whether it will endure and whether it will bring them fame, they significantly differ in that Keats asserts the importance of the individual author, while de Castro de-emphasizes the poet’s individuality and situates her poems as part of a broader landscape of writing.
What do you think?
As mentioned today–here’s the trailer for a movie made a few years ago dramatizing the last few years of Keats’ life and his relationship with Fanny Brawne.
If you read Spanish, you might want to look at the poems we’re reading by Sor Juana in the original Spanish:
“Sátira filosófica” (also known as “Redondillas” or “Hombres necios”): http://litgloss.buffalo.edu/cruz/text.shtml
Sonnet 145: http://dept.sfcollege.edu/HFL/hum2461/jpgs/sorjuana/sjicsonnet145.htm
Today in class we looked at Mary Wollstonecraft’s place setting from Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party.”
I highly recommend checking it out in person if you get a chance–its pretty awesome to see in person, and its on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum (admission is suggested donation, so pay-what-you-can).
You can read more about the whole project here: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/home.php
Browse the various place settings (a few of the other writers we’ll read this semester have place settings too): http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/browse.php
“Crafting the Dinner Party”: https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/blog/crafting-dinner-party
Here’s a few more readings on the canon, the debate surrounding it, and how we define literature:
“Revisiting the Canon Wars”: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/books/review/Donadio-t.html
“The Use and Abuse of Literature” (excerpt): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/books/review/excerpt-the-use-and-abuse-of-literature-by-marjorie-garber.html?ref=review
What’s your take?
Hello and welcome to Great Works of Literature II, ENG 2850 KWMB.
We’ll be using this course blog to enrich our classroom experience by sharing responses to the readings, announcements, and links to outside material.
Looking forward to getting started!
(Post by Nadia Rodriguez)
In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft emphasizes the significance of “order” in women’s educational development to gain equality to men because without it one is simply resting on life experience and, as she states, a “negligent kind of guess-work” to form judgments and assessments that are inherently flawed because of the inadequate method of deduction used. The only education provided to women was one of acquiring traits and mannerisms that would make them suitable wives. As such, their only true value in society is provided by man, weakening their character and maintaining them in a state of subordination. For women to be able to enter the male public sphere, women must first have access to the same knowledge that men are privy to so that they may too use educated methods of logic and reason to deduce and come to informed conclusions.
In the text, Wollstonecraft is not merely stating that aristocratic privilege and patriarchal rule have similarities, but that they are intrinsically one in the same. A hierarchal system which ranks the educated male above all others, and subjugates the female.
However, the author also emphasizes that the value the rich put on artificial refinement and vanity render them helpless and undermine the “foundation of virtue” that she claims is imperative to “influence on general practice”. In other words, because the aristocratic are transfixed on frivolity they cannot have an overall worthy participation and influence on matters common to all. This notion can also be applied to womankind; who in their misfortune have been limited to an education based on such superficial notions in reference to their societal participation.