Monthly Archives: April 2016

Final creative project

Writing assignments

Due during the final exam period: Wed 5/25, 1-3pm

For your final creative project, you have a lot of leeway with what you might do, but here are the four basic tasks you need to do

  1. Analyze one of the works we have read for the rhetorical/stylistic moves that it makes, as well as its structure (Annotation will help you here).
  2. Use these observations to create your own work that is about more contemporary materials/subjects (or other materials of interest to you). For example, you might create your own Pillow Book about important events/settings in your life (like a Pillow Book about being a student at Baruch).
  3. Explain, in two pages, how you used these rhetorical moves from the original text, giving examples from your own work in comparison to the original text. What were these rhetorical moves, and how did you use them in your own work?
  4. During the final exam time itself, present a piece of your creative work (and, if time, some explanation of why you made the choices you did).

You might do this individually or as a group: for example, if you do a scene from a play, you can do this project with a few other people (no more than 4 to a group, though). If you do this individually, you’ll have about five minutes to present during the exam itself; as a group, you’ll have more.

  • Note on group work: If you work as a team, you need to provide evidence of the separate roles that you played. If, for example, you put together your own “updated version” of the Kokinshu, each person should be responsible for covering a “theme.” (the Kokinshu selections we read, for example, focused on the seasons and love, though obviously you might choose different categories).
  • It should go without saying, but: what you write in these projects should be your own work in your own words. If you are bringing in quotes or even just paraphrasing ideas from outside sources, they should be cited. I’ll say it again: even bringing in someone else’s ideas that you find online is plagiarism if you don’t cite your source (because it looks like you’re claiming that idea as your own, and not acknowledging that you got the original idea from elsewhere). Look up how to cite using MLA for texts outside the Norton: there are hundreds of sites online that can help you find the proper way to cite a source. Since you are handing this in at the end of the semester, if I catch plagiarism, I’ll just email you about it, give you the zero, and factor it into the grade; there won’t be time for you to explain yourself, and moreover, by that point you should have had time to look up what academic integrity policy at Baruch is, as well as ask me any clarifying questions.

Suggestions for what you might do (I’ll add some more in coming days, and you can come up with your own too, as long as you vet them with me).

Create your own Pillow Book: While the Pillow Book is in the genre of the “pillow,” or notebook/diary that records daily observations (so-called because it would likely be placed near one’s pillow), it includes several different kinds of entries (lists, characterizations of people, stories/anecdotes, etc) and that sometimes it seems to record actual events and sometimes it seems to embellish them. Observe this text for its rhetorical moves as a diary that records the happenings of Heian court life (at least, what Shonagon asserts is important to notice) and write your own “pillow book” that uses her rhetorical moves, style, attention to detail, etc, to describe and characterize a setting that is important to you. This setting could be Baruch college from your perspective as a student, city or suburban life from your perspective as a resident (particularly NYC life), or your neighborhood and its residents/family/friends from your perspective as a part of that community (or even as someone who feels on its outskirts sometimes!). Feel free to be creative with your setting, but be sure to use the moves that Shonagan does to write your own “pillow book.”

  • Your project should contain EACH KIND of entry Shonagan does (lists, essays on topics, diary like narratives) and you should have AT LEAST 10 entries. If you are working in a group: each person should have at least 10 entries. Note that this should reflect specific features that you find in Shonagan’s work; if it’s just a diary observing your environment in a general way, you won’t do well on this assignment.

Create your own Kokinshu: The Kokinshu, as we began to discuss, is an anthology that uses the technique of association-and-progression to organize the poetry in it (each “series” of poems sticks to one theme, and there are similarities in images between one poem to the next, yet with each poem, there are subtle changes that take us through a “progression”—from the first hints of spring to the height of spring to the fading of spring; or the first hints of a love affair to the consummation and height of the romance to its fading). Observe how this rhetorical technique works in The Kokinshu and then compile/create your own version using the association-and-progression technique. Instead of the poems in the Kokinshu, however, find other poems and arrange them according to a theme where the poems close to each other share similar phrases/words/images but that, when you zoom out, has a larger narrative with a “beginning, middle, and end” (as in the Kokinshu, where poems about the seasons and about love progress to tell a story or to take us through the seasons). You do not have to necessarily use poetry; you might also use other short works in succession. For example, you could take news snippets/Tweets about a particular event or topic, and place them in an order where each Tweet/snippet in proximity shares similar phrases or ideas, but arranged so that they show a progression of some kind (this could work particularly well with political events, as news coverage often uses short phrases to encapsulate larger ideas or topics). You can even use pieces/quotes from the Norton anthology (what we’ve read or other texts) that circle around a particular theme (like duty/right action). Be creative in your materials, but be sure to follow the rhetorical moves of the Kokinshu as you do so.

  • Note that this option might apply for The Thousand and One Nights too: you might create a “frame tale” plus some interlocking stories (this would likely be a good “group” option where each person writes a part or parts of a story, so it’s not too overwhelming a project).

Perform a scene from Sakuntala: The Norton preface to Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection notes that the play is now rarely performed, even with the revived interest in theater in India. According to the Norton, this is because “despite its remarkable survival and continuous influence over some 1,500 years, and its wide appeal to readers around the world, Kalidasa’s play seems better equipped to reveal its beauty and complexity as ‘drama’ rather than ‘theater’” (875). In other words, the play is better to be read than to be performed. Yet we did get to see a performance of it this semester, that sought to get across the emotional ups and downs of the narrative. I think, therefore, that the Norton’s assertion is something we might contest! For this option, perform a scene from Sakuntala, keeping in mind that the play, for each act, intends to depict a different rasa, or emotional state in its pure essence, by “blending” the characteristics of an emotional state with “subsidiary states” like anxiety or lovesickness and with “physical signs associated with” each emotion (873; see p. 875 for which rasa goes with each act, as well as the subsidiary emotions). Your goal is to perform this scene and embody the appropriate rasa in it, in whatever way you believe best will convey these emotional states to the audience. You might use exaggerated gestures, masks, music, etc, to depict this emotional state: there’s a lot of creative possibilities here, but keep in mind that your goal is to really get these emotions across to your audience through multiple modes (in other words, if your whole presentation is just reading aloud and making some faces, you’re not going to do so well: you should be able to explain your reasoning behind the performance choices you made, based on your interpretation of lines of the text).

  • Alternate performance options:
    • Do a similar thing with Medea, this time potentially focusing on masks and performing the scene using masks and body movement/language.
    • Do a scene from Othello, focusing on highlighting, in how you stage the scene and say the lines, some aspect of the text that you and your group got through careful, close reading that you think the class might miss on a cursory reading or general class discussion (note, though, that this would require you doing some reading in advance, as we are reading this play in the last two weeks of the semester).
  • Propose a performance option to me (perhaps one that involves researching the history of how the play would be performed, or one that involves bringing in a more modern-day context/modern music and visuals that you think will help us gain insights into the original play)

(note: you do not have to memorize your scene–you can read it aloud from paper–but you shouldn’t just recite your lines. That’s liable to get your group a C- or below. This goes for all performance options).

Created an annotated edition of a part of a class text: Often while discussing the epics, plays, and poetry in the Norton, we’ve referred back to either the introduction to the text or the explanatory footnotes on the bottom in order to understand better what is going on in the text. While we’ve noted that these footnotes are helpful, they are usually limited to “historical/cultural context”; there are other kinds of footnotes and comments that might be helpful to a reader, such as a gloss on the possible meanings of a word, or an explanation of what a tricky line might mean (and we’ll see this more when we get to Othello, with footnotes that help us to untangle some of the difficult language in the play). My challenge to you is to create an “annotated edition” of a piece/part of one of the texts we read with an audience of Baruch students in mind (particularly Baruch students who might be entering a Great Works course next semester), with a 3-5 page introduction and footnotes (or 2 pages each per group member, if you do this as a group). What, do you think, a Baruch student would want to know about this text, or should know about this text as they read it? What would you have wanted to know? What kinds of footnotes, or what kind of introduction, would you have found helpful? You might make footnotes that deal with historical/cultural context you research, footnotes that define difficult words/note possible meanings to different words, footnotes that point to important parallels and structural details, footnotes that give a few different interpretations of a passage, footnotes that note parallels in other texts we’ve read, footnotes that point to other more contemporary sources that are useful in understanding the text (like a link to a Youtube performance of the play or song that relates to the text in some way)….be creative, and think about what would be interesting or useful to a future student in this class (or to your past self). Even things like reaction GIFs might be fun here! The best version of this project would use several kinds of footnotes (one that just defines words and gives a little bit of historical context, for instance, is not likely to do as well), and demonstrate that the writer really thought about how to reach their future Baruch audience; you should feel like you are a kind of expert on the text by the time you’re done. With this project, you would not need to include a 2-page explanation of why you made the decisions that you did, because the introduction you write will serve that purpose. Make sure to include a works cited page for the research you do.

  • Your footnotes and annotations should achieve the following tasks (and altogether, should add up to about 2.5 pages of writing)
    • Look up and explain historical references
    • Look up and explain words and their usages in different time periods and cultures (try using the Oxford English Dictionary)
    • Look up and explain belief systems (e.g. provide background on religious or philosophical schools of thought) and cultural practices (such as marriage, childbearing, ways of making a living).
    • Contextualize a piece of literature with art or music (or other art forms) with links and discussion of the connections
    • Justify or argue against translation choices
    • Execute close readings and explorations of ambiguous or otherwise noteworthy passages
    • Call attention to important moments in the text that should be registered
  • A good tool for this would be Google docs, because it would allow a group to work on annotating collaboratively. Check out other collaborative writing apps here: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wgw/faculty-resources/collaborative-writing-tech-resources/
  • If you do this as a group, it would probably be best to decide on “jobs” for each person (one person is in charge of historical context annotations, for example). Remember you still need to do a 2 page explanation of what you did and why—what your role was (which is ultimately a protection for you against one person doing a lot of work and another person being less diligent).
  • You will get a zero if you take footnotes from another annotated text, or if your footnotes/introduction plagiarizes from a source outside your own brain (again, you can use that source, but cite it, please, and show what you’re adding to what the source says). That’s still plagiarism. Don’t do it.
  • The above bullet point is especially true if you do Othello: there are several annotated editions out there, and it may be tempting to look at those ones for ideas. Avoid even looking at them for “ideas,” because it may be difficult to get those ideas out of your mind (though of course when reading, use the footnotes to understand the play). You will get an zero on the project if you take footnotes from any edition of this play, because that is plagiarism.

Create your own mini-anthology: Create a mini-anthology centered around a theme, concept, or question of your choosing (The Norton Anthology is an example of an anthology, though yours will be much smaller and narrower). You will choose four texts from our reading (with the possibility of one outside reading, as long as you consult with me about it) and develop an essay-length introduction that gives context and explains your choices, in addition to creating para-­textual material(cover, table of contents, etc.). When you present for the final exam, present your anthology to the class as if you were pitching it to a group of publishers.

Your anthology should include:

  1. A cover page with an original title, some kind of cover art, and your name included
  2. A Table of Contents listing the works included
  3. An introductory essay of at least 5 pages
  4. A paragraph about the editor

At least two of your texts should be ones we’ve covered past the midterm (Thousand and One Nights forward) and they should be by four different authors. If you choose one work outside of what we’ve read, you should have a solid argument for why you think it’s a great work of literature.

Introductory Essay should include:

  • Opening: argument for importance of this theme or question, and what your chosen texts tell us about it.
  • Body: Discussion of individual works and how they fit the theme and support your argument. Draw on specific textual examples from each text to support your opening argument. The body of your introduction will function much like a comparative essay, drawing connections or contrasts between texts that would not have been evident had we looked at them in isolation, and relying on claims, evidence, and analysis.
  • Conclusion:Explanation of how this theme or question, and the way it is explored in your chosen works, is relevant to our lives today.Again, be specific!

What to avoid

  • Don’t simply bring together texts on the same topic, without making any substantive argument about how they fit together or how reading them together offers us a new perspective (so for example, say more than “These texts tell us about the role of women throughout history”—say what about the role of women they show us).
  • Don’t make very general claims: When you’re telling your reader why it is important that they read these selections, your reasons should be specific to the texts you’ve chosen—telling them that literature can have a deeper meaning, change the way we think about the world, or help us to realize injustice, while true, are things that could be said about any other number of works. Be as specific as you can (for example: what injustice? What about that injustice are they helping us realize?).

“Blog” your experience of reading Othello or re-reading another class text we read post-midterm (or if from before that, it should be a text you did not do your analytical paper or oral midterm for):

Use Blogs@Baruch to make a blog containing at least 8 entries about your chosen text, including at least one of each type listed below. That is, once you’ve done the required entries, you can make multiples of each entry type or come up with some kinds of entries of your own. Creative entries (including, but not limited to original poetry, videos of your own performance, visual art, music, etc.) are welcome but must be accompanied by a thoughtful written explanation of the work and its connection to your chosen text.

Each blog entry must by tied to a quotation from the text and must include some kind of visual element—an image, a gif, a video, etc.—though this can include, for example, a picture of text, like of your annotations in your book

Required Entries:

Your blog must include one of each of the following entries. The others (for a total of at least 8) are up  to you. Multiples of one type are okay, as are types of entries not listed here. Entry lengths may vary, but 300-500 words is a good general length.

  1. Analysis of a passage: This entry should focus on the careful analysis of a single passage. Before writing, be sure to read the passage several times and annotate it carefully. In your analysis, highlight choices in the passage that are not easily paraphrased, that resist easy explanation. Building on your observations about those choices, what makes this passage significant tour reading of the text?
  2. Analysis of an adaptation or performance: Respond to a single performance or adaptation of the text (though if you can’t find anything for the text you’ve chosen, let me know). Your response should focus specifically on a choice that was made in adapting the text. Remember that adaptation and performance are always grounded in interpretation. What interpretation does this choice suggest? Based on your reading of the play, is that interpretation a solid one? If you disagree with it, explain why(with evidence).
  3. Analysis of an image: Find an image that, for you, particularly resonates with the text. This may be an image directly linked to the text (like a painting portraying Shahrzad and the king if you’re doing 1,001 Nights) or an image from the period the text comes from (such as an English Renaissance painting if you’re doing Othello), or an image in which you see some kind of connection (though you must be able to make a compelling case for its connection). Be sure to include both the image and full citation information for the image. This entry should include both a close analysis of the image itself and an explanation of how you see its connection to the text
  4. Analysis of a connection: For this entry, think back over the texts we’ve read this semester and explain a connection between this text and one of our previous texts. The connection may compare (locate a  similarity) or contrast (reveal a distinction), but it should be grounded in textual evidence.

 

Reflection

Writing assignments

Reflection on reading/interpreting strategies

Write an nearing-end-of-semester reflection on what you have learned about how to approach, read, and interpret texts, and what you have learned about strategies for reading texts from different cultures and periods. In this reflection, you should mention at least two-three specific strategies and approaches that you can take with you beyond this class; you also need examples from at least three texts where you show how you use/have used this strategy (for example, if you talk about interpreting by comparing translations, you should actually compare two translations of a selection of text; if you discuss reading aloud, you should use an example from a text where reading aloud helped you to hear something new in the text that you missed, and what it was that you noticed through reading aloud; if you mention reading for structure, you should give an example where noting a parallel helped you to notice or understand something about the text, and what it is you understood). Include, at the end, annotations on a passage you think you will use in order to do your final creative project, using the skills you have delineated in the reflection itself. This reflection should be at least 800 words long.

This will be due by Wednesday 5/4 (in class or, if by email, by 11:59pm). Note that this is worth ten percent of your grade.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 4/20 Post

Student blog post

In the end of Fitt 2 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, there is a clear understanding of the bargain in which Sir Gawain and the Sir Bertilak agreed to take part in, as a “game”. This brought my attention to relate it back to the “game” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight agreed on. Do these “games” have an importance, which is why they keep repeating or is there a particular reason to drive the character Sir Bertilak and the Green Knight to come up with them? In a way it makes me feel as if Sir Bertilak knows or could relate to the Green Knight. The way Sir Bertilak “laughed” at Sir Gawain’s explanation as to why he cannot stay seemed to be an odd way to respond to the type of “game” he is participating in. Does it seem odd to laugh at this situation, could he be connected to the Green Knight based on what we are seeing towards the end of Fitt 2 and not want to inform Sir Gawain of this? This thought stays with me as I read into Fitt 3. This third part of the story illustrates the three days Gawain and the master take part in their game, concluding every night with a trade. Gawain delivers a kiss, two kisses, and finally three kisses on the following nights as Sir Bertilak delivers venison, boar, and a fox. On the third night, Gawain leaves out the importance of the gift he receives from Sir Bertilak’s wife, which would be a green girdle. This is said to have the power to protect anyone who wears it from death. Sir Bertilak’s wife asks him to keep it a secret from her husband, “…she pressed him to take the present, / and he granted her wish, and she gave with good grace, / though went on to beg him not to whisper a word / of this gift to her husband, and Gawain agreed…” (Lines 1860-1863)

This also brings my attention again to the thought that maybe possibly there is a relation to Sir Bertilak and the Green Knight. By keeping this a secret, it will keep the secret of the wife and Sir Gawain having this friendship/relationship, and if Sir Bertilak find out, he will find out the kisses that were received were from his wife.

  1. Does it seem odd to laugh at the explanation of this game Sir Gawain is taking part in with the Green Knight—could he be connected to the Green Knight based on what we are seeing towards the end of Fitt 2?
  2. Is there a reason for these games to be so similar?
  3. What is the importance of the secret gift? Why can she not inform her husband that she gifted Sir Gawain with this?

Jersey Boys

Student blog post

Attending Jersey Boys was a great decision. I finally got to see the hype about these 4 singers. It is such a remarkable story of 4 regular guys that had their dreams come true the moment they started to sing. The uniqueness of their voices was what directly pulled me in as well as the story behind it. You love a story of the underdog. You see an everyday person from a state right next to mine, where I have on vacation numerous times become one of the most famous groups. You see them go from the streets to the big stage of Broadway. It gives you that feeling that anything is possible if you work hard enough. I have heard of references of their songs so much and to hear it in person was breathtaking. Hearing it on the radio doesn’t do the live version justice. The voices being so pure and unique are something you do not hear everyday. It is interesting to see how they used their street knowledge to help them get over adversity. They had many personal challenges like the Mob and gambling problems but they always had each other to get them through it. It was so serious that it almost tore the group apart but that is what friends are for. They are there for you no matter what and they are your backbone. That is why this musical touches the hearts of its viewers because it is so real and authentic. I believe that I enjoyed this mostly due to the fact that it had that Italian taste to it. My favorite genre is Italian crime especially organized and since they had to deal with the Mafia it gave me that aspect.

Going to these Broadway plays has really taught me a lot. It brings me to Li Bo poetry to be honest. I will be away for the whole summer for an internship away from my friends, family and girlfriend. I am doing what Li Bo said and not to be stingy with my money. Yes, I have got a lot of tickets for very cheap but it still cost a decent amount. It is something that makes me happy and it is a way to escape the pressures of classes and the reality of me being away from all my loved ones for 2 and a half months. After reading his poetry I am making sure that I make memories and live my life not worrying about what is to come but to live in the present. I will be alone while I am away but I am ok with that. I wont be lonely because I will be happy with myself and feel a sense that I made the most of personal life before I had to leave.

 

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Significance of the Green Knight

Student blog post

I remember the first time I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I was especially intrigued because I had only known the story of King Arthur’s sword and his Knights of the Round Table as classic stories beforehand. To read an extension of it was comparable to reading Wicked, the story derived from the Wizard of Oz, because it’s strange to see such a popular and familiar story from a different perspective in a new setting.

Although the beginning of the story focused a great deal on the festivities of Camelot and focused heavily on the image of people drinking, dancing, celebrating, and having an enjoyable time overall, there was something off about it; the description wasn’t exactly painting it in a positive and elegant light. The people were described as naive and unaware in their almost child-like ways of not having any other care in the world. Maybe this was a way for the author to foreshadow the coming of the Green Knight. They also placed emphasis on describing Queen Guinevere and her striking beauty, but she didn’t end up playing a major role in the correspondence between King Arthur and the Green Knight. I wonder why that was.

Throughout the story, another question that lingered in my mind was the underlying reason for the Green Knight’s actions in seeking out King Arthur’s knights and challenging them to his game. I wondered if, like us, the Green Knight was simply curious about the prestige that surrounded King Arthur’s court in Camelot, and therefore wanted them to prove their worth. He wanted to see the bravery for himself or perhaps even prove it wrong, if given the chance.

  1. Why is the Green Knight green and gold? What is the significance of these two particular colors?
  2. What is the Green Knight and why is he immune to death?
  3. What is the Green Knight’s ultimate purpose in using the game to test King Arthur’s knights? What is the end goal in proving them to be as righteous and courageous as they are rumored to be?
  4. Why was there a heavy focus on Queen Guinevere’s appearance and beauty?

The Pillow Book

Student blog post

        The pillow book allows readers to emerge themselves into the lifestyle of Japanese culture told through Sei shonagon during her many observations of the world she sees. I truly enjoyed this reading because theirs so many descriptive images that allow readers to really analyze each line and find a significant meaning behind it. From the start of the reading I was drawn to Sei Shonagon metaphors, her wording, and her distinct sense of her surroundings.I found the second paragraph in the beginning of the book to be interesting when she talks about the four seasons. But when she spoke about summer I was drawn to her descriptive images. She mentions “In summer, the night-moonlit nights, of course, but also at the dark of the moon, it’s beautiful when fireflies are dancing everywhere in a mazy flight. And it’s delightful too to see just one or two flies through the darkness, glowing softly. Rain falling on a summer night is also lovely.” Each line goes with each other, the words of each line has their own unique meaning which gives a bigger sense of how summer is portrayed. She mentions fireflies are dancing in a mazy flight; fireflies are small insects that only come out at night. I found fireflies to be important because when fireflies begin to come out at night that’s a sign that summer is arriving. I see Fireflies as a symbol of summer, warm weather. The second line says fly through the darkness, glowing softly. Darkness I found to be a descriptive word in this line because in darkness you can’t see anything it’s pitch black, but fireflies use their light to brighten up the summer sky. Glowing softly, I interpreted as the fireflies providing light at night but their light is dim and at the same time their dim light is powerful enough to brighten the summer night. Sei Shonagon finds the beauty of each season and truly reflects upon it through her writing.

      I found the second paragraph in the beginning of the book to be interesting when she talks about the four seasons. But when she spoke about summer I was drawn to her descriptive images. She mentions “In summer, the night-moonlit nights, of course, but also at the dark of the moon, it’s beautiful when fireflies are dancing everywhere in a mazy flight. And it’s delightful too to see just one or two flies through the darkness, glowing softly. Rain falling on a summer night is also lovely.” Each line goes with each other, the words of each line has their own unique meaning which gives a bigger sense of how summer is portrayed. She mentions fireflies are dancing in a mazy flight; fireflies are small insects that only come out at night. I found fireflies to be important because when fireflies begin to come out at night that’s a sign that summer is arriving. I see Fireflies as a symbol of summer, warm weather. The second line says fly through the darkness, glowing softly. Darkness I found to be a descriptive word in this line because in darkness you can’t see anything it’s pitch black, but fireflies use their light to brighten up the summer sky. Glowing softly, I interpreted as the fireflies providing light at night but their light is dim and at the same time their dim light is powerful enough to brighten the summer night. Sei Shonagon finds the beauty of each season and truly reflects upon it through her writing.

Questions:

1: Whats significant about Sei Shonagon describing the four season in such a descriptive way.

2: What universal meaning can you get from reading The Pillow Book?

The Pillow Book

Student blog post

The Pillow Book’s written thoughts are vividly painting a picture for the reader. “At the dark of the moon, it’s beautiful when fireflies are dancing everywhere in a mazy flight,” the author describes a summer night. Those words bring back memories of when I was younger, running around on a soccer field with my cousins at sunset, anxiously waiting for night to fall so that our mason jars could soon be occupied with little fireflies. The “crimson-purple cloud” in the spring and the “pure white frost” in the winter brings me back to each season and distinct memories that come with it. The memories that I am taken back to all have one thing in common – bliss. The author is consistently using words such as enchanting, delightful, and lovely to describe a certain image in his mind. The eloquence of the text takes me to a happy place, growing on me and persuading me to appreciate those moments and memories more.

A poem on page 1137 is written; “With the passing years, my years grow old upon me, yet when I see, this lovely flower of spring, I forget age and time.” The beauty that we see in other things or even people can help us see the beauty in ourselves.

 

Questions:

  1. What does The Pillow Book strike in you? Does it bring back memories or maybe inspire you to appreciate a certain kind of beauty?
  2. What do you think The Pillow Book is; a collection of stores, a book of thought, a journal, etc.?

The Pillow Book

Student blog post

The Pillow Book seems like her personal journal where her observations and notes are recorded. There is no certain format like chapters in The Pillow Book. Therefore it really looks like her personal diary reflecting her own thoughts and opinions. I believe the title of the book also demonstrates that is is her personal diary. The word “pillow” makes me imagine the scene where she writes her diary before sleep and puts it next to her pillow after writing.  As Sei Shōnagon served the Empress, the book is written with various topics including her experiences in the court. Sei Shōnagon starts the book by describing the four seasons. She describes each season with details that are enough to make me imagine. She finds the most beautiful about each season and for instance, she finds the dawn most beautiful in spring. I believe she has delicate observations about the nature as she describes each season with specific features. I believe she was able to observe the beauty of the nature as she resided in the palace as a lady in waiting. I also think she considerably lived in a high society being very near the Emperor. Therefore, her diary entities might contain more upper class story.

There is one section where she telling about the dog named Okinamaro. Okinamaro bites the cat named Myobu living in the palace with the Emperor. Therefore, Okinamaro therefore is abandoned and disappeared. However, Okinamaro later appears in the palace but avoids revealing himself to the people. Okinamaro trembles and weeps after being revealed. People find interesting by how a dog can show such emotions like human beings. The contrast between the cat and dog is very vivid, the cat being praised while the dog expelled with beating. The introduction explains that the cast story is often served as an allegory for Korechika’s exile highlighting cruel court politics. However, I cannot quite understand how the story can be related to the exile and politics.

 

 

Questions

  1. Why do you think the title of the book is The Pillow Book?
  2. What do you think about the Emperor’s Cat story? Do you think there is any meaning or lesson from that story?

Li Bo and Du Fu

Student blog post

While I read Li Bo’s poetry, I felt that Li Bo was lonely man and comported himself through drinking and traveling. In Drinking Alone with the Moon, he drinks alone but with moon and his own shadow. There is a legend that Li Bo died himself by drowning while trying to embrace the moon’s reflection on the water when he was drunken. And the legends about Li Bo’s death shows us how he loves wine and moon. In addition, in Sitting Alone by Jingting Mountain, he gets comfort through looking at the Jingting Mountain. In The Hardships of Traveling the Road I and In the Quite Night, you can see that Li Bo was traveling. I believe he is not good father if he had a family because he will not care his own family but drink wine, like to travel and appreciate landscapes.  However, his habit shows us that Li Bo believed in Daoism deeply. When he describes his dream in A Song on Visiting Heaven’s Crone Mountain in a Dream: On Parting, there are many fantasies and colorful imagery.

Unlike Li Bo, Du Fu’s poetries are about the reality of his country, Tang Dynasty. He missed the glorious time of Tang Dynasty in the past and how people’s lives are pitiful. Because government officials did not follow Confucian duty and An Lushan Rebellion brought chaos in Tang Dynasty, the time period was gloomy and sorrowful. In Autumn Meditations, he express the capital of Tang is like a chessboard. There are many political power struggle and government does not care its citizens as it did before. In Spring Prospect, he is in full of sorrow. Even spring comes and blooms flowers, people spend hard time and it is hard to meet family.

Both of the poets lived in same time period in Tang Dynasty and experienced An Lushan Rebellion which brought chaos to even Chang’an, which is the capital of Tang. However, their poetry’s’ themes are different. They are included sorrow but they are different types of sorrow. I felt that Li Bo tried to forget about the bad issues and comfort himself while Du Fu deplore the situations of ordinary people and criticize government that it does not work properly.

 

  1. What would you be like if you lived in Chang’an at the same time period-engaging in the problem or getting out from?
  2. Comparing today’s musician, Is Li Bo similar for spending his life with wine and living freely?
  3. Is it true that when one uses money like Li Bo, money comes right back to one?