2nd year GAMES AT TWILIGHT, by Anita Desai

Hi, there!
We´ll plunge into this first story in no time, but let´s find out a bit about Anita Desai first...

Look for her biography, understanding about the writer can help us understand her product, her work...Also watch the following interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MQ29zbShX4

(or google "Anita Desai Interview" (it´s a two minutes´ interview)

As you see, she was born in 1937 in India to a German mother and a Bengali father, and is one of the major second-generation Indian-English novelists. She has written about ten novels and a collection of short stories and essays, articles and interviews.She has been writing for forty years and has earned a respectable position in post colonial literature. She has been recognised by various indigenous and international organizations and short listed for the Booker prize three times. Iniatially, she wrote about women, especially middle class Indian women and later developed new themes, such as the claustrophobic experience of city life, demise of traditions, Indo-Pakistan, Indo-Anglican and European culture, the stereotypical Western view of India, migration and Diaspora and more generally home, family, and constraints in relationships.

It is clear then, that we shall be reading a writer that is alien to our culture, this might entail some more work on our part, but eventually we shall have opened a window to a new outlook of life, and that is always enriching...maybe a bit challenging?


So, it is clear that finding out about India and its culture will be VERY convenient to enjoy these stories...ok? How much do we know about India? See what you can find about the land, the languages and culture, the social structure(caste system), religion (Hinduism worshipping three deities: Brhama, Vishnu and Shiva- and Shakti), Marriage and the dowry system. Little by little, learning about the above mentioned issues we´ll come to appreciate what we call Indianness...


We shall start by analysing Games at Twilight

There is an inner voyage in this story, starting at the point of lack of self knowledge and getting to a point of knowledge...from unawareness to awareness.

We mentioned the four stages
Entrapment
The rite of passage, or threshold (hide-and-seek)
The twilight (revelation?)
Winning the game or "winning" the "game"?

We shall be discussing each of the steps in more detail in class. It´ll help if you can print the following questionaire and answer it in class next Tuesday 15 (and Thursday for 2nd D)

QUESTIONNAIRE
Games at Twilight
1. How much empathy for Ravi did you feel at the end of the story? Did his experience remind you of any of your childhood experiences?

2. What specific words and images in this story are most vivid to you? If you had to draw one picture to illustrate the story, what would you draw? Do so, to show me next week.

3. Which images suggest loss and death to you? How do these images make you feel?

4. Why is everyone so surprised to see Ravi when he finally comes out of his hiding place?
Discuss how he is "welcomed" as he reappears. Work on how long he has been missing and how this shows in the text. Focus on all the things the children did as he was "missing". Copy a list.

5. What kind of game are the children playing at twilight?
6. What has Ravi discovered by the end of the story? Find a passage of the text that supports your answer. Think of the issue of being "forgotten", "insignifican".
7. How would you state the theme of this story—what revelation about human life does it make to you? As you think about the theme, think also about how the story’s title reinforces its theme. (Think of the layers of meanings you can give to the word games.)
8. How do Ravi’s experiences in the shed contribute to the mood of the story?
9. Are the children in this story (and childhood itself) more realistically portrayed than the children in television situation comedies, or less so? Give examples to support your view.

Reflect on the following:
CENTRAL THEMES
The "uncanniness" of childhood (not necessarily a "happy" and "naive" time)
Coming of Age: the rite of passage (an initiation into adult life)
The innermost conflict within "coming of age"
Sibling antagonism and rivalry
Anguish about death/life
Death as a unifying force
Human insignificance

TITLE
Work on the symbolism of "the twilight" ( "the uncanny", "the moment of revelation", "the search for identity")


I´ll check the answers to the questions and we´ll discuss the themes and title on Tuesday 22 (and 24 for 2nd D) Enjoy it!!

3rd year from SPECTATOR AB EXTRA, by Arhur Hugh Clough

Remember to read the photocopies I gave you ealier this year, to start with. Those ideas will also shed light on the poem.

Before actually reading the poem, take some time to think..

What is your attitude towards money? Towards being rich? Whose statement do you agree with: the one stated in the Bible? Samuel Johnson´s? Shaw´s? Albert Camus´s? (check out the above mentioned copies)

NOw, read Clough´s biography:

Arthur Hugh Clough was born in Liverpool, England 1791 and died in 1861. (NB Times of the French Revolution, ok?)He was a radical both in his religious and political beliefs. When one reads this apparently jolly poem, one should remember that it doesn’t express Clough’s personal
sentiments: he went to France to support the French working people in the February
Revolution of 1848 when they fought to overthrow the Orleanist monarchy. (The set
extract is the first section of a longer poem.)


Maybe the following notes may help you understand the poem better

Title: Spectator ab extra: literally: a spectator from outside, i.e. an onlooker or an
uninvolved third-party observer
Line 2: pelf: money, riches, material goods (perhaps with the rather disparaging
connotation of ‘filthy lucre’)
Line 7: en grand seigneur: (French) in the manner of a gentleman, with the
demeanour of a person of a distinguished rank


Read the first stanza out aloud, trying to emphasise the rhythm of the lines. What is the effect of the rhythm? What makes it so jolly and song-like?

• Do you agree with the sentiments expressed here? What impression of the people he overhears do you get? Remembering that it is the persona in the poem who is giving this impression, you should explore how he does so.

• Look at the persona himself and make up your mind what you think of him. You should look especially here at stanza 2 to support your view.

• After you have made up your mind, you should try reading the whole poem
exaggerating the character you have imagined.

• Write down what words or phrases led you to respond to the poem as you have done, those which you would want to emphasise above the others. On Tuesday 15, listen to other students’ responses and then decide which of these descriptions best sum up the persona: happy, cynical, selfish, generous, good-living, solitary, uncaring. Are there other words to add to the list?

• Do you find the poem amusing? Why – or why not? Write an appreciation.

Thematic links with set poems
Social injustice/ poverty: Caged Bird; Carpet-weavers; Morocco; Song to the
men of England; Monologue; Muliebrity; Plenty

3rd year SHE DWELT AMONG UNTRODDEN WAYS, by William Worsworth (Poem 85 in Song of Ourselves)

Before reading this poem, google photographs of the Lake District in England, so that you may visualize the home region of this marvellous Romantic poet. One of the nicest places I have ever visited...

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born at Cockermouth, in the heart of the Lake
District, England. If you have taken the trouble of "visiting" the Lake District, as suggested above, you´ll find it easier to understand this poem.

The title in fact is not really a title but the first line of the poem...think of the suggestion of the use of the past tense, dwelt, and the fact that the ways were untrodden..

Read the first verse again, and then consider these questions:

What details emphasise her remoteness? Is this a sad picture? Why have some critics called her ‘a child of Nature’?
Scrutinise the small words in the first line, which might easily be taken for granted and consider the following questions: Why does Wordsworth write among, for example, rather than by?
How can ways be untrodden?

You may need to know that in:

Line 2: Dove: name of a river. It is probably not profitable to specify which Dove this
is. The Wordsworths went back to live in Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the English
Lake District. There is a Dovedale in the Lake District, but there is a more famous
River Dove in Derbyshire. Clearly the poet wishes the reader to imagine a very
remote area. The symbolic associations of the dove(white bird symbolizing peace, purity?) might also be borne in mind.
Line 3: Maid: a girl; a young (unmarried) woman.

Now look carefully at the rhyme scheme, the line lengths, the vocabulary and structure of the sentences and then discuss what is, or seems, simple about it in your view. (Make sure you understand the difference between simple and simplistic. Wordsworth might have been
striving for a simple effect; but this does not mean he wished his verse to be simplistic.)

2nd stanza

Line 7: the star might be Venus which often as the Evening Star is the only one
shining in the sky, because of its relative brightness

Consider the images in the second stanza. What qualities of the violet does Wordsworth emphasise by his description of it? What other associations might a ‘mossy stone’ have? In what ways is the image of the star different to the image of the violet, and what is the effect of this contrast in the poem? Look back at your feelings from your reading of the first stanza. How are you affected by the second stanza?
• Instead of saying 'died', Wordsworth uses the phrase, 'ceased to be'. Does
this phrase make a greater impact? Discuss and explain your thoughts when you meet your classmates on Tuesday.
• What is the effect of the positioning of ‘oh’ at this point in the poem? What is the meaning of the phrase, ‘The difference to me’? Does it say more than that he misses her? Explain their thoughts.
• Read the poem again two or three times to yourselves and try to express in your own way what makes it a special and haunting poem, and why you think so many readers over more than two hundred years have found it so memorable.

Read the following, see if it gives you more clues

This short, apparently simple poem has teased a succession of scholars and critics from the time it was written in 1798-9 to the present day. It might be best not to enquire too far into who Lucy was, if indeed she was a real person at all. Wordsworth wrote it when he and his sister, Dorothy, accompanied his poet friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to Germany shortly after they had collaborated in the writing of their amazingly original Lyrical Ballads. It is one of a group of poems, known as the Lucy poems.

Thematic links with set poems
Mortality: Rising Five; Before the Sun
Nature and humanity: Before the Sun; Farmhand

N.B.These thematik links are included for you to go back to once we have dealt with all of them. The following students were present when we discussed these in class, you can always consult these "helpers" (Thanks Julian Santiago PIntos, Agustina Polizza Gol, Juan Ignacio Nachon and Sofia Belgrano!!!)

3rd year THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES by Charles Lamb

Hi, there!

Here we go again...remember to read the title of the poem and predict...What could this mean? Why "old"? Why "familiar"? What could have prompted the poet or the speaker to write about "faces"? Jot down some ideas first...

Read the poem once. Here´s some help with vocabulary :

Line 4: carousing: merry making (usually involving drinking and lively talking).
Line 14: traverse: cross.
Line 17: wert: were (archaic).

Now work on the following ideas or suggestions individually. Next Tuesday you´ll work in groups to share your conclusions...

*Look at the effect of the repetition, by taking the first two stanzas and reading them out aloud. How do the repetitions affect the way you speak the lines? What light does this shed on the poet’s state of mind?

The use of the present perfect continuous (2nd stanza) suggests this was not a long time ago, so the persona is a young adult.

• In stanza 3, how is the agony of his being parted from his “love” expressed?
Look at how the words are arranged as well as the content of those words. Discuss together.
Is she dead? Married? Must implies moral obligation, why mustn’t he see her? … a mystifying line…
The pull of the past is enormously strong. Why is the past so much more attractive than the present?
*In stanzas 4 and 5, the last line of the verse is modified a little. In what ways do you feel that this modifies the meaning? Is he being critical of his own behaviour? If so, how?
Why can’t he communicate with his friend? Can’t share with him sth. vital?

• Read stanza 5 out aloud, and notice the way the first syllable in each line is accented. What is the effect of this?

• Spend some time pondering the full meanings of the following words and consider their impact: ghost, paced, desert, bound, seeking.

• The second person is used for the first time in the sixth stanza. Drastic change: there’s a dramatic addresseeImagine this being spoken to you. What is the effect of this direct appeal? What is the impact of the question in the second line? .
Is he clinging to the past because the present is too awful? Has he gone through sth. very gruesome? What can lead to such despair? Loss of hope? He may be clinging to a past he is idealizing.

• The last stanza in some respects recalls the style of the first verse with its repetitions and reversion to the same last line. What is the effect on you of the way it is written?

This is an elegy: a song or poem that expresses sorrow for one who has died.
Tempus fugit motif: Time flees/flies.
Ubi Sunt motif: The name comes from a longer Latin phrase :”Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent?” (Where are those who were before us?), a phrase that begins several medieval poems in Latin. The phrase evokes the transience of life, youth, beauty and human endeavour (an earnest attempt).

Thematic links with set poems
Mortality: Rising Five; She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Memories of childhood: Plenty;


Now I´d like to share the poet´s background with you:

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was born in London, England, and became famous as an essayist and critic. This poem sounds as though it might have been written by an old man, who had outlived his contemporaries – it is often quoted as such. The actual truth is that Lamb was only 23 when he wrote it. Lamb was very attached to his sister, Mary, but a year or two before this poem was written, in a fit of insanity, she killed their mother with a kitchen knife. She was confined to a mental institution and later Charles, who always stood by her, had her transferred to a private house where he arranged for her to be looked after. Later, according to his letters to his friend the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she recovered her sanity and became aware of the
enormity of what she had done. After 1799 they lived together, and wrote the Tales from Shakespeare.
Charles was a great essayist.
This poem was written right after his mother’s death. In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me
Died prematurely in a day of horrors- -
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Who are the old familiar faces?
7 stanzas, 3-line long, one identical shorter line. Like in a refrain, in what is repeated we are to find the major idea. The poem might be interpreted in the light of this.

Mind you, I have included this important biographical detail at the end of your discussion because I do not want you to get too bogged down in biographical details. It is far more important for you to look at the universality of the emotion expressed in the poem, of regrets for the passing of shared pleasures and the care freeness and innocence of childhood.

In fact all the poems in this anthology share this quality of universality and you should bear this in mind all the time.