【文讀】Sylvia Plath's inverview (deadline: 4/6, 12 p.m.)

In today's class, we talked about how "good literature" can have this wonderful ability to defy the erosion of time and to stay forever young and awe-inspiring years after it's production. Reading Sylvia Plath's poem such as Daddy gives us such kind of feeling. Her poetry, with its emotional intensity and macaber savageness, can still give us the shudders today. Below is an audio clip of Plath's interview. Listen carefully. In this interview, she mentioned Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, whose "confessional poetry" inspired and excited her. Why? What kind of subject she felt drawn to? What does she mean when she talked about the "dangerousness of gentility" in England? What's the difference between being an American poet and an English poet? Write down anything that you feel interesting or inspiring after listening to this sound clip. Pay attention to Plath's commanding and yet beautiful voice.

【文讀】tensions in John Keats's poetry (deadline: 3/23, 12 p.m.)

As we talked in class, tensions fascinate artists and writers because a tension presents an ever-fluid situation in which two forces are flirting, combating, wrestling,intercoursing with one another. Tensions defy status quo, bringing forth oppositions that stir imagination and trigger narration. In other words, a tension or an opposition is forever intriguing, forever evocative, and forever provocative for artists.

In fact, you can find out this "tension" or "opposition" operating throughout John Keats's poetry. His poems such as "Old to a Nightingale" or "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are built upon oppositions. Although he likes to set up a tension, he does not want it fully resolved. However, much of the pleasure we derive from his poetry stems from this opposition between dreams of something better and the pains of reality.

Here comes your assignment: Pick up any sections of his poem, looking at the details of the poem. Identify a central opposition in the poem and analyze this "opposition."

東華文學翻譯獎

The Dong Hwa Translation Prize invites submissions of translations from Chinese into English and vice versa. Please see below for details:

東華文學翻譯獎設立緣起：
本系曾珍珍教授為了紀念從小喜愛翻譯的長子張式均，特別邀請花東文教基金會共同贊助，從2010年起每年在東華校園定期舉辦文學翻譯競賽活動。

宗旨：
鼓勵東華大學大學部學生發展文學翻譯技能。初期以英翻中、中翻英為主。

參賽資格：
東華大學大學部學生。

比賽項目：
分英翻中、中翻英兩項。每項包括指定作品和自選作品。指定作品請至英美系網頁連結下載，自選作品文類不拘，但以不超過五千字為原則。參賽者可同時參加英翻中、中翻英兩項。

徵稿截止日期：
2010年4月30日前將指定作品與附上原文的自選作品譯稿繳交或寄達東華大學英美系辦公室「東華文學翻譯獎委員會」收（以郵戳為憑）。隨函務必附上東華大學學生證影本。(辦公室地址：974花蓮縣壽豐鄉志學村大學路二段1-17號，英美語文學系)

譯稿格式：
以Microsoft Word格式繕打，列印於A4紙上，一式三份。

得獎公告及獎金金額：
得獎名單將於六月一日公佈於東華大學英文系網頁。得獎人獲頒獎狀及獎金，每項獎金第一名七千元、第二名五千元、第三名四千元、佳作三名，每名三千元。

得獎作品將發表於英文系網頁學生園地。

關於【英史】加簽

Hi folks!【英史】課要加簽的同學請舉手，讓我知道要印幾張加簽單。人數統計完後，我會把簽好名的加簽單放在英美系辦 Diane 那裏，請需要的同學跟 Diane 拿。

【文讀】"Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (deadline: 3/15, 12 p.m.)

How many ways of expressing mixed color can you find in this poem? How does Hopkins expand the meaning of "pied beauty"?

【英史】Questions for James Joyce's "The Dead" (deadline: 3/12, 12p.m.)

In our first week of class, we talked about the meaning of being "modern." To be modern is to find ourselves thrown into a turmoil that is simultaneously exciting and threatening. It is exciting because the dizziness comes from the drama, joy, adventure, and power promised by the arrival of modernity; however, it is at the same time threatening because our old "solid" systems of belief (regarding everything we know about ourselves and about the world) are shattered so mercilessly, as Marx described in the Communist Manifesto:"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." This "melting" vision is later to be found in Yeats's famous poem "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."

In other words, modernity is the age of doubt. Old confidence in History and Truth evaporates. If the Truth (with a capital "T") of God, selfhood, empire is no longer valid, the exploration of "truths" (in a plural form) becomes a modernist task for writers and artists to pursue. Since the objective,rational, or transcendental "Truth" has been rejected, writers begin to focus on subjective, everyday, personal "truths." And usually these "truths" imply a critique of the traditional, the masculine, the Victorian values.

With this in mind, if James Joyce's name is synonymous with modernist literature, how does his work participate in this "de-centering" project? How does his fiction disrupt conventional expectations about self, narrative certainty, and religious faith? If all that has once been holy is now profaned, how can a modernist writer like Joyce manage to do? Can a semi-holy glimpse of redemption be possible for Joyce in this disenchanted modern world which is irreversibly secular?

You can link the aforementioned questions to a detailed consideration of Gabriel in "The Dead." For example, how does Garbriel's "certainty" crumble after several incidents happened in the story? Examine those incidents and anaylze Gabriel's confrontations with different female characters. In what way do these confrontations bring about Gabriel's awareness of his limitations as a lover and a human being?

Make your answer into a 350-400-word essay.

【文讀】the power of creative imagination in "Kubla Khan" (deadline: 3/9, 12 p.m.)

In today's class, we talked about the hallucinatory genesis of Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" and the uncanny visions that are invoked by the poet as a seer. The poem itself is also a demonstration of Romantic art-making. Kubla Khan represents the artist; fantastic Xanadu is the world of art; and the "stately pleasure-dome"--a "miracle of rare device"--is the intricate artwork.

The poem, written in 1797 and published in 1816, is considered a Romantic poem. The Romantic Period is generally considered to be a period revolting against the 18th-century rage for order and reason. Traits or style of the period can be characterized in the following list of Romantic elements:
1) Orientalism: Romantics were interested in the Orient for its exotic and rich colors.
2) Primitivism: Romantics believed that a less advanced stage of culture, even a savage condition, gives people more happiness than complex modern society.
3) The Supernatural and Psychological Extremes: Romantics were fascinated with stories of bewitchings, hauntings, and possession. The 18th-century concepts such as "reason," "order," and "discipline" were disdained by them; instead, they favored supernatural happenings, strange adventures, and violent fits of passion.
4) Celebrations of Creativity and Individualism: The Romantic period, simultaneously the period of imperial expansion and boundless revolutonary hope, was also an epoch of individualism in which poets had high expectations for human potentialities and powers.

In "Kubla Khan," can you detect any Romantic elements listed above? What are they? Use concrete examples from the poem to prove your points.