COMMON MODULE - LITERARY WORLDS
In this module students explore, investigate, experiment with and evaluate the ways texts represent and illuminate the complexity of individual and collective lives in literary worlds. Students evaluate how ideas and ways of thinking are shaped by personal, social, historical and cultural contexts. They extend their understanding of the ways that texts contribute to their awareness of the diversity of ideas, attitudes and perspectives evident in texts.
Students explore, analyse and critically evaluate textual representations of the experiences of others, including notions of identity, voice and points of view; and how values are presented and reflected in texts. They deepen their understanding of how texts construct private, public and imaginary worlds that can explore new horizons and offer new insights.
Students consider how personal, social, historical and cultural context influence how texts are valued and how context influences their responses to these diverse literary worlds. They appraise their own values, assumptions and dispositions as they develop further understanding of how texts make meaning.
In their study of literary worlds students experiment with critical and creative compositions that explore how language features and forms are crafted to express complex ideas and emotions, motivations, attitudes, experiences and values. These compositions may be realised in various forms, modes and media.
Each elective in this module involves the study of three texts from the prescribed list, with at least two being print texts. Students explore, analyse and critically evaluate a range of other texts that construct private, public and imaginary worlds.
Source:
NSW Educational Standards
http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-extension-2017/modules
Focus Questions
How do the literary worlds of texts represent the complexity of individual and collective lives?
How are ideas and ways of thinking that are represented in texts shaped by personal, social, historical and cultural contexts? How do texts broaden our understanding of the diversity of human ideas and perspectives and provide new understandings and insights?
Why are texts valued in different times and places by different audiences?
Personal Reflection
What is the most striking, different or powerful place you have been to? Find a picture or representation of it and write a SHORT REFLECTION on why it had a powerful effect on you and what physical characteristics of that place created such an impact on you.
What is it about travel to another place that engages us so much?
What does it give us?
Why are humans often so keen to travel to exotic, different or unusual places?
Consider how many people find the experience of reading, or viewing a film, to have similarities with travel. Instead of literally travelling to a distant land we do it by reading, or viewing or even playing an electronic game. Fiction can even make a familiar place seem different or strange.
The word ‘Literary’
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Worlds
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Personal reflection on literature
Reflect and respond to the following questions:
In which books or films have you become immersed and felt as though you had entered a different world? What elements of the text created that experience?
Do you think the composer deliberately tried to create an alternative world? Why?
Was that experience enjoyable? Why?
How did you position this text, and your experience of it, into your broader lifelong experience of exploring imaginative texts?
How writers use landscape - the Real and the Imagined
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/how-writers-use-landscape--the-real-and-the-imagined-20180920-h15n7a.html
Mimesis - What is it?
My Year Reading A Book From Every Country in the World
Ann Morgan considered herself well read -- until she discovered the "massive blindspot" on her bookshelf. Amid a multitude of English and American authors, there were very few books from beyond the English-speaking world. So she set an ambitious goal: to read one book from every country in the world over the course of a year. Now she's urging other Anglophiles to read translated works so that publishers will work harder to bring foreign literary gems back to their shores. Explore interactive maps of her reading journey here: go.ted.com/readtheworld.
This is an interesting talk that raises questions about the literary worlds we have access to and how that access shapes our world view. It raises questions about publishing, translation and English language literature. There are interesting ideas expressed about how global communication has exploded or can explode the literary landscape that has been dominated by those with social and cultural agency.
How do we respond to different literary worlds?
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Activity:
Chosen text, such as a fantasy or science fiction text, and the lives of the people within it. Write a series of statements (five) about how the text communicates ideas about the complexity of human lives and the diversity of human experiences.
Chosen text, such as a fantasy or science fiction text, and the lives of the people within it. Write a series of statements (five) about how the text communicates ideas about the complexity of human lives and the diversity of human experiences.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Literary World
Answer the following:
How does it use film techniques to establish a world of fantasy?
What does it remind you of?
How does its visual style suggest the type of world you are about to enter and the kinds of people you are about to meet?
How does it offer historical, mythical clues to help you connect your world with this ‘other world’?
How are post-modern conventions such as pastiche, intertextuality or hybridity used?
Handmaids Tale
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Creating Literary Worlds.
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Imaginative task
Using Julian Barnes’ quotation (below) as a stimulus, compose a piece of writing, in a form of your own choosing, that is an exploration of the power of the imagination. (400 Words)
Write a short reflection that explores how you wanted to represent the power of the imagination and what they see as its limitations. (300 Words)
When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape - into different countries, mores, speech patterns - but you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate by symbiotic. Julian Barnes, A Life with Books.
Analytical Group Task
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My Last Duchess - Atwood
- How has the poem "My last Duchess" used in the short story "My Last Duchess"?
- List and explain the use of the intertextual references.
- What are the themes that are explore in the short story?
- Explain the way Browning literary world is paralleled to Atwood discussion of "My Last Duchess"
Reminder: Rubric Points Literary Worlds
- explore, investigate, experiment with and evaluate the ways texts represent and illuminate the complexity of individual and collective lives
- evaluate how ideas and ways of thinking are shaped by personal, social, historical and cultural contexts
- extend their understanding of the ways that texts contribute to their awareness of the diversity of ideas, attitudes and perspectives
- explore, analyse and critically evaluate textual representations of the experiences of others, including notions of identity, voice and points of view; and how values are presented and reflected in texts
- deepen their understanding of how texts construct private, public and imaginary worlds that can explore new horizons and offer new insights
- consider how personal, social, historical and cultural context influence how texts are valued and how context influences their responses to these diverse literary worlds
- appraise their own values, assumptions and dispositions as they develop further understanding of how texts make meaning
- experiment with critical and creative compositions that explore how language features and forms are crafted to express complex ideas and emotions, motivations, attitudes, experiences and values
Group Work
The next section of this unit includes brief explorations of characteristic texts from each period, linked by ideas of mapping and travel, in order to show diverse representations of key human experiences. On the back wall students create a time-line of the following key literary periods:
You will need to include:
The next section of this unit includes brief explorations of characteristic texts from each period, linked by ideas of mapping and travel, in order to show diverse representations of key human experiences. On the back wall students create a time-line of the following key literary periods:
- Early modern worlds
- Romantic worlds
- Realistic worlds
- Modernist worlds
- Postmodern worlds
- Future and speculative worlds or Anthropocene fiction
You will need to include:
- Characteristic
- Major Events
- Authors
- Notable Novels
Pre-Modern Worlds
The oldest literary worlds that humans have developed are myths, legends and lore: stories that are created to explore how the world came to exist and why it is the way it is. These are often strange and wonderful worlds with gods and lords, miraculous events and symbolic meanings. A lot of these myths touch deep places in our cultural and psychological make-up so that, while not ‘realistic’ in any modern sense, they are still profoundly affective and leave mythic structures that endure and organise modern literature – structures of success and failure, comedy and tragedy, good and evil.
Listen to the podcast of Uncle Jack Charles (Boonwurrung) reading the ancient and enduring story of Cleverman. Write a breif response examining how its production qualities and how it invites the listener into this world.
Homework
Read the legend of Pandora’s box – a kind of creation myth about the origins of evil. Think of a different creation story from a different culture and compare and contrast the representations of both stories. Write an analytical paragraph about the different ideas and representations of Creation myths in different cultures.
Listen to the podcast of Uncle Jack Charles (Boonwurrung) reading the ancient and enduring story of Cleverman. Write a breif response examining how its production qualities and how it invites the listener into this world.
Homework
Read the legend of Pandora’s box – a kind of creation myth about the origins of evil. Think of a different creation story from a different culture and compare and contrast the representations of both stories. Write an analytical paragraph about the different ideas and representations of Creation myths in different cultures.
Cleverman - Official Trailer
Explore the original Cleverman myth, what can you find on the internet? Then examine the official trailer for the TV series Cleverman a postmodern text that creates a world that brings the ancient past and the future together to represent and challenge values and cultural assumptions.
New Article
View the online ABC news article, ‘Cleverman showcases revival of Australia's Indigenous languages’. Use Australia Arts Council 2007 Protocols for producing Indigenous Australian media arts as a reference and discuss Indigenous cultural and intellectual property and protocols for the inclusion of Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung languages of the north coast of NSW in Cleverman.
Use the interpretive model below to explore the texts. Make notes on the following areas and share their ideas.
in order to understand:
In discussion, students discuss how myths and lore are now read as:
They also consider:
Consider and discuss how we read these stories today and what we can still gain from them.
Use the interpretive model below to explore the texts. Make notes on the following areas and share their ideas.
- personal, social, historical and cultural context of the text
- genre, form and structure of the text
- distinctive features of the text
- their own context(s)
in order to understand:
- ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society
- diverse perspectives on human experience
- alternative readings of the text
- the value of the text.
In discussion, students discuss how myths and lore are now read as:
- symbolic explanations of the social and physical world (external explanations)
- explanations for cultural ritual (internal explanations)
- explanations for psychological traits.
They also consider:
- how the texts’ social, historical and cultural context may determine these meanings
Consider and discuss how we read these stories today and what we can still gain from them.
Response to Modernity
This stage focuses on texts which respond to elements of individual and collective experience in the modern world (last five centuries) – where most of our texts originate.
As the module and electives are trans-historical, they focus on literary responses to the emerging modern world and the various challenges it has thrown up to individuals and societies within it. These include the varied, diverse perspectives individuals have towards those experiences and the various identities it shapes as well as how voices that have been silenced or marginalised are expressed through new worlds that represent a new world order.
How has the modern world drawn out broad historical responses such as:
These factors led, in a complex way, to successive artistic responses: in a simplified map of the development of literary worlds. The waves of modernity led to the rise of Romanticism, then Realism, Modernism and Postmodernism, each with characteristic preoccupations, perspectives and values.
As the module and electives are trans-historical, they focus on literary responses to the emerging modern world and the various challenges it has thrown up to individuals and societies within it. These include the varied, diverse perspectives individuals have towards those experiences and the various identities it shapes as well as how voices that have been silenced or marginalised are expressed through new worlds that represent a new world order.
How has the modern world drawn out broad historical responses such as:
- The rise of reason over religion and its effect on humanity
- The growth of the urban world and its impact on culture and individuals
- The growth of complexity and size of human institutions and structures – the rise of the state – and its impact on individuals
- The growth of technology and its impact on society
- The rise of voices and experiences that challenge the dominant or grand narratives of the Western world
These factors led, in a complex way, to successive artistic responses: in a simplified map of the development of literary worlds. The waves of modernity led to the rise of Romanticism, then Realism, Modernism and Postmodernism, each with characteristic preoccupations, perspectives and values.
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Early Modern Worlds
Key text – John Donne’s ‘Good Morrow’ or similar early modern poem about exploration
How are the following elements representative of an early modern worldview and the experiences it portrays:
· Personal, social, historical and cultural context of the text: early-modern world pitched between the medieval world and its moral values and the rise of the individual, the world of exploration and travel
· Genre, form and structure of the text: aubade (morning poem), love poem moving rapidly through a series of ideas about love as a kind of exploration, wittily using love imagery as the personal exploration of the other
· Distinctive features of the text: its wit, use of paradox, formal rhyme structure
· Your own context(s): our own era still values individualism and romantic love and appreciates the wit, but may question Donne’s self-assurance and male confidence
How are the following elements representative of an early modern worldview and the experiences it portrays:
· Personal, social, historical and cultural context of the text: early-modern world pitched between the medieval world and its moral values and the rise of the individual, the world of exploration and travel
· Genre, form and structure of the text: aubade (morning poem), love poem moving rapidly through a series of ideas about love as a kind of exploration, wittily using love imagery as the personal exploration of the other
· Distinctive features of the text: its wit, use of paradox, formal rhyme structure
· Your own context(s): our own era still values individualism and romantic love and appreciates the wit, but may question Donne’s self-assurance and male confidence
Written Reflection
How have you gained understanding about:
· ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: the growth of individualism and romantic love, the witty indirect exploration of human intimacy (reacting against medieval formality and moral disapproval)
· diverse perspectives on human experience: contrast the attitude of the male lover and his implicit female listener
· alternative readings of the text: explore at least one academic reading of the text and contrast it with the group’s personal reading
the value of the text: an early love poem that shows the rise of human individualism and the exploration of romantic love
· ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: the growth of individualism and romantic love, the witty indirect exploration of human intimacy (reacting against medieval formality and moral disapproval)
· diverse perspectives on human experience: contrast the attitude of the male lover and his implicit female listener
· alternative readings of the text: explore at least one academic reading of the text and contrast it with the group’s personal reading
the value of the text: an early love poem that shows the rise of human individualism and the exploration of romantic love
Romantic Worlds
A number of the following elements as representative of a Romantic worldview and the experiences it portrays.
- personal, social, historical and cultural context of the text: the Romantic celebration of the artist and of travel to exotic places as enlightening of the soul
- genre, form and structure of the text – a sonnet where the octet sets out the experience of reading Chapman’s translation and the sestet captures the wonder of exploration
- distinctive features of the text – exploring literature as entering new worlds – capturing its joy and passion
- their own context(s) – a more jaded sense of exploration – it’s all been discovered and mapped by Google Earth – we need to go to interplanetary discovery to get the same sense of wonder
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
BY JOHN KEATS Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. |
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Gain understanding about:
- ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: the celebration of the heroic artistic individual
- diverse perspectives on human experience: our current era is more cynical about the power of art
- alternative reading of the text: students explore an academic or alternative reading of the text and compare and contrast it with the group’s own reading
- the value of the text: its heroic celebration of art and of human ingenuity through a beautifully constructed sonnet
Modernism
Joyce is on the border between realism and modernism but his early short stories can be considered realist. This may be an interesting discussion to consider by researching the critical opinion on Joyce’s style.
The student group leads a seminar to explore a number of the following elements as representative of a realist worldview and the experiences it portrays.
- personal, social, historical and cultural context of the text – look at Joyce’s experience of Ireland, the Irish experience of immigration, the gendered roles of immigrants and the experiences open to them
- genre, form and structure of the text – a realist short story exploring the disappointments of modern life and the psychological forces holding us back
- distinctive features of the text – expert use of the short story genre, subtext and implied psychological states examined, modulated use of narrative perspective and its effect, the realist recreation of social structures based on class and gender
- their own context(s) – current experiences of immigration, contesting the gendered expectations of the era
Summary of "Eveline"Eveline Hill sits at a window in her home and looks out onto the street while fondly recalling her childhood, when she played with other children in a field now developed with new homes. Her thoughts turn to her sometimes abusive father with whom she lives, and to the prospect of freeing herself from her hard life juggling jobs as a shop worker and a nanny to support herself and her father. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. As Eveline recalls, Frank’s courtship of her was pleasant until her father began to voice his disapproval and bicker with Frank. After that, the two lovers met clandestinely.
As Eveline reviews her decision to embark on a new life, she holds in her lap two letters, one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She reasons that her life at home, cleaning and cooking, is hard but perhaps not the worst option—her father is not always mean, after all. The sound of a street organ then reminds her of her mother’s death, and her thoughts change course. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank.
At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She appears detached and worried, overwhelmed by the images around her, and prays to God for direction. Her previous declaration of intent seems to have never happened. When the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. She clutches the barrier as Frank is swept into the throng moving toward the ship. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless.
As Eveline reviews her decision to embark on a new life, she holds in her lap two letters, one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She reasons that her life at home, cleaning and cooking, is hard but perhaps not the worst option—her father is not always mean, after all. The sound of a street organ then reminds her of her mother’s death, and her thoughts change course. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank.
At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She appears detached and worried, overwhelmed by the images around her, and prays to God for direction. Her previous declaration of intent seems to have never happened. When the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. She clutches the barrier as Frank is swept into the throng moving toward the ship. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless.
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Gain understanding about:
- ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: the social forces driving emigration and its social costs
- perspectives on the diversity of human experience: the privations and difficulties of turn of the century Ireland/female perspectives on life and love
- alternative reading of the text: students explore an academic or alternative reading of the text and compare and contrast it with the group’s own reading
- the value of the text: its poignant sadness exploring the social tensions of early twentieth century Europe
Modernist worlds
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Explore a number of the following elements as representative of a modernist worldview and the experiences it portrays.
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The Second Coming Launch Audio in a New Window
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Gain understanding about:
- ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: the voice of the speaker is a dreamlike incarnation of the sense of modernist crisis
- perspectives on the diversity of human experience: explores history in terms of the subversion of biblical ideas and the integration of mythic structures to undermine notions of Western civilisation
- alternative reading of the text: students explore an academic or alternative reading of the text and compare and contrast it with the group’s own reading
- the value of the text: a powerful poem that encapsulates the fear that the progress expected by the Enlightenment has not occurred; eminently quotable lines about the disintegration of civilisation and the questioning of what the idea of civilisation has come to mean
Post-Modernist Worlds
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explore a number of the following elements as representative of a postmodern worldview and the experiences it portrays:
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in order to gain understanding about:
- ideas about the complex relationship between individuals and society: a self-conscious sense of personal identity and the tenuousness of individual relationships
- perspectives on the diversity of human experience: a sense of loneliness and isolation within a complex cultural milieu
- alternative reading of the text: students explore an academic or alternative reading of the text and compare and contrast it with the group’s own reading
- the value of the text: responding to its contemporary context of the isolation of the individual in an atomised society.
Future and speculative worlds or Anthropocene fiction
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Student group leads a seminar using Blade Runner to explore a number of the following elements as representative of a speculative, futuristic or Anthropocene world view and the experiences it portrays.
in order to gain understanding about:
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