Sumários
Moving towards biotext and an introduction to the reading of Fred Wah's "Diamond Grill"
9 Março 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
Presentation of the history of Chinese immigration to Canada and placing the history of the Wah family within this context.Introduction to the concept of biotext in the context of immigrant writing and the tradition of the Canadian long poem.
While the " Canadian long poem" is often associated with the "Confederacy Poets" from 1860s to 1900s and the later poetry of Anglo-Saxon origin (in particular Pratt and Birney); this form of long poetry actually had its origins in the declamatory long poems of the First Nation tradition (p 35 your manual).
We watched videos of contemporary First Nations poets delivering declamatory long poems. These included Lee Maracle: "Aboriginal Apology Residential Schools” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv3HVOSr90c and Helen Knott: "Calling out Justine Trudeau" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wPOv5Q0Bm8
And also watched excerpts from the contemporary First Nations’ documentary film Stories Are in Our Bones (dir Janine Windolph 2019) that follows the documentary tradition of First Nations’ story telling https://www.nfb.ca/film/stories-are-in-our-bones/?docs-hp_en=feature_2&feature_type=w_free-film&banner_id=79343
Students then read Chief Dan George's "A Lament for Confederation" (1967)
Declamatory poetry served 4 main functions:
1) the presentation of concerns/grievances
2) the understanding of belonging to a long tradition - where the "I" as a person is rarely referred to, rather the voice of the first person is the collective "We of the tribe"
3) the awareness that this "We" exists as part of a natural environment - is a product and protector of that environment and tradition
4) When grievance is expressed, solutions can be found - these poems normally ended with recognition and hope.
Biotext shares many of these characteristics, born as it was from the long poems of •Michael Ondaajte (Ceylon & Britain), Daphne Marlatt (Australia & Malaysia), Roy Kiyooka (Japan) and Fred Wah (China & Sweden & Sctos/Irish)
It too asks the 4 questions above, even if it does this in a slightly different fashion. For instance (3) above becomes "I" not we and is asked in relationship with a questioning of how this hybrid being, who is the author, fits into his/her many cultural backgrounds and Canada as well.
(5) They also use different formats, moving between prose, poetry and even historic/newspaper entries
(6) The "I" can be variable
please answer the questions below for next class and send these answers to my email cbeecher@campus.ul.pt before or during class time 2.00-4.00 p.m. when I will reply)
1. What did you like/dislike about the Diamond Grill text?
2. Do you see traces of points 1 to 6 in it?
Settling the Canadian prairies
4 Março 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
Continuation of historical review of the settling of the the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and comparison of this to the settling of the original provinces of Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick; Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Preparing an abstract and reading the opening of Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese
2 Março 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
Writing abstracts for research papers:
This should contain what (the thesis ideas) and the how (the approach you are going to use) and why. It should also indicate the limitations of your essay as this will be quite short 2,000 – 2,500. This is all done in the “Ben Taylor: A Canadian Hero” abstract presented above, but I will now give examples of a bad abstract and show how to improve this.
Bad Abstract: The Great Gatsby is inarguably the best-written novel of the last 100 years, leaving millions of readers with either a renewed or disenchanted view of the “American Dream.”
• It does not establish the HOW (context) and WHY (reasoning) of the thesis.
• You should specify the context (American novels ?)
• and refer to the main reasoning behind this assertion (Is it the strength of the thematic elements? The descriptive prose? The witty dialogue?).
It is also too sweeping to support in simply one essay.
This abstract improved: The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as one of the best 20th-century American novels. what In this essay I will examine the rich symbolism used to portray success, knowledge, corruption and alienation how from the perspective presented by Elizabeth Long in The American Dream and the Popular Novel (1985). Why I will examine how Fitzgerald produced a meaningful commentary on the notion of the American Dream’ through his bold exploration of these themes.
Long, Elizabeth. The American Dream and the Popular Novel. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
We also looked at Canadian history from federation to early 20th century, especially comparing the settlement of the prairie provinces to the coast, in preparation for the reading of Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese. We began this reading.
Analyzing film
19 Fevereiro 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
As quite a number of students are considering analyzing a Canadian film for their essay, this class was dedicated to writing an academic essay on film. It was based on the proposals presented by Timothy Corrigan in
A Short Guide to Writing about Film because academic film studies need to add considerations of formalistic analysis. They need to focus on cultural and narrative driven approaches as they consider one or more of the following:
•film history – how the technological (e.g. image digitalization or computer generated graphics or social developments (e.g. attitude to LGTB or Hays Code) permit an issue to be approached
We also examined the various elements of mise-en-scene in films settings and how these denotative elements produce connotative effects on viewers.
An example of an abstract that illustrates an appropriate approach to writing about film based on Michael McGowen's One Week (2008) is added below. You can see in this that the essay will look at topics related to national cinema and genre.
Title: The Canadian "everyman" in Michael McGowen's One Week
Abstract: In One Week (2008) Michael McGowen casts his protagonist, Ben Taylor, as an everyman something that is quite unusual for a contemporary road movie. Perhaps Elspeth Cameron’s proposals in Canadian Culture: An Introduction (1997) can offer some explanation for this unusual positioning. Cameron suggests that Canadians do not particularly like heroes, preferring the ordinary to the extraordinary; a condition she attributes to the country’s colonial past, which has given the country and its people a feeling of peripherality because “’ Head Office’ is somewhere else” (19).
Traces of Margaret Atwood’s victims, as presented in Survival (1972), can also be seen in Ben Taylor’s progression through the movie. Developing these arguments, in this essay, I will suggest that both One Week and Ben Taylor are creations that fit in the Canadian literary tradition and can be understood more easily when examined from this perspective.
Discussion of the opening chapters of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables
17 Fevereiro 2020, 14:00 • Cecília Maria Beecher Martins
The opening chapters of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables were discussed in terms of their literary style and also how they reflected Canadian culture at the turn of the 20th century.