Choose 1 question from each group FOR A TOTAL OF 4 ANSWERS

INSTRUCTIONS

• Below, you have 4 groups.  Each group offers you 2 questions to choose from. 

• Choose 1 question from each group FOR A TOTAL OF 4 ANSWERS.  Ignore the questions you don’t choose.
• Review background information given here and also in “Week 4-5 Readings.” 
• Be sure to use a CITED quote for each answer from the text to back up your stance. (You know how to do this now!) 
• And remember, I am not asking for long questions.  Just answer them succinctly with a quote, practicing all the ways to do a direct quotation as you’ve learned from the DIRECT QUOTE CHEAT SHEET in WORKS CITED QUICK GUIDE.  (Haven’t used it yet?  Do it now.)
• Use the QA heading and submit your answers in the usual way in a file, with your name and assignment week on it, in Dropbox.

• And remember, your entire Wk 4-5 QA will be only 4 questions–one from each group.

• Place Works Cited citation of literary works cited after the corresponding question. Or place them all in alphabetical order at the end of the QA. Either way is fine.

[img alt=”” src=”https://elearn.apsu.edu/content/enforced2/6441359-APSU_201617_LALI_ENGL2030_SECW1B_SECW2B_COMB/images-141.jpg?_&d2lSessionVal=twBnX3Ch8JppszTbFJmQbaOZM&ou=6441359″>            

Marie de France                Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

#1

COURTLY/BAWDY LOVE

Marie de France (12th century, French) “Laustic”
Geoffery Chaucer (English, 14th century), Canterbury Tales’ “The Miller’s Tale” not in textbook. Find web link in Wk 4-5 Readings)

Marie de France’s tale is a “lay.”(See textbook introduction. Review the introduction in Wk 4-5 Readings for “Marie de France” to compare with “fabliau” in Miller’s Tale below.)

“The Miller’s Tale” is an example of a fabliau. These travelers telling each other tales are a motley “middle” medieval group: A knight, a nun, a Pardoner, a physician, a merchant, a plowman, a friar, a summoner, a miller–a total of 29 stories and 29 people. A “Host” moderates the group, making the storytellers take turns. The Knight has just told a tale of “courtly love.” The Miller is drunk and decides to butt in before his turn–having taken exception to The Knight’s proper, aristocratic tale of romance–and tells a love triangle “fabliau.” What about the fabliau makes it the opposite of the Knight’s properly romantic tale of nobility and, of course, the courtly love found in Eludic, from which the Knight’s tale sprang.) And why would a bawdy tale be so fitting for this motley Middle Ages crew?

Questions (choose one): 

1. What is a lay?  What is a fabliau?  Compare/contrast using examples from the stories.
  • Find definition of “lay” in “Laustic” textbook introduction.
  • Find definition of “fabliau” at this website–(read first several paragraphs).  Click on this link (or paste into browser if not live): 
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/fabliaux/

2. In light of the definition of courtly love, along with what you think of “The Miller’s Tale,” compare/contrast these two “love” stories that were written 2 centuries apart. (See Wk 4-5 Readings for background on “courtly love.”)

How to cite “The Miller’s Tale” quotes since it’s not in our textbook?

• I’ve placed the info on how to quote from a website URL inside your Works Cited Quick Guide in CONTENT.  You are responsible to cite this correctly. See how there.

#2

Emily Dickinson (19th century American)
Requiem, Anna Akhmatova (20th century Russian)

#3

Short Stories of AFRICA

Doris Lessing, 20th century, “The Old Chief Mchlanga”  
(1919)  
Chinua Achebe, 20th century,  “Chike’s School Days”
 (1960)

These two stories are from 20th century Africa, one at turn of century, one in mid-century.

Doris Lessing is a white British writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

Chinua Achebe is a black Nigerian whose novella, Things Fall Apart, is the most widely read book in modern African literature (the entirety of it was in the earlier textbook we used.  Since it is now out of the current edition we are using, we can at least read this short story that is in its place.

Short stories are glimpses that may have meaning for what they say about the cultures of which they are offering a peek, at a certain point in time and place.  For your chosen question, let’s compare/contrast these two stories. Use quotes to back up your ideas.

Questions (choose one):

1. How do the points of view differ in these two stories and how are they similar?

2. How do they seem similar in tone, style, or “moral” and how do they seem different in tone, style or “moral”?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 #4

20th century Czech surrealism and 19th century American realism

Franz Kafka, “Metamorphosis” (Czech, 20th century)
Kate Chopin, “Story of an Hour” (American, 1894)

[img alt=”” src=”https://elearn.apsu.edu/content/enforced2/6441359-APSU_201617_LALI_ENGL2030_SECW1B_SECW2B_COMB/images-6.jpg?_&d2lSessionVal=twBnX3Ch8JppszTbFJmQbaOZM&ou=6441359″>  

Kafka

(Review the Answers.com link in Wk 4-5 Readings for more background.) By the way, recently, one of my World Lit students pulled out her father’s version of this story in the original German, and wrote this comment on the Discussion forum:  “In the original German text, Kafka uses the word “Ungeziefer” to describe what Gregor changes into. “Ungeziefer” translated into English is vermin. Beetles are cute German cars with great gas mileage.  Gregor turned into something more vile than that.”

Why would anyone want to write a story about what it would be like to awake one day as “vermin?” Remember that the common worker back then-in that time and place-was just learning the dehumanizing aspects of a totalitarian society….the one that would make bleak most of the 20th century for those eastern European countries: 1915 was the start of WW I which led to WWII and its atrocities which led to the Iron Curtain countries of communism. It was a dreary century for his country.  The answer could be political or social commentary or personal commentary.  You decide. 

–Study the Introduction to the textbook’s reading for the BEST clues to this story.
–Look up the words “existential” and “kafkaesque” in a dictionary to foster your understanding and your writing about it.

• Here’s an online dictionary:  Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary  (If link is broken, copy URL into browser: http://www.m-w.com 

Chopin 

Be sure to read the background information in Wk 4-5 Readings.  Kate Chopin was ostracized in her time for writing so daringly about the role of women in that suppressed society. Women’s suffrage–the right to vote–seemed an impossible dream fought over half a century (Women didn’t get the vote until 1920 incredibly enough, even though the women’s suffrage  movement began in the mid-1800s.)This is how she’s been described: Kate Chopin, a female writer in the 1800’s writes stories of women in various states of independence from males. She can be viewed as a writer of the beginning of women’s rights although she does not declare herself a feminist by any stretch of the imagination... 
Questions for Kafka/Chopin (choose one):

1. Do you think these 2 stories were trying to make some societal commentary?  

•Was “The Story of an Hour” about, say, women’s roles/lives in the time period?  (Social commentary.) 

•Was “Metamorphosis” making some comment on, say, the worker’s or breadwinner’s role in that time period? Making him feel like a bug?  (Social or political commentary)
• Back up your answers with at least one cited quote per story. See “Wk 4 QA/Forum Background for “Story of an Hour.”

2. Surrealistic “Metamorphosis” is very different type of storytelling from the realistic “The Story of an Hour,” but it gets its point across using the same literary techniques as all stories. • Choose a literary technique from the list below for either story and discuss how it adds to the success of the story:

-point of view

-setting

-irony 

 TIP: If you didn’t take me for 1020 and/or aren’t familiar with these terms, choose the other question. Or look up these terms. Here is an online glossary:

Literary Term Definition Glossary    ( Copy this URL into browser if this link is broken: http://literary-devices.com/ )

[How to cite “The Story of an Hour” quotes since it’s not in our textbook?>

• I’ve placed the info on how to quote from a website URL inside your Works Cited Quick Guide in CONTENT. You are responsible to cite this correctly.  See how there. 

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