Wednesday 28 February 2018

On no-places and railroads

Flannery O'Connor on the Grotesque

In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in his ordinary life. We find that connections which we would expect in the customary kind of realism have been ignored, that there are strange skips and gaps which anyone trying to describe manners and customs would certainly not have left. Yet the characters have an inner coherence, if not always a coherence to their social framework. Their fictional qualities lean away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected. It is this kind of realism that I want to consider.
All novelists are fundamentally seekers and describers of the real, but the realism of each novelist will depend on his view of the ultimate reaches of reality.
[…]
Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.
Listen to more here

Monday 26 February 2018

For Mon 26 - This Property is Condemned 4



Willie condensa em si uma atitude contraditória que perpassa todo o excerto. Seja visualmente, no diálogo ou na sua fisicalidade dominante, é o limbo entre ingenuidade sonhadora e passado inculcado em mácula, que a definem. Concorda com esta afirmação? Serão os excertos ‘Oh, no, she’s just disappointed because she didn’t get married. Probably never had an opportunity, poor thing’ e ‘Because I was lonesome then an’ I’m not lonesome now. You can tell Frank Waters that. Tell him that I’ve inherited all of my sister’s beaux’, bons exemplos desta atitude?


A Linha de Comboio assume-se sempre como espaço/cápsula-temporal onde nostalgia, herança e futuro são cruzados de maneira única. Não é inocente a escolha, por parte de Tennessee Williams, deste cenário de fundo a acompanhar o estado de espírito de Willie e Tom. Qual das personagens, a seu ver, melhor se enquadra com o embalo bucólico e de esperança que o espaço nos sugere?

For Mon 26 - This Property is Condemned 3

“They all disappeared. Afraid that they might get stuck for expenses I guess. But now they turn up again, all of ‘entao, like a bunch of bad pennies. They take me out places at night. I’ve got to be popular now. To parties an’ dances an’ all of the railroad affairs. Lookit here!” 
Why is she popular now?

“Uh-huh. I’m not supposed to be but I am. The property is condemned but there’s nothing wrong with it.” 
Why is the property condemned?



Sunday 25 February 2018

For Wed 28 - "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Conner 3

1. The car is an object of great importance and significance to this story. In your opinion what is the symbolism behind the car and the meaning of it in the grand scheme of the plot?

2. The choice of color used in the story allows the reader to have some insight as to the author's intentions. Shiftlet arrives at the farm wearing a black suit and a brown hat. The color of the hats of Mrs. Crater and the young hitchhiker are both grey. The turnip-shaped cloud which descends over the sun is also grey. Lastly, blue is the color of the daughter's dress and eyes when she first appears. How do you interpert the usage of these colors in these particular characters? And what other examples have you found?

For Wed 28 - "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" 2


1. In your opinion, what were Mr. Shiftlet's intentions by marrying the innocent Lucynell Crater and why was Mrs. Crater so eager to have a son-in-law?
2. Can you establish a relation between the actions in the story and the title "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"? What is the meaning behind it?

For Wed 28 - "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor- questions/ topics for discussion

1. In this short story, there are differences between the way the narrator's speech is written and the way the characters speak. What devices mark those differences, and how does it serve the story? Can you identify linguistic differences between Mr. Shiftlet's and Mrs. Crater's speech?

2. Both Shiftlet and Craters make remarks on their understandings of what men and women should be like. Reflect on how the remarks they make may be related to a) the period and context in which the story was written; b) the context of the narrative itself; c) the intentions and motivations of these two characters.

For Mon 26 - 'This Property is Condemned' 3



As we all know, the Great Depression of 1929 is one of the most negative icons of North-American history. The effects of this global crisis did cause numerous families to lose everything they owned as the banks collapsed. This placed devastating economic, social, and psychological strains upon these American working-class and middle-class families.

I believe that the influence of the Great Depression in this play is an interesting topic to discuss. Willie's family lost their boarding house business. As a result - presumably - Willie's sister used sex as a commodity; their father - as happened with several families after the Great Depression - deserted his wife and children; Willie, a 13 yo girl, was living alone in an abandoned house. Along with the economy, the Great Depression destroyed society's moral values - which is perhaps one of the themes of play(?).

Can you establish some kind of bridge between the effects of the Great Depression and Williams' play? Or do you think that the explosive spending of WWII brought an end to the depression and thus it isn't related at all (considering this is a 1946 piece)?

Wednesday 21 February 2018

For Mon 26 - This Property is Condemned 2







  1. Compare the initial descriptions of Tom and Willie with the complexity of their lines troughout the text. Do you think that this act approaches a monologue (a centralization in one of the characters)?
  2.  “Tom: Why don’t you do that for me? (…) What you did for Frank Waters.” (p.256). Comment on the theme of sex in this play. How do you think her upbringing in a house that took in railroad men influenced her?

Stories and their films - a reading suggestion

The next two literary texts we are going to study have had movies made out of them. For further reading on "Adaptation Studies" see the article in the file "Secondary Sources" of our moodle.


This Property is Condemned (1966)

The Life you Save (1957)

Post - Post - Modernism — The Contemporary?

In an age of de-differentiation (implosion of the power of distinctions and of making them, according to French philosopher Baudrillard) it is harder and harder to come up with critical categories that stand. Probably, our class has made a better job at it than our scholars, whose consensus so far amounts to one word: the contemporary )


Post-Modernism - some key concepts

a) According to Linda HutcheonPostmodernity is the condition of the late 20th century, and it should be distinguished from Postmodernism, which refers to the cultural production and reflection that might embody its critique (the abovementioned questioning).

b) According to Fredric JamesonPostmodernism itself belongs to the "cultural logic of late capitalism", and as such there is no distinction between the critique and the condition (the critique, obeying to the laws of the production of culture, which rest on immateriality and profit, might annull itself).

Even if Postmodernism somehow blurs the distinctions between the high and the low - the idea of equality in Postmodernism risks being overweighed by

1. Relativism: the first of the important keywords, as it is the conterpart to
2. Mistrust of grand narratives (religion, politics, scientific positivism)
3. De-differentiation (namely of economics and culture), leading to the indecidability of correspondence between value and objects, and (in language) between signifiers and possible signifieds.
4. Indifference/confusion about origin and historical chronology; not only because of doubts cast upon narratives of cause and effects, but also of the four following co-related concepts:
5. simulacrum: a term introduced by Baudrillard as leading to hyperreality ("a generation by models of a real without origin or reality) and much glossed over by Jameson, who takes it to mean an imitation of something whose original never existed.
6. a-historicism: loss of historical grounding, due not only to revisionism (interpretation of an historical fact by standards of another time) but also to the constant practice of anachronism in Postmodernity
7. pastichewhich, to Jameson, has become an inocuous and all-too clever use of mimicry, whereas Hutcheon prefers to call it
8. parody: Linda Hutcheon sees Postmodern mimicry as much more positive, a repetition that embodies transformation and difference. Whatever we call it - parody or pastiche - what we have is a radical
9. intertextuality, which is one of the many features of Postmodernism that make it a movement that doesn't exactly break with Modernism but radicalizes some of its practices, like:
10. Fragmentation and breakdown of linear narrative
11. Depersonalization / defamiliarization and multiple points of view
12. Variety of competitive discourses (including heteroglossia - mixing of languages within the literary text)
13. Reflexivity - we enter the consciousness of self/selves/and-or Others, and art is increasingly also reflexive of itself - it ponders on its own making. This is an important part of Postmodernism as a critique of means and ways of representation, and its awareness that realities are made rathern than given.
14. Distortion
Last - but still possibly not completely - Postmodernism includes also:
15. sexual freedom and gender b(l)ending
16.  added challenges to the family as basis of society
17. nihilism and saturation of stimuli - depression / anxiety as a consequence of affective loss, and this in turn a possible consequence of skepticism (see the menace of the world's end at the click of a button at the close of World War II), as well as of the radicalization of modernist intellectualization and symbolization.
18. dislocation and evasion (where we may start with Tennessee Williams and the figure of the "fugitive"...)

Tuesday 20 February 2018

For Mon 26- This Property is Condemned


What do you think about the contradiction between Willie’s adult clothes and her “childlike and innocent” manner? (p. 247)


Who do you think are the “railroad men” and why was Alva (Willie’s sister) “The Main Attraction”? (p.251)

Monday 19 February 2018

Class Debates - Proposed Format

1. Opening Statements (with at least 3 arguments, two of them must be literary)  
YES/PRO 3 min     NO/CON 3 min

2. Rebuttal - teams argue against each others' arguments  (2 rounds of 3 min each) 

3. Clarification / Questions from the audience (5 min)

4.  [Conference of teams] 5 min

5. Closing Statements  YES/PRO 3min NO/CON 3 min

Debate Preparation: 
1. Obtain information from reputable sources.
2. Provide at least two substantiated pieces of evidence (examples).
3. Prepare a quality open statement that shall be publicized   previously to the opposing team and to classmates (via blog)
4. Reflect clearly on the ethical theory/theories and principles involved with the issue.
5. Present your information effectively and convincingly (you may use props or audio-visual material, but you cannot exceed the alloted time)
6. In addition to preparing arguments for their position, each team should anticipate their opponents’ arguments and identify possible flaws or weaknesses in those arguments

Debate Rules:
You must raise your hand if it's not your time to speak.  
Teams lose 1 point for each interruption.  
Teams lose 1 point for whispering while another speaker is talking. 

Debate evaluation:
- by peers (classmates) who fill a handout with pre-set parameters
- by teacher, whose evaluation includes feedback from colleagues and appreciation of written post on the blog.

Welcome with rock'n'roll - Rui Reininho, Pós-Modernos (1986)

...Depois da V2 DDT PBX
Ketchup K/7 Kleenex Kitchnet Duplex
Twist again colourfull wonderfull
Chegou o T2-T4 com garagem pró P2 turbo sound disco sound discussão?
Video-Club joy stick midi high-tech squash e sauna
Compact D (compre aqui?)...

Ser Mãe era a aspiração natural de todo o homem moderno [Being a mother was the natural aspiration of every modern man]
ser o melhor é normal para os novos pobres deste colégio [being the best is normal for the new poor of this boarding school]
ter medo é a pulsão fundamental do criador e [to have fear is the fundamental impulse of the creator and]
estar sóbrio é continuar permanecer [to be sober is to continue endure]

---E dantes as máquinas estavam sempre a [... And once upon a time the machines were always derailing...]

Mas com uns pós modernos nada complicados [But with the post-moderns, who do not complicate at all]
sentimo-nos realizados [we are fulfilled]
Ah! Os pós modernos agarram a angústia [oh the postmoderns take anguish]
e fazem dela uma outra indústria [and turn it to an industry]
com os pós modernos nunca ganhamos [with the postmoderns we never win]
mas tambem nada investimos [but we also do not chip in]