Teaching literature and music for non-native English undergraduates

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Dr Otilia Pacea [email protected] May 2016

Literature into Music, Music

into Literature. An

Alternative Approach to

Teaching Literature

http://powerpoint.sage-fox.com/


Can we listen to the music of literature?

Lend me your writing ear

I had nothing to offer except my own confusion…


BOUBA KIKI


sound, meaning, (non-)arbitrary, Plato, Cratylus, John Locke, Ferdinand de Saussure, conventionalism,

naturalism, Wolfgang Köhler (1929), Vilayanur Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard (2001)

The Bouba Effect

Minor VSThe Kiki Effect

Major

Sound Symbolism



darkness VS brightness

Music of Grammar



Cultural Patterns

Fire Rejection in itself Spiritual liberation Non-conformity Spontaneity

Firework Rejection with a hook Self-expression, self-

esteem Conformity revisited ‘Expected’ spontaneity



American Decades

Reappraisal of conventional structures

Postwar economic boom Rampant materialism Consumer culture

End of innocence 3Ds (digital, disaster,

divas) Twin Tower fall Terror alerts Economic bubbles

Post WWII Post 9/11


But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” What did they call such young people in Goethe’s Germany?









By the strictest definition, the Beat Generation consists of only William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Herbert Huncke, with the slightly later addition of Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky. By the most sweeping usage, the term includes most of the innovative poets associated with San Francisco, Black Mountain College, and New York's Downtown scene. Using the broad definition, the Beat Generation is marked by a shared interest in spiritual liberation, manifesting itself in candid personal content and open forms, in verse and prose, thus leading to admiration for Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and other avant-garde writers.




“It's a kind of furtiveness ... Like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge that there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the “public,” a kind of beatness I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.”



down and out poor and exhausted

elusive, mysterious quality of the wordbeat

beatific



Hold your fire_____ your tongue____ your breath ___What you loveAshes to ashesWe’re ____ ____ rustBut there _____ ____ a little iron leftLeft in us I’ll _____ a candleYou _____ the flameKiss in the darknessJust to ____ it all ____I still believe in the choirs in the skySinging, “Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”We are a ______Into the nightWe’re burningInto the night




Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

-- Einstein

Education

Teaching literature and music for non-native English undergraduates