The feminist aspects of She Unnames Them. - раздел Образование, Сучасна література країн, мова яких вивчається “She Unnames Them” Is A Mâshâl (Mâshâl...
“She Unnames Them” is a mâshâl (mâshâl − a Hebrew word for a linguistic construct like a parable, satire or prophecy, but in the ancient sense of language in which words act in the world; so mâshâlim that epitomize past situations educate their hearers in significant ways and satires and prophecies may will future outcomes) in the sense of a light-toned, highly serious comic satire. “She Unnames Them” ends Buffalo Gals, and, again, it is, in this context − and helping greatly to establish the context − an (anti)Prophecy, a mâshâl of unmaking: a figurative unbuilding of walls. In this beautiful funny little story, Le Guin is as sincere as the authors of the “J-Code” in their story of the making: the myth of the Creation of Eden. Initially, in the J-Code version of Creation, you have a pretty sterile world, because Yahweh had not yet created farmers and gardeners nor watered the earth. So the Eternal gathers up dust (‘adamah) and animates it with “the breath of life,” making ‘adam, “man ... a living being” − i.e., dust plus breath (ruach, anima, spiritus). The body/soul business is a later importation, and, I strongly agree with Le Guin, a very bad idea. Then,
The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it. And the Lord God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found. So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This one at last
Is bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh.
This one shall be called Woman,
for from man was she taken.”
Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh. (Gen. 2.18-24; Tenakh).
In the more sophisticated P-code (or E-code) version of creation, God makes men and women together (and perhaps hermaphroditic) and just comes right out and gives us rule, dominion, mastery (Gen. 1.26-28). The more primitive Eden story is more subtle and yokes together consciousness, dominion, and an ambiguous marriage, soon to become fully patriarchal (Gen. 3.16).
“It is not good for man to be alone,” and in the J-code version of the creation story, there’s just Adam, in the beginning, and the garden. So the Eternal makes the beasts and birds, and in the first act of human consciousness Adam names them. Which gives him dominion over the beasts: “Because the name is the thing… and the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing” [Le Guin U.K. The Rule of Names // The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. – NY: Harper and Row, 1975. – 303 p. – P. 76]. The naming, however, does not give him a proper companion and “fitting helper,” so the Eternal does the rib trick and gives the man a woman. The woman is an afterthought and created to be a helper, but is still accepted by a rather poetic and punning Adam as “bone of my bones / And flesh of my flesh.” And, in an image of innocence, “The two of them were naked, the man and his wife, yet they felt no shame” (Gen. 2.24).
The Hebrew for “naked,” though, ‘arummim, leads to ‘arum, “shrewd” in the next verse, where we learn that “…the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild beasts that the Lord God had made” (3.1). And the rest of the story is the Fall and the establishment first of explicit patriarchal rule of Adam over Eve then expulsion from the Garden, then the birth of Cain and Abel-and then murder and, by Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, civilization, and civilization’s hubristic discontents.
The first act of complicity, then, with the monotheistic Father/Creator God was Man’s unilaterally naming the beasts. Woman undoes the job, in Le Guin’s version, and does it democratically, indeed, with good anarchistic participation: “Most of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names. Whales and dolphins, seals and sea otters consented with particular grace and alacrity, sliding into anonymity as into their element” − water, the favorite element of the Daoists, perhaps, in its yielding strength, and large bodies of water, representing Being, the Dao that can be named (if we weren’t giving up naming). There is a problem with yaks for a bit: “Unlike the ubiquitous creatures such as rats or fleas that have been called by hundreds or thousands of different names since Babel, the yaks could truly say, they said, that they had a name.” But it’s a name “The council of elderly females finally agreed that… might be useful to others” but was totally “redundant” from “the yak point of view”: they didn’t need a name for themselves and had never used it [Le Guin U.K. Buffalo Gals And Other Animal Presences. – Santa Barbara: Capra P., 1987. Collection. – 196 p. – P. 194].
Pets were a problem, especially among the “verbally talented individuals” like “some parrots, lovebirds, ravens, and mynahs” who “insisted that their names were important to them.” The solution here was getting them to understand “that the issue was precisely one of individual choice, and that anybody who wanted to be called Rover, or Froufrou… or even Birdie in the personal sense, was perfectly free to do so.” What she unnames is not the personal name any animal likes to name itself but “the lower case (or, as regards German creatures, uppercase) generic appellations poodle, parrot, dog, or bird and all the Linnaean qualifiers that had trailed along behind them for two hundred years like tin cans tied to a tail.” The insects and fish give up their names easily, especially the fish, whose names “dispersed from them in silence throughout the oceans… without a trace” [P. 195]. All this work of unNaming done, she feels closer to the beasts, far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear{sic}. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to smell one another’s smells, feel or rub or caress one another’s scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another’s blood or flesh, keep one another warm, − {sic} that attraction was all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food [P. 195−96].
In fairness, she, the Woman, will not make an exception for herself, so she goes to Adam and says, “You and your father lent me this − gave it to me, actually. It’s been really useful, but it doesn’t exactly seem to fit very well lately. But thanks very much! It’s really been very useful.” She is embarrassed (it is awkward to return gifts), but, fortunately perhaps, Adam “was not paying much attention,” and responds to what I’ll call The Great Divorce with only “‘Put it down over there, OK?’ and went on with what he was doing.” One of the reasons she, the Woman, leaves is “talk was getting us nowhere,” but she had been prepared to talk things over. She “fiddled around a little, but he continued to do what he was doing” − doing being what one with dominion does − “and take no notice of anything else. At last I said, ‘Well, goodbye, dear. I hope that garden key turns up.’” And Adam, oblivious, asks “When’s dinner?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m going now. With the −” I hesitated, and finally said, “With them, you know,” and went on. In fact I had only just then realized how hard it would have been to explain myself. I could not chatter away as I used to do, taking it all for granted. My words now must be as slow, as new, as single, as tentative as the steps I took going down the path away from the house, between the dark-branched, tall dancers motionless against the winter shining [P. 196].
Eve has given up her name, her share of dominion, and Adam and the household of ‘adam, returning to the woods or forest or line of trees she cannot dismissively name “forest,” or whatever. She has given up the taxons and binomial nomenclature of Carolus Linnaeus (1707–78), and, more deeply the universals and categories of Western thought going back to at least Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Most deeply, she has redone the Western myth underlying all such naming in the Judeo-Christian-Rationalist West. Now she must face the world face to face − a truly radical Nominalist − without abstractions, and Le Guin values such immediate, unmediated contact with the world, however much to the rational (masculinist?) mind, this relationship with what is may seem like unconsciousness.
Eve’s act, seen this way, is also a mâshâl for women’s giving up the ease of writing that comes with working within a tradition they have grown up with: “The beauty of your own tradition,” Le Guin has written, “is that it carries you. It flies, and you ride it… It frames your thinking and put words in your mouth. If you refuse to ride, …you lose that wonderful fluency.” If women are to create their own tradition, they must drop men’s categories, which means, for at least a while, “…you have to stumble along… like a foreigner in your own country, amazed and troubled by things you see, not sure of the way, not able to speak with authority.” I think the lesson is that, like this re-visioned Eve, women must make the attempt in order to “to speak your own wisdom” [Le Guin U.K. Earthsea Revisioned. – Cambridge, MA: Children’s Literature New England, 1993. – 26 p. – P. 12].
[From Erlich R.D. Coyote’s Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin].
Все темы данного раздела:
Передмова
Для студентів іноземного відділення факультету філології та журналістики ПДПУ імені В.Г. Короленка вивчення сучасної англомовної літератури має особливе значення, адже літературна творчість є вищим
Brooke Jocelyn. John Betjeman. – Online at : http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/brookej/btjmn/.
2) John Betjeman. – Online at : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Betjeman.
3) The Website about John Betjeman. – Online at : www.johnbetjeman.com.
3. On the Movement:
The Movem
For further reading
1. Кружков Григорий. Глазок ватерпаса (О Шеймасе Хини) / Григорий Кружков // Ностальгия обелисков : Литературные мечтания. − М. : Новое литературное обозрение, 2001. − С. 477−486.
Winter Seascape
The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slated shelf
And thunder und
Love Song
He loved her and she loved him. His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appeti
Storm on the Island
from Death of a Naturalist (1991)
We are prepared: we build our houses squat, Sink walls in rock and ro
The main characteristics of poetry.
Perhaps the oldest kind of literature known to humanity, poetry in its earliest stages was told or sung, but during its long and continuing evolution it has become part of the written tradition and
John Betjeman’s conservatism in form and theme. Winter Seascape: the poet’s brilliance at describing landscape.
John Betjeman (1906−1984) achieved huge success during his lifetime and continues to retain his “National Treasure” s
The literary analysis of the poem
Winter Seascape
The sea runs back against itself
With scarcely time for breaking wave
To cannonade a slated shelf
And thunder under in a cave.
Before the next ca
The Movement as an anti-modernist group tended towards anti-romanticism, rationality, and sobriety.
The Movement was a term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, in 1954 to describe a group of writers including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Da
Philip Larkin’s hybrid style between verse and prose. Church Going as an example of his philosophical lyrics.
Philip Larkin (1922−1985) was born in Coventry in the family of Sydney and Eva Larkin. He attended the City’s King Henry VIII School between 1930 and 1940. He started writing
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside | letting the door thud shut.
Making its very ordinariness seem sincerity:
Once I am sure there’s
Man and Woman: Love Song by Ted Hughes and Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath.
Edward James (Ted) Hughes (1930−1998) was born in Mytholmroyd, in the West Riding district of Yorkshire, on August 17, 1930. His childhood was quiet and dominantly rural. Whe
The comparative analysis of two poems
It’s quite difficult to establish a good comparison (a simple formal comparison would be easier) between these two poems, these two great works by two of the most representative writers in the Engl
Allegorical works by Seamus Heaney: Storm on the Island.
Seamus Heaney /ʃeiˈmas hi:ˈni/ was born on April 13, 1939, on a farm in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern
Literature and Resources
1. About dystopia:
Dystopia. – Online at : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia.
2. About Orwell and 1984:
1) George Orwell. –
Online at : en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Part One
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doo
Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange. (British version).
Final Chapter (21)
“What’s it going to be then, eh?”
A shot from A Clockwork Orange (1971, USA, Great Britain, dir. by Stanley Ku
Энтони Берджесс. Заводной апельсин.
Пер. В.Бошняка− Ну, что же теперь, а?Теперь представьте себе меня, вашего скромного повествователя, с тремя koreshami − Леном, Риком и Бугаем, которого так прозвали за тол
The definition of dystopian literature.
A dystopia (alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia or anti-utopia) is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is usually characterized by an oppressive social control
George Orwell’s brief biography.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face − for ever.”
− from Nineteen Eighty-Four
The British author George Orwell
The plot and the structure of 1984.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (commonly written as 1984) is an anti-utopian novel published in 1949. The book tells the story of Winston Smith and his degradation by the totalita
The analysis of Chapter 1.
The world described in Nineteen Eighty-Four parallels the Stalinist Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. There are thematic similarities: the betrayed revolution, with which Orwell
Anthony Burgess’s life and works.
Anthony Burgess (1917−1993)was a British novelist, critic and composer. He was also active as a librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, essayist, travel write
Explanation of the novel’s title
Burgess wrote that the title was a reference to an alleged old Cockney expression “as queer as a clockwork orange”. Due to his time serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaya, Burgess thought
Part 1: Alex’s world
Set in a dystopian future, the novel opens with the introduction of protagonist, fifteen-year-old Alex (the character’s surname is never revealed in the novel) who, with his gang members (known as
Part 2: The Ludovico Technique
After being sentenced to 14 years for murder, Alex gets a job as an assistant to the prison chaplain. He feigns interest in religion, and amuses himself by reading the Bible for its lurid descripti
Part 3: After prison
Alex gets his release, but upon returning home, finds that he is not welcome: his personal belongings have been confiscated (sold, so that the money made might go towards the care of the cats of th
Structure
The novel is separated into three parts of seven chapters. Each part has a different setting or motive for the main character, but keeps to certain conventions across three parts. For example, each
The analysis of Chapter 21.
The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang dialect which Burgess invented for the book, called Nadsat. It is a mix of modified Slavic words, Cockney rhyming slang,
Literature and Resources
1. About the Theatre of the Absurd:
1) Culik Jan. The Theatre of Absurd. – Online at : www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm.
2) The Theatre of the Absurd. – Online at : en.wikip
Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Act Two. HAMLET, ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene. Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first. The first illegible line is HAMLET’s, co
Drama: the main characteristics.
Drama can be divided into serious drama, tragedy, comic drama, melodrama, and farce.
Drama differs from other forms of literature in that it demands a stage and performances. It can be enj
Tom Stoppard’s life and plays.
Sir Tom Stoppard (born Tomáš Straussler on July 3, 1937) is an Academy Award winning British playwright. Born in Czechoslovakia, he is famous for plays such as The Real Thing and
Works for the theatre
Stoppard’s plays are plays of ideas that deal with philosophical issues, yet he combines the philosophical ideas he presents with verbal wit and visual humor. His linguistic complexity, with its pu
Work for radio, film, and TV
In his early years Stoppard wrote extensively for BBC radio, in many cases introducing a touch of surrealism. Some of his better known radio works include: If You’re Glad, I’ll Be Frank;
The plot and the synopsis of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a humorous, absurdist, tragic and existentialist play by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe August 26, 1966.
The themes of the play
Existentialism − why are we here? Why should Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do anything unless someone asks them to? They find themselves as pawns in a gigantic game of chess,
Literature and Resources
1. About American poetry:
1) Американская поэзия в русских переводах [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http://www.uspoetry.ru/poets/2/poems/.
2) Дудченко М.М. Література Вели
Harlem: A Dream Deferred
What happened to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a Raisin in the sun? or fester like a sore –
and than run?
Does it stink like rotten meat? or crust and suga
The Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for imag
Like a Rolling Stone
Once upon a time you dressed so fine You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didnt you? Peopled call, say, beware doll, youre bound to fall You thought they were all kiddin you You u
The open form vs. closed form poetry.
Poetry in the 1950s was under the heavy influence of T. S. Eliot’s often misinterpreted idea of poetry being an escape from self and the Modernist focus on objectivity. Similar to this, and perhaps
Langston Hughes as a representative of the African-American Renaissance. Analysis of Harlem: A Dream Deferred.
Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes (1902−1967) grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico. By the time Hughes enrolled at
Harlem: A Dream Deferred
The noted poet, Langston Hughes, focused primarily on race relations in America during the 1920s and 1930s. Sometimes his poetry is simplistic and degenerates into a nothing more than whining, but
The mastery of rhythm and natural imagery in Theodore Roethke’s poems. The meaning of Waking.
Theodore Huebner Roethke (RET-key) (1908–1963) was a United States poet, who published several volumes of poetry characteri
Waking.
When a poem takes dead aim on the eternal we should not be surprised that it draws many interpretations. Neal Bowers sees the key to the cryptic opening lines of The Waking, and consequently
Robert Lowell’s psychological lyricism.
Robert Lowell (1917–1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV, was an American poet whose works, confess
The main ideas of The Supermarket in California.
Allen Ginsberg (1926−1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey, on June 3, 1926. The son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, two
Rock-poetry as a cultural phenomenon.
Rock is a form of popular music with a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and often bass. Many styles of rock music also use keyboard instruments such as organ, p
Playing with the MEANINGS of words
Simile: a comparison using “like” or “as.”
Ex. He’s as dumb as an ox.
Metaphor: a direct comparison.
Ex. He’s an zero.
Playing with the IMAGES of words
Imagery: the use of vivid language to generate ideas and/or evoke emotion via the five senses.
Examples:
· Sight: Smoked mysteriously puffed out
The life and poetry of Jim Morrison. The main ideas of People Are Strange.
James Douglas Morrison (1943–1971) was an American singer, songwriter, writer, and poet. He was best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the popular American rock band The
James Baldwin. Sonny’s Blues.
I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name,
James Baldwin’s biography and major works.
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924–November 30, 1987) was a novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, and essayist,
The plot overview.
“Sonny’s Blues” is narrated in the first-person by an unnamed character, Sonny’s brother. An algebra teacher in a high school in Harlem, this narrator is a stable family man with a wife and two son
The socio-historical setting of Sonny’s Blues and characterization of brothers within that context.
a. Growing up in Harlem:
“Sonny’s Blues” takes place during the mid-20th century, probably during the early 1950s. The action of the story occurs prior to the g
The characterization.
Like with so many other stories, in “Sonny’s Blues,” the dramatic action mainly concerns the characters’ changes or lack of them. The character changes in “Sonny’s Blues” are particularly interesti
The imagery.
Following a story’s prevailing imagery can help us to understand an author’s focus or concerns. A story can have a pattern of recurring imagery as well as sentences which describe in figurative or
The themes.
A story’s themes are best and most specifically expressed as complete sentences. Thus, rather than saying “one theme of Sonny’s Blues is suffering” or even “coping with suffering” we should
The biography and works of Richard Bach.
Richard David Bach (b. June 23, 1936, Oak Park, Illinois) is an American writer. He claims to be a direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach. Richard Bach is widely known as the a
The seventies: the social context of his works.
Following the social cataclysm of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, Americans turned inward − initiating a decade of “self-help” and healing that some critics have called the “Me decade.” Richar
The main aspects of New Age philosophy and cosmology
Theism
There is a general and abstract idea of God, which can be understood in many ways; seen as a superseding of the need to anthropomorphize deity. Not to be confused with panth
Religion and science
Eclecticism
New Age writers argue people should follow their own individual path to spirituality instead of dogma.
Anti-patriarchy
Feminine forms of spiri
The plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
The novel tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is bored with the daily squabbles over food and seized by a passion for flight. He pushes himself, learning everything he can
The main themes and symbols.
Several early commentators, focusing mainly on the first part of the book, see it as part of the American self-help and positive thinking culture, epitomized by Norman Vincent Peale and by the New
Ursula Le Guin. She Unnames Them
MOST OF THEM ACCEPTED NAMELESSNESS with the perfect indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names. Whales and dolphins, seals and sea otters consented wi
The appearance of soft science fiction.
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used
The main themes of her books.
As it was mentioned abovethey areTaoist, anarchist, feminist, psychological and sociological themes.
Much of Le Guin’s science fiction places a strong emphasis on
Changing the fantasy canon: Earthsea series.
The world of Earthsea is one of sea and islands: a vast archipelago of hundreds of islands surrounded by uncharted ocean. It is uncertain wh
Новости и инфо для студентов