english 651: writing hypertext
elizabeth
cooper's journal for english 651
Last week, I promised to give you some reference points for your consideration in reading Afternoon, a story. Use them however they help your reading. They're arranged below in order that they occurred to me.
Werther- Knicknamed Wert: The word
'wert' in German means dear, valued, honoured, esteemed, worthy.
Goethe's The Sorrows of
Young Werther (1774; final version 1787) is a short epistolary novel, the story of an
artistically inclined young man "gifted with deep, pure sentiment and penetrating
intelligence, who loses himself in fantastic dreams and undermines himself with
speculative thought until finally, torn by hopeless passions, especially by infinte love,
he shoots himself in the head." Werther's infinite love for an uncomplicated girl
named Lotte who, however, marries a man with a much steadier, more bourgeois temperament
than Werther's at least partly reflects Goethe's own experiences. (from Benet's Reader's
Encyclopedia, 3rd edition. Harper and Row, 1987).
Nausicaa- In Homer's Odyssey, the daughter of Alcinous, king of Phaeacians. Nausicaa conducts Odysseus to the court of her father when he is shipwrecked on the coast. To them, he reveals his identity and tells the story of his wanderings, who help Odysseus to get home. Homer's portrait of this young lady is refreshingly human and believable. (Reader's Encyclopedia)
Odyssey - sometimes called the first novel because of
its exciting narrative and the effective use of flashbacks to heighten the dramatic
action. It is largely a collection of folk tales, many of which are easily recognizable in
the legends of other lands. These tales have been given continuity and coherence by
attributing the adventures to a single hero and mnoreover by reworking each incident so
that it contributes to a consistent picture of that hero. The consistency of the
author's concept of Odysseus as a fictional character can be appreciated by comparing him
with Heracles, whose saga is also the result of a gradual accretion of unrelated tales but
whose adventures were never told in a unified work of literature.
The monumental and complex figure of Odysseus and the chief work
in which his adventurew were told have had a perennial fascination for later writers.
The most remarkable work that has been inspired by the Odyssey is James
Joyce's novel Ulysses, in which a single day's events in the life of Leopold
Bloom, a notably unheroic Jewish citizen of Dublin, are made to conform to the pattern of
the Odyssey. More recently the Greek poet Nikos Kazantzakis undertook to
relate the further adventures of Odysseus in The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
(translated in 1958), which was intended as a summation of the author's philosophical
attitudes. The journeys of Odysseus are presented as an agonized but ecstatic
struggle toward freedom and purity of spirit. Kazantazkis has said that his Odyssey
is "a new epical-dramatic attempt of the modern man to find deliverance by passing
through all the stages of contemporary anxieties and by pursuing the most daring
hopes." (Reader's Encyclopedia)
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)- American novelist and short story writer; many years a resident of Europe, write three experimental plays produced in 1919-20. Her novel Nightwood (1936) with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, is an experimental novel dealing with Parisian artistic underground. After its publication she became a recluse. (Reader's Encyclopedia)
James Joyce (1882-1941) Irish novelist, short-story writer,
and poet. Joyce is regarded as one of the greatest literary talents of the 20th century
and is known for his revolutionary innovations in the art of the novel. Joyce's
technical innovations include an extensive use of the interior monologue an dother
experiemtnal narrative techniques; the use of a unique language of invented words, puns,
and complex allusions; and the use of a complex network of symboloic parallels drawn from
mythology, history, and literature. Joyce is also famous for his detailed rendering
of Dublin life, his objective presentation of organic functions, his extraordinary
psychological penetrationk, his robust humor, and his sensitivity to auditory impressions
(he had a lifelong passion for vocal music). Before other writers had imitated his
techniques and critics had explained his methods, hisbooks were denounced as obscure,
unintelligible, nonsensical, and obscene.
In his largely autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916), the hero Stephen Dedalus grows in self-awareness as an
artist and rejects the whole narrow rold in which he has been brought up. Dedalus says:
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home,
my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art
as freely as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence,
exile, and cunning." Rather than following a clear narrative progression, the book
revolves around experiences that are crucial to Stephen's development as an artist.
Through his use of the stream of consciousness technique, Joyce reveals the actual
materials of his hero's world, the components of his thought processes.
In Ulysses (1922), Joyce shifted to a more detached and
impersonal style of the epic. Ulysses is a disillusioned study of
estrangement, paralysis, and the disintegration of society. The novel records the
vents of one average day. The plan of the book parallels the Odyssey. Stephen is
related to Telemachus and Molly Bloom to Penelope, although through a complex network of
literary and historical allusions, each character is associated with many other figures as
well. The central theme, that of exile, is one that preoccupied Joyce. Whereas
Ulysses on his odyssey gradually discovers the truth about himself and his relation to the
gods and finally reutrns to his homeland, Joyce's two exiles cannot find the key to their
loneliness and frustration, and their potentialities for growth seem fated to be stunted
by their environment.
A perfectionist who sought to fill his mature work with a network
of complex internal echoes and allusions, often parodying a variety of literary styles,
Joyce toiled long hours at his writing and repeatedly revised and polished his work. (Reader's
Encylopedia)
Lolly - named for Lolita. Lolita (pub. in France in 1955; in U.S. in 1958) by Vladimir Nabokov. Humbert Humbert is a miccle-aged intellectual who has a passion for girls between the ages of nine and fourteen. He falls in love with the twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he calls Lolita. In his plot to seduce her, he marries Dolores's mother, whose accidental death then allows Lolita and Humbert to take off on an oddyseey across the U.S. Humbert is surprised when, contrary to his schemes, Lolita seduces him and again when she leaves him and marries Clare Quilty, whom Humbert is forced to murder. The book presents a quest for enternal innocence, albeit in satirical terms. It combines parody, fanciful imaginative flights, literary puzzles, and a brilliant satirical overview of American culture. (Reader's Encyclopedia)
Peter -
St. Peter - One of the twelve disciples of Jesus, oted for
his impulsive nature. More incidents are related to Peter in the Gospels than to any
other disciple. He was first called Simon but, when introduced to Jesus by his
brother Andrew, Jesus called him Cephas ('stone') which was translated into the Greek
Petros ('rock'). His position as first bishop of Rome led to the Roman Catholic
belief that all popes are his successors. He is popularly conceived as the keeper of
the gates of heaven, to whom saints and sinners present themselves for admittance.
Peter was one of the leading disciples and often served as their spokesman.
After the Crucifixion, he became widely known for this miracles and his missionary
activities. He is the patron saint of fishermen, having been a fisherman himselv,
and is usually respresented as a bald old man with a flowing beard, dressed in a white
mantle and blue tunic and holding a book or scroll. His symbols are the keys and a
sword. (Reader's Encyclopedia)
Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1902) --
Peter stays in Never-Never-Land after the other children decide to go home and grow up.
Albers, Joseph, graphic artist; Albers, glass, color and light; Albers, op-artist, Homage to the Square, 1969
Anni Albers, weaver