Reading Quiz 1

For Tuesday's class (April 27) answer the following question considering all three Allende stories read for class:

Latin American cultures have been indelibly marked by European colonialism. Consider the impact of colonialism on some of the characters in "Toad's Mouth,". . . "The Road North,". . . and "Phantom Palace." What powers do the indigenous people have? Discuss their relationship with nature. What message, if any, do you think that Allende is trying to convey about the colonization of Latin America?

Writing Tips:

• Focus on providing answers to question, don't simply summarize what's happening. Make something of the detail in story that helps clarify your answer. In other words...
• Answer the question knowing that we have read the story. Use specific details and quotes to make your points, and focus only on plot points that are relevant to your points.
• Include MLA citation, with page numbers.

You do not have to type up your response, and there is no page requirement, but you should spend about 30 minutes making a developed response AFTER reading all three stories.

Isabl Allende & the Feminine Character

Isabelle Allende

· Chilean novelist, short story writer and memoirist

· B. 1942 in Lima, Peru. Family moved to Chile (father a Chilean diplomat)

· Most famous work is The House of the Spirits

o Centers on women’s role in the upheaval and terror that characterizes 20^th century Chile

o Especially influenced by Marxist President Salvador Allende’s overthrow by military dictator Augosto Pinochet in 1973

o Salvador Allende = father’s cousin

· Left Chile in 1975 for Venezuela (fear of the Pinochet regime)

· The “strong, resilient female”

· Late 1980s – moved to the US, thematic subjects grow: assimilation, exile, the search for identity, immigration, greed, globalization, preservation of indigenous people and landscapes

· 1987, published Eva Luna, which is about Eva’s journey to becoming a writer

Major Questions to Consider when looking at her work:

1. What is the role of the woman in the piece? How does she represent (or not) general notions of femininity? Conversely, how does she represent the male characters?

2. How focused on the history of Latin America / Chile is a piece? Does the piece seem to be driven mostly by its Latin American heritage, or is this piece thematically more universal? (this question can help us see the growth in topics as we read through her work…)

3. How would you compare her use of magical realism with Garcia Marquez (and others you might have, or will have, read)?

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Today’s Readings: Critical Reading Exercise

Deduce the gender roles that Allende assigns to the characters in these stories. What is the male role? What is the female role?

Go back and track the lines/phrases that indicate characterizations of gender. Mark a M next to male, and W next to the female.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Eva Inside Her Cat”

- What’s the magical element that drives this particular story?

- As far as imagery, what is the implied connection between insects and ancestry?

o What is significant about the narrator’s obsession with beauty?

o What insight into her character does her use of religious language reveal? About her? About message of the story??? Anything…

- In what way does the use of the undefined “boy” effect your reading of the story?

- Does a cat seem like an appropriate transformation for the narrator? How so?

- 3,000 years have gone by? Really?

“ Eyes of a Blue Dog”

- What’s the magical element that drives this particular story?

- When in this particular story do you get the sense that the world is not so “real”?

- How does the title of the story operate within the piece? When is the meaning of the title revealed – and to what extent?

- What images or descriptions within the story’s structure hint to the fantastical nature of the relationship between the narrator and the woman “of his dreams”?

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: A Tale for Children”

- Magical Element(s)? What is different about the drowned man from those of village? List…

- What is the significance of naming him Estaban?

- What connection does Estaban have with the village, and how does it transform? What statement does this transformation then make?

- What does Estaban’s body bring to the villagers – woman, men, children? How does this serve as a larger statement about humanity?

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Homework for next two classes:

Thursday, by e-mail (not meeting in class): One well-developed paragraph with supporting material and explanation, which answers the following:

From reading either “Two Words” or “Wicked Girl,” what are qualities that you see Isabel Allende is instilling in her female main characters?

- Though you only need to answer the above for one of the two stories, we will discuss both short stories on Thursday, 4/20, along with “Clarisa”

Tuesday, 4/20: Have closely and actively read all three of the first short stories in Allende’s collection: “Two Words,” “Wicked Girl,” and “Clarisa.” I’d like each of you to come up with one question for each story that asks something about a major theme, Allende’s use of “magical realism” or a noticeable trend in Allende’s language/writing style. (Remember: the more specific the question the better; any ideas you have, or intuition that you want to figure out…ASK!)

April 8: Bolano

A Brief and Incomplete Summary of 20th Century Latin American Literary Movements:

1. Modernismo: "founded" by Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario in late 1800s, movement's main literary conventions include poetry of exotic, faraway landscapes (often imagined) and symbolic images -- surreal and childlike worlds. A kind of escape from the material world of the day. Influenced by French Surrealism and even EA Poe and Walt Whitman...
2. from the early 1960s through '70s-->the "Boom": writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa start to get European attention...publishing of Latin American authors enters the international mainstream in large numbers. This was when magical realism really took off.
3. Magical Realism: literature that involves two perspectives of the world: first, it is often set in the modern world where landscapes are real; second, there is the inclusion of the fantastical or the supernatural. In a sense, there's a balance between a rationally-created world and the more primitive, "irrational" world. Juan Rulfo and Garcia Marquez (especially Marquez) are seen as masters of this movement.

Chile In Context

1. Geographically isolated by Andes from Argentina and Bolivia, and by Atacama Desert from Peru.
2. Native folklore had a heavy influence on literature, due in part to the isolation of nation.
3. Literature of 1800s and first half of 2oth century often worked to shape a regionist, national identity. There was a championing of the "rural" and the native.
4. "Generation of 1950" -- term coined by Enrique Lafourcade, who published an anthology of Chilean writers. Including "the boom" and a general reference point to understand how literary topics shift to a more cosmopolitan (city) perspective, away from the rural/nativism of Chile.
5. 1970: Salvador Allende is elected president (Socialist), but is overthrown by military three years later. General Auguste Pinochet takes control of military and government, and has a tyrannical hold over country (and literature) until 1989. Pinochet is thought to have killed over 3,000 Chileans who defied his authority, over that time period.

Roberto Bolano...

• In the article "Vagabonds," Daniel Zalewski calls Bolano's fiction "...the testimonies of people the wanderers leave behind" (New Yorker). Of the short stories read for today, where is this concept most well-represented? What kind of thematic effect(s) does this convention have on the reader?

Roberto Bolano

The New Yorker has many on-line pieces by one of today's most well-respected (but late) authors. Bolano's lore over the last five years has grown, though he died in 2003 at the age of 50.

Here is a critical piece on his work.

Here is "Meeting With Enrique Lihn."

Here is "William Burns."

Here is "The Insufferable Gaucho."

Syllabus