...What makes a compelling short story is different for many people. Some prefer action, others scenic narratives, and some even the gory details. Though, for the people such as myself, what makes a story compelling is the symbols. “Jury of Her Peers”, a short story written by Susan Glaspell which is based off of her editorial piece, “The Hossack Murder”, contains numerous symbols throughout the pages. Such symbols include the canary and, of course, the broken fruit jars. These symbols are what make this short story a compelling fictional recreation of a real event. The symbol of the canary is likely the most dominant symbol in the short story. It would sing and sing and then it stopped once it was murdered. The poor canary was the only thing...
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... Introduction 3 Men and Women 4 Writers and Readers 7 Goodness 9 Mothers and Children 10 Referências 13 Women we know: a biographical critical analysis on Unless by Carol Shields Introduction Unless is the last novel written by Carol Shields, before she passed away of breast cancer in 2003. The novel is structured in a first person narrative; the narrator is Reta Winters, a 44-year old writer and translator. Throughout the narrative, the reader follows a linear chain of thoughts by Reta on the central theme of the novel, which is her quest to find out why her daughter Norah decided to drop out of university and live on the street with a sign on her chest written "Goodness". The essay will be developed through research in primary sources – interviews – in order to analyze Carol Shield’s work using mostly, but not only, her own concepts and reflections on Literature, writing and being a writer, and composition process of Unless. Many scholars have made researches on the novel, especially about language resources, metafiction and gender issues. The most cited work is Nora Foster Stovel’s ““Because she is a woman”: Myth and Metafiction in Carol Shield’s Unless”. By investigating her compositional process in interviews, the intention of the essay is to create an analysis on the novel; the focus of the analysis will be on the preoccupation of showing and perceiving the human conditions, society and the individual, as well as portraying women in...
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...economy. Germany had spent six years preparing for war, and a large portion of the economy was already devoted to military production. During the war, as Germany acquired new territories (either by direct annexation or by installing puppet governments in defeated countries), these new territories were forced to sell raw materials and agricultural products to German buyers at extremely low prices. Fiction as Reconstruction of History: Narratives of the Civil War in American Literature by Reinhard Isensee Even after more than 140 years the American Civil War continues to serve as a major source of inspiration for a plethora of literature in various genres. While only amounting to a brief period in American history in terms of years, this war has proved to be one of the central moments for defining the American nation since the second half of the nineteenth century. The facets of the Civil War, its protagonists, places, events, and political, social and cultural underpinnings seem to hold an ongoing fascination for both academic studies and fictional representations. Thus, it has been considered by many the most written-about war in the United States. The War That Never Goes Away: The Significance of the Civil War for the Cultural Imagination in the United States Despite the overwhelming body of academic work on the Civil War produced in the United States (and beyond) most of the American public (as well as the international audience) has been exposed to it through cultural...
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...Fiction, Between Inner Life and Collective Memory. A Methodological Reflection. François-Xavier Lavenne, Virginie Renard, François Tollet1 Introduction In the writing of their fictional works, novelists often have to reflect on the functioning of memory, for memory lies at the heart both of inner life and of human experience in general. It is indeed in the works of writers such as Marcel Proust or Jorge Luis Borges that the best exemplifications of the subjective experience of memory are to be found. However, from a strictly mnemonic point of view, literature provides more than a means of reflecting on memory: it is also the site of the rebirth and construction of individual and collective memories, which can then serve as a foundation for the writing of fictional works. Creative writing has a meiotic function and is as such a powerful tool capable of rescuing memories from oblivion and bringing them back to life, thus reconciling the past with the present. The present article seeks to bring to bear new perspectives on the relationship between a novelist’s personal memories, collective memory, and the fictional narratives partially inspired by these two types of memory. In the first section we briefly examine the distinction traditionally made between individual memory and collective memory, which we then try to reconcile so as to arrive at an approach to the mnemonic phenomenon that best fits the needs of literary scholars. In the second section we challenge the conventional...
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...In The Voice of the Preceptress: Female Education in and as the Seduction Novel, Shelly Jarenski talks about the political, social, and educational values behind the creation of seduction novels. She starts by giving an extensive narrative of the “contemporary anxieties over the education of women and narratives of female seduction” (59). She then proceeds to address the social and political influences over these novelists or narratives. Throughout her narration, she protrudes the question or the existing debate of whether women should have an education and if yes, how should they be educated (59). Based on the information she extends to the reader, she presents her opinion of the function and intention of the seduction novels during this...
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...it took many years for the author, now revealed as Harriet Jacobs, to be properly identified, the work had been dismissed as fictional. Jacobs’ decision to remain anonymous came from guilt and disgrace over the way she was treated while enslaved and the actions she was forced to take to become free, particularly those pertaining to sexual acts. Wanting to be viewed as a “proper Christian” she decided to create the pseudonym name Linda Brent. It was under this name the text was published. In later years, her text has been viewed as an important text, speaking truth to the ears of sentimental novel readers in the north, and calling for action against the cruel institution of slavery. Employed as a teacher by Pace University in 1968, Jean Fagan Yellin wrote and published her dissertation. While re-reading Incidents in the 1970s as part of the project and to educate herself in the use of gender as a category of analysis, Yellin became interested in the question of the text's true authorship. Over the next six-years, Yellin found and used historical documents including the Amy Post papers at the University of Rochester (Post was a close friend of Jacobs), state and local historical societies, and the Horniblow and Norcum papers at the North Carolina state archives, to establish both that Harriet Jacobs was the true author of Incidents, and that the narrative was her autobiography. Her edition...
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...Poetry, prose, sonnets, drama, plays, short stories and novels are concepts that first came to my mind when I think in the question “What is literature?” The definition of literature has change over time. The only thing that is certain about the meaning of literature is that the definition will change. The concepts about what is literature about also change over time. In order to get a clear understanding of exactly what literature is, first we need to know its definition. According to the Merriam-Webster, literature is defined by “the body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age; the body of writings on a particular subject: printed matter.” Literature has to do with letters, but some people often think that literature is only one thing, not knowing that it is composed by several elements that we use every day. These important elements include poems, prose, sonnets, drama, plays, short stories and novels. Poetry is created from the soul. It comes from your emotions and it needs every piece of creativity inside you. It has been called the art of “saying the unsayable” because trough this you can express your feelings with no limit, and nobody can tell you that is wrong. If you make a poem and you think it is not good enough, well it is no good. You as the author or the reader, can only judge if it is good or but for you but maybe for some one else it is the opposite as it is for you. A good place to start when looking back at how poetry...
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...Society has witnessed the work of a variety of creative workers who have come from tragic backgrounds, it only the most unfortunate that some have tragic endings as well. Marilyn Monroe’s archived poetry and diaries depict an artful yet quite sad soul, she writes of her love for her craft, defying her difficult past, “working (doing my tasks that I/ have set for myself)/ on the stage—I will/ not be punished for it/or be whipped/ or be threatened/ or sent to hell to burn with bad people feeling that I am also bad./ or be afraid of my [genitals] being/ exposed known and/ seen—”, but also confesses that she is “very lonely” and paints the narrative of an exploited figure in short verse [Source F]. As aforementioned, Plath also depicted her personal experienced in her books, as well as being at the forefront of the confessional poetry movement. Her poem “The Applicant”specifically examines the construct of marriage, gender stereotypes and social pressures, while poems such as “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the last poem written before her death, “Edge,” are popular for their dark themes, provocatively sad tone, and distinct language. Despite the chain reaction of abusive environments female artists may enter when they professionalize their creative work, a result of women’s psychological augmentation, women express their emotions, potential mental...
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..."The Victorian elements in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontё" The Victorian Era, in which Brontё composed Wuthering Heights, receives its name from the reign of Queen Victoria of England. The era was a great age of the English novel, which was the ideal form to descibe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. Emily, born in 1818, lived in a household in the countryside in Yorkshire, locates her fiction in the worlds she knows personally. In addition, she makes the novel even more personal by reflecting her own life and experiences in both characters and action of Wuthering Heights. In fact, many characters in the novel grow up motherless, reflecting Emily’s own childhood, as her mother died when Emily was three years old. Similarly, the vast majority of the novel takes place in two households, which probably is a reflection of author’s own comfort at home as whenever she was away from home she grew homesick. Emily Brontё’s single novel is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. However, despite the relative invisibility of Victorian influence in the plot and content, the attitudes of the Victorian Era make some impact on the story, and the novel is considered not only a form of entertainment but also a means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems. Brontё may not highlight the social aspects in the novel, nevertheless the indications of Victorian society’s...
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...Sleight of Hand, Sleight of Mind Orson Welles' F for Fake and the Art of the Cinematic Con Orson Welles' 1974 "film essay" F for Fake opens with a scene of Welles, in the role of a magician, performing a sleight of hand trick with a young child, "transforming" the key the young boy has presented him into a coin and then showing how the young boy had the key all the time in his pocket. The magic was the perfect illustration of Welles' purpose in the film. F for Fake was a film about fraud and deceit, about how the makers of art (and, in particular, film) use "trickery" to fool their intended audience into believing something that is not true. The film focuses on three known "charlatans" (Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, and Welles himself) who used their talents to produce such magnificent forgeries that they were able to fool everyone (even so-called "experts") into believing in the truth of their claims. Despite the status of this film as one of Welles' "minor" films from late in his life (it was one of the last films he completed prior to his death in 1985), it has had a tremendous impact on filmmaking, both in a technical sense (the film's complex editing of various film stocks and styles) and in a textual sense. Welles' identification of the ways in which an audience can be manipulated into believing anything as long as it has the "air" of authenticity has had a tremendous impact on current filmmaking, especially in the realm of horror filmmaking with the current crop...
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...Strategic Leadership and Decision Making 16 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE One of the primary responsibilities of strategic leaders is to create and maintain the organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective effort. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is organizational culture. But what do we really mean by organizational culture? What influence does it have on an organization? How does one go about building, influencing or changing an organization's culture? THE IMPACT OF CULTURE Why is culture so important to an organization? Edgar Schein, an MIT Professor of Management and author of Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View, suggests that an organization's culture develops to help it cope with its environment. Today, organizational leaders are confronted with many complex issues during their attempts to generate organizational achievement in VUCA environments. A leader's success will depend, to a great extent, upon understanding organizational culture. Schein contends that many of the problems confronting leaders can be traced to their inability to analyze and evaluate organizational cultures. Many leaders, when trying to implement new strategies or a strategic plan leading to a new vision, will discover that their strategies will fail if they are inconsistent with the organization's culture. A CEO, SES, political appointee, or flag officer who comes into an organization prepared to "shake the place up" and institute sweeping changes...
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...Fiction we must understand what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know, their community was also governed by the concept of Predestination. This belief was based...
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...Introduction Pire Paolo Pasolini was renowned Italian artist who plied the domains of poetry, intellectualism and film and literature with some of his works spanning the High renaissance epoch. Pasolini was notably distinguishable as a journalist, linguist and philosopher among a host other art domains that he pursued in the long yet drastically ended course of his art career. Pasolini was also a newspaper and magazine columnist as well as painter and renowned political figure. Eloit Audrene (2004) notes that Pasolini illustrated a unique and uncommon cultural dynamism in his course towards turning into a highly controversial figure evident through a closer assessment of his works of art. Pasolini was marked by outright disdain for the Bourgeoisie culture and social system. His ideologies tended towards the conceptual tenets and thrust of communism. On the 26th of January 1947 the author wrote a contentious declaration published on the front page of newspaper entitled Liberta, "In our opinion, we think that currently only communism is able to provide a new culture". What heightened the controversy with regards to his political ideological inclinations is that whilst it was evident in his art works that he disdained Feudalism Pasolini was still not a member the Country’s Community Party (PCI) which embraced ideas akin to his. This was contrary to common expectations given his public denouncements of the Bourgeoisie and the entirety of the feudalist social and societal conventions...
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...Connecticut State Department of Education Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) Third Generation Handbook for Reading and Writing Across the Disciplines Contents Technical note: If using an electronic version of this handbook, click on any underlined text to link to the specific section in the document. Foreword 3 Position Statement 4 Introduction 6 Reading Across the Disciplines: • Response to Literature 8 • Reading for Information 11 Writing Across the Disciplines: • Interdisciplinary Writing 15 • Editing and Revising 18 Instructional Strategies to Use All Year 19 CAPT Strategies for All Students 22 Additional Assessment Information 25 Released Items 26 Foreword On behalf of the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), I am pleased to present the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) Third Generation Handbook for Reading and Writing Across the Disciplines. The third generation CAPT, developed in 2004 and piloted in 2005 and 2006, will be administered live for the first time in March 2007. This handbook has been developed to provide Connecticut’s public school educators with important information about the CAPT reading and writing across the disciplines assessments. It should serve as a reference for all content area teachers as they prepare their students. It is designed to answer the frequently asked questions about...
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...Song of Solomon Analysis: Gender Roles and Freedom Racism divides communities, but sexism deserts individuals. American history is ridded with oppression on the basis of race and gender that have left individuals and communities alike subjugated and isolated. Toni Morrison, through her fictional novel Song of Solomon, tackles the desire for belonging that so many faced during the oppressive 1960s. Appeals to equal rights for African Americans were met with hateful discrimination and bloody discourse—ultimately dividing people from within groups. But Morrison pushes her discussion beyond just the confines of racism to the treatment of black women in society; the tyrannical repression they faced. Throughout Song of Solomon, a reoccurring theme of dependence and abandonment of women presides. Toni Morrison exploits women’s belonging to men and yet, also, their burdens for men’s freedom. In order to conquer the quest of the novel, the main character must recognize and overcome such female injustices. Foundational to the their societal repression, black women suffered not only from racial segregation but the social obligations to men, children, and their community. Women were the guardian of the family in the 1960s, and lacked the free-will retained by men. The man they married, the structure he created, defined a woman. Song of Solomon directly touches on the heavy racism circling the times. Milkman and Guitar actively talk about racism and the cruelty of the white “nonhumans...
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