...In what ways does a comparative study accentuate the distinctive contexts of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Room of One’s Own? A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) by Edward Albee, when compared, accentuate the difference in values and beliefs that pervaded the context in which they wrote. Woolf’s critical yet creative essay explores truth and gender equality in a period driven by progression and the first wave of feminism. Contrastingly, Albee attempts to confront his audience through satirical dialogue and bombastic characters. Although Albee also explores truth and gender equality, the difference in context allows him to examine the way in which these values have been discarded in the moral decline masked by the American Dream. When paralleled, it is evident that both texts reflect the differences of their context. Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own digs beneath the veneer of social progress to expose the patriarchal values entrenched in society. Woolf first establishes the subjectivity of truth, so that the readers draw their own conclusion as “they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.” By making them conscious on the subjectivity of truth, Woolf is forcing the reader to draw their own conclusions on what is logical, rather than accepting the patriarchal beliefs of their context. The anecdotal evidence of the fictitious Mary Seaton’s experience at the British Museum exposes the...
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... Works of the writers of the Theatre of the Absurd are characterized by - * lack of logic * unconventional dialogue * rejection of conventional characterization and plot. They all express the idea that human existence is essentially meaningless and that in this world true communication is impossible. Camus in his Le Mythe de Sisyphe “In the universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile …this divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity”. This very idea surfaces in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. A mixture of absurdity and reality, illusion and truth, farce and tragedy is condensed in Edward Albees first full length play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1962) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf demonstrates the Mid-20th century American panic towards the fall of human privilege, embedded within both Cold War rhetoric and the changing social climate of America. This is a play not so much about a discontented marriage as a disillusioned...
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...Thanks to Edward Albee’s skill as a writer, Alan Schneider’s superb staging and directing and the brilliant performance by the cast, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” provides a thrilling and spectacular evening at the Billy Rose Theatre. You may struggle to fully understand Albee’s characters. You may feel that a pillar of the plot is too paltry to support the climax. You may feel that this play goes against social norms. You may also feel that this is just another play. Yet, in spite of all that, you are encouraged to visit Broadway, where Albee’s new play opened Saturday night. Making his debut on Broadway, Albee brings the fervor and exasperation that helped him so brilliantly write “The Zoo Story” and “The American Dream.” He has created a play that runs over three hours long yet there is never a dull moment. Although Albee’s thoughts are uninviting and satirical, he is never imposing. With the unmatched, natural talent of Albee that has been seasoned through the years of writing plays for the theatre, Albee is able to fill the stage with constant excitement for the audience, who will be on the edge of their seats for almost the full duration of the play. In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Albee is focused on Martha and George, a couple...
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...A healthy marriage is a commitment to another human being that transcends all the tangible, and impalpable temptations of our materialistic world, as well as has open communication. In the play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee the dynamics of a modern aged marriage in the 1960’s is explored through the perspectives of George, Martha, Nick, and Honey. These two partners are prime examples of failing marriages in the post industrial world. We observe Martha fail on her commitments to George, and George fall short of Martha’s expectations. Another failure in the partnerships stems from a web of lies sprung from Honey’s lie about their “hysterical pregnancy”, and the exposed motives of Nick’s reasoning behind marrying Honey. Martha and George have an older and more complex relationship than Nick and Honey, and once...
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...Through the exploration of a pair of texts composed in different contexts one can observe the significance of the ability of texts with varied form and context to still present and reflect similar values. A Room of One’s Own (hereafter AROO), a polemic, by Virginia Woolf and the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (hereafter WAVW) by Edward Albee both address gender inequality and truth and illusion even though their contexts and form starkly contrast. An analysis of similar themes will provide a greater understanding of meanings and perceptions of the texts. AROO, written in the post-war period of the late 1920s, was composed in a time of great social change due to the destruction and turmoil of the War. Modernist writing highlights the absence of, and search for, meaning and features experiments with new forms. Loss and absence lie at the heart of Woolf’s art, resulting from the experience of loss as an adolescent – her half sister, father, brother and mother. Her refusal to give one single view of anything, offering instead multiple, often conflicting views which the reader has to balance and bring together is another modernist trait. In contrast, WAVW was written in a far more conservative context, and although Albee does challenge societal roles, he does it in a more blatant way. Written during a time of Cold War tension, where fear and instability was disguised beneath the facade of the Great American Dream, Albee is still able to paint a dystopian image of the stereotyped...
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...show you the answer – Motivation leads you to the right thing to do! This is some of the Topics that we are dealing with in the short story called A Gap of Sky. A Gap of Sky is a short story written by Anna Hope and published in 2008. It is about a 19-year-old girl struggling against the inner voice of her, which is telling her to cut out her studies and have fun instead. By having fun I mean drinking and doing drugs. Because that’s what Ellie is good at. She has been sent to London by her parents to study, but she is not taking it as serious as her parents are expecting of her to do, because she has been partying all night and can’t remember much. She wakes up and starts stressing because of an essay that she has to write, about Virginia Woolf. But she needs printer ink, so she goes out into the world searching for printer ink. On her way searching for printer ink she experiences a lot. The 19-year-old Ellie is the main character. Her parents have sent her to London to study but she doesn’t really care, instead she drinks and does a lot of drugs. But at the same time it seems like Ellie has two sides. Because she’s also stressing about the essay that she still needs to do and she’s okay staying up all night doing it as...
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...will show you the answer – Motivation leads you to the right thing to do! This is some of the Topics that we are dealing with in the short story called A Gap of Sky. A Gap of Sky is a short story written by Anna Hope and published in 2008. It is about a 19-year-old girl struggling against the inner voice of her, which is telling her to cut out her studies and have fun instead. By having fun I mean drinking and doing drugs. Because that’s what Ellie is good at. She has been sent to London by her parents to study, but she is not taking it as serious as her parents are expecting of her to do, because she has been partying all night and can’t remember much. She wakes up and starts stressing because of an essay that she has to write, about Virginia Woolf. But she needs printer ink, so she goes out into the world searching for printer ink. On her way searching for printer ink she experiences a lot. The 19-year-old Ellie is the main character. Her parents have sent her to London to study but she doesn’t really care, instead she drinks and does a lot of drugs. But at the same time it seems like Ellie has two sides. Because she’s also stressing about the essay that she still needs to do and she’s okay staying up all night doing it as long as she does “she’s going to have to work through the night, but it’s fine” – inside of her...
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...For example, after reading ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ at AS level, I became fascinated by the idea of living up to expectations of society, and the pressures of having a perfect life. This led me to read ‘The Outsiders’ by S. E. Hinton, as the book explored the spirit of rebellion mainly aimed towards social norms and class systems. The story focuses on the negative results of a hostile society, but at the same time manages to stay realistic. C.S. Lewis once said that ‘Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it…’ I agree with this view that books aim to display all of humanity’s universal truths and help the reader enhance their life after reading something that has the ability to change their perception of the...
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...Contemporary American Drama This is a term paper assignment for the class “Contemporary American Drama.” In this assignment, I will firstly give a clear definition of drama producing the historical background of contemporary American Drama briefly. Then I am going to introduce the genres we have covered with the characteristics of each such as absurdist, realist and feminist drama. After introducing the genres, I will give a brief analysis of the plays and the playwrights we have studied in class. Finally, I will make a few objective points about my personal performance, the instructor’s performance and the contribution of the course to my academic career. Drama is a literary work generally performed by actors in a kind of stage which involves conflicts and action crisis in it with a plot, characters and dialogues. Setting, costuming, props, blocking, movement, gestures, pacing, intonation are main elements of the spectacle. The distinct period in all arts with drama begins in 1960s. Until 1950s, the words American Drama and Broadway have almost same meanings. In the very beginning times of American Drama, plays were not originals; they were wholly borrowed from London. But after 50s, American Drama changed radically. Actors, directors, and others from Broadway came to America, because now they did not have any job there. After they came, they established their own Off-Broadway companies here. The most popular and affection dramatists of time in America were Eugene O’Neill...
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...Introduction: The Seventh Sense While completing the exercises in this book, keep in mind these differences between American English and British English: 1. Parentheses are called brackets. 2. Periods are called full stops. 3. Exclamation points are called exclamation marks. 4. 7:30 is written 7.30. 5. Americans place all terminal punctuation inside closing quotation marks, while British usage sometimes “picks and chooses.” Exercises Guaranteed to Bring Out Your Inner Stickler 1) Take a walk or drive through your village, town, or city and write down signs or advertisements that are egregiously punctuated. Look particularly for those “pesky apostrophes” and “delightful/horrific examples of idiotic sign-writing.” (Should you become obsessed with these outings, we suggest you wear a disguise and whip out your notebook when no one is looking. You do not want to be recognized as one of Lynne Truss’s sticklers on the prowl!) 2) When you have found a sign with a punctuation error, write a courteous letter explaining the correct use of the apostrophe and “express the gentle wish that, should the offending ‘Bob,s Pets’ sign, for example, be replaced, this well meant guidance might be borne in mind.” These letters won’t be necessary, after the A.P.S. (Apostrophe Protection Society) has created a more militant wing. 3) Look through your local newspaper and find errors such as, “DEAD SONS PHOTOS MAY BE RELEASED.” 4) Look on Amazon for a film/book review and, keeping...
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...Question: 1 Abstract This paper examines the polemical issues in the application of literary theories to the field of literature and literary criticism. Out of the several modern approaches to literary criticism as employed by the critics, four literary theories are strategically chosen for analysis in this paper; Formalism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism/Deconstruction and Marxism. This work is objectively carried out by consulting articles, journals and books written on the literary theories. The opportunity of information technology via the internet is also utilized. It is established in the course of writing this paper that literary theories are indispensable tools for literature to achieve its goal of sensitizing its audience towards literary awareness. The application of literary theories to literature, that enhance better and detail insight into text or literary works, would continue to be relevant and make literature more enjoyable and meaningful to its readers and users. Further research and enquiry into the relationship between the two (literature and literary theory) is open and should further be exploited. Keywords: literary theory, literary criticism, Marxism, Formalism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism Introduction Literary criticism is the study, evaluation and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals. Though the two activities are closely...
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...Дневник читателя READER’S JOURNAL Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Joseph Heller. Catch-22 (1961). Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire (1959). Iris Murdoch. The Black Prince (1973). Jerome David Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient (1992). Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). Edward Albee. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1949). ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea (1952). ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- FULL TITLE · The Old Man and the Sea ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR · Ernest Hemingway ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- TYPE OF WORK · Novella ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- GENRE · Parable; tragedy ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- LANGUAGE · English ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · 1951, Cuba ------------------------------------------------- ...
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...This document is attributed to Jack Lule and Flat World Knowledge 8.2 Movies and Culture LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. 2. Recognize how movies reflect cultural attitudes, trends, and events. Indicate how movies influence culture. Movies Mirror Culture The relationship between movies and culture involves a complicated dynamic; while American movies certainly influence the mass culture that consumes them, they are also an integral part of that culture, a product of it, and therefore a reflection of prevailing concerns, attitudes, and beliefs. In considering the relationship between film and culture, it is important to keep in mind that, while certain ideologies may be prevalent in a given era, not only is American culture as diverse as the populations that form it, but it is also constantly changing from one period to the next. Mainstream films produced in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, for example, reflected the conservatism that dominated the sociopolitical arenas of the time. However, by the 1960s, a reactionary youth culture began to emerge in opposition to the dominant institutions, and these antiestablishment views soon found their way onto screen—a far cry from the attitudes most commonly represented only a few years earlier. In one sense, movies could be characterized as America’s storytellers. Not only do Hollywood films reflect certain commonly held attitudes and beliefs about what it means to be American, but they also portray contemporary trends, issues, and...
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...“Behind the Fair Façade” Representations of Femininity in Three Walt Disney Animated Features Bachelor Thesis Bethany Schouten, 3278972 Media en Cultuurwetenschappen Genderstudies Supervisor: Domitilla Olivieri May 31st, 2011 “Behind the Fair Façade” Representations of Femininity in Three Walt Disney Animated Features Bachelor thesis by Bethany Schouten, 3278972 Index Introduction 3 Methodological and theoretical Framework 4 Corpus 9 The Research: SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS 11 The Research: THE LITTLE MERMAID 18 The Research: THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG 24 Findings and Interpretation 31 Identity Formation 35 Conclusion 38 Literature 41 Media 43 Introduction The Walt Disney Company’s cultural products have been a great influence on popular culture since the 1930s and an inspiration for generations all over the world ever since. For many, including myself, the Princes, Princesses and fantastical creatures of Disney’s animated fairy tales have become symbols of their youth. Seeing the films gives rise to a feeling of nostalgia, they become a memento of one’s childhood world. But what kind of world is this? What kind of realities do Disney’s fantastical representations construct? In my thesis, I will analyze a specific element of Disney films: gender roles constructed through the representation of femininity in their animated...
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...THE RULES OF THE GAME: NOUVELLE EDITION FRANCAISE/THE KOBAL COLLECTION DEEP FOCUS CANON FODDER As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks? BY PAU L SC H RA D E R Top guns (and dogs): the #1 The Rules of the Game September-October 2006 FILM COMMENT 33 Sunrise PREFACE THE BOOK I DIDN’T WRITE I n march 2003 i was having dinner in london with Faber and Faber’s editor of film books, Walter Donohue, and several others when the conversation turned to the current state of film criticism and lack of knowledge of film history in general. I remarked on a former assistant who, when told to look up Montgomery Clift, returned some minutes later asking, “Where is that?” I replied that I thought it was in the Hollywood Hills, and he returned to his search engine. Yes, we agreed, there are too many films, too much history, for today’s student to master. “Someone should write a film version of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon,” a writer from The Independent suggested, and “the person who should write it,” he said, looking at me, “is you.” I looked to Walter, who replied, “If you write it, I’ll publish it.” And the die was cast. Faber offered a contract, and I set to work. Following the Bloom model I decided it should be an elitist canon, not populist, raising the bar so high that only a handful of films would pass over. I proceeded to compile a list of essential films, attempting, as best I could, to...
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