Asian Literature

1. Asian Literature • Project Overview

2. Choose your favorite Asian Literature Author

3. Something to Think About: • You will want to choose an author your are passionate about because you will be working on this for several days • The best presentations you will ever give will be on topics that you like • Focus on one particular piece of writing

4. In Your Presentation You Need: • Information about the Asian author • Map of the Asian author’s country • Historical context of the Asian author’s country • Modern context of Asian author’s country • A sample from the Asian author’s text • The Asian authors writing style • The American author’s information • A comparable work of American literature from an American author • The American authors writing style

5. Example • Information about the Asian author History Laozi is traditionally regarded as the author of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), though the identity of its author(s) and/or compiler(s) has been debated throughout history.[2][3] The earliest reliable reference (circa 100 BCE) to Laozi is found in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) by Chinese historian Sima Qian(ca. 145–86 BCE), which combines a number of stories. In the first, Laozi was said to be a contemporary of Confucius (551–479 BCE). His surname was Li (李 "plum"), and his personal name was Er (耳 "ear") or Dan (聃 "long ear"). He was an official in the imperial archives, and wrote a book in two parts before departing to the West. In the second, Laozi was Lao Laizi (老來子 "Old Master"), also a contemporary of Confucius, who wrote a book in 15 parts. In the third, Laozi was the Grand Historian and astrologer Lao Dan (老聃 "Old Long-ears"), who lived during the reign (384–362 BCE) of Duke Xian (獻公) of Qin).[4][5] Popular legends say that he was conceived when his mother gazed upon a falling star, stayed in the womb for 62 years, and was born when his mother leaned against a plum tree. He accordingly emerged a grown man with a full grey beard and long earlobes, which are a symbol of wisdom and long life.[6][7] In other versions he was reborn in some thirteen incarnations since the days of Fuxi; in his last incarnation as Laozi he lived to nine hundred and ninety years, and traveled to India to reveal the Dao.[8] igious figures, arguing that not enough would be known for years, or possibly ever, to make a firm judgment.[15]

6. Example • Map of the Asian author’s country

7. Example • Historical context of the Asian author’s country • China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/) is seen variously as an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia, a nation and/or a multinationalentity. • With nearly 4,000 years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest civilizations.[1][2][3] Prior to the 19th century, it possessed an advanced economy; but successive dynasties missed theIndustrial Revolution that occurred in Europe and China began to decline.[4][5] In the 19th and 20th century, European and Japanese imperialism, internal weakness and civil war damaged the country and its economy, and led to the overthrow of imperial rule. In 1949, after major combat in the Chinese Civil War had ended,two states calling themselves "China" emerged: • The People's Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949, commonly known as China, has control over mainland Chinaand the largely self-governing territories of Hong Kong (since 1997) and Macau (since 1999). • The Republic of China (ROC) established in 1912 in mainland China, now commonly known as Taiwan, has control over the islands ofTaiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, the Pratas island group, and a few other outlying islands.

8. Example • Modern context of Asian author’s country In the 1950s, change to economic policies in Taiwan transformed the island into a technology-oriented industrialized developed economy after a period of high growth rates and rapid industrialization. Meanwhile, mainland China, under Mao's rule, remained underdeveloped and striken with famines, natural disasters and disastrous CPC-led political campaigns that caused millions of deaths. In the 1970s, reforms led by Deng Xiaoping, known as the Four Modernizations, improved agriculture, industry, technology and defense, raising living standards and making the PRC one of thegreat powers.[6][7][8] By 2011 challenges included the growing divide between rich and poor and environmental degradation.

9. Example • A sample from the Asian author’s text

10. Example: The Asian authors writing style Philosophy Writing Style • The primary focus of a philosophy paper is the argument. An argument in philosophy is not merely a disagreement between people. An argument is a set of premises or reasons that are presented as support or grounds for believing a conclusion. If a claim is true, then there must be some good reasons for believing it. The goal of a good argument is to present and defend true conclusions. Philosophy is devoted to uncovering and clarifying the reasons that support conclusions and separating them from the claims that allegedly support the conclusion but fail. In philosophy papers we present, explain, and critically evaluate arguments.

11. Example: The American author’s information • William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on his own native Lafayette County.[1] • Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.[2] Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. • In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were 1930's As I Lay Dying and Light in August (1932).

12. Example: A comparable work of American literature from an American author • "'You're not a poor baby. Are you. Are you. You've got your Caddy. Haven't you got your Caddy.'" • "We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers."- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, April Seventh, 1928 • "You got him started on purpose, because you know I'm sick."- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, April Seventh, 1928 • "Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep."- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, April Seventh, 1928 • "I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, June Second, 1910

13. Example: Stream of Conscious Writing • In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. • Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, which is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device. The term was introduced to the field of literary studies from that of psychology, where it was coined by philosopher and psychologist William James. • Stream of consciousness, the continuous flow of sense‐perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind; or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue. The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be distinguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject‐matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it; thus Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) is about the stream of consciousness, especially the connection between sense‐impressions and memory, but it does not actually use interior monologue. In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousness is a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts ‘directly’, without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream‐of‐consciousness technique also does one or both of these things. An important device of modernist fiction and its later imitators, the technique was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage (1915–35) and by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928). For a fuller account, consult Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel (1968). [1]