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Module B: Critical Study of Text. Memoir and Culture as Representations of identity. Core Text. Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer, Puffin Melbourne, 2005. BOS Context. Module B: Critical Study of Texts
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Module B: Critical Study of Text Memoir and Culture as Representations of identity
Core Text Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer, Puffin Melbourne, 2005
BOS Context • Module B: Critical Study of Texts • This module requires students to explore and evaluate a specific text and its reception in a range of contexts. It develops students’ understanding of questions of textual integrity. Students explore the ideas expressed in the text through analysing its construction, content and language. They examine how particular features of the text contribute to textual integrity. They research others’ perspectives of the text and test these against their own understanding and interpretations of the text. Students discuss and evaluate the ways in which the set work has been read, received and valued in historical and other contexts. They extrapolate from this study of a particular text to explore questions of textual integrity and significance.Students develop a range of imaginative, interpretive and analytical compositions that relate to the study of their specific text. These compositions may be realised in a variety of forms and media. • Module B: Critical Study of Texts • This module requires students to engage with and develop an informed personal understanding of their prescribed text. Through critical analysis and evaluation of its language, content and construction, students will develop an appreciation of the textual integrity of their prescribed text. They refine their own understanding and interpretations of the prescribed text and critically consider these in the light of the perspectives of others. Students explore how context influences their own and others’ responses to the text and how the text has been received and valued. (Reread English Stage 6 Syllabus, p 52.)
Definitions • Representation: the ways in which ideas are portrayed through texts • Textual integrity: The definition of textual integrity in the Stage 6 English Syllabus is: • "the unity of a text; its coherent use of form and language to produce an integrated whole in terms of meaning and value" (page 143
Memoir or Autobiography • Memoir comes from the Latin word "memoria" meaning memory. • A biography or autobiography is a person’s life…a memoir is a “slice” of life.
Structural Elements of Memoir E L E M E N T S • Focus on a brief period of time or series of related events • Narrative structure (storytelling elements like setting, plot, imagery, characterisation foreshadowing/flashback, and irony and symbolism • Retrospective • Fictional quality • Higher emotional level/more personal reconstruction of the events and their impact
Elements of memoir (cont) • Explores an event or series of related events that remain lodged in memory • Describes the events and then shows, either directly or indirectly why they are significant • WHY do you STILL remember them? ( we will study the concept of memory and how we store memories) • Focused in time (not long – particularly significant in terms of science and then the veracity of memory in memoir) • Focuses on problem/conflict and its resolution and why the resolution is significant in your life
Expectations and Assumptions • The audience makes the assumption that something more visceral is or should be happening when someone sits down to write her own memories of events. • We expect an embodied relationship between memory and the person remembering; the story is already imprinted indelibly, even before it is voiced or linked, in the synapses of the teller, waiting for the appropriate moment to be made visible to another.
Definitions from previous slide • Visceral: characterised by intuition or instinct rather than intellect • Synapse: a region where nerve impulses are transmitted and received, encompassing the axon terminal of a neuron that releases neurotransmitters in response to an impulse, an extremely small gap across which the neurotransmitters travel, and the adjacent membrane of an axon, dendrite, or muscle or gland cell with the appropriate receptor molecules for picking up the neurotransmitters
Definitions you will need • Universalism: Universal characteristics – applies to all • Humanistic: Concern for human affairs, characteristics, values, dignity etc • Chronicling: A chronological record of events; To record or chronicle events • Propagandistic: Pertaining to propaganda or propagandists
Definitions (cont) • Partisanship: Devotes to one party or faction or ideology characterised by emotional or biased allegiance • Supernatural history: Complex phenomena in history that cannot be explained by natural or human events or recall – above nature- not necessarily occult etc, just the history that cannot be explained within the constraints of time, science etc
Definitions (cont) • Secular: of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal: secular interests. • Naturalistic: imitating nature or the usual natural surroundings; pertaining to naturalism, especially in literature and art. • Philology: the study of literary texts and of written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning; (especially in older use) linguistics, especially historical and comparative linguistics; the love of learning and literature.
Definitions (cont) • Epistemology: a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. • Fallacy: a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc: That theworld is flat was at one time a popular fallacy; a misleading or unsound argument; deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness.
Definitions (cont) • Presentism: theories that suggest the biblical acts leading to the apocalypse are in the course of being fulfilled - that all history is leading to the apocalypse and end of the world and thus has been predetermined – fate and destiny • Dogma: a specific doctrine or theoretical or ideological approach
Definitions (cont) • Cliometricians: the study of historical data by the use of statistical, often computerized, techniques. • Myopic: Shortsighted- one view, limited view of history
Definitions (cont) • Deconstruction: a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s. Applied to the study of literature and history, the theory questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality. Further, the theory emphasises that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words; therefore, a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.
Definitions (cont) • Structuralism: Compare functionalism as an approach to anthropology and other social sciences and to literature that interprets and analyses its material in terms of oppositions, contrasts, and hierarchical structures, especially as they might reflect universal mental characteristics or organizing principles • An approach to linguistics that analyses and describes the structure of language, as distinguished from its comparative and historical aspects • Post structuralism: a variation of structuralism, often seen as a critique, emphasizing plurality of meaning and instability of concepts that structuralism uses to define society, language, etc.
Definitions (cont) • Modernism: as a movement in the arts, 1929, from modern. The word dates to 1737 in the sense of "deviation from the ancient and classical manner" [Johnson, who calls it "a word invented by Swift"]. It has been used in theology since 1901.
Definitions (cont) • Post modernism: any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism, especially a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often playful illusion, decoration, and complexity.
Definitions (cont) • Feminism: The doctrine — and the political movement based on it — that women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men. Has anthropological, sociological and historical theories underpinning the rise and perpetuation of the theory.
Introductory Questions • History: record of the past – facts – why is this idea limited or problematic? • Memory: perceptions of events, emotions, reactions – why are these important?
Introductory Questions • Who records history? – Male? Female? – Cultural expectations and roles about who records and perpetuates or owns history – look at the range of histories or biographies and who writes them; extremely gendered representation until the 20th century. • Whose perspective of history is presented in the text? • Whose perspective of history is silenced? • What historical facts are presented? • How can the facts be verified? • How would we normally assess or evaluate the evidence?
Introductory Questions (cont) • What limitations are evident in the recorded history? • What is the purpose of perpetuating or manipulating history? • Can we ever negate history? • Why do we revise or create revisionist histories?
Introductory Questions (cont) • Who records memory? • What differentiates memory from history? • Is all history memory? • What is collective memory? • What is national memory? • How does national memory differ from personal memory? • Does every individual have the same memory of history or an historical event?
Introductory Questions (cont) • What histories are examined- Chinese ancient; Chinese 19th and early 20th century; Chinese mythology and its influence on history and national memory? Chinese American immigration; defection; Communism; Cold War politics; Cultural Revolution • How effectively does Li Cunxin use his structure to emphasise the significance of history on his own and others’ memories?
Introductory Questions (cont) • Why do we reflect upon our memories? • Why do we record our memories? • How do memories contribute to identity – Family? Personal? Gender? Social? Political? • Why is memory unreliable? • Why is history unreliable? • Can we have biased memory in the same way that we can have biased history?
