The Purpose of this blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the class can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasnt here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?


Wednesday 20 July 2011

Fairy Tales

The main purpose of our last lesson of the year was to re-imagine a fairy tale in a carter fashion.

The lesson kicked off with the class discussing intertextual motifs in "The Bloody Chamber" and their meanings.

We came up with:

Mirror = society’s opinions. How we see ourselves through society’s eyes.

Moon = reason / truth / Aufklarung.

Blood = maturity / sexuality

Virginity = innocence.

Roses = Sexual feelings / danger

Snow = Purity

Chinese Boxes = different layers / ambiguity

Transformations = people not immutable characters.

Animals = men’s sexual Grrr. Or lovely soft feminine softiness (Lamby).

Houses = Patriarchal status quo.


We then discussed our homework from last lesson which was centered around the question:


Could Carter's use of the present tense, then, be related to the distinction between the human and the animal?

This question was answered by most of the class on the last blog post. The answers seemed to be in line with what Christopher Williams commented: "In the case of Wolf-Alice herself, this question can relate to her quite significantly. As the past tense is occuring, she is mostly classified as an animal; due to her being brought up by the wolves. However, as the present tense takes place, she learns the ways of human living and begans to understand what is the norm throughout society in order to gain attraction towards herself"

After this the class considered what Fred Botting Said about carter: "In her late twentieth-century fiction, Carter powerfully and often critically demonstrates the reversal of values and identifications that occur via the Gothic genre. Otherness takes centre stage: sexual transgression, dark desire, and fantastic deviance wonderfully subvert the restrictive orders of reason, utility and paternal morality… In Gothic times margins may become the norm and occupy a more central cultural place."

The final task of the lesson was to reproduce a fairy tale using Carter's style. We done this in groups of 3/4 and had a chance to either write the story out or to perform as a play. The group was thoroughly entertained by all performances as they all involved a degree of creativity. This task also consolidated what we had learnt throughout the last few months about the Gothic genre and Angela Carter.

Homework for the summer holidays can be found in the previous blog by Chris C

Thanks for reading, enjoy your holidays & take care.

'Sonny.

1 comment:

  1. For those of you who have lost your sheets:

    1. Read 'Wuthering Heights'. Write a chapter summary for each chapter.
    2. Use the audio version to help you as you are reading.
    3 Re-read each of the stories from the 'bloody chamber'. For each story create a revision podcast that covers:

    A. Analysis of Key images and Motifs
    B. Discussion of how Carter uses the fairy tale conventions
    C. Discussions of how Carter uses the Gothic Conventions
    D. Critical discussions of Carter's work - read aricles from Emagazine to help you with this
    E. Make podcasts covering each theme we have discussed in lessons. These might include Gender roles, moral pornography, transformation, settings, sexuality, narrative, fairy tale clichés etc.

    Email audio recordings to a.sadgrove@londonacademy.org.uk

    Emagazine site
    englishandmedia.co.uk/emag

    Write essay
    show how 3 stries in the 'Bloody Chamber' comment on patriarchal oppression
    societies readiness to identify women as "victims" of such oppression use term moral pornography

    ReplyDelete