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"Were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world." - Moby-Dick (Chase - The Third Day)
Prof. Michael R. Broek
About Michael
- Michael Broek
- is an Assistant Professor of English at Brookdale Community College. He is currently completing his Ph.D in American Literature at the University of Essex (UK). His thesis/dissertation concerns issues of aesthetics, nationalism, and the works of Hawthorne and Melville. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Goddard College, and his work has been published in journals such as The Cimarron Review, The Sycamore Review, The Clackamas Review, Sundog, Slipstream, 42opus, The Paterson Literary Review, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere in print and online. He is the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts.
Schedule: World Literature II
World Literature II
Schedule
Week I- Introduction/Literary History Tour (Enlightenment Rationalism, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism)
Week 2: A New Way of Thinking - Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum; Leibniz: From Theodicy; and Voltaire: Candide, Part 1
Week 3: Satire and the Limits of Rationalism - Franklin: "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly"; Jefferson: "Notes on the State of Virgina"; Sift: "A Modest Proposal"; Voltaire: Candide, Part 2
Week 4: Art's Resistance to Nationalism - Marx's Communist Manifesto, Chap. 1, Dostoevsky: “The Grand Inquisitor” (541-556); Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things,"; Taha Muhammad Ali: "Revenge"; Martin Espada: "Alabanza"; Adrienne Rich: "Diving Into the Wreck"; Chika Sagawa: "Backside"
Week 5: I'd Prefer Not To - Melville: "Bartleby the Scrivener";
Week 6: People Don't Do Such Things - Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People; Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus";
Week 7: Slipping On Bananas - Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape; Camus' "The Guest"; William Butler Years: "Leda and the Swan"; Lucille Clifton: "Leda (1, 2, 3); W.H. Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"; William Carlos Williams: "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus"; Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons;
Week 8: Jorge Luis Borge - "The Garden of Forking Paths"; Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Week 9: Naguib Mahfouz -
Week 10: Jose Saramago -
Week 11: Wole Soyinka -
Week 12: James Joyce -
Week 13: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
Week 14: Franz Kafka
Schedule
Week I- Introduction/Literary History Tour (Enlightenment Rationalism, Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism)
Week 2: A New Way of Thinking - Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum; Leibniz: From Theodicy; and Voltaire: Candide, Part 1
Week 3: Satire and the Limits of Rationalism - Franklin: "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly"; Jefferson: "Notes on the State of Virgina"; Sift: "A Modest Proposal"; Voltaire: Candide, Part 2
Week 4: Art's Resistance to Nationalism - Marx's Communist Manifesto, Chap. 1, Dostoevsky: “The Grand Inquisitor” (541-556); Neruda, "I'm Explaining a Few Things,"; Taha Muhammad Ali: "Revenge"; Martin Espada: "Alabanza"; Adrienne Rich: "Diving Into the Wreck"; Chika Sagawa: "Backside"
Week 5: I'd Prefer Not To - Melville: "Bartleby the Scrivener";
Week 6: People Don't Do Such Things - Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People; Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus";
Week 7: Slipping On Bananas - Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape; Camus' "The Guest"; William Butler Years: "Leda and the Swan"; Lucille Clifton: "Leda (1, 2, 3); W.H. Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts"; William Carlos Williams: "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus"; Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons;
Week 8: Jorge Luis Borge - "The Garden of Forking Paths"; Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Week 9: Naguib Mahfouz -
Week 10: Jose Saramago -
Week 11: Wole Soyinka -
Week 12: James Joyce -
Week 13: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
Week 14: Franz Kafka
7 comments:
My computer is still broken, but I've been checking the blog every chance I get (unfourtunatley it's a pain in the butt for me to get computer acess. Right now i'm at the library..a computer is FINALLY available for my use, and there is a grossly sticky film covering the keys and a child is screaming in my ear next to me. God help me...)
ANYWAYYYYYYYYYY.......
According to wikipedia, absurdism is humanity's failed efforts to find meaning in a meaningless universe. Why are these philosopher's such pessimists? Or, more frightening to me is: why do I often see their point? Ahh.
Okay, moving on..
Our schoolmaster friend Daru pretty much has an Arab prisoner dumped into his lap against his will, and is told he has to bring him to face his prison sentence. Poor Daru. He had nothing to do with this, why doesn't that lazy Balducci guy just finish out his task? I mean, he got this far with the prisoner...Hey Balducci, finish out your freakin' job and leave poor Daru, who seems perfectly okay among his chickens and rather lonely sounding school house (hey, to each their own), alone! Daru's choice is he could simply let this man go free, or shackle him back up and lug him off to face the judge. The absurdity is how the prisoner gives up his many opportunities to make a run for it, and even when Daru pretty much grants him freedom, still turns himself in...at least that is what I could only assume happened because of the notes he found on his chalkboard. Now what's the sense in that? He tried to do a kind thing, and instead it all blows up in his face. Daru, I feel your pain, brother.
What piece have you liked or responded to the first?
according to that definition i believe it is absurd to think that Daru needs to make this decision. It isn't his to make. He was told to complete a task and his only choice should have been to say yes or no, and if the answer was yes, then there should be no moral dilemma here. He wasn't the one who was appointed to make such decisions and therefore does not reap any of the consequences. Especially if his prisoner feels that he needs to go to jail (which is what it seems like to me) even after he had chances to escape. I mean i can understand where Daru is coming from here with his thoughts but just keep it out of your mind and you'll be fine, you don't need to over analyze everything you know some things are just what they are Daru!
Interesting comments. Freedom is an interesting problem for the absurd "man." What does it mean to be "free"? Does it mean doing whatever the hell you want? Do we really want that kind of freedom? Can we have freedom without responsibility? Daru has isolated himself away from the problems of the world, but the world comes looking for him anyway, and he's given a choice. Can he just do what he is told and damn the consequences? I think the final note on the chalkboard suggests that the "Arab's" friends are going to kill Daru because they ASSUME that he has turned in their friend. So you see, Daru was damned no matter what he did. I don't know about you, but that's I often feel about my life.
Heres what i got from Dictionary.com for Absurdism-
the philosophical and literary doctrine that human beings live in essential isolation in a meaningless and irrational world...
Daru is faced with bringing a Arab to another check point for killing his cousin. Daru is a schoolmaster and finds himself above this petty chore. He sees all this bloodshed as pointless and further aiding the human cliche. He decides to give the Arab some goods and gives him a choice go to the station or head towards the nomads whom will take care of him. When Daru returns home he finds a nice little message "You handed over our brother, you will pay for this." Daru let the Arab free, but the Arabs fellows will never hear this, they want blood, Daru is alone, he sees the world differently and will pay for it...
Daru's position is beyond absurd. He is thrown into a unfair situation that has nothing to do with him whatsoever. To have someone else's fate in your hands is hard enough, i couldnt imagine what it would be like to have to make that tough of a decision, and have what i choose only bite me in the ass in the end. For someone who is just a medium i think he did the write thing, he gave the prisoner the choice...he could have ran away. If only the people who left the lovely message on his chalkboard new that.
I don't think the freedom to do whatever the hell we want would be in anyone's favor. At first it would seem great, but evetually society would fall into a state of anarchy. there is a reason for law and a reason that we can't just drop prisoners off at a friend's doorstep.
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