ENGL 1302

Mead Reading missing third page

2012-02-10T12:47:00.001-06:00

http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/st_invention.html You may read it here.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jdegolia/Interpretation%20and%20Argument/Suggested%20Readings/Mead.pdf pdf

How to Prepare/First Major Paper/Schedule

2012-02-06T14:27:00.001-06:00

In this course, we will spend more time on prepping for papers than on the papers themselves. You will learn to do effective research on your topics and to synthesize and analyze large amounts of information.

Use of google and wikipedia as well as the databases will be critical. Not only are you supposed to keep track of the plot, characters and theme of the various media we will explore, you will learn to do research on the historical event that the story, film, or essay is covering.

You will look for similarities in theme and tone in the various items you read or watch.

Some of this research will occur in class. Some of it you will be responsible for. Please create MLA work citations for each site you look at.

Your first large paper assignment is a 4 page research paper over one of the following:

Crimean War--Battle of Balaclava and "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Gallipoli Campaign WW1 and the film Gallipoli
Absurdism as portrayed in Catch-22
Korean War and MASH as commentary on how war is waged

The research will be done in teams (pick your team this week); at least four sources that are not wikipedia will be used. Teams will decide on the topic, the thesis statement, the support and the sources to be used in the paper. Then each individual will write his or her own paper, to be then gone over by the team, with the team synthesizing the papers into a final draft to be turned in to the instructor for a group grade. Individual rough drafts will receive a large paper grade, as will the group paper.

You should begin the background research this week. Team mates and topic is due by Thursday/Friday Feb 16/17.

Initial sources (each student brings two) by 23/24th to go over in class. Works cited page for the two sources created and handed in to the instructor.

Mar 1/2: All research gathered will have been read, discussed, processed and sources chosen by this date. One works cited handed in to the instructor. Thesis and supports agreed upon and submitted.

Mar 8/9 Rough drafts brought in to class and final draft written, with both papers turned in.

Week 3 Feb 7/9 and 10th: Watch Gallipoli, compare to the "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Be prepared for quizzes and discussion.

Week 4 Feb 14/16 and 17th Catch-22.

Week 5 Feb 21/23 and 24th MASH.

Week 6 Feb 28/Mar 1 and 2nd: Work on major paper. Review plagiarism and MLA.

Week 7 Mar 6/8 and 9th: Finish and submit individual rough drafts and finished group paper.

Week 8 (after spring break): Begin reading and discussing novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Charge of the Light Brigade/Gallipoli

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http://www.britishbattles.com/crimean-war/balaclava.htm

http://history1800s.about.com/od/europeanwars/a/crimeanwar01.htm

http://www.dowlingfamily.info/i1854cri.htm

http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/galipoli.html

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/greatwar/pdf/g4cs2all.pdf

http://www.dva.gov.au/commems_oawg/commemorations/education/Documents/Gallipoli_Anzacs_Unit6.pdf HAS NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS--You should read!

Sources in database:
Markley, Arnold. "An overview of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”." Poetry for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.

In November Tennyson read of the disastrous charge in the newspaper; he composed the poem on December 2, 1854. Tennyson determined the metrical plan of the poem from the line “Some one had blundered,” which was inspired by an editorial he had read that referred to the incident as “some hideous blunder.” First published in the Examiner on December 9, 1854, the poem underwent heavy alterations in subsequent printings, including, in some versions, the poet's removal of the line “Some one had blundered,” at the advice of friends. Evidently, Tennyson later regretted this alteration and reinstated the line, feeling perhaps that the real cause of the disaster should be admitted and stated explicitly; the charge was, after all, someone's blunder. The many alterations to “The Charge of the Light Brigade” over the years suggest that Tennyson never seemed to be completely pleased with the poem, and indeed he never came to consider it among his finest works.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" was an inspiration for British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, however, and in August of 1855, Tennyson had 1,000 copies printed for them. In the soldiers' version of the poem, Tennyson took care to reinsert the line, "Some one had blundered." The aspect of the poem that the Victorians found most moving was its glorification of the noble soldiers who followed the orders that they were given, despite the fact that they knew full well that charging toward the Russian cavalry in the valley would be a disastrous and likely fatal move. The poem captures this noble sense of duty to one's superiors and honor in battle: "Their's not to make reply, / Their's not to reason why, / Their's but to do and die!"

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” was popular among the Victorians and has remained a popular war poem. Nevertheless, like the poet himself, critics have never considered the poem to be one of Tennyson's greatest works. The main criticism of the poem from an artistic point of view has tended to involve its heavy— almost forced—meter and rhythm and its frequent use of repetition, which critics view as detractions from the overall success of the poem. Nevertheless the poet should be credited with his effective use of sound and imagery in the poem. In 1890, just two years before Tennyson's death, Thomas Edison sent a representative to England with his new recording device to capture the poet's voice as he read his own work. The manner in which Tennyson reads “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is a wonderful reminder of the richness of the sounds in this poem. As Tennyson reads them, the opening lines, “Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward,” sound like the galloping of the cavalry horses in thecharge, and Tennyson's explosive pronunciation of the first syllable of the word “cannon” in the three lines at the beginning of stanza 3 echoes the explosion of cannonfire that surrounded the soldiers.
In addition to the realistic battle sounds re-created in “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the poem's imagery captures the visual aspects of the battle, particularly in stanza 4 with the flashing of the soldiers' sabres and their plunging into the smoke from all the exploding artillery. Here the Russians are described as turning back from the fierce onslaught of the Light Brigade, but “Not the six hundred.” Their return from the battle is postponed until stanza 5, after the Russians had fled; only then do Tennyson's noble but tattered remnants of the British Light Brigade stumble back out of the “jaws of Death” and the “mouth of Hell.” Stanza 6 provides a final tribute to these brave heroes as the poet asks, “When can their glory fade?” and calls upon the reader to “Honour the charge they made!” Whether or not the critic finds the heavy metrical pattern or the frequent repetition in this poem to be worthy of a great work of art, most readers would agree that Tennyson's use of these poetic elements, and his mastery of word, sound, and image, make “The Charge of the Light Brigade” a moving and beautiful tribute to a disastrous historic event.

Markovits, Stefanie. "Giving voice to the Crimean War: Tennyson's 'charge' and Maud's battle-song." Victorian Poetry 47.3 (2009): 481+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.

Yet if all war represents a kind of suicide, the charge epitomized the connection. Recall how The Times's leader described it as "splendid self-sacrifice"; the paper's correspondent William Howard Russell wrote somewhat more critically of men "rushing to the arms of death." (38) Tennyson acknowledges the suicidal impulse in the almost casual exchange of one conjunction for another in his ballad:
   Their's not to reason why,
   Their's but to do and die:
   Into the valley of Death
      Rode the six hundred. (ll. 14-17)
"Do and die," not do "or" die. Shannon and Ricks call this line "one of Tennyson's greatest evocations of duty"--the "unuttered" thought that (like Maud's unvoiced ballad) is the soul of the poem (p. 30). Surely, though, to "do or die" should be enough. The more common version of the phrase appears in Tennyson's friend Franklin Lushington's poem describing the heroic efforts of the soldiers at the earlier Battle of the Alma: "Fifty thousand men rise up to do or die." (39) But the substitution of conjunctions marks the difference between bravery and suicide, between "ordinary" battles, such as the Alma and the extraordinary charge at Balaklava, between what people had thought the Crimean War would represent and what it came to represent. And thus when Emily inadvertently replaced the "and" with an "or" in one version of the manuscript, Tennyson immediately corrected the mistake (Shannon and Ricks, p. 44n50).
In Tennyson's version of the phrase, the soldier faces not a choice or chance between heroic action and martyrdom but an inevitable conflation of the two. An act that simultaneously expresses the desire to forgo action altogether, the suicidal deed can only very rarely (and with difficulty) be described as epic. Yet the charge of the Light Brigade presents just such a rare occasion, when suicide and what Matthew Arnold had recently called "great human action" coincide. (40) Christopher Ricks sees Tennyson as envious of the "assured simplicity" of the soldiers' response in "The Charge" largely because of the personal attraction to him of the idea of honorable suicide. (41) In a sense, then, this war, with its nationally registered miseries and confusions, allowed Tennyson a way to express publicly his most private desires and terrors by translating them into broadly acceptable patriotic terms. But if nothing else, Maud's thorough exploration of the similarity between dishonorable and honorable suicide demonstrates how keenly alive Tennyson was to the ambiguities presented by even so apparently clear-cut an example of heroism as the charge.
Still the charge--a failure by any normal military standards-came to represent a new, ambiguous (and peculiarly British) form of success. Russell, in his report in The Times on November 14, claims of the cavalry that "demigods could not have done what we had failed to do" (p. 7). While on the one hand, he intends merely a defense of their failure to take the guns, his words also contain the suggestion that the failed action of the Brigade was more glorious than the successful actions of "demi-gods" would have been.

Haltof, Mark. "Gallipoli, mateship, and the construction of Australian national identity." Journal of Popular Film and Television 21.1 (1993): 27+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.

As opposed to Weir's earlier films, Gallipoli is based on authentic historical events, the participation of Anzac (Australian and New Zealand) troops in the 1915 Dardanelles campaign. "The wireless tells and the cable tells, how our boys behaved by the Dardanelles," Henry Lawson begins his "Song of the Dardanelles" (Lawson 155). Nevertheless, the film is not simply an attempt to reconstruct those events but deals with Weir's favorite theme--that of individuals facing strange events in a hostile environment. This metaphysical cast of theme gives way to a psycho-sociological approach that finds reflection in Weir's choice of thematic opposition. The cosmic oppositions from Weir's earlier films, dream versus reality (The Last Wave); nature versus culture (Picnic at Hanging Rock), are replaced by a more concrete dichotomy in Gallipoli: Australia versus Britain.
The purpose of this endeavor is to define the notion of "the Australian nation" by going back to, and examining such local stereotypes and mythology as good Australians-bad foreigners, the myth of innocent Australia, the attributes of Australianness versus Britishness. Employing visual stereotypes, Weir does not want to deconstruct but rather to reinforce the mythic elements constituting the Australian national identity. Such a cinematic purpose was strongly advocated by Phillip Adams:
We got into this industry for one reason: to give ourselves a national voice, to give ourselves a sense of national purpose and a national identity, and to throw it that way would be a disaster and a fiasco. ("Two Views" 71)
Of course, Weir's film is not the first artifact to play upon the modern Australian self-image. Gallipoli is deeply rooted in the local mythology of Australia as well as in the national literacy and painting tradition. And as such, Weir's film may be seen both to derive from, and continue on in the discussions on national identity as well as nationalist feeling, which emerged distinctively for the first time by the end of the nineteenth century. The changing attitude toward the Australian landscape, the romanticization of the bush and the bushman, and the emergence of local artists, painters, poets, and writers interested in defining their new environment, contributed to the nation-making process. Finally, the Boer War with Australia's participation, but under British command, was a kind of "emotional substitute for a real war of independence" (Eddy and Schreuder 153). The war correspondent and poet A. A. G. "Smiler" Hales put it bluntly:
A nation is never a nation Worthy of pride or place Till the mothers have sent their first born To look death in the field in the face. (quoted in Eddy and Schreuder 144)
The title of Weir's film refers to 1915 Gallipoli campaign during the First World War. Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Aegean side of the Gallipoli peninsula near the end of April 1915, and fought there through December 1915, when the troops were evacuated. The film's climax is the suicidal, senseless attack on Turkish trenches undertaken by the eighth and tenth Light Horse Regiments of Anzacs. The Gallipoli battle has an important place in Australian history and mythology, and lives on in film, literature, and historical works. It was an event of national significance. Bill Gammage, historian and advisor on the film, notes that before Gallipoli, in November 1914, the Australian cruiser "Sydney" had driven aground the German light cruiser "Emden." This victory was celebrated as conferring adulthood on the Australian navy. To build a nation, however, a more spectacular event was needed. "The time was awaiting the event," concludes Gammage ("Anzac" 57).
Despite its title, Gallipoli is not a "war film" or an "anti-war" film, but a "celebration of the national ideology," as Jane Freebury has observed in her symptomatically subtitled article "Screening Australia: Gallipoli: A Study of Nationalism on Film" (5). The film places emphasis on parallels between personal and national history. The protagonists, Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) and Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), resemble Australia itself--young, inexperienced, enthusiastic. In the first part of Gallipoli, Archy's trainer, Uncle Jack (Bill Kerr), reads to his family passages from Kipling's Jungle Book, where Mowgli becomes a man. Later, for Archy and Frank, the battle marks their passage into manhood, and for Australia, the baptism and fire and, consequently, the birth of a nation. Albinioni's funereal Adagio for Strings and Organ serves to emphasize the painful moment.
Weir's film contrasts the essence of Australianness (mateship, the outback, isolation, innocence) with the corruption, depravation, and crowdedness of the rest of the world. Australia's isolation from the world's issues and hence its innocence is strongly stressed, particularly in the first part of the film, which takes place in Western Australia's outback. The key scene of Archy and Frank's meeting with an old man with a camel in the desert emphasizes this distinctly. The old man, Stumpy (Harold Baigent), does not know about the war and has never been to Perth. When Archy explains why Australians are involved in the war, the old man cannot understand. Weir's (and scriptwriter David Williamson's) sense of humor puts it this way: "Still, can't see what it's got to do with us (doubts Stumpy) . . . If we don't stop them they could end up here (Archy) . . . And they are welcome to it (answers Stumpy looking around at the vast desolate countryside)." The sense of Australia's isolation is given by emphasizing the emptiness and immensity of the landscape.
In combining themes of isolation and images of landscape, Weir accentuates an aspect central to the Australian mythology of self-identity. As a rule, the Australian landscape is one of the most important elements of the New Wave period films. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Mango Tree (1977), The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978), The Irishman (1978), My Brilliant Career (1979), and many others employ the landscape to generate the essence of Australia. The Australian landscape in these films is the source of meaning--a distinctive characteristic that has its own discursive function. It typifies the "real Australia" and establishes the differences between Australian and European culture.

...

In his Australian Cinema 1970-1985, Brian McFarlane discusses images commonly projected by Australian films of the last decade: a man's country, anti-authoritarianism, a wide-open land, the Aussie battler, and the competitive instinct (47). Apart from the landscape, Gallipoli contains all elements mentioned by McFarlane. As with nearly all Australian films dealing with the past, Weir employs these important elements of national identity and promotes them.
Weir develops the discourse on mateship by showing that the boys' rivalry and different attitudes toward war originate in their different family backgrounds. "It's not our bloody war," says Frank. "It's an English war--it's got nothing to do with us." His father also tells him not to fight for the English, who murdered his grandfather "five miles from Dublin." The boys' attitude toward the war resembles the well-known stanza of Henry Lawson's The Ballad of the Cornstalk. He writes about the Boer War:
I'm going to the war, and I don't know what it's for, But the other chaps are going with the Bush Contingent men, And if I should stay behind, there'll be trouble in the wind For my girl will throw me over when they come back agen. (quoted in The Australian Experience of War 18-19)
Unlike Frank, Archy grows up in a family with strong pro-British feelings and his joining the Light Horse is, apart from an opportunity to change something in his life, an answer to the call "The empire needs you!"
This mateship (comradeship among males), frequently present in Australian cinema, and which Weir dramatizes in the relationship between Archy and Frank, is the leading motif of Gallipoli. Mateship has mythological character in Australia and is embedded not only in working-class values but is constitutive of Australian male self-image. Always in the center of this myth is the bushman, whose attributes were later transferred to the Anzacs atGallipoli. The virtues of the frontiersman suited the political situation. In his acclaimed study The Australian Legend Russel Ward makes comparison between the character of the Australian soldier and the character of the bushman:
Comradeship and loyalty, resourcefulness and adaptability are as necessary to the one life as to the other. And just as the bushman liked, on principle, to emphasize his "independence" from his masters, while being sometimes on good terms with the individual squatter, so the digger liked to be thought that he cared nothing for the officers as a class. (231)

...

If the battle of Gallipoli marked for Australians the symbolic birth of their nation, Weir's Gallipoli plays upon the notion of the nationhood and on the self-image of Australians. Although it does not share the same optimistic, patriotic spirit as does, for instance, Charles Chauvel's Forty Thousand Horsemen (1942), Gallipoli pays homage to earlier films about Australia's participation in World War I and quotes Chauvel's filmic version of those events. The images of the battle already appeared in Alfred Rolfe's 1915 propaganda feature The Hero of the Dardanelles and, repeated many times over in later films, they survived almost untouched.

...

This article discusses Gallipoli and its role in the debate on Australian national identity not because Weir's film is unique but, on the contrary, because it is typical. This film validates existing stereotypes in order to articulate the Australian national identity. Populistic images, reinforcing values from the bush ("frontier" values), define a national character in contrast with the British one and explore how Australia differs from England within the context of a shared heritage.

Gallipoli and other Australian films of the New Wave period try to reconstruct a continuity between the past and the present in order to reinforce, rather than to deconstruct, the popular images directly taken from the mythologized past. Commonly projected images of the naive, innocent, "rough but honest" Australian male victimized by the British are repeatedly shown in Australian films. Moreover, Ward's thesis, with its apotheosis of the digger-soldier as the embodiment of Australian psyche, serves as a valuable model for the representation of the national type. The bush and the bushman still represent the "real Australia." Nevertheless, these images, which have been promoted within and outside the country, have little to do with present-day Australia.

The inability to come to terms with real Australian identity causes a peculiar situation. In Gallipoli and other Australian films the nostalgic, mythical vision of innocence is presented as "real" and is employed in order to self-define and to project this image overseas. It may prove the assumption that, being unable to express their true uniqueness, Australians have to apply mythic resolutions.

Footage of Gallipoli

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First Film/Text Pairing Jan 31 through Feb 3

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The Charge of the Light Brigade

Read the poem, then do background on the Battle of Balaclava and the actual charge.

Gallipoli

We will watch the film Friday or the next class meeting(s). Before then, you will do background on both the film and the Battle of Gallipoli and WW1.

Overview

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We will spend the first couple weeks going over MLA format and grammar. Please do not miss these classes as there will be assignments and quizzes that can not be made up.

We will be using war to connect all our materials and projects for the course. We will read several fiction and nonfiction pieces pertaining to war. We will also watch several films dealing with war.

Because I have five separate sections of this course, we will watch different films in each class. This will mean content is individualized and you will need to make sure when reading entries that you make sure it is directed at your class.

You are responsible for being in class and missing will be detrimental. Get a classmate's contact info to get notes if you have to miss and to find out what we did and what the assignment is. If you miss a film, you will have to watch it on your own time (and I will not provide the film).

There are only two major papers. Most of our work will involve discussion and group projects. You must be prepared to talk in class and take notes.

The following films may be used in the course:
Platoon
Damnation Alley
Born on the Fourth of July
Day After
The Road
Full Metal Jacket
The Bridge over the River Kwai
From Here to Eternity
1941
Gardens of Stone
Catch-22
Apocalypse Now
The Green Berets

In addition, you will be expected to pick and watch a war film of your choosing to compare it to one of the films we watch in class.

Popcorn and other treats are welcome on movie days, but you must police yourself. :)