Choose 1 question from each group FOR A TOTAL OF 4 ANSWERS

INSTRUCTIONS
[img alt= src=https://elearn.apsu.edu/content/enforced2/6441359-APSU_201617_LALI_ENGL2030_SECW1B_SECW2B_COMB/images-141.jpg?_&d2lSessionVal=twBnX3Ch8JppszTbFJmQbaOZM&ou=6441359>
Marie de France Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
#1
COURTLY/BAWDY LOVE
Marie de France (12th century French) Laustic
Geoffery Chaucer (English 14th century) Canterbury Tales’ The Miller’s Talenot in textbook. Find web link in Wk 4-5 Readings)
Marie de France’s tale is a lay.(See textbook introduction. Review the introduction in Wk 4-5 Readings for Marie de France to compare with fabliau in Miller’s Tale below.)
The Miller’s Tale is an example of a fabliau.These travelers telling each other tales are a motley middle medieval group: A knight a nun a Pardoner a physician a merchant a plowman a friar a summoner a miller–a total of 29 stories and 29 people. A Host moderates the group making the storytellers take turns. The Knight has just told a tale of courtly love. The Miller is drunk and decides to butt in before his turn–having taken exception to The Knight’s proper aristocratic tale of romance–and tells a love triangle fabliau. What about the fabliau makes it the opposite of the Knight’s properly romantic tale of nobility and of course the courtly love found in Eludic from which the Knight’s tale sprang.) And why would a bawdy tale be so fitting for this motley Middle Ages crew?
Find definition of lay in Laustic textbook introduction.
Find definition of fabliau at this website–(read first several paragraphs). Click on this link (or paste into browser if not live):
How to cite The Miller’s Tale quotes since it’s not in our textbook?
#2
EMILY AND ANNA
Emily Dickinson (19th century American)
Requiem Anna Akhmatova (20th century Russian)
Anna Akhmatova Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson had no poems of consequence published under her name during her life and only a handful anonymously published. Yet somehow we are still reading her. How did that happen? What does that say about something universal in her work?
With Anna Akhmatova we have a voice of dissent during Stalin’s reign of USSR terror. She was not allowed to be published during all those years even committing some to memory for fear her work would be lost before her repression lifted. It’s a mother’s cry over a lost son during Stalin’s reign. What does their existence say about the personal power of the pen despite politics and a universal truth?
Questions (choose one):
1. Answer the underlined questions above and compare the universal quality in both women’s works.
2. Emily wasn’t oppressed by a dictatorship nor in peril for her life because of her writing. In many ways she is the exact opposite of Anna–introverted reclusive and outspoken advocate. Can you see any similarities between these two women’s life and their writing subjects? Compare/contrast either way as you see fit.
#3
Short Stories of AFRICA
Doris Lessing 20th century The Old Chief Mchlanga (1919)
Chinua Achebe 20th century Chike’s School Days (1960)

These two stories are from 20th century Africa one at turn of century one in mid-century.
Doris Lessing is a white British writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.
Chinua Achebe is a black Nigerian whose novella Things Fall Apart is the most widely read book in modern African literature (the entirety of it was in the earlier textbook we used. Since it is now out of the current edition we are using we can at least read this short story that is in its place.
Short stories are glimpses that may have meaning for what they say about the cultures of which they are offering a peek at a certain point in time and place. For your chosen question let’s compare/contrast these two stories.Use quotes to back up your ideas.
Questions (choose one):
1. How do the points of view differ in these two stories and how are they similar?
2. How do they seem similar in tone style or moral and how do they seem different in tone style or moral?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
#4
20th century Czech surrealism and 19th century American realism
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis (Czech 20th century)
Kate Chopin Story of an Hour (American 1894)
[img alt= src=https://elearn.apsu.edu/content/enforced2/6441359-APSU_201617_LALI_ENGL2030_SECW1B_SECW2B_COMB/images-6.jpg?_&d2lSessionVal=twBnX3Ch8JppszTbFJmQbaOZM&ou=6441359>
Kafka
(Review the Answers.com link in Wk 4-5 Readings for more background.) By the way recently one of my World Lit students pulled out her father’s version of this story in the original German and wrote this comment on the Discussion forum: In the original German text Kafkauses the wordUngeziefer to describe what Gregor changes into.Ungeziefer translated into English is vermin. Beetles are cute German cars with great gas mileage. Gregor turned into something more vile than that.
Why would anyone want to write a story about what it would be like to awake one day as vermin? Remember that the common worker back then-in that time and place-was just learning the dehumanizing aspects of a totalitarian society….the one that would make bleak most of the 20th century for those eastern European countries: 1915 was the start of WW I which led to WWII and its atrocities which led to the Iron Curtain countries of communism. It was a dreary century for his country. The answer could be political or social commentary or personal commentary. You decide.
–Study the Introduction to the textbook’s reading for the BEST clues to this story.
–Look up the words existential and kafkaesque in a dictionary to foster your understanding and your writing about it.
Here’s an online dictionary: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (If link is broken copy URL into browser: http://www.m-w.com
Chopin
Be sure to read the background information in Wk 4-5 Readings. Kate Chopin was ostracized in her time for writing so daringly about the role of women in that suppressed society. Women’s suffrage–the right to vote–seemed an impossible dream fought over half a century (Women didn’t get the vote until 1920 incredibly enough even though the women’s suffrage movement began in the mid-1800s.)This is how she’s been described: Kate Chopin a female writer in the 1800’s writes stories of women in various states of independence from males. She can be viewed as a writer of the beginning of women’s rights although she does not declare herself a feminist by any stretch of the imagination…
Questions for Kafka/Chopin (choose one):
1. Do you think these 2 stories were trying to make some societal commentary?
Was The Story of an Hour about say women’s roles/lives in the time period? (Social commentary.)
Was Metamorphosis making some comment on say the worker’s or breadwinner’s role in that time period? Making him feel like a bug? (Social or political commentary)
Back up your answers with at least one cited quote per story. See Wk 4 QA/Forum Background for Story of an Hour.
2. Surrealistic Metamorphosis is very different type of storytelling from the realistic The Story of an Hour but it gets its point across using the same literary techniques as all stories. Choose a literary technique from the list below for either story and discuss how it adds to the success of the story:
-point of view
-setting
-irony
TIP: If you didn’t take me for 1020 and/or aren’t familiar with these terms choose the other question. Or look up these terms. Here is an online glossary:
Literary Term Definition Glossary ( Copy this URL into browser if this link is broken: http://literary-devices.com/ )
[How to cite The Story of an Hour quotes since it’s not in our textbook?>