Reading Notes Week 12 Part A

Reading Notes 

Week 12 

Part A 

• In the introduction to Modernity and Modernism the beginning of the text explains how in the start of the twentieth century the world became more connect in ways of technology. Inventions like the automobile and plane allowed people to travel covering much land in record speed with all of the new advancements. The revenue from all of these new creations and the world becoming smarter health care became better and a random fact that was interesting was infant mortality went down and the population began to increase. 
• The world population was able to triple in the era going from under two billion to around 6 billion people. The improvement in human life was apparent from the transformation in technology that allowed us as humans to adapt even further to our environment. 
• Although the advancements also occurred when it cam to the military and new weapons that were effective and destructive once in action. 
• Even though our world was improved with size the twentieth century was one of the most bloodstained in our history as humans with as many as 200 million people died. "died in wars, revolutions, genocides, and famines. 
• I appreciate hoe on pg. 6 and pg. 7 they give readers a map of the world at 1913 with the old labels to help us further understand the climate at this particular time. I can see that the names are different for countries like "Dominion of Canada" and Russian Empire"or "French West Africa".
• This map is helping me understand that the world was power hungry in these days and it was all about who had the biggest arms and ruled over the most people with their "power". Everyone had their own "empires" they ruled over. 
• Then the text begins to tell the story if Virginia Woolf and how she was one of the great modern novelist and she was a known feminist who used her essay's to explain women in their  society and gender differences. And also the "predicament of the women writer" 

Reading Notes Week 11 Part A

Reading Notes 

Week 11

Part A

• In the introduction to writer Leo Tolstoy the text uses many adjectives to describe him like a womanizer and aristocrat which means he was a gentle person to the highest rank and had his way with women. 
• Also he was a vegetarian which made me think even being born in 1828 and passing away in 1910 it is surprising people born in that time period had the idea of no indulging in meat.
• It was very ironic that he was famous for his knowledge on the topic of marriage but struggled in his own marriage. 
• Leo was known for his reflection on how to live the best way on this world and how you should handle the temptations of guilt, pleasure, war, money, and sex. 
• He wrote once "Blame me and not the  path I tread" making me think intensely on the lessons given in the bible of how God can judged us as humans but he choses not to blame the past things you have done to stumble in your walk of life. 
• With the examples of great novels like "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" Leo was able to convey to readers many stories of humanistic pursuits , military fights, and love and marriage. 
• The story that the text focuses on is "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" which is a story of an ordinary middle class man who recently finds out that he will die soon. And this direction the story is going in is automatically interesting because Leo I know was born in a time where they wrote a lot of stories of self reflection and this is exactly what  the character in the story struggles with after finding out this disturbing fact. 
• It is interesting when the story begins on page 740 the author jumps straight into the story although I feel it would have been even more helpful to give background on who Ivan is and how did he die. 
• Reading this text leaves me with questions but I can say this is a very detailed story so in continuing to read you understand further where the author is going. 

Reading Notes Week 10 part A

Reading Notes

Week10

Part A

• As the world made advancements in transportations made communicating from anywhere easy and impacted the literature in a huge way. 
• With more transportation made it easy for writers to get inspiration from all over the world and allowed them to spread their message further. 
• Also it helped writers spread their new discoveries in writing in general. 
• Realism was on of the most influential movements in the nineteenth century which began in Britain and France and didn't immediately cause impact in European influences. 
• An interesting fact was on pg. 626 where they show a realistic masterpiece named "The Stonebreakers" in 1848 and it was destroyed in the Allied bombing in World War 2. 
• This was so interesting because this shows men hard at work which is a realistic everyday site that was depicted in the painted but since it was destroyed it only exist in reproductions and photos. No more originals all because of the war another realistic aspect of life in the time of the war. 
• Realistic writers introduced new techniques to the literary world that drastically changed history of theater in the late nineteenth century. Realistic writers wrote novels and short stories with realistic drama. 
• The novel was new for literature and opened up flexibility for writers to explore different styles of writing. 
• In the introduction of Fyodor Dostoyevsky where they talk about his background it was interesting in how he was fascinated by thought of why do humans have the basic desire of subduing those weaker than oneself.
• Interesting enough his father was a drunk after the death of his mother that spiraled his behavior. He described his father becoming violent and beating his servants and even talking to his dead wife. 
• I also think it was interesting that before he wrote his novel "Poor Folk" that he actually became poor by blowing all of his money then actually writing the novel and not basing it on opinion or others experiences. 

Week 9 Reading Notes: Part A

Reading Notes

Week 9

Part A

• pg.537-541 is information about Vietnam,India, China and enjoy the addition of the map on pg. 540. The map gives me a picture of the settings and how at the time these empires were so close to each other. Allowing them to not see eye to eye causing tension to run high between the two. 
• On pg. 541 it shows a French Colonial family posing next to a machine gun. The picture even had the kids in the picture making me understand how at the time war was normal to the citizens, that huge guns were backgrounds for a picture. 
• Also on the same page it explains how Vietnam was ruled by China for over a thousand years and it took until the tenth century were in a famous Battle of the Bach Dang River ending the golden years of Chinese rule. 
• Explains how Indians in the 19th century "passed from one vast imperial power to another". 
• In China they proved to me strong and independent and Europeans wanted most of the products they manufactured especially the beauty care but their money flooded China's system I believe and caused China to isolate themselves. This ended in the 19th century though. 
• "The Tale of Kieu" is the master of Vietnamese literature and many people that are Vietnamese can recite the full 3,000 lined piece of poetry. 
• People even used this text to define their future and how they continue life. 
• A story of a young women forced into prostitution and slavery but has to come to the stand for her nation that is being attacked by foreign enemies and tyrants flooded the land to control the people. 
• The story is also a love story that has many themes and is just a great piece of Vietnamese literature.  
• Nguyen Du's "The Tale of Kieu" is considered the best of Vietnamese literature. 

Reading Notes Week 8 Part A

Reading Notes 

Week 8

Part A

• Frederick Douglass was the most important African American public figure during the nineteenth century. Even though Douglass was born into slavery and was subjected to manually labor instead of being on school. Douglass's perseverance allowed him to teach himself to read and use that to shortly become a powerful anti slavery speaker and writer. 
•  Full name Fredrick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in Talbot County in Maryland sometime in 1818. He barely knew his mom and his dad was most likely his slave master. At the age of six he had lived with his grandmother but soon went to live in his owners house. Douglass's owner at the time was one of the most wealthiest men in Maryland. 
• In this period of time Douglass recounts countless routine heartless consequences for the plantain slaves. For the better his life turned in 1826 Douglass was sent to live with a relative of his owner in Baltimore. There Hugh Auld's wife began to teach Douglass how to read and when Auld discovers his wife is teaching the slave boy how to read he becomes enraged with anger yelling that literacy would make Douglass unmanageable, not content, and would make him never be able to be a slave. 
• This knowledge changed Douglass's life find out that the key to freedom was through reading and obtaining knowledge he saw his clear pathway to being a free man. 
• Later he was send back tot he plantation where he got in to a long physical altercation with his master and freed himself by force. Although not lawfully free Douglass went back to live in Baltimore where he began to learn and work sending his wages back to his master. 
• In 1838 Douglass managed to escape and at first in his book he didn't list the strategy he used to escape slavery for good. Although after many years past he reveled that he dressed as a sailor and a free black slave gave Douglass his free papers to make it to New York where he married the women he previously met in Baltimore. He worked odd jobs and changed his name while helping the abolitionist movement.  
• Soon Douglass would begin to read an abolitionist newspaper and by chance met the editor who offered him a job and this became the start of greatness for Fredrick Douglass. 

Reading Notes Week 7 Part A

Reading Notes 

Week 7

3/6/18

• After Toussaint's exile the an ruthless second in command obtained charge in the raging revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines successfully defeated the French in 1803.
• After his victory he claimed a new nation and named it Haiti.
•  Dessalines crowned himself emperor and then in 1804 wrote "Liberty or Death" or the "proclamation"
• Dessalines was a former slave who was given no schooling but didn't let that fact prevent his document he created that had been laced with both cleverness and intelligence
• pg. 36 "the ancient tree of slavery and prejudices, "
• Compared the slave trade to "cannibalistic consumption of fellow human beings" 
• His proclamation made it to about 50 different US newspapers 
• In 1806 Dessalines was assassinated and left a complex legacy behind (described well on pg.36 as well in a bout a sentence)
• "Yes we have rendered to these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage; Yes I have saved my country, I have avenged America.
• Dessalines was passionate and very blunt in speech but also looked at issues through a stern but wise view point. A humanistic view point. 
• Olaudah Equine was the first freed slave to write an autobiography and was pleased to have it challenge the views of pro-slave writers at that time who believed that Africans were not human beings.
• His writing was profound, Olaudah was barred from education but still wrote his own autobiography that showed "extraordinary intellectual powers" and this was bad business for the debate on slaves not being people. Because how can an African who is not a human being writing so intelligently. 
• His book had about 39 editions before 1857 and was translated into German and Dutch And Russia. 
• Not only was the topic of slavery making his book so popular but the places he traveled were exotic and he went all over the world. Which was intriguing to read and gained Olaudah white audiences who were fascinated by his travel and intelligence. pg. 73

Reading Notes W5: Part A Feng Menglong+Ihara Saikaku

Reading Notes

Week5

Part A

• Feng Menglong was know as one of the most versatile writers in the early modern age of China .He was an ardent scholar but also enjoyed small dramas of everyday life. He was a reason that vernacular stories turned into true stories through his higher educated thinking and knowledge of common people. 
• Feng Menglong was born to a wealthy family in 1547 that lived in Suzhou which was the center of culture during the Ming Dynasty.
• Feng was a collector jokes and folksong because he was always passionately reading popular literature that common people had in their culture. Giving him material to be able to include both scholarly and common aspects into his work. 
• New urban culture during the Ming Dynasty started to produce genres with the topics like sex, money, crimes, and court cases. 
• Feng did much reading and editing others writings and then adding his own creations of his own that read like popular stories. Out of 120 stories in his collection 37 he wrote completely by himself. on pg. 498
• Vernacular writing attracted Feng from its freedom of speech and expression in ways he could not do when writing in classical language. He created a hallmark in new vernacular writing also with his love of being an oral storytelling. 
• On pg. 498 in the last paragraph also gives a summary of the story we will be reading for the majority of the reading telling us the two main characters and how the plot line of Feng's story telling will play out. 
• In starting to read the story I can see immediately the story telling Feng is building up to by giving the lay out of the setting and background of characters to have readers further understand the story he was telling. 
• Also I see the versatility showing that he structured the preface of the story easy to read and having readers understand what is going on. Then switching to a more scholarly vocabulary but still everyday talk when his story began with his characters Lui Yuchun and Mei.