Engl 145: Survey of World Literature II

Ichiyo: - Developed Realism in Japan without European influence. - 19th century writer. - Died at 24 of tuberculosis, had a writing career of only four years. - Born as Higuchi Nastsu. Changed her last name in her pen name to Ichiyo, which means single leaf. - Her final short story was called "Seperate Ways" "Seperate Ways": - Two main characters: Okyo and Kichizo - Okyo is a seamstress from a poor family - Kichizo (nicknamed Dwarf) works in an umbrella shop and is also poor. - Okyo is moving away to become someone's mistress, because she is tired of living in poverty and whoever she is going away with will provide for her. - Kichizo tries to convince her not to, but Okyo is convinced she has no choice. - In the end, Kichizo tells Okyo not to touch him, and they have gone separate ways. Flaubert: - Lived as a hermit in a small French town in the 19th century but did some traveling to North Africa, Syria, Turkey and Italy. - Was bi. - Had a ...

Realism Across the World: - Literary movements were spreading faster with the expansion of empires and new methods of transportation and communication such as the telegraph and the steamship. Writers from different cultures could mix ideas and fuse traditions. - Symbolism was a poetic movement started in Paris by Charles Baudelaire. - Realism "began" in Britain and France, but also in various places around the globe like Japan. - Realism was influenced more by the reality people saw: poverty, dirty streets, industrialism, disease, etc. - Realism rejected idealism and fantastical notions. - Writers such as Honore de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote stories that showed the different classes and the realities they had to face. Dostoyevsky:  - Born in Moscow 1821 in a family of six children. - His mother died in 1837 and his father became violent and unstable. He was murdered in 1839, likely by his own serfs. - Was arrested and sentenced to death ...

About the Author: - Liu E was born in 1857 - His father was a government official - Was nicknamed "that mad fellow" due to his wild and energetic personality - Highly intelligent and studied music, poetry, philosophy, economics, astronomy and medicine - Had a deep knowledge of flood control which proved useful when the Yellow River flooded and he began to work for the Yellow River Conservancy. His plan worked, largely because he got directly involved with the workers instead of just being an overseer. - The Travels of Lao Can was his most successful novel, which is about the protagonist, Lao Can, travelling China and fixing injustice, corruption, and various problems. Parallels how Liu himself stepped in and got involved when a problem arose. - He also stepped in during the Boxer Uprising of 1900, when he saw Russian troops burning stores of rice while the Chinese public was starving. He persuaded them to sell it to the people at a low price, saving many lives and ea...

For this assignment, I googled a lot of inspirational mottos in order to come up with my own. Oddly, one of the most inspirational came from a source I didn't expect, an athlete. I'm not an athletic person and I don't watch sports, but Michael Jordan shared some words of wisdom when he said "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." I found that really inspirational because often I focus on what I've failed to do, and not what I can do in the future, which keeps me stuck in the past without making improvements. But if I learn to accept the failures and move on, then I'm sure I will find success eventually. That's why I came up with the phrase "It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to work, it just has to happen." I can't s...

This week, I was able to overcome my anxiety and post my reading. I've been doing the reading and taking partial notes for most of the assignments I've missed, but I have very strong anxiety about posting work that I'm afraid isn't the greatest thing anyone's ever read. I end up missing the deadline because I feel my posts won't be worth any points at all, because they aren't good enough. My parents raised me with a perfectionist mindset, and trying to unlearn that has been challenging. I know I sound irrational and ridiculous, but the fear is so real and so debilitating that my hands are shaking as I type. Despite this, I feel very proud that I managed to post this week, and it's been a big confidence boost. What motivated me to finally do it was seeing my other classmate's notes, they weren't paragraphs of in depth analysis on every single story we read, a lot of them were bullet points of the most crucial details that they would need later. ...

I'm worried about my progress so far. I fell into a rut, where I couldn't motivate myself to do much more than the projects. I'm back on my feet, I've done all the work for this last week and will be doing it all from now on, including the extra credit, but I've missed a lot. I intend to do everything I can to get my grades back on track, if it's still possible. I've been really focused on my other classes, one of which has a lot of reading as well and the other which is Journalism. It's a production class, so we are rushing to get out the school newspaper each week and it eats up a lot of my time and energy. Still, I'm not one to make excuses, I let my anxiety get the better of me. Hopefully, I can still recover from this and improve.

I am planning to answer the prompt "Think about a theme you see running through your life (failure is the best lesson, love is eternal, etc). Choose a reading that you think also discusses this theme (even if it reaches different conclusions about it). Explore connections between how the theme plays out in your life, and how the theme gets played out in the reading" using Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" as my reading of choice.  When reading the story, the theme of free will, struggling for control over your own life even if it means perishing in the end, resonated deeply with me. I grew up with very controlling and restrictive parents who had planned out my entire life for me. For most of my life, I kept my head down, simply doing what I was told because I didn't know what else to do. Having no control over my own fate made me feel trapped and miserable, and was slowly wearing me down day by day. Even when I turned 18 and was legally an adult...

In The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du, fate and destiny play huge thematic roles throughout the story. Early on, Kieu is told of her grim fate: that despite her talent and beauty, she will face a life of hardship. This fate comes true, as her family is disgraced, she must sell herself into prostitution, she is raped, she fails to escape multiple times, she contemplates suicide and even attempts it once. However, Kieu also seems destined to be with the man she loves, Kim Trong, after they make a promise to marry each other. The theme of destiny comes through in both the dialouge between Kieu and Kim and in the description of their meeting. Du describes this meeting as, "Beautiful girl and talented young man -  what stirred their hearts their eyes still dared not say. They hovered, rapture-bound, 'tween wake and dream;" (Du, 553). Even at first sight, without saying a word to each other, they immediately feel bound together by the feelings in their hearts. When they finally do m...

Ghalib is a well known poet from 19th century India, who wrote his prose in Urdu and Persian. His pseudonym means "Conqueror" in both of those languages. He began writing poetry at a shockingly young age, only seven years old. He endured a lot of suffering in his life, losing seven children, none of who lived more than 15 months. He adopted his wife's nephew as his son, only to lose him too and his wife shortly after to tuberculosis. My favorite work of his is Couplet 1, which says "Ghalib, it's no use/ forcing your way with love:/ it's a form of fire/ that doesn't catch when lit/ and doesn't die when doused." (Ghalib, 594) I relate to this on a personal level, because I've had to tell myself this many times. I've often tried to force myself to love the people I think I should love, to no avail. I've also tried to stop loving people I don't think I should love, an equally fruitless endeavor. I love that he begins the couplet by...

In The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du, a young beautiful woman name Kieu is told that though she is attractive and talented, she is doomed to a life full of misfortune. The main plot of the story is about those misfortunes: first, her wedding to the man of her dreams is postponed due to the death of one of his relatives, then while he is gone, Kieu's family is wrongfully accused of a crime and her family stands to be imprisoned. She sells herself to save her family, and contemplated suicide. A man claims he is going to save her, but abandons her and she is recaptured into prostitution. This cycle of trying to escape her pimps only to fail continues multiple times, and she is passed around from person to person, who only care for her body. In the end, she reunites with her fiancee and they finally wed, but she refuses to sleep with him because she feels that her body is not worthy. It's not uncommon to read stories where a beautiful woman is "tainted" by sex, but it gets ...