A Literary Tour of the U.S.(connecting literature and place)Hardy Griffin

Istanbul Şehir University

Agenda

Morning session: One possible tour of U.S. literature

Presentation, discussion, & practice

Midday session: Workshop on U.K. literature

Formulating your own approaches and activities

Answers to pre-meeting online survey

Question 1: What have you found most motivates you while you are

learning a foreign or second language?

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Survey Answers continued

Question 2: Do you think of your first language (L1) as coming from a

particular place? If yes, where and why? If no, why not?

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Survey Answers continued

Question 3: Do you think of English as coming from a particular place?

If yes, where and why? If no, why not?

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Survey Answers continued

Question 4: In the teaching of foreign languages, do you think it is helpful

to use literature in that language?

Goals

Explore this idea of ‘placing’ literature/language

Present some possible teaching materials

Create personalized materials

Publish a project website for ourselves and others

Jack London: To Build a Fire

Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the

man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high

earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through

the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for

breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.

It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was

not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an

intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the

day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not

worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days

since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must

pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the

sky line and dip immediately from view.

“It’s so cold that…”

…Starbucks is serving coffee on a stick.

…even your false teeth chatter, and they’re still in the glass.

…I’m drinking hot sauce instead of coffee.

…I’m opening the refrigerator to get some more heat in the house.

Learners can make their own one-line joke.

Check Readability Statistics

From ‘File,’ choose ‘Options’ and from there ‘Proofing’. In this dialogue box, you check ‘Readability statistics’ and then when you run the spell check, you will get the Fleisch-Kincaid Grade Level.

John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath

The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit

blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the

first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade

down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as

breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of

pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green

unearthly artichoke plants.

And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop

from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The

centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples,

peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All

California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the

limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be

placed under them to support the weight.

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep

The next morning was bright, clear and sunny. I woke up with a

motorman’s glove in my mouth, drank two cups of coffee and went

through the morning papers.

…The trees on the upper side of Laverne Terrace had fresh green

leaves after the rain. In the cool afternoon sunlight I could see the

steep drop of the hill and the flight of steps down which the killer had

run after his three shots in the darkness. Two small houses fronted on

the street below. They might or might not have heard the shots.

There was no activity in front of Geiger’s house or anywhere along

the block. The box hedge looked green and peaceful and the

shingles on the roof were still damp.

John Nichols: The Milagro Beanfield War

Lead character, José (Joe) Mondragon, decides to irrigate his bean field.

The_Milagro_Beanfield_War.mp4

Willa Cather: My Antonia

Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my

knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be

nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there

was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was

nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which

countries are made. No, there was nothing but land — slightly

undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the

brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the

other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we

had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had

never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar

mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven,

all there was of it.

The Bayou

Kate Chopin: Beyond the Bayou

The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La Folle’s cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned field, where cattle were pastured when the bayou supplied them with water enough. Through the woods that spread back into unknown regions the woman had drawn an imaginary line, and past this circle she never stepped. This was the form of her only mania…

Cheri had carried his gun muzzle-downward. He had stumbled—he did not know how. He only knew that he had a ball lodged somewhere in his leg, and he thought that his end was at hand…

La Folle gave a last despairing look around her. Extreme terror was upon her. She clasped the child close against her breast, where he could feel her heart beat like a muffled hammer. Then shutting her eyes, she ran suddenly down the shallow bank of the bayou, and never stopped till she had climbed the opposite shore…

A child, playing in some weeds, caught sight of her as she neared the quarters. The little one uttered a cry of dismay.

‘La Folle!’ she screamed, in her piercing treble. ‘La Folle done cross de bayer!’

Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God

The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was

gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on

porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These

sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long.

Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the

bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became

lords of sounds and lesser things…

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things

enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches...

It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the

day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard… It had called her to

come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-

buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her

tremendously.

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

At the entrance [to the apartment building], I bumped against a

woman who called me a filthy name, only causing me to increase my

speed. In a few minutes I was several blocks away, having moved to the

next avenue and downtown. The streets were covered with ice and soot-

flecked snow and from above a feeble sun filtered through the haze. I

walked with my head down, feeling the biting air…

The whole of Harlem seemed to fall apart in the swirl of snow. I

imagined I was lost and for a moment there was an eerie quiet. I imagined

I heard the fall of snow upon snow. What did it mean? I walked, my eyes

focused into the endless succession of barber shops, beauty parlors,

confectioneries, luncheonettes, fish houses, and hog maw joints, walking

close to the windows, the snowflakes lacing swift between, simultaneously

forming a curtain, a veil, and stripping it aside.

Paul Auster: City of Glass

The first meeting with Stillman took place in Riverside Park. It was mid-

afternoon, a Saturday of bicycles, dog-walkers, and children. Stillman was

sitting alone on a bench, staring out at nothing in particular, the little red

notebook on his lap. There was light everywhere, an immense light that

seemed to radiate outward from each thing the eye caught hold of, and

overhead, in the branches of the trees, a breeze continued to blow,

shaking the leaves with a passionate hissing, a rising and falling that

breathed on as steadily as surf…

The second meeting took place [in] his customary breakfast place, the

Mayflower Café, and sat down in a corner booth at the back…

The third meeting took place later that same day. The afternoon was

well advanced: the light like gauze on the bricks and leaves, the shadows

lengthening….

Emily Dickenson: “A Lane of Yellow Led the Eye”

A lane of Yellow led the eye

Unto a Purple wood

Whose soft inhabitants to be

Surpasses solitude

If Bird the silence contradict

Or flower presume to show

In that low summer of the West

Impossible to know -

That’s the tour1. Alaska/Yukon

2. Northern California

3. Los Angeles

4. New Mexico

5. Nebraska

6. Louisiana

7. Mississippi

8. Florida

9. New York (2)

10. Massachusetts

A parting thought:

So many missing states!

Washington (Tom Robbins), Montana (Wallace Stegner),

Minnesota (Garrison Keillor), Texas (Larry McMurtry), Illinois

(Gwendolyn Brooks), Indiana (Kurt Vonnegut), North

Carolina (Maya Angelou), Maryland (Frederick Douglass),

Maine (Stephen King)… and so many more!