To Sir with Love - Presentation

Why film?

• Shift from print to visual culture
• Different from other texts

Trivia

• Sidney Poitier- First African- American actor to win Oscars (1963)
• Poitier in Blackboard Jungle (1955)
• Sequel -To Sir With Love II (1996)
• Based on the memoir of E R Braithwaite
• Broke box-office records in 1967 in the US

The Film
Title: To Sir with Love (1966/7)
Director: James Clavell
Producer: James Clavell
Script: James Clavell (from the novel by E.R. Braithwaite -1959)
Cinematography: Paul Beeson

The Cast
Sidney Poitier -Mark Thackeray
Christian Roberts -Denham
Judy Geeson -Miss Pamela Dare
Suzy Kendall -Gillian Blanchard
Ann Bell -Mrs. Dare
Faith Brook -Grace Evans
Chris Chittell -Potter
Geoffrey Bayldon -Weston
Patricia Routledge -Clinty

The Story

• Why does Mr Thackeray take to teaching?
• His early experiences of the school, of students, and staff
• “Ah, so you're the new lamb for the slaughter - or should I say, black sheep?” – Weston
• The classroom experience
• Mr Thackeray learns! Or students teach him (Thackeray loses temper)
• The realisation and the change (books find a better place!)
• The test of the new relationship
• Too fat to jump - Thackeray becomes PT teacher
• Seal’s mother dies
• Pamela’s issue
• The museum visit

• Survival training
• Thackeray gets a letter
• The farewell party
• The dance
• The gift
• ‘To sir with love’
• The next term’s class – mission incomplete

DVD Chapters
1. The start
2. North Quay Secondary School
3. The staff
4. Mid-day dance session
5. Hackman’s classes
6. The silent treatment
7. Their proper places
8. Seales
9. Studying South America
10. Pranks & filthy games
11. Responsible adults
12. Questions and answers
13. Thackeray’s story
14. The museum trip
15. Miss Dare’s move
16. Surviving training
17. Mark & Gillian
18. Too high for Fats
19. Passing the hat
20. Mrs Dare
21. “I got me a job”
22. Counselling Miss Dare
23. A boxing lesson
24. The Seales’ funeral
25. The celebration begins
26. Ladies’ choice
27. A little remembrance
28. Next term’s class

Themes

• Racial issues
• Inspirational teacher
• Education as a catalyst
• Teenage angst
• Mr Thackeray v students
• Mr Thackeray v other teachers
• Pedagogy
• Leadership

Thackeray’s Battle

• Against
• Narrow-minded administrators
• In-bred social ideas – race, difficult children
• Pessimistic colleagues
• Student crush
• Many more….

Some Questions

• How does Thackeray help his students to break out of the pattern of intolerance and roughness into which the society had placed them?

• What are the preconceived ideas that Mark Thackeray and his students have of each other? What makes them change these ideas?

• The concept of human beings able to alter their ways is a crucial element in the film. How far do you think is it possible in the case of rural as well as urban India marked by rigid social structures like caste, family tradition, parental pressure, and market driven society?

• What could be the social and environmental conditions that are responsible for the condition of the children in the film?

• In what ways can the film be adapted to the Indian situation?

• Critics argue that the film portrays a simplistic, commercially palatable rather than a realistic image of the challenges of teaching, leading the viewer to a distorted perception of the implications of the various discourses employed. Do you agree with it?

• What are the different notions of education (discourses) at work in the film?

• Is the notion of education prescribed in the film problematic, practical or idealistic?

• Thackeray’s character has been accused of making students conformists and not critical thinkers. Do you agree with this view? Did Thackeray have a choice?

• Attempt a character sketch of Mark Thackeray?

• Do we have such disadvantaged schools and children? What can we do to bring them to the mainstream?

Gurudakshina

• Switch off the lights
• Close the taps
• Throw the cups in dustbins
• Do not misplace books in the library

Grateful to…..

• YOU
• Rajan
• Mr Kennedy, Ms Ramaswamy
• The Dept of Media Studies
• Vice-Chancellor, Dean
• Other dept heads and teachers
• Akshay Rajmohan

YOU become a TEACHER -with a difference.

Notes on Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelly

1. From Sparknotes
2. Filmic adaptation of the poem
3. Analysis

Notes on Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn

1. Analysis
2. Analysis
3. Meaning in the Conclusion
4. From Sparknotes

III PSEng Questions on Psychoanalytic Criticism/Essays

The III PSEng students may post their questions on the essays on Psychoanalytic Criticism here. In addition you may also try to respond to others' or your own questions.

I Semester Optional English Q Paper - Mid Sem 2008

Christ University, Bangalore
I Semester BA Optional English

Paper I: British Literature: Anglo-Saxon to the Present

Note: You are encouraged to keep the answers as brief and concise as possible. Answers exceeding the prescribed word limit may be penalized.

I. Answer any six of the following in not more than 200 words each. 30 marks
1. Locate Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, Defoe and Goldsmith within the ‘Print culture and Rise of Nation-States’ framework through the texts you have studied.
2. How is the world that comes across in the Prologue of the Wife of Bathe different from that of Shakespeare’s sonnets?
3. Critically examine the concept of courtly love as exhibited in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
4. What problems do we encounter in making a comparative study of the description of Wife of Bathe and ‘the young man’?
5. What does the essay “The Man in Black” tell us about the socio-political situation of England?
6. Trace the imperial rhetoric in Robinson Crusoe.
7. Write a note on the Greek concepts of Drama.
8. Differentiate the style and content of the two essays you have studied.

II. Answer any two of the following in not more than 250-300 words each. 20 marks
1. Write a note on rise of English Drama with reference to the Miracle Moralities.
2. What is the central argument in the sonnet ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’? Discuss.
3. Write a note on the concept of the Metaphysical conceit.
4. Write a note on the rise of the genre – novel.
5. Explore the ideas of ‘God’ as they come across in Robinson Crusoe, keeping in mind Defoe’s own religious inclination.

Feedback on Mid Semester question papers

HI
Can I have feedback on I Semester Optional English mid-semester question paper? Could you email your comments to me on ajpinto42 at gmail dot com?

“An Introduction” By Kamala Das notes for II JPEng students

Some propositions on the poem.

The poem, “An Introduction” by Kamala Das, has strong existentialist moorings proposed by Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir. Although it is unlikely that Das has read either Kierkegaard or Satre, it is most likely that she has read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

The assertion of the self against the various given social roles, identities and communal demands is an indicator of the existentialist leanings of the poet. The first person narrative of the poem also reinforces the idea of the asserting self. The assertion in terms of the issues and the roles it is rejecting presents the inverted pyramid structure of the poem. The use of the indefinite article ‘An’ in the title is also indicative of the fluid but resisting and self-determining position of the poet.

Here are some interesting write ups on the poem and her poetry in general. Click on the links to go the the specific sites

1. Split-Self And Self Assertion In The Poetry Of Kamla Das

2. Calling Kamala Das Queer: Rereading My Story

3. Kamala Das

4. The Histrionics of Kamala Das

5. IGNOU Interview with Kamala Das

Shakespeare's Sonnets - material + replies to Questions Raised in the classroom

Here is some material on Sonnets.

The site contains reliable interpretation/analysis of the sonnets. Please click on the sonnets to get to the site.

Three I JPEng students had asked for the explanation of three lines from sonnet 74. Those lines have been explained in the link provided below. Should there be further doubt on those three lines, please get back to me via blog.


Sonnet 18 : Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?


Sonnet 74 : But be contented when that fell arrest


Sonnet 116 : Let me not to the marriage of true minds

A question on litotes in the comment section below led me to this fascinating site on figures of speech. Please click on the link below and search for Shakespeare's sonnets that are prescribed for you. You may also use the short cut key : Ctrl F

Sonnet Sqeezing

End-Semster Model Question Paper - V Semester Optional English - OEN 531 Literary Theory and Criticism

CHRIST COLLEGE, BANGALORE -29
(Autonomous)

End-semester Examination - October 2008

Course: BA Time: 3 hours
Subject: Optional English Max Marks: 100 Paper: OEN 531 - Literary Theory and Criticism

Section A

I. Answer in not more than 200 words. 10x4=40

1. What is literature according to Eagleton?
2. “No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone.” – TS Eliot. Discuss the efficacy of the historical-biographical approach in the light of the statement.
3. Criticism should dissociate art from mystery and concern itself with how literary texts actually worked. How does this statement reflect formalist concerns?
4. What are the two major contributions of Saussure to Structuralism according to Rivkin and Ryan?
5. How did Derrida’s concept of “difference” challenge the central assumptions of Plato’s metaphysics?
6. Explain the three parts of the mind as proposed by Freud.
7. What is the contribution of French feminists to feminism?

Section B

II. Answer in not more than 350 words. 15X4=60
1. How does Eagleton challenge the ideas of literature upheld by various schools of thought?
2. Critique the central assumptions in the essay ‘Are Poems Historical Acts’?

3. Attempt a formalist critique of the following text.

After his Death

It turned out
that the bombs he had thrown
raised buildings;

that the acid he had sprayed
had painfully opened
the eyes of the blind.

Fishermen hauled
prizewinning fish
from the water he had polluted.

We sat with astonishment
enjoying the shade
of the vicious words he had planted.

The government decreed that
on the anniversary of his birth
the people should observe
two minutes pandemonium.

- Norman MacCaig

4. How does Levi-Strauss attempt a structuralist reading of Oedipus the King?

5. What principles of poststructuralism does Hillis Miller draw upon in his reading of “A Slumber did my Spirit Seal”?

6. Attempt a psychoanalytic criticism of the following poem.

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

- William Wordsworth

7. Attempt a feminist critique of the following text.

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

D.H. Lawrence

******************

Sample Questions - I Sem Optional English Mid Sem Exam

Sartaj had asked me for sample questions yesterday. Today Abey reminded me about them. Hence this post.

The questions may be :

• Single-text based
• Asking for comparison of two texts in terms of their style, world view or themes.
• Questions asking about literary genres or movements, namely novel, metaphysical poetry, sonnets, Puritanism, early theatre in England, early theatre in Greece,
• Questions asking you to locate texts in larger frameworks the syllabus or course plans try to engage you in, namely, print culture and nation states or similar frameworks, if mentioned.

Some Sample Questions

What is conceit?

How does Chaucer describe Wife of Bathe?

How do Shakespeare’s and Donne’s poems you have studies differ from each other?

How does the worldview of Shakespeare’s sonnets differ from that of Donne’ poems?

Locate the texts you have studied in the print culture and nation-state framework.

All the best.

Tomorrow's class cancelled

Some of the course participants begin their exams tomorrow. Hence, they requested me not to have Existentialism classes as they would miss out on the lecture on Kierkegaard. I spoke Dr Kachappilly. He has agreed to cancel tomorrow's class.

Bottom line: NO PHILOSOPHY CLASS TOMORROW.

Link to Concept of Nation for IFEP and I JPEng

Here is a very good link to the concept of nation

Please click on the following word: Imagining the Nation.

Question paper Pattern, I Sem Optional English, IFEP, IJPEng, IPSEng

Question paper Pattern

Christ University, Bangalore

Mid Semester Examination – August 2008
Paper: OEN 131: British Literature: Anglo-Saxon to the Present

Time 2 Hours Maximum Marks: 50

Note: You are encouraged to keep the answers as brief and concise as possible.
Answers exceeding the prescribed word limit may be penalized.

I. Answer any six of the following in not more than 200 words each (6x5=30)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9

II. Answer any two of the following in not more than 250-300 words each. (2x10=20)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

***************

Further notes
• The questions are on novel, drama and poetry.
• Macbeth is not there for exam.
• The spacio-temporal location of ‘texts’ is important. E.g. the socio-political and economic conditions that produced these texts, genres like novel, sonnet, frame-narrative.
• All the best

Disclaimer
This pattern and instructions posted here are not to be treated as official. Should there be be any discrepancy i may decline to take any responsibility. The post is purely a personal attempt to address the student concerns. If you wish to verify the veracity of the matter on this post, you may consult the teacher concerned. The class representatives may take initiative in this direction.

I JPEng Optional English Questions

I JPEng students may post their questions and comments on the portion of the Optional English syllabus dealt with so far and classroom discussion here.

I FEP Question Answers on Novel

Dear FEP 08-11 Students, please post your questions and answers in the comment section of this blog.

However, it is important that you give the complete URL of the internet source you have referred to to find the answer. In case of a book, give the complete title, author's names, place of publication, publisher's name and year of publication.

For better idea so citing/referencing please enter 'bibliography' in the search box above and find my write up on that.