Serge Guilbault: The New Adventures of the Avant- Garde in America / MA Previous

CIA II

MEL 132

Western Aesthetics:

Twentieth Century

MA English

Essay Mapping

Serge Guilbault: The New Adventures of the Avant- Garde in America

AVANT GARDE: A prominent feature of modernism is the phenomenon called avant-garde that is a small self conscious group of artist and authors who deliberately undertake, in Ezra Pound’s phrase, to “make it new”. By violating the accepted conventions and proprieties forms and styles and to introduce hitherto neglected, and sometimes forbidden subject matter. Frequently avant garde artist represent themselves as “alienated” from the established order, against which they assert their own autonomy.

Paragraph 1 Revitalisation of Avant garde

Avant garde-revitalized-US after II world war Economic boom-strategies familiar to - jaded Parisian-deployed- confronted- in new bourgeois public.

Paragraph 2 Greenberg’s Formalist Theory

Between-1939 and 1948- Clement Greenberg's- formalist theory of modern art o juxtapose- avant garde- to create a structure- Baudelaire or Apollinaire- dominant role in international scene.

Paragraph 3 Development of Greenbergian formalism Greenbergian formalism- flexible as it began during and after was- later solidify into dogma. Its relation ship- (from writings & ideologies) to marxist movement- to the crisis- finally to disintegration of marxism.1940- visible- ideologies and writings Grrenbergian formalism- born- Stalinist- Trotskyite ideological battles- disillusionment of American left and de - marxification of New York.

Paragraph 4 Alliance the stage for revolution

De-marxification began 1937- intellectuals confronted- the political and aesthetic option became Trotskyites. Greenberg- allied- Dwight Mac Donald and Partisan review- in Trotskyite period- located- origin of American Avan-garde. Trotskyite context- some day- till how- anti stalinism- started as Trotskyism- turned into art for arts sake. American communist party’s alliance- liberalism- responsible for- depression- revolution.

Paragraph 5 Work of art historian Meyer Schapiro

Art historian- Meyer Schapiro shift 1937- abandoned- rhetoric- popular Front - revolutionary language- article social basis of Art- emphasized- alliance between artist and the proletariat. His article- " Nature of Abstract art'- important for - refutation- of Alfred's Barr’s formalist- essay- cubism and Abstract art- displacement of Ideology enable left to accept artistic experimentation

Paragraph 6 Schepario’s notion of abstract art

In 1936 - Schepario- guaranteed artist place- 1937-' Nature of Abstract art'- pessimistic. for him - abstract art- Alfred Barr & other- segregated- art from social reality- had roots in production- abstract art- don’t understand- precariousness of position- grasp implications if what he is doing. By attacking the art- destroying illusion of artist independence- insist relationship link art with society- That produces it.

Paragraph 7 How avant garde abstact art helped the artists

Schopiro- too edged sword- destroyed Alfred Barr's illusion of independence- shattered abstract art as an ivory tower- isolated from society. Leftist painters founded- negative ideological formulation- provided by abstract art as a positive force-Easy for communist- reject- the art cut off reality- reached to conflicts- can use- abstract language- express- social consciousness. This opening - developed- avant garde abstract art. His article- allowed - evaluated- abstraction. For American painters- article- deliverance- conferred prestige on author.

Paragraph 8 Avant garde preserver of culture

Partisan review- letter Tortsky- analyzed catastrophic portion of the American artist. Tortsky and Briton's & Greenberg- analysis- blamed- cultural crisis- decadence of aristocracy- bourgeois. Tortsky artist - free of - partisanship- not politics. Greenberg- abandoned- critical position- Tortsky eclectic action- favoured – modernist avant garde. Greenberg -artistic avant garde - preserve- quality of culture- against influence of Kitsch. Death of bourgeois culture- replaced - proletarian- destroyed by- communist alliance with popular front- So formation of avant garde- important. Failure- communist party - incompetence of Troskytes- artists need- realistic , non revolutionary solution. Green berg- allowed – defence of qualiy- avant garde.

paragraph 9 Growth of avant garde

Greenberg- believed- threat culture- academic immobility- that period- Kritsch for propaganda. Avant garde- it was innocent- less absorbed. Seemed unrealistic- attempt- simultaneously both political and cultural front in the back ground- second world war.

Paragraph 10 Formation of intellectual elites

Avant garde and Kitsch- important- demarxification- American intelligentia- Around 1936 Partisan review- emphasized- importance of intellectual of working class- formed - international intellectual elite- became oblivious politics.

Paragraph 11 Greenberg theory of modern elitist

Art and politics- Trotsky, Briton & Schapiro- preserved - in writing - absent in Greeenbergs. Preserving- analytical procedures- Marxist vocabulary- Greenberg established - theoretical basis- elitist modernism

Paragraph 12 Greenberg’s appeal to socialism to save culture

Avant garde and Kitsch- formalized defined- rationalized- intellectual position- failed by many others. Article- new hope . Using Kitsch- target , a symbol- totatilarian authority- to which allied and exploited - Greenberg- made- artists to act . Greenberg position- rooted- Trotskyism- withdrawal- during depression- he appealed - socialism- death of tradition. Today Socialism - presentation - living culture. Greenberg's article- marked beginning- American pictorial renaissance.

Paragraph 13 The alliance made splits

Avant garde and Kitsch- coincided- two events- integrity of soviet union- German- soviet alliance- invasion of Finland by Soviet union- took radial shift- Greenberg’s literary friends and contributors to partisan review. After they- return. The optimism - maintained- evaporated-Soviet. Meyer Schapiro and thirty artist coleagues - liked to- Stalinism- social aesthetic of popular Front

Paragraph 14 Changing of the positions of the artists

Federation -American painters and was born - non political association- played important role- creation of avant garde after was. Many first generation painters Gottlieb, Rothko, Pousette -Dart) Disillusion in 1939- rise in fortunes of Popular Front- after German attack Russia- no central concern for articles as in past. Private sectors re- emerged - long years of depression- artists un happy- public convinced & valued their work after 1940- artist employed - idiom- roots - embedded in social appearance. The artist - central for public - but object changed. Instead of social programmes - They elite through universal.

Paragraph 15 Internationalism of America boon to the Artist

1943- from isolationism to - internationalism- the years best seller-one world by Wendel Wickie. Internationalism- bought- optimism. Artists of avant garde - organized exhibition- rejected work.Rejection of politics- had re assimilated by propagandistic art- realization of modernism. Internationalism aligned new man -preserve image of avant garde.

Paragraph 16 Rising postion of avant garde

Rejection of politics-had reassimilated –by prpagandic art-realization of modernism. Internationalism aaligned new man –preserve image of avant garde.

Paragraph 17 Need for art gallery

US from war- victorious, confident - Public infatuation- increased- influence of media- Need- new national art & network of galleries - promote & profit new awareness. 1943 Marh mortomes Bran_ Gallery - opened a wing - experimental art by Betty Parsons- Satisfy market's demand for modernity. Sam Koots- Charles Egan opened galleries for modern art.

Paragraph 18 Effect of war

The optimism art- Contrasted- Left identifying itself emerged from the war. Middle class worked- safe guard privileges it had won economic boom. Dissidence-fade-among communist party left. Demarxification of extreme left- during war- turned into de politicization - when America and Soviet union became clear.

Paragraph 19 New academicism threat

De politicization - drifted intellectuals into isolation, powerless, refused to speak. Between 1946-48 - political discussions- Marshal plan , soviet threat & presidential election - Henry Wallace & Communists played important part to humanist - abstract art- art of Paris - all galleries Greenberg considered - academism- serious threats.

Paragraph 20 Differentiation of American art

American society needed - infusion of new life- not pessimism and academism. Greenberg formulated- a critical system based on characteristic in defined American in his weekly articles the Nation- differentiated between American and French art. This system - modern American art- infused new life- could not apply- pale imitation of school of Paris- turned out by American Abstract artist. Greenberg’s – first differentiation - In article Pollock and Dabuffet.

Paragraph 21 Quality of American art

Greenberg emphasized- vitality , virility and brutality- American artists. His idea - transfer American art- from provincialism to internationalism- replacing the Parisian standards - grace craft, finish- to American as violence , spontaneity , in completeness , brutality , vulgarity life demanded- American art trustee of it.

Paragraph 22 Greenberg's opinion on American art

Greenberg stated - American art- ought to be urban , casual and detached - to have control and composure . Fault of American art - restrain form articulating - message describing, speaking , telling story etc.

Paragraph 23 Detachment of modern art from ivory towers

Greenberg's - painting important - return to ivory tower. Which previous decade- destroyed . The position of detachment - from critical works- artists fear participating - in virulent political propaganda. The interpretation he gave- for modernist detachment . The Rokho and Still - concern - save pictorial message

paragraph24 Rotkho's fear of critics

Rotkho - tried to purge art - convey precise image - fear of assimilate by society . He afraid - critics - obliterate - is abstract forms. Wrote- letter- to Betty Persons - Not to show - his painting to critics .

Partagraph 25 Problems in expression of art

Work of many avant garde artists- became a kind of unwriting , art of effacement , discourse- articulation - negate itself be re absorbed. Dwight Mc Donald - impossibility of expressions- Modern age silence of avant garde .

Paragraph 26 Difficulties of modern artist after nuclear destruction

Nuclear destruction - obscene- modern artists- had two- dangers - 1. assimilation of message by political propaganda .2.Representation of world beyond reach .Abstraction , individualism and originality - best weapons - against society.

Paragraph 27 Greenberg fight against removal of parisan cubism

In 1948- no work shown- Greenberg announced - in article. The decline of cubism in partisan renew - American art- broken- with Paris- vital of western culture. This declined Parisian cubism.

Paragraph 28 Protection of western art

The third world war threat- discussed - in press -idea that Europe- France and Italy- Topple into Soviet camp. Question of what - Become - of western civilization . Greenberg's article rescued - the cultural future of west.

Paragraph 29 How the art came to the Americans side

Many struggles -success the Parisian avant gard- survived. Virility -of an art - like Pullock revitalize modern culture- represented by Paris . Dealing- abstract expressionist art - brought international to America.

Paragraph 30 Placement of US as supreme in all fields

Critic- been aggressive devoted – defy supremacy of parisian art- replace it - on international scale - with a rt of Pollock and New York school. Greenberg - dispensed parisan avant gard- place New York school at the centre of world culture. US- winning all cards - atomic bomb a powerful economy, strong army - least cultural superiority missing .

Paragraph 31 Individualism basis of American art

Victorious liberalism- refashioned but Schleisgner -barricaded - anti communism centered - notion of freedom ,. Individualism - basis of all American art - represent new era - confident and un easy at that time. Artisitic freedom - central to abstract - expressionist art.

Paragraph 32 Honocourts paper on Individuality

Rene de Harnocourt- presented- paper explored - notion of individuality . Freedom of individual expression - basis of their culture - deserved protection - encouragement - confronted with cultures.

Paragraph 33 Ideology of avant garde aligned with liberalism

The ideology of avant garde - aligned - post war liberalism . New liberalism- identified - because values represented - cherished - during cold war. In modern work - brutality- stifles individual- artist become a rampart example of will- against - uniformity of totalitarian society .Juxtaposition - political and artistic images - possible - both consciously or unconsciously - repressed aspects- of ideology.

Paragraph 34 Avant Garde unique position

Society -height centre position as united states- intellectual repression was strong. Abastract expression - freedom to create controversial works- freedom of action and gesture. Liberty defended - by moderns - the conservatives . Present internal struggle - to those outside -proof - inherent liberty of the American system . Freedom - symbol promoted- cold war.

Paragraph 35 Expressionism aspect of liberal society

Expressionism -difference between a free society and totalitatrianism . Represent essential aspects - of liberal society- aggressiveness and ability -generate controversy in final analysis.

Paragraph 36 Pollocks paintings

Pollock drip painting- both left, right and middle - revitalized - new liberalism. Pollock - had a school developed - became catalyst - as Kooning says broke the ice.

wanted Paragraph 37 Modern American artists to avoid Modern - the image statement . Wanted to express - attempt to erase - void the readable - censure himself . He rejected two thing s- aesthetic of popular front and the traditional American aesthetics - reflected isolation of an earlier Greenberg - elevated - art of avant garde- international importance - but integrated into imperialist machine - museum of modern art.

Paragraph 38 Avant garde- theoretically - opposition to Truman administration - aligned - with majority . Geenberg - followed - with others and was its catalyst . analysing political aspects of american art- defined ideological , formal vantage point - avant garde- would have to intend to survive - ascending of new american middle class. To do so - first generation artists - defended against sterirlity of american abstract act- emotional contents , social commentary. Discourse the avant garde artists in - intend in their works -Meyer Schapiro articulated .

39. Rebellion against - political exploitation - stubborn determination - to save western culture - americanizing - killing father Paris- topple into disgrade aims of mother country.

Reference

Guilbault, Serge. The New Adventures of the Avant- garde in America.

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms.

'The Museum of Modern Art: The Past’s Future'/ MA Previous

Vachiraporn

1024121

CIA 2 MEL 132: Western Aesthetics:

Twentieth Century Euro-American Art, Culture and Ideas

15^th July 2010

The Museum of Modern Art: The Past’s Future

Between 1980 and 1984 the Museum of Modern Art was unimprovement and contraction. After a design developed by Cesar Pelli and dean of the Yale School of Architecture. MOMA doubled its exhibition space, added a glass-in atrium, upgraded its dining facilities, built a new theatre-lecture hall, and expanded its bookstore. To help finance the undertaking, the Museum, in an unprecedented move, sold air right to a developer who erected a 52-storey residential condominium tower over the Museum’ s new west wing. Initially critics feared the condominium tower would mar MOMA’s appearance; however, when the Museum reopened they were nearly unanimous in their praise of Pelli’s design. The renovation had resulted in the best of all possible new MOMAs. Critical thus added up to a collective sigh of relieve on MOMA had not been too radical after all. Instead of lamenting the lack of a fresh start or new direction, it tended to laud MOMA’s deepening attachment to tradition. Kramer, for example, noted in the course of an analysis that ‘the museum’s primary function to exhibition as extensively as possible and as intelligently as possible the masterworks from its own permanent collection, and he quoted with evident satisfaction the words of Alfred Barr, inscribed on a plaque newly installed at the entrance to the permanent collection of painting and painting and sculpture, concerning the Museum’s obligation to engage in the conscientious, continuous and resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity.

The term ‘museum’, as an encompassing signifier, ‘must be granted the flexibility of a cloth that can be gather here, stretched there to accommodate a form whose mutations are linked to the changing character of capital, the state and public culture’.

- There were two fundamental aspects of what might be called ‘museum perception’

1 The temporal relation between viewer and object in the sense of the viewer’s perception of the time of the object.

2 The related issue of MOMA’s representation of itself, in particular the way the Museum building has evolved or ‘mutated’ as a signifier of the modern.

MOMA’s history can be divided into three periods.

1 Utopia

2 Nostalgia

3 Forever Modern

Utopia

Beginning with the Museum’s opening in 1929 and petering out in the late 1950s. During this period MOMA constituted its history of modernism.

- Drawing upon then current aesthetic discourse, it subjected a heterogeneous set of materials to the systematizing and taxonomical procedures that characterize the museum as a culture institution.

- The division and classification of materials according to media and their further classification by styles through the application of aesthetic criteria.

A study of MOMA during the 1930s would reveal a process of experimentation, of trial and error out of which there emerged a complex modernist aesthetic construct based on Bauhaus architecture and design.

Writing on the culture logic of late capitalism, Fredric Jameson has argued that an artist’s resistance to one manifestation of capital can lead to an art of compensation.

- A Utopian gesture, the artist, in Jameson’s words, ‘ends up producing a whole new Utopian realm of the senses’. This Utopian move, while it represents an imaginative escape from the oppressive conditions of the present, is also unavoidably grounded in those same conditions. What appears as an escape from a particular stage of capital of ten anticipates a later, more advanced stage. This Utopian reflex may also apply to aesthetic constructs. It takes no special insight to see the MOMA of the 1930s projecting a resolution to the contradictions of its particular historical moment, and this resolution being precisely in terms of capitalism’s next stage of development.

- The unprecedented corporate expansion and modernization, through the application of advanced technology, of post-Second World War America.

- MOMA was far from alone in its anticipations of corporate modernization. The New York World’s Fair of 1939, for example, represents a popular version of a similar Utopian projection.

The most revealing feature of MOMA’s Utopianism was the new museum building itself. Designed by Philip and opened in the spring of 1939.

- The building functioned, as a unifying element that diminished or obscured the heterogeneity of the collections and the diversity of experiences on offer.

- The building also proved to be MOMA’s most representative artifact, not something it had collected but something it had deliberately created the most potent signifier of its Utopian aspirations.

- The building, with its clear, simple lines and polish surfaces directly contrasted. This type of contrasted was crucial to MOMA’s developing aesthetic.

The Museum interior was turned into antiseptic, laboratory-like spaces-enclosed, isolated, artificially illuminated and apparently neutral environments in which viewers could study works of art displayed as so many isolated specimens. Much has been made of the ‘intimacy’ of these gallery spaces. This ‘intimacy’ also produced its own sense of distance. This technologies space, the work acquired its Utopian aura.

Nostalgia

The 1950s, the beginning of the second phase of MOMA’s history, was the Museum’s moment of vindication. Bauhaus-style architecture, which the Museum assiduously promoted, became a ubiquitous signifier of corporate modernity. ‘American century’ proved to be no Utopia Bauhaus modernism became Bauhaus monotony. The ‘new American painting’ was transformed almost overnight into a modernist academy. The 1950s marked MOMA’s highpoint as an institution and the beginning of its transformation. Utopia projection was replace by nostalgia for an outmoded Utopia-or rather, for the time when belief in a Utopian future was still credible. This longing for the past’s Utopia came to dominate MOMA’s practice as an institution.

The history of the permanent collection underscores the retrospective mood that during the 1950s began to take hold. Although the Museum began to build a collection during its early years, its collecting policy was deliberately limited. In effect, the Museum attempted to overcome the contradiction inherent in the idea of a museum of modern art by deaccessioning or selling to other museum works in its collection that were more than fifty years old.

- In the 1950s MOMA abandoned its original policy and focused more of its efforts on building and exhibiting a permanent collection.

- In the 1953 it did away with the fifty-year rule.

- Three years later it officially declared its intention of exhibiting a ‘permanent collection of masterworks’.

This decision led directly to the expansion of the Goodwin-Stone building.

Johnson’s handling of the expansion provides further evidence of MOMA’s growing attachment to its own past.

- Tripartite design thus produced a set of meaning about MOMA’s historical situation and the significance of its collections that quite precisely anticipated but also helped to determine all that viewers would encounter in the Museum itself.

Forever Modern

MOMA’s choice of Cesar Pelli to carry out the 1980-4 renovation was far from fortuitous. In an interview given in 1981, just as work was getting underway, he acknowledged that his role was above all that of custodian of MOMA’s architectural heritage.

The Goodwin-Stone façade had been dwarfed by its neighbors on 53^rd Street. It made a certain sense to preserve the façade or to create something on the same scale. The surrounding office buildings and especially the condominium tower, itself a part of the Museum’s fabric, intensified the contrast between past and present, between Utopian hopes frozen in the past, and the unfocused dynamism of the late-capitalist present.

Johnson’s 1964 renovation left the original lobby areas and the galleries on the second and third floors pretty much intact.

- Enlarge the lobby.

- Added his glasses-in atrium or garden hall.

Visitors to the post-Pelli MOMA pass from the street into the lobby and after paying admission proceed to the garden hall. Otherwise, having first entered the old Museum they then enter the Museum a second time, but this time it is in effect the new Museum they enter. Their progress through the building repeats this alternation between old and new, between the space of the present and the nostalgic space of MOMA’s past

MOMA’s garden hall or atrium is representative of an increasingly familiar from of public space, a space that is at once grandiose and overwhelming and yet barely legible.

The Museum’s exhibition spaces might be read as so many ‘inside’ to the atrium’s ‘outside’

- Inside and outside do not entirely fit the situation to cross the boundary from one to the other, to go.

Pelli’s design further distances MOMA’s past-a past that thus acquires an aura of unreality, a sense of being sealed-off as in a time capsule, since it is now experienced through the medium of the atrium’s present.

Reference

Wallach, Allan. “The Museum of Modern Art: The Part’s Future”. Art in Modern Culture:

An Anthology of Critical Texts. Eds. Franscina, Francis, and Jonathan Harris. London/

New York: Phaidon, 1992. Print.

'The Museum of Modern Art: The Past’s Future'/ MA Previous

Vachiraporn

1024121

CIA 2 MEL 132: Western Aesthetics:

Twentieth Century Euro-American Art, Culture and Ideas

15^th July 2010

The Museum of Modern Art: The Past’s Future

Between 1980 and 1984 the Museum of Modern Art was unimprovement and contraction. After a design developed by Cesar Pelli and dean of the Yale School of Architecture. MOMA doubled its exhibition space, added a glass-in atrium, upgraded its dining facilities, built a new theatre-lecture hall, and expanded its bookstore. To help finance the undertaking, the Museum, in an unprecedented move, sold air right to a developer who erected a 52-storey residential condominium tower over the Museum’ s new west wing. Initially critics feared the condominium tower would mar MOMA’s appearance; however, when the Museum reopened they were nearly unanimous in their praise of Pelli’s design. The renovation had resulted in the best of all possible new MOMAs. Critical thus added up to a collective sigh of relieve on MOMA had not been too radical after all. Instead of lamenting the lack of a fresh start or new direction, it tended to laud MOMA’s deepening attachment to tradition. Kramer, for example, noted in the course of an analysis that ‘the museum’s primary function to exhibition as extensively as possible and as intelligently as possible the masterworks from its own permanent collection, and he quoted with evident satisfaction the words of Alfred Barr, inscribed on a plaque newly installed at the entrance to the permanent collection of painting and painting and sculpture, concerning the Museum’s obligation to engage in the conscientious, continuous and resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity.

The term ‘museum’, as an encompassing signifier, ‘must be granted the flexibility of a cloth that can be gather here, stretched there to accommodate a form whose mutations are linked to the changing character of capital, the state and public culture’.

- There were two fundamental aspects of what might be called ‘museum perception’

1 The temporal relation between viewer and object in the sense of the viewer’s perception of the time of the object.

2 The related issue of MOMA’s representation of itself, in particular the way the Museum building has evolved or ‘mutated’ as a signifier of the modern.

MOMA’s history can be divided into three periods.

1 Utopia

2 Nostalgia

3 Forever Modern

Utopia

Beginning with the Museum’s opening in 1929 and petering out in the late 1950s. During this period MOMA constituted its history of modernism.

- Drawing upon then current aesthetic discourse, it subjected a heterogeneous set of materials to the systematizing and taxonomical procedures that characterize the museum as a culture institution.

- The division and classification of materials according to media and their further classification by styles through the application of aesthetic criteria.

A study of MOMA during the 1930s would reveal a process of experimentation, of trial and error out of which there emerged a complex modernist aesthetic construct based on Bauhaus architecture and design.

Writing on the culture logic of late capitalism, Fredric Jameson has argued that an artist’s resistance to one manifestation of capital can lead to an art of compensation.

- A Utopian gesture, the artist, in Jameson’s words, ‘ends up producing a whole new Utopian realm of the senses’. This Utopian move, while it represents an imaginative escape from the oppressive conditions of the present, is also unavoidably grounded in those same conditions. What appears as an escape from a particular stage of capital of ten anticipates a later, more advanced stage. This Utopian reflex may also apply to aesthetic constructs. It takes no special insight to see the MOMA of the 1930s projecting a resolution to the contradictions of its particular historical moment, and this resolution being precisely in terms of capitalism’s next stage of development.

- The unprecedented corporate expansion and modernization, through the application of advanced technology, of post-Second World War America.

- MOMA was far from alone in its anticipations of corporate modernization. The New York World’s Fair of 1939, for example, represents a popular version of a similar Utopian projection.

The most revealing feature of MOMA’s Utopianism was the new museum building itself. Designed by Philip and opened in the spring of 1939.

- The building functioned, as a unifying element that diminished or obscured the heterogeneity of the collections and the diversity of experiences on offer.

- The building also proved to be MOMA’s most representative artifact, not something it had collected but something it had deliberately created the most potent signifier of its Utopian aspirations.

- The building, with its clear, simple lines and polish surfaces directly contrasted. This type of contrasted was crucial to MOMA’s developing aesthetic.

The Museum interior was turned into antiseptic, laboratory-like spaces-enclosed, isolated, artificially illuminated and apparently neutral environments in which viewers could study works of art displayed as so many isolated specimens. Much has been made of the ‘intimacy’ of these gallery spaces. This ‘intimacy’ also produced its own sense of distance. This technologies space, the work acquired its Utopian aura.

Nostalgia

The 1950s, the beginning of the second phase of MOMA’s history, was the Museum’s moment of vindication. Bauhaus-style architecture, which the Museum assiduously promoted, became a ubiquitous signifier of corporate modernity. ‘American century’ proved to be no Utopia Bauhaus modernism became Bauhaus monotony. The ‘new American painting’ was transformed almost overnight into a modernist academy. The 1950s marked MOMA’s highpoint as an institution and the beginning of its transformation. Utopia projection was replace by nostalgia for an outmoded Utopia-or rather, for the time when belief in a Utopian future was still credible. This longing for the past’s Utopia came to dominate MOMA’s practice as an institution.

The history of the permanent collection underscores the retrospective mood that during the 1950s began to take hold. Although the Museum began to build a collection during its early years, its collecting policy was deliberately limited. In effect, the Museum attempted to overcome the contradiction inherent in the idea of a museum of modern art by deaccessioning or selling to other museum works in its collection that were more than fifty years old.

- In the 1950s MOMA abandoned its original policy and focused more of its efforts on building and exhibiting a permanent collection.

- In the 1953 it did away with the fifty-year rule.

- Three years later it officially declared its intention of exhibiting a ‘permanent collection of masterworks’.

This decision led directly to the expansion of the Goodwin-Stone building.

Johnson’s handling of the expansion provides further evidence of MOMA’s growing attachment to its own past.

- Tripartite design thus produced a set of meaning about MOMA’s historical situation and the significance of its collections that quite precisely anticipated but also helped to determine all that viewers would encounter in the Museum itself.

Forever Modern

MOMA’s choice of Cesar Pelli to carry out the 1980-4 renovation was far from fortuitous. In an interview given in 1981, just as work was getting underway, he acknowledged that his role was above all that of custodian of MOMA’s architectural heritage.

The Goodwin-Stone façade had been dwarfed by its neighbors on 53^rd Street. It made a certain sense to preserve the façade or to create something on the same scale. The surrounding office buildings and especially the condominium tower, itself a part of the Museum’s fabric, intensified the contrast between past and present, between Utopian hopes frozen in the past, and the unfocused dynamism of the late-capitalist present.

Johnson’s 1964 renovation left the original lobby areas and the galleries on the second and third floors pretty much intact.

- Enlarge the lobby.

- Added his glasses-in atrium or garden hall.

Visitors to the post-Pelli MOMA pass from the street into the lobby and after paying admission proceed to the garden hall. Otherwise, having first entered the old Museum they then enter the Museum a second time, but this time it is in effect the new Museum they enter. Their progress through the building repeats this alternation between old and new, between the space of the present and the nostalgic space of MOMA’s past

MOMA’s garden hall or atrium is representative of an increasingly familiar from of public space, a space that is at once grandiose and overwhelming and yet barely legible.

The Museum’s exhibition spaces might be read as so many ‘inside’ to the atrium’s ‘outside’

- Inside and outside do not entirely fit the situation to cross the boundary from one to the other, to go.

Pelli’s design further distances MOMA’s past-a past that thus acquires an aura of unreality, a sense of being sealed-off as in a time capsule, since it is now experienced through the medium of the atrium’s present.

Reference

Wallach, Allan. “The Museum of Modern Art: The Part’s Future”. Art in Modern Culture:

An Anthology of Critical Texts. Eds. Franscina, Francis, and Jonathan Harris. London/

New York: Phaidon, 1992. Print.

Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Mapping by : Vandana Choradia

Map of Anthony Giddens’ essay- Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

1. Rethinking nature of modernity in 21^st Century in line with society

• “Nature of modernity must go hand in hand with a reworking of basic premises of sociological analysis.
  

II. Modernity affecting self and social life

• Modernity must be understood at an institutional level
• Self and social life constantly interact

IV. Modern Social life organized by Time and Space

• Institutional reflexivity
• Expansion of disembedding mechanisms
• Transform content and nature of everyday life

V. Modernity as post traditional order; principle of radical doubt

• Insists Knowledge should have hypotheses
• Claims that are true
• Openness to revision

VI. Modernity as a risk culture

• Reflexive organization of knowledge environments
• Risk assessment- precision, quantification
• Although, by its nature is imperfect

VII. Riskiness of certain areas in late modern world

• High consequence risks
• Apocalyptic- term High Modernity

VIII. Influences of media, systems on self identity and social relations

• Systems become autonomous
• The activities of electronic media is devoid of hyper reality in Baudrillard’s sense

IX. Reflexively organized self-identity

• Significance of notion of lifestyle and choices- structuring identity
• Life planning
• Tradition losing its hold, daily life- dialectical interplay between local and global, paralleled to people negotiating lifestyle choices
• Capitalistic production and distribution- core components of modernity’s institutions

X. What is lifestyle?

• Emancipation, access to forms of self-actualization, decisions taken and courses of action followed under conditions of severe material constraint
• Interconnects with life-planning
• Misunderstandings of ‘lifestyle’- only pursuits of prosperous/ rich groups and classes

XI. Transformation of Intimacy

• Interaction between local and global
• Pure relationship--- trust, reflexively controlled over long term

XII. Search for intimacy

• Integral to pure relationship
• Mistake- view contemporary search for intimacy as a negative reaction to the impersonal social universe

XIII. Reskilling

• Reacquisition of knowledge and skills
• Situationally variable
• Contrasts… it is partial, revisable in nature of expert’s knowledge
• Validates the need for Reskilling- Distrust, scepticism, rejection and withdrawal affects the linking of individual activities and expert systems

XIV. Interaction between self- reflexivity and abstract systems affect psychic processes and bodily development.

• Body- phenomenon of choices
• Do not affect only individual
• Narcissistic cultivation- control the body

XV. Sequestration of experience

• Influenced by science, technology and expertise
• Reframe issues of nature, scientific idea that excludes morality- through institutional account, internal referentiality
• People have direct contact with incidents and relate them to issues of morality

XVI. Shame by institutional repression

• Situation- Mentions Freud in reference to guilt (killing the father- Oedipus/ Electra complex)
• Institutional repression- shame over feeling of guilt
• Brought out through mechanisms of change

XVII. Personal Meaninglessness and existential questioning

• Life has nothing worthwhile
• Phenomenon- repression
• Authenticity- casing self- actualization

XVIII. Counter reaction to Existential questions- Life Politics

• Repression is incomplete
• Lifestyle choices- raise moral issues
• Emancipatory Politics

XIX. Emancipatory politics influencing existential issues

• Modernity excludes them
• Emergence of life-political programme

Giddens, Anthony. “Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.” Art

in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts. Eds. Franscina, Francis and Jonathan Harris. London/New York: Phaidon, 1992. Print

Pinto, Anil. Class lecture. On Modernity and Self Identity.Christ University. Bangalore, India. 4 August 2010. Lecture.

UGC Sponsored National Seminar on Linguistic and Literary Terrain of Translation Salesian College, Sonada - A Report

Seminar dates : 30-31 July 2010

The Seminar had scholars from different kinds of institutions and from different parts of the country. There were two scholars from Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, a Philosopher from Assam University, from Bangalore, and many part of West Bengal.

Since the organisers had tried this diversity and had insisted on the full papers being sent before the seminar, the seminar proved to be a productive one with very serious discussion shaping up during the course of deliberations. The outcome of the deliberations made the seminar very special to me.

What I also liked was the careful scheduling of the papers. There were only six papers each for the day. That is, three in the forenoon session and three in the afternoon. This structure gave sufficient time for scholars to present their views and later engage in a serious discussion, something which is sacrificed in many seminars.

The seminar was clearly not held with the primary focus on building records for NAAC or other such purposes but for creating platform to build research and academics.

Were there new insights? May be. For me the only new insight from the deliberations was the role of typographies in determining the relationship between the translator and writer of the ‘source’ text, which emerged in a discussion I initiated after the presentation of Prof Dipankar Sen. I had not seriously considered this so far in the context of translation studies. Other ‘carry home’ from the seminar were, the distinction being made between Nepali literature in Nepal and Nepali literature in India, the canonical literature

in English vs theory divide as it came across from the interaction with Jamia scholars, introduction to a lot of new sources, new texts and newer kinds of engagement with translations.

I also presented a paper entitled “Reading More Intimately: An Interrogation of Translation Studies through Self-translation” You may find the abstract at the end or the report.

One other part I must appreciate of the seminar was the presence of Nepali writers and translators that was created in each session. After the deliberations of each session, established Nepali translators were asked to respond to the deliberation from Non-Nepali scholars. This was an important step in terms of creating a dialogue between scholarship in translation studies and practice of translation in Nepali. This gesture made the seminar locate itself clearly in the local milieu.

A journey to the place I visited confirmed that Darjeeling clearly remains a neglected territory by governments of West Bengal and India. Hardly any infrastructural needs have been attended to since the time of the British Raj.

Abstract of my Paper

While the poststructural turn has made the study of translation more self-reflexive, it has not made translation studies scholars rethink the fundamental assumptions of translation process, which poststructuralism should have. As a result, many practices in the nature of ‘translation’ have not only got marginalised but have got relegated to absence, within translation studies. One such practice is self-translation. This paper tries to read the process of self-translation closely and thereby raise critical questions on the fundamental assumptions about translation. The paper will conclude by positing self-translation as an important domain for scholarly engagement by drawing attention to its potential to make translation studies more nuanced.

III year BA Optional English: Mid-semester examination Aug 2010 note

Essays for exam

What is literature? – Terry Eagleton

Creative Writers and Daydreaming – Sigmund Freud

Topics

Psychoanalysis

Formalism

Structuralism- Esp. Saussure’s theory of language

Origins of humanist/literary thought– Plato, Aristotle


Question paper pattern
Marks: 5x10=50

Answer any five.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 

I MA English -Western Aesthetics Mid-semester Exam Aug 2010 note

MEL 132 Western Aesthetics: Twentieth Century Euro-American Art, Culture and Ideas

 Duration: 2 Hrs                                                                             Max. Marks: 50

Note:   

• All questions are compulsory.
• The first three questions carry 15 marks each and the last question carries 5 marks.
• There is no word limit. However, your answers should sufficiently reflect the discussions in the prescribed essays/talk.
• You are permitted to carry relevant material to the examination hall.
• Evaluation Criteria: 50% weight for the understanding of the arguments in the essays as reflected in the answers; 20 % for reading beyond the text and the classroom discussion; 20% for structure of the answer – Introduction, body, conclusion, citation; 10% for language, punctuation. 

Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln for II year American Literature Course

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address






Wikipedia article

Audio reference link


for II year American Literature Course

Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln for II year American Literature Course

Audio link
Wikipedia article

Works of Terry Eagleton

What is Literature?
Literary Theory: An Introduction

II year JPEng and CEP Questions

II year JPEng and CEP -ites may post their questions here. I will respond to them.

----
Let me attempt answers here for the questions asked in the comments section below.


Reg. Liberty Song 
1. The liberty song which I understand became a very popular (pop) song during the last phase of struggle against England leading to declaration of Independence. The Stamp Act became a breaking point which was capitalized by the leaders asking for independence from England. The argument was, since England was not using the money collected from the American colonies for the welfare of the White residents of America, England had not right to collect it. Stamp Act insisted on collecting money by way of stamp on all legal translations and claims.  The Act helped leaders demanding freedom more popular support from the colonies.

The Liberty Song has that background. It was written about three years after the Stamp Act. However, you will find the concern mentioned above in the poem as well. They do not want to pay, if they cannot be taken care of well.

For more on the Stamp Act click here for the wiki article 
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2. I am not able to understand the second question, hence, apologies. My position is that native american story telling did not become part of any visible, dominant narrative tradition of USA. However, I admit I am subject to correction.
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3. Thomas Paine's work is Propaganda writing
For more on that you may click and refer to the following links
a. From 'On Papers.com' 
b. From 'Dream Essays.com'
c.  From enotes
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4. Links to 'Song of Myself'
a. From 'Sparknotes'
b. From 'Wikipedia'
c. From 'Bookrags'
d. From 'enotes'
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5. Links for 'Purloined Letter' as Dark Romantic
a. From Wiki on Dark Romanticism
b. From Passgen : 'What is Dark Romanticism?'
c. From Associated content
-------

Hope this will be some use. All the best.

Guest Lecture on Capitalism/ Capital and related concepts

Notes by Sneha Sharon Mammen:

Dated: 3rd August, 2010

The following has been Mr. Dhar's fragment of understanding on Capital/ Capitalism/ Aesthetics/ Culture, which triggered our minds to think on his lines which was in turn the product of his toil to understand Marx for the past twenty two years. It certainly reaped its own benefits as students of Literature, Economics and Law participated in a four hour involved interactive session with the professor.

Mr. Dhar storms the session with the mind boggling general question as to what ‘Capital’ essentially meant. A shift from Hegel to Marx ( according to lay man understanding) interprets capital as something that can be used as an investment and from which an individual can expect returns. The term is also in day to day circulation as in ‘ I don’t have any capital’. These are varying plausibilities of using the term.

Today we understand capital as per newspaper/stock exchange/finance reports. However, no study of Economics is complete without the premier study of Das Capital, Karl Marx’s foundation guide in writing. Marx, who intended to write six volumes could only leave behind, unfortunately three volumes and a forty pages of the unfinished fourth number. However, the ground work for Das Capital was Grundrisse, a German text of six hundred and fifteen pages again by Marx.

As mentioned earlier economics and its study is incomplete without a study of the giants in this sphere, essentially Marx and his predecessors Adam Smith and Ricardo. The six major volumes of Das Capital were supposed to discuss in detail each broad point. Interestingly, forty pages into the fourth volume, Marx finds himself perplexed and arrives at the conclusion that he has essentially got some angle wrong. Therefore, he sets himself to read further into analyzing the entire situation all over again. This breeds thirty thousand copious pages of unpublished analysis on economy and its working( now in the Marx Engels Archive, Amsterdam). It was Rosa Luxemberg who completed the fifth volume.

Mr. Dhar had the lovely chance to scroll through the first four hundred pages of the full collection of the unpublished version and says that much of it was also on the Indian village conditions, twenty five hundred pages on medicine, hundreds of pages to prove Calsulus wrong and so on. This could also mean that quite visibly politics and culture and economics is tied together and are not essentially varied, thoroughly different terms.

What Marx actually stood against was for the piece meal, segmented understanding of the reality of the world.

Volume one of Marx’s Das Capital talks of Commodity and Production. Marx basically went into studying the intrinsic aspect and property of a commodity. Volume two on the other hand studied Distribution as a step two of the entrance of commodity into the market. However, there was no concept of demand and supply discussed therein. The third volume studied Land and Rent and ended with the ‘nasty word’ as Mr Dhar puts it, ‘Class’. The last chapter of volume three is an attempt to describe what class actually was but it was all in vain. Also, surprisingly enugh, only the first volume talked of labour!!

‘ A patient thinker cannot give all the answers and those who have all the answers are not thinkers’ courtesy Mr Dhar, and hence Marx attempted in vain to define ‘class’.

So when a Terry Eagleton and a Jameson were referring to ‘Capital’ and ‘capitalism’ they were indeed talking about the volumes that they had read and do not deal with it with respect to our present day newspaper understanding of the concept.

So our understanding of capital now moves on to understand that it is not only investment or does not yield returns alone but is also a vicious cycle and Money, Value and Price are essentially very different concepts. However, Marx in volume one of his book describes and establishes relation between all the above mentioned concepts. For example, hundreds of pages were spent in understanding what the term ‘value’ actually catered to.

A non-economic background student pops up a very ontological question at this juncture. ‘ Is there a common entity from where these things are derived from?’ and this leaves us with the discussion as to what were the origins of capital, money and value. What is capital generally looked upon as now and what was its primordial form? These were basically free in nature. For a long time even cattle was used as monetary exchanges. Meaning to say that nobody really has the capital, it is all there out in nature and nature has all the resources.

Taking up a pluralist, heterogeneous example:

What could you possibly do with a mango?

1) You either consume it. There is a segment in our life which is involved with consumption based on need. Everything need not essentially be revolving around buying and selling.

2) Mango seed could produce more mangoes in future and the process of consumption can be multiplied. It is therefore a vicious cycle. ( Indian villages are self sustainable and process like this/ also knowledge multiplies in a similar way)

3) You could use the mango as an exchange commodity for an orange.

4) You could also convert the mango into pickle. (Economics gives us a feeling that everything happens in the market but not actually!) The process has to take place to convert the mango into the pickle and the very fact that there is capital in the world is philosophically naïve.

Seed to mango involves labour too.

The initial mango found free in nature plus human/animal labour leads to capital in this case. Without the intervention of nature therefore nothing becomes possible. Marx traps us that way saying that nothing actually happens without labour.

At this juncture can we consider that capitalism did have two bases: the spread of colonialism and the rise of slavery. The British sold the Burmese teak and the skyscrapers of the west is a result of two hundred years of immense plunder, but, the initial mango was found free in nature and it could be sold without having to pay for it. Today, the mad rush that we see is just a run for the free capital that exists be it the Ambani feud or the Iraq war. Thousands of acres of land in Bengal was bought by the Tata’s for a rupee. Does it then become the free mango?!

0 ( free mango) + x ( money from selling) = x( total profit)

Mango + labour = pickle also involves no harm and again you can earn ‘x’ amount. This has been practiced even today by the self employed. The market then comes only at the last juncture.

Now, supposingly you want to employ another person to do the work, here labour in question would be a commodity which is bought and sold and not a capital.

Therefore, 0 + 2 (remuneration to be paid for labour) = 4 ( selling price)

Total gains from transaction would be ( SP- remuneration) = 2.

Essentially we could also say that not everythings begins with capital. We just have natural resources. ( Natural resources + labour= production)

However, capital by itself cannot do anything and nothing can happen without production( Marx refutes this later in volume second). Marx moves on to derive from Adam Smith and Ricardo to say that Capital is impossible without land and labour.

Volume three suggests that capital never pays rent ( Coca Cola/ Tata’s), and therefore it is a critique of Hegel when he says that there is no capital per se. Whatever you have is either free in nature or plunder and that is where the concomitant history of capitalism lies embedded, what went hand in hand with capitalism in Europe was Colonialism. When in 1857, England was undergoing industrialization, India was facing the Sepoy mutiny and nationalism while Africa at this time was in the clutches of slavery where labour was bought for free ( capital may or may not buy labour!) The essential being of the slave was bought as the white master employ his labour on the cotton fields and sell the efforts of bonded labour( what we now understand it as) worldwide.

Ponder: Is it still happening? Consider the fashion industry, the IPL auctions! In India, bonded labour unfortunately goes the caste way

When do we actually buy and sell labour? When you work in an office for a pay, you are actually selling your labour and the employer who recruits you is the buyer of your labour. At this point, Marx needs to be congratulated for a term that he coined, ‘labour power’ and hence it is labour power that is sold by a worker ( the idea of human capital comes here). It is therefore a need based economy. It is the similar case in our domestic households where everything is need based. It is still an economy because there is exchange in the strictest sense.

For Capitalism to work well the game should run fair; there ought to be buying and selling of labour power but it should be necessarily without any coercion which might otherwise be a condition of slavery.

Value and Price are very different from each other. Price could be infinitely cooked up ( palak paneer in a dhaba would cost only Rs 20 while the same thing might cost 500 in Taj chain of hotels). Marx therefore showed that the wage that the labour gets is the value of labour, both intrinsic and generated and sometimes this value is expressed in monetary forms. Slave labour therefore has value but no price. We could say that essentially everything has value but only a few have price tags attached to it.

For example lets say:

Leather ( value 1) + labour ( value 2) + Vx ( x being the work employed by labour on the leather) = shoe (value 3)

There is therefore an exchange,

C’ – C= profits

C’ –C = delta C ( which is capital according to Marx, both static or variable)

Now, C + delta C = C” ; capital can therefore be generated by production. Is capital therefore accumulated labour?

Example, The share market.

Again, production need not always take place, you buy shoes in Lisbon for C, sell it in Singapore for C’.

Capitalism was also born with a single universal language. Meaning to say that a mango should be a mango everywhere else and this is where the concept of brand comes in and interstingly enough, potato an import from Latin America and idli from Indonesia is doing so well in India!

The capitalists in modern cultures is the bourgeois and the working class therefore becomes the proletariat. India has a mixed economy. However, the term is not thoroughly a transparent term. India is a capitalistic+ slave + feudal +need based economy. That is how it is decentralized and therefore not the whole of India can be either capitalistic or agrarian.

It was therefore a ladder progression, where the bottoms of the ladder was pre capital, rural, agricultural and pre modern and with a shift in time period constituting development we moved on to capital, the west, modern, the urban and industrial and at the end of it Capitalism becomes an ideology and not a fact. “ Ideology is seeing yourself in the mirror and believing that it is you although the image that is formed is laterally inverted” and some people actually live this ideology and they are the capitalists- the bourgeois who lives in this illusion. However, collective hallucinations and illusions are part of everyone’s life! The illusion lived during the feudal periods was that the monarch was Godsent.

This is why culture and economy should go along. It was the proletariat who critiqued the ideology. The present interest in Marx is not because of him along but because of other perspectives too. Even the feminist corners of the woman labour question has generated interest.

Workplace – selling labour- consumer becoming the proletariat. There is no final bourgeois in that sense of the word.

Twenty four hundred pages run in from volume one concerning commodity to volume three where Marx talks of class/proletariat/labour. He saw that the commodity (shoe) in the market was sold for Rs 8 and tried finding out the price of leather for the capitalist and it was found that he paid only Rs 2. Another Rs 2 was used in employing labour and therefore the value increment is ( 8- (2+2) ) =4

Which is delta C , that is profits in mainstream economics. Now Marx’s question was, ( 2+2) has value and the Non Performing Appropriator (NPA) has value. V1 +V2 ----) V3 and in this case 4 is the value increment. Value is added because V2 worked on V1 ( Vx) to generate the final product that is V3.

Value + added value = 8- 2= 6

6 – labour charges( 2)= 4 ( surplus value) and this is called exploitation. Who decides where the surplus value goes? It is the producer, the one who generated value in the first place. Aesthetics in cultural studies has been dominated by NPA’s and that is why we have an Oscar Wilde or a Virginia Woolf or the Bronte sisters!

In the quest of allocation of surplus value, there is a power/ political struggle. The social and the cultural are also deciding factors. The producer may even choose to spend the entire surplus in a casino within a day or might even channelise it as social security, hospitals etc. No true appreciation of aesthetics can happen here.

At home, the mother converts the cauliflower into cauliflower curry. Here no price is attached but value is surely generated. The feminists put forth their need for respect and recognition and a share in labour for the services she renders. However, the final product is not a commodity here. Capitalism is a process which engages in buying of labour and means plus products which yields the final commodity.

Historically, some people have lived on other people’s labour, can we all labour together now?

The ethical aesthetic question therefore is HOW TO LIVE? What is it to be cultured? Living out of someone else’s labour is not shared living at all. No amount of cosmopolitanism marks culture and Terry Eagleton says that an oppressive society is not a condition of culture.

Studying the woman question, the labour of a woman cannot be brought under the realm of capitalism if she is doing it for her family, however the curry that she cooks if generated in the market through catering can make her a capitalist and since she is in no contractual bond to either cook or clean the house as labour is in capitalistic economy, the two spheres are thoroughly different.

Lecture by: Anup Kumar Dhar, 3 August, 2010 at Christ University.

Framing Questions - An Approach/ MA Previous

Notes by Shilpi Rana

Asking questions or we can say rather good questions is all the more important even than providing answers.Pinto Sir made us acquainted with the types of consequences of the questions raised.He said that asking questions is the first step to become a "scholar".

To explain the art of preparing questions we took THE GENERAL PROLOGUE of Chaucer's THE CANTERBURY TALES and we were asked to prepare questions on it.Some of the questions raised were as follows :

- How is the fourteenth century society portrayed through the characters in THE CANTERBURY TALES?

- Elaborate on the literary devices in THE CANTERBURY TALES.

- Describe the stratification of the societythrough the analysis of the characters in THE CANTERBURY TALES.

- Are Chaucer's characters his own voice?

- Describe the influence of the church in THE CANTERBURY TALES.

- How is the concept of morality depicted in THE CANTERBURY TALES?

- What are the medieval concepts of literature engaged in THE CANTERBURY TALES?

- Is there more positive characters than negative characters in THE CANTERBURY TALES?

- Discuss the concept of eroticism in THE CANTERBURY TALES.

- How is the corruption of the church portrayed in THE CANTERBURY TALES?

After the above questions we had, we were explained what type of questions should be asked as we being postgraduate students.

CONCLUSION :

- Ask questions which can make a long arguement. The answer of the question asked should not be a short and straight away answer, it should have a good content and should go on for pages. We can add "Discuss" or "Elaborate" or "Elucidate" to the questions.

- We must keep the time frame in mind while asking questions. Do not impose concepts which the time does not permit. Ask questions on the literary concepts used during the time and its impact on the then society.

- Ask questions on the literary techniques on the part of the author. What is the research area of the author and how is the work received by society as a whole, by the readers and as well as by us individually. For eg. In which genre of work does THE CANTERBURY TALES fall into - Is it novel, poem, epic, drama, etc.? The answer would be it is a Frame Narrative(where there are many stories within a story) like the stories of PANCHATANTRA, VIKRAM BETAAL , ARABIAN NIGHTS etc.

- Ask questions making an interplay of the characters in the text.

- Raise questions on the debates appeared in the text itself.

- Ask questions on the author's perspective itself.

These were some of the useful tips on how to frame correct questions even in order to perceive the text well.

Philis Wheatly

Phillis Wheatly (1753-1784)

Phillis Wheatly was a kidnapped African slave child who was sold from the South Market in Boston to a well to do Susanna Wheatly. In her childhood she experienced special, much indulged comfort and only token slavery. She quickly learned Latin, English and the Bible and began writing in 1764. Her poems were based on the themes of morality and piety, along with patriotic American pieces, an epithalamium, and a short racially self conscious poem, “Thoughts on being brought from Africa and America”.

Initially her poems were not published as the subscribers felt that it was part racially motivated. With the prestigious co-operation of Countess of Huntingdon and Susanna Wheatly, her book was published in London in 1773. This was the first volume known to have been published by a black American, man or woman. Her poems have elements of neoclassical poetic norms.

Her poems represent a deeply self conscious art. Her sense of herself as an African and an American makes her in some way a dual provincial in relationship to the eighteen century Anglo-Atlantic cosmopolitan centre. The language of poem is both American (refines English) and African (non refined and broken English) in nature.

Her poems included not only Christian elegies, but also highly original English translations from the Latin of Ovid, biblical paraphrases and poems about nature, imagination and memory. She was highly influenced by the Bible.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

In just eight lines, Wheatley describes her attitude towards her condition of enslavement -- both coming from Africa to America, and the culture that considers her color so negatively. Wheatley begins by crediting her slavery as a positive, because it has brought her to Christianity. She makes a clear distinction between God (frightening and fearful) and Saviour( hope). The word "benighted" means "overtaken by night or darkness" or "being in a state of moral or intellectual darkness." Thus, she makes her skin color and her original state of ignorance of Christian redemption parallel situations.

She credits "mercy" with her voyage -- but also with her education in Christianity. Both were actually at the hands of human beings. In turning both to God, she reminds her audience that there is a force more powerful than they are -- a force that has acted directly in her life. She cleverly distances her reader from those who "view our sable race with scornful eye" -- perhaps thus nudging the reader to a more critical view of slavery or at least a more positive view of those who are slaves. She directly talks about the Europeans treatment to the African community.

"Sable" , refers to a self-description of her color which is very valuable and desirable. This characterization contrasts sharply to the "diabolic die" of the next line, as it means poisonous evil color. In the second-to-last line, the word "Christian" is placed ambiguously. She may either be addressing her last sentence to Christians -- or she may be including Christians in those who "may be refined" and find salvation. She reminds her reader that Negroes may be saved. The implication of her last sentence is also this: the "angelic train" will include both white and black. She believes that everyone is entitled to redemption.

The poem is biblical in nature, and we can say that she criticizes Africa at some point and also she talks about African from an outsider point of view. She distances herself from her pagan land (Africa) as she is now civilized. Although we can say that Wheatly re-defines Christianity, she believes that Africans can be redeemed. There was notion of Africans being referred to ‘cians’, which believed that Africans can never be redeemed of their sins. Thus, at a certain level it can be said that it is ‘anti Christian’ in nature as it defies the norms of the Bible.

Phillis Wheatley takes on the role of one who has the right to command: a teacher, a preacher, even perhaps a master or mistress( saviour).In looking at Wheatley's attitude towards slavery in her poetry, it's also important to note that most of Phillis Wheatley's poems do not refer to her "condition of servitude".

On Imagination

Wheatly personifies Imagination as a woman, a queen. The thyme scheme of the poem is aabbccdd. This poem stands as an ode in praise of Imagination.

“Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand”. He praises beauty and glorifies the creation- creation of poetry. This poem is the form of invocation in order to justify the sacredness of Imagination. Wheatly draws a comparison between ‘Fancy’ and ‘Imagination’. She says that fancy is ordinary in nature which has the capacity to only capture one’s mind. Also ‘fancy’ can be tampered whith, while Imagination is very powerful, it has an element of ‘fascination’ about it. “Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain”. Also, fancy can’t be remembered while imagination lasts longer and at times is forever itched in our memory.

She raises the level of Imagination to the divine god himself and claims that Imagination has pinions, wings to soar high. “And leave the rolling universe behind”. There is a reference of Galileo’s theory which states that the world is round. “There in one view we grasp the mighty whole”, there is reference to view everything as a whole, there is a sense of holistic view about every minute detail. “Leader of mental train”, thoughts or mind have the ultimate power, the ultimate sovereign ruler about whom we have to bow.

Wheatly urges her soul to rise and contemplate the majesty of God through the vastness and orderliness of his creation. Though God himself is unseen, he is made manifest in the heavens and the earth through such powerful objects as the sun. Wheatley takes the grandeur of the cosmos as proof of God's sublime, divine imagination. The poem is shaped by the pattern of day's light being following by night's darkness and the return of daylight on the following morning. Humans and the vegetative world require the productive light of the day and the restorative darkness of night, so God is not only powerful but also merciful. The poem ends with Reason and Love, personified, asking what most shows forth almighty God. The poet's answer is that everywhere one looks one sees God's infinite love made visible; humans know him through their senses. Reason falters and fails in the face of the Eternal. All that is left is for humans to praise and worship.