The ideas present within the novel transcend not only the time it was written but lift themselves from the pages to manifest within pop culture. What Dostoevsky was focused on still resonates with audiences today. So, this week, pay attention to your world. Listen to your music, watch your television, see your movies, and read your books. Think about what point is being made and how it is connected to our novel, Crime and Punishment.
This is your opportunity to not only read our texts, but to read the world:)
Monday, February 16, 2015
Monday, February 9, 2015
Crime and Punishment
The following passage from Crime and Punishment. In your blog this week, explain how the author's use of imagery, and figurative language characterize the two characters: Raskolnikov and the Pawn Broker. Remember to explain why it matters!
"The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held ‘the pledge.’ Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively" (1.7. 16).
"The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held ‘the pledge.’ Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively" (1.7. 16).
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Wilde
Aestheticism
According to The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms Aestheticism is a movement that started in Europe in the second half of the 19th century.
Supporters of this movement insist that there is a separation of art from morality. Art needs no moral to have value. Art for Art's Sake or L'art pour l'art
In literature--it was about praising the form with little authorial presence.
Aestheticism is shown through this character--Cyril from Wilde's The Decay of Lying (1889):
- Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily realistic in its age of realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far from being the creation of its own time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress.
This is a very brief explanation as to what this movement meant and just a glimmer as to Wilde's involvement. In looking at this description, how does this change the way you see The Picture of Dorian Gray? Can a piece of Artwork exist without any moral, social, or political value? Think about your speeches and the art pieces you incorporated when making your argument.
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