Ekphrasis
Blog Unit:
Detail Brueghel's "Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus"
Blog Unit: IB HL English, Year 1: Ekphrasis
(Ekphrasis, alternately spelled ecphrasis or ekfrasis, is an ancient Greek term used to denote poetry or poetic writing concerning itself with the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly visual scenes.)
The Argument:
In his book, The Educated Imagination, the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye says, “There are two main kinds of association, analogy and identity, two things that are like each other and two things that are each other. One produces the figure of speech called simile: the other produces the figure called metaphor” (Frye, 32).
An issue that I often encounter when I teach literature I associate with building bridges. Many of my students see the relationship between the shoreline of the “real world,” that world wherein they live, and, say, the shoreline of biology or economics. They can imagine that someday, somehow those academic subjects might play a role in their future careers. My students have constructed a bridge between themselves and those disciplines. My subject does not offer them the ground of cause and effect or demand and production. I offer them a world founded upon mere imagination where almost any argument is as good as the next, a world that in comparison appears groundless, and any bridge under construction seems but a “ghostly paradigm of things” (“Among School Children,” 43, Y.B.Yeats).
My students often ask the pertinent question, “Why should I study literature; why should I spend time on a subject which is a place where there are few, if any, absolutes, where rights and wrongs are relative?” Any honest consideration of these questions begs another question even more basic, one with significant ramifications: Why Art?
Suppose we go on a trip to a distant planet, but it’s a planet like our own, one that will sustain human life. The first thing we notice is that this is a place that is not “us.” We see this planet’s mountains and valleys and oceans and sky. But we realize that they are not a part of us. Two things happen: we become curious about this world, and we have feelings about it. Our curiosity leads us to explore and measure and weigh and make distinctions: this thing is heavy; this thing is wet; this thing is green. Eventually our emotions run the gamut from curiosity and wonder to anxiety and fear. But regardless of our itinerant emotions, our habitual state of mind is one of separation; this place is not a part of us.
Soon we realize that there’s a difference between this world we see and the world in which we want to live. We begin to realize that we have needs and desires: when it rains we want to be dry; when it is cold we want to be warm. We want to live not in the world we see, but in a world that we build out of what we see. We want to build and live in a world that is human/humane; we want to build a home. Art is born. Northrop Frye says, “Art begins as soon as [the idea] ’I don’t like this’ turns into [the idea] ‘this is not the way I could imagine it’” (28). In our imaginations anything can happen that can be imagined, and “the limit of the imagination is a totally human world” (Frye, 29).
The imagination is the place where we can create the sense of identity with our surroundings. The poet doesn’t write a poem because he wants to simply describe nature, he wants to create a world that is totally absorbed and possessed by the human mind, and we’ve come round to an answer to the question about why we should study literature. Two of the tools that the poet uses are simile and metaphor; tools, as mentioned earlier, of association. “The motive for metaphor,” according to Frye, “is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is in those rare moments when you feel that although we may know in part, as [St.] Paul says, we are also a part of what we know” (33).
Unit Lesson Plan/Outline:
Students, I want you to search the web (and others sources—i.e., books, magazines, etc.) and “find” a work of art. It can be a painting or sculpture or photograph or tapestry; it can be a dance video or music—you choose. Please “check” with me when you have decided what “object” of art you have chosen to use. Regardless of your respective artistic talents, you are required to sketch (reproduce as it were) the work of art that you have chosen. If you’ve chosen a dance video, think about some of Degas’ paintings that feature dancers; if you’ve chosen music, think of Disney’s Fantasia. You are allowed to also use a photograph of your object in your blog if you wish (Flickr: Creative Commons), but you are all required to draw! You must post your sketch on your blog! (with or without an accompanying photograph). Are you an artist? If you are a photographer, painter, sculptor (etc.), you may choose a work of your own. Just remember: you still must do a sketch! Think of it as a variation on a theme.
You need to reflect upon the reasons that led you to choose that particular object of art. Each student will write and post a brief explanation (a kind of abstract) on your blog in which you discuss the reasons that led you to choose that object of art.
You are then required to compose a poem (of no less than ten lines) inspired by your object of art.
When we return from Christmas Holiday, in class we will read “Musee des Beaux Arts,” by W.H. Auden. I will have an image of Brueghel’s “Landscape With The Fall of Icarus” for us to observe (this painting inspired Auden’s poem). Together we will do a close reading of “Musee des Beaux Arts,” paying close attention to Auden’s literary devices and allusions. We will discuss Auden’s tone.
For homework, subsequent to our class discussion on Auden, you are required to compose a comparison/contrast personal reflection paper comparing Auden’s poem with your poem (think of it as a kind of Commentary on your own poem where you include a discussion of “Musee des Beaux Arts”). An emphasis should be placed on whether you think the similarities or the differences between your poem and Auden’s are more significant. This, too, will be posted on your blog: word limit: 750—1,500.
Conclusion:
In our first section, subtitled “The Argument,” I discussed the world of the imagination. I’d like to finish with a quote from Northrop Frye, to whom I am completely indebted for much of the substance of this lesson plan (including planetary exploration). Frye writes:
But the study of arts, such as painting and music, has many values for literary training apart from their value as subjects in themselves. Everything man does that’s worth doing is some kind of construction, and the imagination is the constructive power of the mind set free to work on pure construction, construction for its own sake. The units don’t have to be words; they can be numbers or tones or colors or bricks or pieces of marble. It is hardly possible to understand what the imagination is doing with words without seeing how it operates with some of these other units” (Frye, 120).
Action Plan:
Activities: Students select an “object” of art.
Students sketch their chosen object.
Students post their sketch (students may include a photo of their “object”).
Students post a brief abstract (one paragraph) that discusses what led them to select their work of art.
Students compose a poem inspired by their “object” of art.
Students post their poem.
Students compose and post a Personal Commentary discussing their poem and Auden’s poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts”.
Timing: IBHL 1: 2009-10; Spring Semester
Resources: Described in length above.
Monitoring: Student Self-monitoring, Socratic Seminar, Criterion-based Rubric (for the student’s reflective essay: IB “Written Paper 1: Commentary” Rubric, pages 61-66 in Language A1 Syllabus).
Evaluation: Individual student self-assessment via conferencing with the instructor (me). (Process) HAL: 1-7. (Product) GPA: A-F.
Success Criteria: Bloom’s Revised Taxononmy (hierarchically—from least to most important): Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating (Bloom’s Traditional Taxonomy = Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis).
Landscape With The Fall of Icarus, Pieter Breughel, c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood; 73.5 x 112 cm;
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.
Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,
Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.
This page will link to individual student E-Folios/Blogs.
E-Folios
I can’t think of a better definition for E-Folios than the one offered by The Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning:
“We define a learning portfolio as a purposeful collection of artifacts that characterize learning experiences of the portfolio owner. These artifacts may include items that were created by the student in the context of the learning experience, such as a paper or a drawing, or the artifacts may otherwise represent the student’s learning experience, such as a brochure or photo. Reflection, the process of thinking about something from a new perspective in order to understand that thing more deeply, is an essential part of creating a learning portfolio. The products of this higher-order thinking are also important components to be included in the portfolio. The portfolio owner might be an individual or a group of individuals–teachers, learners, a program or institution. The set of artifacts contained in a portfolio together with reflections, tell a unique story about some aspect of the owner, and can help the owner share his or her story in rich detail” (http://scil.stanford.edu/research/efolios/).