LITERATURE

BEYOND
THE
BOOK
 INTRODUCTION
The Cultural Studies approach brings to everyday life the same tools of analysis one finds in
literary study. Advertisements, popular songs, television shows, journalism, comics, videogames,
films – all can be analysed from a variety of critical perspectives. That is the case because they
are imaginative artifacts that bear meaning. They are constructed using similar techniques to
those used in film and literature such as narrative, metaphor, irony, framing, and composition.
As in literature, so in culture, meaning is borne by signs. Signs function because they embody
codes (dictionaries of meaning) that are shared by cultural communities. The image on a
magazine cover will be meaningful to the community of readers the magazine addresses
Advertisements (printed, and now TV) and television shows operate similarly by providing
significant narratives that viewers understand because they share the codes upon which the
narrative is based. TV detective shows, for instance, reinforce a shared understanding of moral
order in a civil society. An example of a literary advert: The Turtle Dove – Dicken’s advert poem.
Culture consists of texts, institutions and practices. A popular song is both a text in the
traditional literary sense (words on a page) and also a performance, a merger of sound and word
that can also, on stage, draw on dance and special effects, and even on story (i.e. videoclips).
Example: Annie Lennox’s ‘Love song for a vampire’.
Cultural studies began with the study of popular literary forms such as the detective novel, and
with such everyday practices as Punk fashion. It remains committed to the examination of the
popular realm, but in theory it also encompasses high culture as well and can, in the form of such
subdisciplines as Visual Studies, cover a range of high-cultural and popular materials.
Culture is a realm of power. Those with economic power are able to make cultural products,
while those without economic power are obliged to be consumers. Certain realms, such as
filmmaking and popular music, are more open to creativity from below on the class ladder, but the
production and dissemination of media entertainment requires great resources.
Cultural Studies emerged in the literary academy in the wake of the 1960s and combined
Marxism and Structuralist studies. Marxists are concern with class and with the way income
differences manifest themselves in culture. They noticed that working-class youth, who are
assigned few materialist resources by a capitalist society, resort to symbolic means of attained
self-identity and a sense of self-worth. Structuralism, the study of human sign systems, aided
Marxist endeavor by providing a vocabulary and method for analyzing those symbolic activities.
Cultural Studies has since expanded to include everything from religion and cyberspace to
comic books and videogames. Any symbolic and meaning-laden human activity is cultural and is
worthy of study.

Things to look for in Cultural Texts:

 How does the text use signs to create meaning?

 Is the text part of a larger cultural discourse with rules and conventions that shape what
it is?
 What if any are the likely effects of the text on audiences? How is it going to be received?
 Does it work to convince or manipulate, to evoke feelings or to instill fear?
 What seems to be its purpose apart from entertaining?
 How can the cultural text, issue, event or problem be part of the social work related to the
real world?

WHAT IS LITERATURE?

Scholars and literary critics differ over what constitutes literature. The once revered canon of texts
(such as The Canterbury Tales, The Merchant of Venice, and Wuthering Heights) has given way
to the study of a much broader range of texts (including popular romances, soap operas, and
advertisements) and voices (especially kinds of voices that had not been included among
canonical texts such as African-, Asian-, and Latin American writers). Some definitions of literature
specify criteria that a text must have in order to qualify as literature whereas others emphasize
acceptance by a reading community as the primary marker. There is a widely shared sense that
literature stands apart from more ordinary texts such a telephone books, shopping lists, etc.

 A practical approach to understanding literature might enumerate some widely shared

characteristics:
o Written texts.
o Careful use of language, including features such as creative metaphors, well-
turned phrases, elegant syntax, rhyme, meter
o Written in a literary genre (poetry, prose fiction, or drama).
o Intended by its authors to be read aesthetically.
o Deliberately somewhat open to interpretation.

LITERATURE & URBAN ART

THE SIMULATED THEME WORLD

• “Space is a construction and material manifestation of social relations that reveals cultural
assumptions and practices” (Barker 2003:353).
• “Urban spaces and places are formed by the synergy of capital investment and cultural
meanings” (Barker 2003:359).

According to Zukin (1991), we cannot understand cities without considering:

• How cities use culture as an economic base.

• How capitalizing on culture spills over into the privatization and militarization of public
space.
• How the power of culture is related to the aesthetics of fear.

Culture plays an economic role in a number of ways:

• The culture industries, including film, television, advertising agencies and the music
business lend glamour to cities, bringing direct employment and other economic benefits.
• The museums, restaurants, shops, theatres, clubs and bars of cities provided convivial
consumption spaces for business meetings and tourism.
• The new arenas of public meeting, public culture and the public sphere are situated in
private commercial spaces – the private park, the shopping mall and the simulated
theme world.

Example: Walt Disney Parks and literature for children.

Disney land and Disney World are two of the most significant public spaces of the late 20th century.

• The Disney landscape provides a multi-media experience representing a tourist attraction

and a symbolically desirable lifestyle.
• This is a public culture where civility and social interaction occur in the context of a
security regime in which there are no guns, no homeless people and no drugs =
Everything is perfect and clean.
• Disney’s idealized and fantasized world presents to us, in symbolic and imaginary form,
the pleasurable aspects of urban life while removing the fear.
• It is the new model for public space and entertainment.
 • Disney World confirms and consolidates the significance and power of culture as a form
of commerce and social control.
• Disney has used mythology, historical characters, fairy tales, fables and English
literatures as the foundation for some of its most successful projects.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1951)

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became the first animated Disney feature to
use classic English literature as a bedrock. In the Disney version, elements from both the original
Alice adventure and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass were combined to give a strong
flavour of the Carroll’s perversely warped universe and offer a colourful note to Disney World and
Disneyland urban layout.

PETER PAN (1953)

The second classic British book that inspired Disney was J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan, or The
Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. It is worth pointing out that Barrie originally wrote this as a play, but
the novelisation which first appeared in 1911 was entitled Peter & Wendy. While most of the
elements from Barrie’s Pan transfer well to the Disney version, there are some darker overtones
in the novel which are left out. Disney’s attractions based on Peter Pan are spectacular, since
you fly over London in Peter’s ship, and you can nearly touch the Big Ben tower.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS

• Adapted from novelist and playwright Dodie Smith’s work.

THE SWORD ON THE STONE (1963)

• Based on T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.

• The book is divided in four parts, and The Sword in the Stone in the first part.

OTHER LITERARY WORKS THAT INSPIRED DISNEYLAND’S / DISNEY WORLD’S LOCATION

• A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

• Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
• Margery Sharp’s The Rescuers (1959) and Miss Bianca (1962) inspired The Rescuers
(1977).
• Eve Tutus based his The Great Mouse Detective on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
• The Black Cauldron is based on Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, which
borrows in turn from Welsh mythology.
• Treasure Planet, an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novel Treasure
Island.
• Oliver & Company is a reworking of Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens.
• The Lion King has reminiscences from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

STATUES IN PARKS, MALLS, AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

• The Bremen Town Musicians.
• Chronicles of Narnia.
• The Little Mermaid – Denmark’s most famous statue, in Copenhagen’s harbor.
• Jungle Book: workshop for children – statues made by children.
• Peter Pan.
 SHAKESPEARE AND URBAN ART
Shakespeare’s Funerary Monument:
• The earliest memorial to the playwright, located in his hometown (Stratford-upon-Avon).
Constructed between 1616 and 1623.
• It features a bust of the poet, who holds a quill pen in one hand and a piece of paper in
another.
• Throughout the years, people have stolen the quill and the piece of paper from the
monument. Some critics have used paintings with those missing elements has proof that
he was not a writer, but a merchant.

Shakespeare’s Statue at the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, preferential place.

LITERARY REFERENCES IN THE NAMES OF SHOPS

• Hurry Cutter – The Barbershop.

• To Bead or Knot 2 Bead.
• Surelock Homes.
• Lord of the Fries.

LITERATURE AND GRAFFITI

• Authors.
• Quotations.
• Murals dedicated to famous figures, like activist.
• Belfast / Northern Ireland murals: republican and loyalist murals, use of Irish mythological
figures (the Ulster Cycle; Cú Chulainn, Queen Maeve).

LITERATURE & PAINTING

English literature entered English painting through the stage door, with the assistance of
William Hogarth. The earliest subjects were from the world of entertainment rather than that of
polite literature: popular actors and actresses costumed for, and often posed in, the parts that had
won them fame. Theatrical pictures, first character portraits and then representations of scenes
as well, continued for more than half a century to be the chief link between the painted and the
written (and in this case “performed”) arts of England.
Hogarth was the first English artist to paint directly from the stage, beginning with two
Shakespearean productions: Henry IV (Falstaff examining his recruits, 1730), Henry VIII.
The increasing popularity of pictures from fiction toward the end of the 18th century did not
detract from, but on the contrary nurtured the fortunes of theatrical paintings. The painting of
English historical subjects had began as early as 1729-30.

• Visual representations of earlier literature: Arthurian paintings, tapestries, miniatures.

• Sherlock paintings.
• Jane Eyre paintings.
• Wuthering Heights paintings.
• Alice in Wonderland paintings.
o Alice’s tea party is inscribed in our cultural discourse, as are some of the
characters.
o Disney film – intended for children; very colorful and happy; Disney style,
beautiful, friendly.
Questions:

• How does the picture use signs in order to create meaning?

• Are the characters that appear in the painting part of a larger cultural discourse with rules
and conventions that shape what it is?
• What, if any, are the likely effects of that picture on the people who see it?
• What seems to be its purpose?
• How can the picture be related to the social world of which it is part?

LITERATURE & SCULPTURE

If we go back to Renaissance times, then literature and sculptures were the means of expression
of an artis or of a writer’s feelings. Since Humanism was focused upon this, it was an easy way
gain promotion in the social ladder. Many artists tried their luck at sculpturing and writing but only
a few made their names well known. At the beginning of the Renaissance sculptures started
appearing all over. Sculptures were considered craftsmen and they did not sign the art.
Nevertheless, people usually know who had created the sculptures and the status of the artist
rose when he showed more creativity and came up with new art forms. Usually, sculptures were
made of stone, marble, and sometimes even ice. For a more modern example, while we still have
sculptures, we can also look at toys.

• Beowulf toys.
• Arthurian toys.
• King Lear statues.
• Sherlock Holmes statue.
• Alice in Wonderland paper statue; bottle statue.

LITERATURE & ARCHAEOLOGY

STUTTON HOO

• Burial site discovered in 1939.

• Important links to the Anglo-Saxon world and Beowulf.
• The remains of a boat were discovered, and also a large burial chamber containing
numerous artifacts.
• Such artifacts suggest a distinctly Christian element intermingled with pagan ritual.
• Burial sites including the ships.
• Episodes in Beowulf now have tangible archaeological evidence to add credibility to the
blend in customs in the text.

LITERATURE & PHOTOGRAPHY

• Photographs as book illustrations.
• Photographs of authors.
• Adaptation films stills / photographs / posters.
• Photographic compositions.
• “Photographic adaptations.”
Whereas you can visualize any kind of literary work through painting, you need to have literature
dramatized in order to be able to capture images with a camera. And contrary to what happens
with painting, the work of art which is reproduced in photographs becomes more accessible to
more people and affords them a role in its critical evaluation.

LITERATURE & FILM

CINEMATIC ADAPTATION.

• Making a story fit the specific requirements of cinematic narrative.

• This term is usually applied to the turning of tales, novels or plays into film scripts.

TYPES OF ADAPTATION.

As many as scriptwriters, but we are going to reduce them to four ones:

• You are faithful to the literary work, structuring it in scenes which follow the order of the
narrated ones.
• You select the key scenes from the literary work and you build your script upon them.
• You choose intriguing elements, characters or situations, and you create, with them, an
almost original script.
• You choose the subject of a narration as the leitmotif of an utterly original script (e.g.
Inherit the Land – man in the US with a great farm, and three daughters --- King Lear).

An adaptation must not be understood as a mere transfer from a system of expression to another,
but as an absolutely determinant cultural-historical transfer. An adapted work is always created
in a different cultural-historical context from that in which the original one was produce and by
essentially different means. It is, therefore, an appropriation which entails a process of integration
and assimilation of the original work, in order to translate it to the characteristics point of view,
look, aesthetics and ideology of the context of the context of the adaptation and the adapters.

ADAPTER.

An adapter is a script writer in charge of adapting a pre-existing work into the screen.
Shakespeare was the great adapter of all times. His works were inspired by previously extant
works.

SHOT / ‘PLANO’.

• Space covered by the camera lens, which frames a scenery, objects or people.
• When filming, uninterrupted operation of the camera to display a series of stills
(fotogramas); it is also called “take” (toma).
• In the finished movie, a continuous image with a sole mobile or static frame. Definitive
form in which the film contains the take.

TYPES OF SHOTS

• General View: When it is the landscape which dominates in the frame and man is nearly
non-existing in it. It is used to show where action is taking place.
• Extra-Long Shot: When human figures occupy only ¾ or 1/3 of the screen height. The
bigger it is, the smaller man gets with respect to the landscape or the surroundings. It is
the type of shot used by those directors who want to express the perfectly-balanced
relationship between man and the environment in which he evolves and acts.
 • Long Shot: l That in which human figures take up at least two thirds of the screen height
and that, besides presenting the general atmosphere, allows us to differentiate the actors’
gestures perfectly. It is used, therefore, to show the locations of subjects and objects, for
the audience to follow all the wide movements. It is the shot used by epic films.
• Medium Long Shot: It takes up a full-length standing human figure, as if
• staring at it up and down. It is used to see actors move in their environment. It is the most
commonly used shot in action films, in sci-fi films and in musicals with from- one-to-three
actors choreographies. The shorter the medium long shot is, the more impact characters
will cause on the audience and the more strength their gestures and facial expressions
will acquire.
• Knee Shot: It frames the human figure in such a way that the bottom line is located below
the knees. It is mainly used when it is essential to visualize the reactions of the characters
involved and when it is necessary to establish a relationship between several elements
in the same take. It is the kind of shot used for melodrama, western and film noir.
• Long Medium Shot: It takes up the human figure up to below the waist, letting us see the
actions of hands and chest. It allows us to realize what mood the character is in, through
the look in his/her eyes and his/her face affectation. It is the type of shot used for comedy
and drama.
• Medium Shot: The bottom line of the frame is located above the waist. It is used to show
details better, to highlight actions and forms, to reveal reactions, to get dramatic or comic
effects. It is the most commonly used take in any classic cinematic narration.
• Medium Close Up: The bottom line of the frame is at the height of the armpits. It is the
most commonly used take in conversations between two people, in tense situations and
in scenes of films about characters’ private lives.
• Close Up: It frames one or several human figures above the collar bone. Close ups are
an invasion of the field of conscience, they provoke considerable mental tension, and
they reflect an obsessive kind of thought. This type of take concentrates all the audience’s
interest, reveals and points out the information that otherwise would go unnoticed, and it
emphasises that which it shows.
• Very Close Up: The head fills the frame. It causes the effect of a nearly obscene approach
to the character’s thoughts. Almost unknown to classic films, but modern movies use it a
lot, influenced by TV.
• Extreme Close Up: It is the framing of an isolated detail of a character or object which, in
the story-line of the film, is essential.
• Shot – Reverse Shot: Relationship established between two takes, edited one after the
other, which alternate a point of view of two characters (or groups of characters) facing
each other in a conversational context.

TYPES OF ACCEPTANCE ANGLES

Acceptance Angle: The difference between the camera level and that of the object to be filmed,
that is, the sight angle determined by the position of the optic axis of the lens in relation to the
vertical position of the filmed object.

• Eye Level: The horizontal angle in which the skyline is parallel to the upper and bottom
rims of the still. It is normally used, and it provides naturalness, calmness and realism.
• High Angle: The horizontal angle in which the skyline is parallel to the upper and bottom
rims of the still. It is normally used and it provides naturalness, calmness and realism.
• Low Angle: In the low angle shot the camera is below the character. Its aim is precisely
opposite to that of the high angle shot. It intends to enlarge that which it frames. It is taken
from a low angle (below the eyeline and upwards). In this kind of angle, characters can
be turned into heroes, their moments of euphoria or triumph can be expressed, and they
can even be turned into powerful and fearsome creatures.
• Tilted, canted or oblique Angle: With the tilted, canted or oblique angle the camera is
inclined to one side. In this type of shot the diagonal framings are usual. They are used
 in order to make the audience ‘nervous’ and let them know that something is going to
happen or that there is something wrong. They are used in horror and science-fiction
movies.
• Top Angle: This angle is achieved by placing the optic axis fully vertical (camera
downwards); it accentuates isolation and agglomeration, but also the form and movement
of groups, (thence its frequent use in the filming of choreographies).
• Supine Angle: The optic axis is completely vertical, but with the camera ‘looking upwards’.
It gives danger, oneiricism and exoticism to the thus filmed space.

OTHER CONCEPTS

• Background Depth: the space between the foreground and the background that are
focused in the same frame. It is used as an element of great dramatic and psychological
background.
• Scene: the space between the foreground and the background that are focused in the
same frame. It is used as an element of great dramatic and psychological background.
• Sequence: is a series of scenes which belong to the same storyline.
• Sequence Shot: a lengthy take which becomes a sequence; it is a sequence film in just
one shot, in just one take and which keeps the spatial and temporal units.

LITERATURE, MAGAZINES &

NEWSPAPERS
• Reviews.
• Critical essays.
• Obituaries.
• Pop culture commentary.
• Blogs and literary magazines that publish works.

• The Female Spectator: four fictional female characters, used to instruct/teach women.
• Literary critic magazines: The Strand, the Guardian Literary Supplement.
• Literary magazines: The Lotus, Overture.

LITERATURE & COMICS

A comic is another means of expression, and a very appealing one for literature.
The part of the sign Saussure calls the ‘concept’ or ‘meaning’ (mental impression/association
of the ‘thing’) he named ‘signified’. The part he calls the ‘sound-image’ (the mental ‘linguistic sign’
given to the ‘thing’) he named the ‘signifier’. In the comic we find both the signified and signifier –
we have images and texts.
Hjelmslev differentiates the different levels of expression and content, with their respective
substance and form. Hence, we shall compare the dramatic or cinematic image with the image
used in comics.

CINEMA COMIC

- Audiovisual. - Visual.
- Spatial-temporal. - Just Temporal.
- Direct, it is updated while interacting - Finished before the appearance of
with the audience. the reader.
 - Real image (tridimensional and - Created image (bidimensional, fixed
mobile) and sequential).
- Showing. - Showing and narrative.
- Reality elements turned into signs on - Morphological and structural plastic
stage. elements turned into conventional
- Unique point of view of the audience. signs on the space of representation.
- Staged. - Several points of view.
- Composed.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

• David Bowie intended to write a musical inspired on George Orwell’s 1984, but Orwell’s
wife would not grant him the rights to develop it. Therefore, he ended up including the
songs he had written for the musical in his LP Diamond Dogs, issued in 1974.
• The Alan Parsons Project devoted their debut studio album to the works of Edgard Allan
Poe. It was entitled: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe), and one of the
songs it contained was “The Raven”. The songs in the album correspond to titles of Poe’s
horror stories.
• Led Zeppelin wrote “Starway to Heaven” inspired on the carácter of the Elves’ queen,
Galadriel, from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. There are also references to The Lord of
the Rings in Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble on”. And in Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard”.
• Kate Bush wrote a song inspired on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which was a great
hit in 1978. The speaker in the song is Cathy’s ghost.
o Wuthering Heights has been sung by many singers, who have offered their own
versions.
• In 2007, Idina Menzel’s ”A hero comes home” is included as the end-credit song for
Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf. In the movie, Robin Wright Pen also sings the song. I am
inclusing both versions here.
• “Into the West” is the end-credit song for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(2003), sang by Annie Lennox.
• “Grey ships pass Into the West” is a metaphor for going to heaven. Peter Jackson
revealed that “the song was inspired by the premature death by cancer of New Zealand
film maker Cameron Duncan”. The first public performance of the song was at the latter's
funeral.
• That metaphor also worked perfectly for the last scenes of the film, when Bilbo, Frodo
and the elves leave for the West.

LITERATURE & OPERA

Opera is an art of escalation and magnification. Conflicts between characters or within the
heart of an individual character in crisis situations are intensified immeasurably through music.
This art possesses an emotional immediacy and unleashes a visceral impact that words alone
cannot duplicate. When drama, music and the voice are working in harmony, their combination
can be sublime.
When operas are inspired by great works of literature, composers and their librettists look for
explosive dramatic potentials, characters or stereotypes which can be converted through music
into exemplary figures and, accompanying them, the interwining themes of love and death.
It is a fact that it takes longer to sing words than to simply pronounce them. To set to music
every line of verse or prose a character utters in a literature text would lead to lyric dramas of
interminable length. Composers and librettists have been thus compelled by the very nature of
the art form to practice “condensation.” To keep an opera within manageable limits, they must
discard all but those elements of the original text necessary for the audience to understand the
relationships between the characters and follow the development of the plot. It would be unfair to
judge an opera on the basis of its fidelity to the book that inspired it. The predominant presence
of music in this art form creates new parametres which cannot be ignored. These profoundly
influence the structure a given opera will have. Literature provides the raw material which a
composer and his librettist cannot help but fashion into something different, even when they strive
to be faithful to the spirit of the original.

LEAR, NATIONAL THEATER, MUNICH (1978)

• Lear is an opera in two parts with music by Aribert Reimann (b. 1936), and a libretto by
Claus H. Henneberg, based on Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear.
• Reimann wrote the title role specifically for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who had suggested
the subject to the composer as early as 1968.
• Reimann then received a commission from the Bavarian State Opera in 1975.
• The world premiere, in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle with Fischer-Dieskau in the
title role, occurred at the Nationaltheater, Munich on 9 July 1978, with Gerd Albrecht
conducting.
• The production was revived in Munich in 1982 and this revival is the source of the video
you are about to view.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

• Written by Bernard Herrmann from 1943 to 1951.

• A prologue, 4 acts and an epilogue that repeats the music from the prologue.
• Recorded in full by the composer in 1966.
• Complete performance in 2011.
• Lucy Fletcher, Herrmann’s first wife, wrote the libretto, based on the first part of the novel,
interpolated some text from the second part of the novel and some poems by Emily
Brönte.
• "Wuthering Heights", the Opera, Music by Frédéric Chaslin
o London Symphony & London Philharmonia Chorus Orchestra
o Palau de Las Artes, Valencia
o Conductor: Frederic Chaslin

BEOWULF

• Beowulf: Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

• Tom Solomon as Beowulf.

1984

• 1984 Big Brother Productions, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

• Written by Korean composer Unsuk Chin.

• Première: 30th June, 2007 at Baviera State Opera House.
 LITERATURE & THE MEDIA
Webpages and Literary Blogs
DENNIS COOPER AND THE ETHICS OF ONLINE LITERATURE

This is an excerpt from one of the entries Dennis Cooper (California, 1953) publishes fortnightly
on his blog, The DC Blog. As we will see in class, the entries normally take the form of a list of
sex workers’ profiles, with images and text. These posts are very explicit and graphic in their
content—this is not surprising since Cooper’s novels, such as his award-winning The
Sluts (2005), are known for their morbid and graphic detail. His is an “alarming and transgressive
fiction” (Kennedy 2012, 1).

Do we like Dennis?

• Michiko Katutani 1996 – just interested in sensationalism for sensation’s sake. AKA little
depth, only on it for the shook.
• Lev 2006 – work that flickers a disturbing light on the darkest nights of human souls.

The DC blog.

• May 2005 – daily.

• Censorship.
• Gave rise to a thriving artistic community.
• His main project.
• Variety of post, including fortnightly “Sluts” and “Slaves”:
• No source.
• No collection method.

Anatomy of a post

• Tititaling – real or no real, uncertainty.

Basis: Citational Literature

• Citational literature: encompasses all work s of citation that incorporate a significant

amount of found language (Comitta 2020)
• Are texts made entirely or almost entirely of found language [which] stand out in the genre
of citational fiction because of their radical rejection of originality [which] turns writing into
a kind of editorial or achival labour” [Comitta 2020]
• Found poetry: composed from other texts.
• Flarf poems created “but collaging together found language gathered from the web”
(Epstein 2012, 311).

The case of Saltwater Empire

• Hurricane Katrina,
• Alive in Truth project
• Raymond McDaniel
• “Convention Centers of the World”
• No credits.
• It was “highly unethical to use individual narratives in an anonymous and interchangeable
way, especially given this context” (A. L. Young 2020).

Metaliterature
 • Reveals “how literary fiction creates an imaginary world” and “helps us understand how
the reality we live day by day in similarly constructed similarly written” (Waugh 1984, 18).
• Parallelism to social media/dating apps.
• “the accumulation of similarities across source materials or within a single source can
reveal […] how we write, think and exist in the world” (Comitta 2020).

- Commercialization of the body.

- Sexualization of younger bodies.
- Sexism.

LITERATURE AND WEBPAGES

Nowadays the WWW is the fastest and probably more effective way of promoting literature.
The webs of sellers are an excellent platform to promote literature, since they include information
about books, reviews, images and an easy and fast way of acquiring them, not only in their
hardback and paperback but also in their electronic format.
Other types of websites related to literature that we can find are encyclopedic articles, study
aids, free access to books, book reviews, TV or cinematic versions, advertising, literary blogs,
creative literature blogs and magazines, and other blogs on literature.

LITERATURE & VIDEOGAMES

VIDEOGAMES VS. LITERATURE?

Both in the popular press and in everyday life, literature and video games are frequently
positioned as antagonists in the battle for time.
Michael Thompson in his 2012 article “Dark Night (After Night After Night) of the Soul” poses
the question that grownups have been posing to generations of youngsters in the last decades:
“Is a 100-hour video game ever worthwhile?” His response and that of older people is a common
one: “You could read a few books or do something profitable instead of wasting your time playing
those silly games.” Even the 2004 National Endowment for the Arts’ Reading at Risk report places
video games among other forms of electronic media as “competing” with literature: Students are
playing video games instead of reading great works of literature.
These sources (and countless others) fail to consider that video games and literature are
components of complex 21stcentury media and cultural interrelations. Over the past sixty years,
video games and literature have not really been antagonistic: They have been involved in a
reciprocal relationship of influence.
Espen Aarseth, a writer in the field of video game studies, states that “Storytelling has been,
and still is, the dominant form of cultural expression” (2004: 50). Stories inspired on those by J.
R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis have pushed the medium of books even further with their imaginative
stories and fantastical characters. As sources of inspiration and influence, they have allowed
future generations to write creative new stories in the genre of high fantasy. This in turn has
allowed newer mediums such as video games to thrive.
Some videogames based on Tolkien’s work are: The Hobbit (1982), Lord of the Rings: Journey
to Rivendell (created in 1983, never released), Lord of the Rings: Game One (1985), Bored of the
Rings (1985), The Boggit: Bored Too (1986), Shadows of Mordor (1987), War in Middle Earth
(1988). And many, many more.
One of those inspired by these classical tales is Todd Howard, who served as the executive
producer at Bethesda Game Studios and was responsible for much of the development of The
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). As a video game, Oblivion, has gameplay with nearly unlimited
customization and possesses a narrative, which is unique and new every time a person plays.
As a type of interactive entertainment, video games produce more interaction between the
player than other mediums like books or movies. Books are limited by both the order in which
they must be read and by the fact that, no matter how many times you read it, the story is not
going to change. And even if you do not read them following the stablished page order, but
choose, instead, the different options some books offer, the text itself in each of the options is not
going to change. It is going to be the same text for that specific option.
Video games such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were different when they appeared
because they allowed for both alternate character scenarios and different character choices each
and every time you played the game. You are also able to make your character a different race
set within the world, which allows for different conversations and interactions when going through
multiple play-throughs. Oblivion can serve as a new and engaging storytelling device with its
alternate scenarios and varying levels of gameplay. Robbins explains that the “Decisions
characters make—whether to execute a villain, lie to a major political figure, or talk their way out
of a fight—alter how the character is perceived by others, affecting the story and environment”
(2012: 46). This means that the player’s actions will have the power to decide and control the
development of the storyline. The player may choose to be an assassin-thief-like character
working for the Dark Brotherhood, or a powerful battle mage in the Mages Guild fighting off evil.
The most remembered books are probably those that have a character for everyone. In Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings, there are all kinds of characters which can fit a variety of reader’s interests.
This can also be said for The Elder Scrolls series, but instead of having predetermined characters,
these video games allow the players to make one their own.
Another important feature found in the game involves its rather unique and original story and
The Elder Scrolls series’ ability to accomplish what authors like Tolkien and Lewis started in the
fantasy genre. The narrative structure of the game has nonlinear gameplay with a linear story.

Based on the player’s choice of quest lines, there are a great variety of different paths the
game can take. The arrows represent the many paths the player can choose to take. However,
both the beginning and the end of the game will stay the same.
The Journey, a narrative archetype which relies on one Hero’s quest to accomplish a goal, is
commonplace among fantasy epics. This design, in which there is one individual going up against
countless others and defeating the odds, is one that can be very engaging to a reader. The fantasy
world built in The Elder Scrolls series is easy for viewers to lose themselves in and strongly
suggests that this new medium of video games can build atmospheres much like those found in
other mediums. The tales of The Elder Scrolls and those of Tolkien provide great storytelling and
narratives that engage the viewer.

Other videogames based on literature are: Castlevania (loosely based on Dracula by Bram
Stoker), several games based on Sherlock Holmes, or on Harry Potter, Metro 2033 (based on
Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novel of the same title), The Witcher (series by Andrzej Sapkowski), Alice:
Madness Returns, The Wolf Among Us (Fable comics).

LITERATURE & ADVERTISING

WRITERS ON ADVERTISING

Salman Rushdie: Before he wrote Midnight’s Children – the 1981 novel which would win not
only the Booker Prize for that year but the ‘Booker of Bookers’ award in 1993 – Salman Rushdie
worked in advertising (in the 1979s). Rushdie explained that his work in advertising ‘taught me to
write like a job. If you have the client coming in that afternoon for his new campaign, you can’t not
have it. You have to have it. What’s more, it has to be good.’
George Orwell, in his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), he shows a man with high
literary ambitions being ‘reduced’ to the work of writing advertising jingles and rhymes.
Marshall McLuhan: ‘The greatest art form of the twentieth century.’
 Mark Twain: Author Samuel Clemens turned his literary alias Mark Twain into an icon by
skillfully applying the branding and marketing tactics of the day, along with devising some
strategies never imagined. He said: ‘Many small thing has been made large by the right kind of
advertising.’ Twain’s titles were originally sold by advanced subscription via the well-prepared
pitches of his door-todoor sales team. These salesmen were literally walking advertisements that
created desire and prestige for the books by promoting their beautiful illustrations and bindings.
The special features made these early editions more expensive than copies later sold in stores,
but proved that direct marketing was well worth it.
Laughter was Twain’s way of skewering powerful people. His pen was his weapon and he
used it to express his strong opinions, but all of his jabs were veiled in humor. He knew that his
views would make an impact if they could first make people smile. As a result, Twain set the
standard for using amusement to inspire agreement and action.
Twain was known for selling himself before his work. His personality evolved over the course
of his publications and he incorporated this new wry persona into marketing his books, even
trademarking his name as a separate enterprise. He maintained the same marketing persona and
it established him name as a trusted brand.
Twain’s personal interest in risky new ventures led to some successes but many more
failures, yet his willingness to take risks kept his name in the news. Some of his failed projects
even inspired later successful stories and helped define his brand identity.
Twain’s formal schooling ended at age 12, but his subsequent job and travel opportunities
proved to be a much better education. His early travel experiences and unique perspective on the
world went on to become his trademark. He further fueled his education by frequently talking with
readers where he picked up ideas while promoting his brand.
Twain toyed with a variety of writing styles and his work was published in both major
magazines and tiny tabloids. His secret was having the ignorance not to settle on a single style,
and the confidence to believe that his talent could span all genres. His unwavering drive to
publicize his work increased both his fame and brand name. While Twain’s interest in inventions
could have defined his career, he realized that his writing talents would take him much farther.
Twain had a gift for using vernacular speech in his writing to very good effect. He actually
agonized over every word and punctuation mark to produce the desired reaction in readers. This
knack for choosing just the right words, and using them in just the right way, became the key to
sustaining his brand.
Twain was well ahead of his time in his ability to market his work while marketing himself as
the definitive brand. He produced a steady stream of quality content and used laughter to drive
loyalty. Though his heyday was more than 100 years ago, he still had the last word on modern
marketing.

ADVERTISING VS LITERATURE

• Are advertisements "writings of quality with pretenses to permanence"?

• Are advertisements widely understood to be a form of literature?
• Are they careful in their use of language, written in a recognizable literary genre, intended
to be and actually read aesthetically, and deliberately open in interpretation?

In fact, advertisements fail by any of these definitions to qualify as literature. It is this

difference that gives rise to the sense that literature is a part of "high" culture while advertisements
are something else and belong to "low," or mass, culture.
However, this binary division does not reflect the real relationship of literature and advertising
either in the present or the past. The literary theorist Jennifer Wicke argues that neither the novel
as a literary genre nor the advertisement as a text can be properly understood alone but rather
share a long and intimate history. She notes that prior to Gutenberg, scribal manuscripts
contained avertisements (or notices) that explained the circumstances of the copying. For
example, a notice that copying had been done during holy days would signify that the text was
not to be sold. At first, such notices appeared at the end of manuscripts. Later, after the printing
press was invented, printers began placing them as prefatory material before the main texts. The
content of these notices expanded to announce, describe, and indicate ownership of the texts
that followed. Thus, the very technology of printing spurred the development of advertisements
of printed texts.
Identifying with characters in literature is the theme of “Become Someone Else,” an
enormously clever and elegant advertising campaign by Lithuanian advertising firm Love Agency.
It was created for Mint Vinetu Mint, a used bookstore in Vilinus that caters in classic books.

LITERATURE & VAMPIRES

THE MYTH OF THE VAMPIRE

• Folklore and superstition.

• 19th century: recurrent topic in literature.
• ‘Vampyre’: noblemen, vices of society.
• John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819).
• James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampyre (1845-47).
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
• th
20 century: The popularity of the vampire increased not only thanks to literature but also
to another cultural expression: the CINEMA.
• Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).
• Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula.
• British Hammer Horror Corporation between 1958- 1974.
• Last decades of the 20th c.: George Romero’s Martin (1976), Joel Schumacher’s
The Lost Boys (1987), Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola
in 1992.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE AND BEYOND

• Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) and The Vampire Chronicles.
• Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994).
• Change: in the audience perspective: vampire’s point of view.
• Celluloid Vampires (Abbot 2007: 7)–the reinvention of the vampire through film
technology. Special effects transform the myth.
• Mass media and “increasing commercialization of culture and leisure” (Strinati 1996: 2).
Vampire = a product to be marketed and sold worldwide. Influence of their representation
on screen.

The vampire is commercialised in a wide variety of spheres. “Unprecedented degree of

intersection across multiple forms of media and distribution outlets” (Wee 2004: 89)

The success of any product quickly generates copies, and the American TV network CW
created The Vampire Diaries (September 2009), based on L. J. Smith’s novels commissioned in
the early 1990s following Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga’s success.
Romantic formula for their potential audience: Love triangle. But first they must be idealised to
fit into the tradition of the romantic hero: vampires are then “sanitized” and “domesticated”
(Clements 2011: 149).
Traditional elements: fangs, aversion to the sun, etc. In the last decades, there is a gradual
SECULARIZATION that has led to more religious elements to disappear.
The tradition of the aristocrat vampire (in the original novels they were Italian noblemen) is
updated and included within the heroic history of the creation of the United States.
All these variation in the traditional romantic formula should be understood in the context of
commercialisation and globalisation of popular culture. But media organisation do not only reflect
the demands of profitability that are at work in American society but they also become a discourse
to transmit ideology: construct reality for their consumers. As Michael Ryan explains, “by picturing
the world in a certain way for audiences, the culture industries shape what will and what will not
be seen. They construct reality for their consumers, and that picture of reality is usually
inaccurate” (Ryan 2010, 42).
Tendency towards homogenization, which audiences perceive as real, though not at all
accurate, is safer for the network and avoids any type of controversy since it conforms to the
mainstream ideology.
Sex is not taboo. It is not intrinsically linked to the fact of being a vampire (True Blood) BUT
heterosexual relations are the norm.
Vampires reflect the human wish for eternal youth and beauty, the human “anxieties about the
aging process and the desire for immortality” (Abbot 2007: 134). In the last decades there is a
higher stress on beauty & youth in a reflection of today’s society and its present obsession with
those aspects.
Chris Barker refers to the concept of ornamental culture, the culture of “celebrity, image,
entertainment and marketing, all underpinned by consumerism” (Barker 2012: 315). Women’s
and men’s bodies are OBJECTIFIED: present an ideal to be obtained and desired.
When vampires become monsters in the inside they also become monsters in the outside.
Physical appearance is linked to moral aspects: the concept of free will They offer vampires the
power to choose and this shows audiences what is understood as a good and a bad choice.
But apart from traditional elements, new inclusions are added to the presentation of vampires.
These are not only ways of taking vampires into the 21st century but they should also be
understood as a reflection of a materialist modern society where success is measured by the
amount of things you can buy.

Vampires do not only reflect the changes that have been taken place in American society in
the last decades and how commercialisation and globalisation have affected popular culture but
it is also a reflection of our own time and how the discourse of the vampire has become yet
another instrument of the dominant sociocultural order.
The Vampire Diaries presents not only American but also worldwide audiences with particular
values. They reinforce “ideological constructions such as the value of romantic love, the norm of
heterosexuality, nationalism, or traditional concepts of good and evil” (Sturken 2003, 21) and,
thus, modulate the way reality is perceived.
This creates a false idea of reality and fosters unattainable role models and particular ideals
when the monsters in the stories become the heroes, the ideal any teenager should aspire to
become. And the most important aspect of these ideologies is that they “appear to be natural or
given, rather than part of a system of Belief that a culture produces in order to function in a
particular way” (Sturken 2003, 21-22)

LITERATURE & MUSICALS

CAMELOT

• Based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T.H. White tetralogy novel The
Once and Future King.
• Premiered in 1960. It had great success.
• The musical has become associated with the Kennedy Administration, which is
sometimes referred to as the Camelot era, stressing its glamorous, media culture image
(c.f. Henry V vs Richard III – new Arthur, from Wales).
• Great actor, not-so-great singer: monologues, easy singing parts.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

• Switch to speaking for emphasis?

• The moors, the environment, is introduced as a character.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

• New context: WWII.

• Homage to musical films of the 20s/30s/40s.

LITERATURE & FASHION

FASHION

Fashion connects the body to a ‘personality’, to culture, to civilization and to history. Further
to this, fashion itself could be said to constitute ‘a whole form of civilisation’, an ancient or alien
one with its own language and customs, which is subrational and composed of ‘line and form’ and
‘sex and poetry’. (Barham 2013: 3)
Herbert Blau suggests that the quality of fashion and its fascination remains in the texts – that
has not dated or died or become ‘absurd and repulsive’, unlike the fashions themselves.

FASHION IN BEOWULF

Elizabeth Howard argues that the warrior, who is determined to fight the monster Grendel
bareheaded, provides a potent renunciation of an essential Old English / Early Medieval hero
characteristics: his armed appearance. Beowulf fights the monster with no clothes on.
Wearing clothes, most particularly in their specialized forms of weapons and armour, are
frequent subjects of the mead-hall tales: warriors using weapons against their enemies and
wearing armour passed down from father to son.
Clothing protects the body from the elements as amour protects the warrior from injury.
Clothing can also be a sign of rank, profession, character, marital or religious status. Armour and
weapons are signs of military status; they mark a man as a warrior and establish his rank within
the hierarchy.
When Beowulf lands on Hroogar’s shore, his armour and weapons identify him as a noble.
The coastguard admires him and his war gear. Beowulf, to prepare for his fight with Grendel, does
not put on his armour. In Beowulf monsters do not wear clothes, they do not wear armour, they
do not generally use weapons. He claims he wants a fair fight against Grendel, a monster? The
removal of his masculine markers renders Beowulf both monstrous and feminized, even weak
and helpless.

ARTHURIAN FASHION – MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TIMES

• Arthur’s portrait: sword instead of ? (typical elements portrayed with kings).

CLOTHING INSPIRED BY LITERATURE

• Poe’s The Raven, Sherlock Holmes, Alice in Wonderland, etc. inspired outfits.

FASHION IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS

• Upper-class fashion in mid-19th century England. The clothing was unique to the century.

It was a time of over-the-top, extravagant, and fancy fashion. The rich wanted to express how
different they were from those who were less fortunate, and they did this by wearing extraordinary
clothing. This made it easy to decipher what class each member of society was in based on how
they dressed.
 In Wuthering Heights, the two households were both extremely wealthy, so they dressed
accordingly. Heathcliff, on the other hand, was forced to dress like a servant by Hindley, the heir
and eventual master of Wuthering Heights. He was forced to dress like that because it was a way
for the other characters to feel better about themselves, especially Hindley, and superior.

FASHION AND INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

The Gothic interest in vampire lore stems from the origins of the subculture’s development. In
the late 1970s, the punk movement was spawned by a desire to branch off from the mainstream
with a mentality of revolt. Two approaches to rebelling defined the spectrum of punk mentality:
anarchy, on the one hand, and a thirst for knowledge on the other. The punks who turned to
research and introspection became known as “Noble Punks.”
Later they were known as Goths, due to, on the one hand, the sounds known as “Gothic”
music in the early 80s and, on the other, to the relation of the lyrics to Gothic literature from the
late 1880s. Thus, the Gothic subculture began to look at literature for inspiration, including seeing
death and darkness as a way of appreciating life. This included Polidori/Byron’s Vampyr and
Stoker’s Dracula.
Combining the notion of introspection inherent in many Gothic stories with the desire to rebel
via literature and Gothic tales’ typically supernatural themed plots, vampires quickly grew to be
iconic of Gothic subculture lifestyle.
Vampires, in many depictions, especially early stories within the body of vampire literature,
are presented as being learned and utilizing their immortal state to gather knowledge. Vampires
also tend to have a trait of rebelliousness and that of being an outcast on some levels, paralleling
the social ideals of many Goth community members. Literature descriptions and cinematic
representations of vampires have contributed to constructing the ways in which the Goth
subculture defines the lore today and thus, how it is embraced.
Some Goths can have false fangs, and Victorian outfits (as many vampires are seen as
timeless, thus wearing historically associated clothing). Some remain awake at night and sleep
during the daylight hours (if possible), wearing the clothing and false teeth associated with
vampire imagery at all times, and even hiding mirrors in their house and drinking thick red juice
or wine fairly exclusively. Most Goths embrace vampire lore in various ways somewhere in
between taking vampirism as a lifestyle and only watching a few vampire movies here and there.

LITERATURE & TATTOOS

THE TATTOOS

A form of body art that can be traced back to the fourth millennium B.C. in Europe and to about
2000 B.C. in Egypt. Tattoos are not just a desirable or decorative art form. They are not just the
end result of an often-painful process either. They tell the stories of individuals. They express the
beliefs of a community.
“In many cultures, it symbolizes a rite of passage, a way of marking a particular event in the
narrative of life, an expression of defiance or resistance to authority.” (Beeler 2006:1)
Since real (not temporary) tattoos are a kind of scar, their affiliation to the scarred body and
psyche is often explored by creators of tattoo narratives (e.g. Literarure, television and film).
Tattoos are an art form with a strong visual presence. They are as close to the image as to the
writing. Tattoos are images and narratives of human desire.

+ References to Tattoos in literature, e.g. “The Red-Handed League” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
+ Tattoos representing literary motifs, e.g. authors (Poe, Shakespeare), symbols (Harry Potter),
quotes.
 READINGS
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

Interview with the Vampire was published in 1974 by the American author Anne Rice. It could
be classed as a gothic and/or vampiric horror work. It was followed by a number of other novels
in the same universe, called The Vampire Chronicles.
The novel is divided into four parts, separated –more or less– by their setting. Throughout all
of them, we find bits of the Interview the title alludes to. Louis, the vampire, is telling his story to
a young journalist in the 1980s.

CHARACTERS

Louis de Pointe du Lac: He is the vampire that is being interviewed. He struggles with his life as
a vampire, unlike Lestat. He seeks a different understanding of vampirism. For years he doesn’t
drink from humans, though events in later years affect his understanding of himself and the moral
capability of vampires. He is tortured and disatisfied, though he has relationships that aleviate
that in some ways. He intends for his story to be a warning.

Lestat de Lioncourt: He is the vampire who turns Louis, to gain his wealth and properties. His
father is still alive when he meets and turns Louis, he takes care of him but also mistreats him.
He stands in opposition to Louis as the ‘immoral vampire’. Louis doesn’t hold him in any high
regard, and considers him a failure of a vampire mentor. He is markedly more savage and
inhuman than Louis.

Claudia: Child of about five years that Louis feeds from in an attack of thirst. Lestat later turns
her to make her ‘their daughter’. She is a peculiar vampire: both an innocent little child and a
fierce killer, who enjoys the hunt like Lestat does. The first years go without trouble, but at some
point the issue of her growing up without physically doing so arises. Claudia is very frustrated by
her condition.

Interviewer / Boy: He is a sort of reader stand-in; he provides a human perspective on the

vampire’s story and so he reflects the human fear and fascination with the supernatural and the
enduring appeal of immortality in spite of the warnings.

Armand: He is the oldest vampire that we know of. He is the unofficial leader of the Parisian
vampires. He and Louis very quickly feel a fascination with each other, which grows to be
described as love. He is the older, knowledgeable vampire that Louis is seeking, while to him,
Louis represents a man of the age, the kind of companion he needs to adapt to the century.

THEMES

Humanity: through the apparently inhuman and monstruos figures of the vampires, the novel
explores the elements that comprise humanity. Most, if not all, of the themes that follow could be
said to answer or seek to answer this question. You can also compare the characters, especially
any character against Louis, to try to answer the question: Louis vs Lestat / Claudia / Armand.

Compared to other monsters, vampires are very human-like, which makes the question of what
makes them monsters and what makes them human more interesting. The interviewer expresses
surprise at the idea of Louis, and other vampires, feeling love – but either through Louis directly
stating he did love, or through the relationships that we see them form (Louis and Claudia, for
instance), it is clear that they do indeed feel emotions we associated with humanity: love, but also
hate, guilt, need for companionship, lust, etc.

Certain comments by the vampire characters also offer the interpretation of vampires as
heightened humans, rather than merely savage monsters.
Guilt and regret: Louis is often consumed with guilt. It is what drives him into becoming a
vampire, and the guilt at having to kill is what differentiates him as a vampire, it is what he
considers sets him apart from Lestat.

Confession: the novel is developed as an interview Louis gives, and it is one that he seeks out
himself: he needs to tell his story, which, following on the prior theme of guilt and regret, could be
said to work as a confession.

Community / Companionship: regardless of what the characters may say or think about
whether they need others or not, it is clear through their actions that they seek and care for a
shared life of some sort.

Louis and Lestat cannot stand each other, but they share a life for a really long time. Lestat seems
to be an opportunist; he needs Louis for his money and properties, and though that cannot be
refuted, it wouldn’t be too far off to say there is something more. Indeed, his desperate attempt to
bring Louis back from Paris is proof of this. At the beginning, Louis needs Lestat as a vampire
mentor - but that quickly stops being necessary, and yet he continues with him; but he still
continues to want to find vampires that share his concerns and who can provide him with greater
knowledge. Claudia is one reason, but his relationship with Lestat always maintains some level
of ambiguity.

Armand and Louis’ relationship, and what they seek from each other, is another example of this
seemingly inherent (human?) need for companionship.

Family: could be said to relate to the previous theme. Families –both as we understand them,
and in a broader sense– have a great presence in the novel. Lestat has a father he seems not to
be able to stand, but for whom he also cares. Louis’ story starts due to the love he felt for his
brother, and specifically, the grief at his death. Louis, Lestat and Claudia make an unconventional
family unit. Madeleine, the woman Claudia seeks to be her companion in preparation for Louis
leaving her, has lost her daughter, and wants to become a vampire to take care of Claudia and,
in a way, fill that void.

Immortality: vampires are immortal, and there is a price to pay for it (killing humans), some do it
without regrets, others struggle with it, but one thing is clear: you will not be the same person you
were before becoming a vampire. Which takes us again to our first question: is this new person
no longer human?

Armand also talks about most vampires not being able to deal with immortality, not being able to
adapt to the changing times. Vampires are therefore technically immortal, but in practice, very
few are able to handle immortality.

Morality - Good and Evil: Morality is explored mostly through Louis conflicts with his own
morality as a vampire. As he says, ‘Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.’
Other vampires have different stances, Lestat, for instance, or even, most vampires but Louis,
deems morality a human concern that vampires are above.

THE POET X

• Narrator: Xiomara (15-year-old girl)

• Lives in Harlem, New York with her family (twin brother and parents)
o Her parents: Originally from Dominican Republic
o Her mother: wanted to be a nun but forced to marry Papi.
• Poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her relationship with the world
o She feels unheard.
o She recited her poems like prayers
o Deals with normal teenager’s issues (identity, body, religious questions…)
• School year = new challenges:
o Ms Galiano (English teacher) invites her to a Poetry Club. BUT cannot go.
o Relationship with Aman. BUT she is not allowed to date boys = secret relationship
o Twin brother in love with someone (she doesn’t know whom)
o In confirmation classes expresses doubts about God and the Bible.
• Things improve:
o Ms Galiano invites Xiomara to Poetry Club and she finally goes.
o Xiomara leaves accidentally her notebook at home:
 Mami finds it
 Mami horrified by the poems
 Mami burns the notebook
o Mami and Xiomara learn to talk each other with Father Sean’s help
o Family encourages and support Xiomara

Main Themes.

• Sexuality.
o Xiomara’s conflicts with her parents revolves around sexuality.
o When she began to develop physically (11), Mami repeated her that it is women’s
responsibility to minimize their body’s importance Xiomara wanted to make
herself smaller so that some parts easier to ignore.
• Religion.
o Xiomara’s mother follows a very strict Catholicism BUT Xiomara has doubts
about religion.
o Jesus as a friend she no longer wants to talk.
o Acevedo does not condemn religion in the novel: Father Sean as a supportive
priest.
• Power of Language.
o Xiomara’s notebook: the only place where she could express her thoughts
o Then, she shares her poems (she gains confidence)
o Acevedo suggests: language helps people to make sense of their world and
sharing it builds communities and develop a sense of empathy with others.
• Immigrants and New Generations.
o Immigration and contrast with previous generations:
o Xiomara’s parents are from Dominican Republic (retain some customs)
o Children born in the U.S. (raised with the culture of this country) – wanting to
‘honour’ your parents, feeling ‘indebted’ to them for their sacrifices, but having a
different perspective on many things.

Characters.

• Xiomara.
o Novel’s protagonist
o 15-year-old Dominican American teenarger (Harlem)
o Writes poetry about what concerns her
o Never had the choice about whether to attend church or not
• Twin.
o Xiomara’s twin brother (Xavier)
o Opposite to Xiomara (very devoted to Catholicism)
o Secretly gay
o Favourite child of Mami (breaks rules Xiomara cannot)
• Mami.
o Xiomara’s mother
o When young she wanted to be a nun, but forced to marry Papi
o When Xiomara was little, she adored her
 o As Xiomara grows, Mami becomes abusive and controlling
• Papi.
o Xiomara’s father
o Before children were born he was a womanizer.
o When children were born, they turned Papi into a reformed man
o Despite his previous sexual history, he calls Xiomara a “cuero”
• Aman.
o Xiomara’s boyfriend
o Kind and respectful with Xiomara
o He asked her to read her poetry = Her words are important
• Father Sean.
o The priest
o When young, he wanted to be a professional bo0xer, but joined Catholic
o Church.
o Thinks people should not be forced to devotion
• Caridad.
o Xiomara’s bestfriend
o Extremely devout
o One of the earliest supporters of Xiomara’s poetry
o Arranged Xiomara’s first public performance at the Nuyorican Poets Café
• Ms. Galiano.
o Young English teacher
o Encourages Xiomara to join her Poetry Club
o She is able to make Xiomara feel seen and heard.