EDENG212– CONTEMPORARY AND POPULAR LITERATURE

Module 2 The Reader, The Author, and The Time

Course Facilitator JONATHAN D. DAVILA

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Introduction

No author writes for himself. The ivory tower although it may exist
in the life of some authors, there will be a time that they will go down
from it to look at the people. The author, maker of literature, re-creator of
the universe may be a recluse, but he belongs to the people and he is
their conscience in troubled times. He is their voice in confusion, the
observer of history, and its interpreter. The author, the reader, and the
time are merged together in one singular act of experience. Each to his
own, yet a whole, accommodating the riches of meanings a great piece
of work can offer. Both situations are solitary and therein lies the real
treasure.
Course Outcomes

At the end of this course, you must have:

1. Discussed the relationship of the author to the reader and to the society
2. Constructed a schematic diagram of such author
Learning Objectives and reader relationship

At the end of this module, you must have:

1. Interpreted the literary piece taken in the context of its environment and
time
2. Discussed the obligation of the reader and the duty of the author

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 Learning Evidence

Learning Task #3: At the end of the module, you must have constructed
a schematic diagram of the relationship between the author, the reader,
and the society, and have provided a brief justification for it with 2
references.

What are some of the school’s literary interpretation that you know? Can
you give a brief description of the following schools’ of thought in literature?

a. Formalism
b. Reader-Response
c. Historical
d. Autobiographical
e. Feminist
f. Semiotics

How does the reader get the best of the author’s work?

Let us look at this video before we discuss the concepts above.

Mining Literature for Meanings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=eREopphW5Bw&t=33s

Discussion Questions:
Answer the following questions before you go to the Evaluation.
Do not skip this part; it is an exercise to guide you in the formation of
your schematic diagram.
1. According to the process discussed in the video, to get the best out of
a piece of literature, how should we approach it?

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2. Is it possible that the reader can find in a work, meanings that were
not intended to by the author? Is this a valid interpretation then?
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 Let us take this poem by Heather McHugh:

What He Thought

By HEATHER MCHUGH

for Fabbio Doplicher

We were supposed to do a job in Italy

and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the mayor, mulled
a couple matters over (what's
a cheap date, they asked us; what's
flat drink). Among Italian literati

we could recognize our counterparts:

the academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib—and there was one

administrator (the conservative), in suit

of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated
sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.
Of all, he was the most politic and least poetic,
so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome
(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)
to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn't read Italian, either, so I put the book
back into the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then

our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there
we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked
                                             "What's poetry?"
Is it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or
the statue there?" Because I was

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the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have to think—"The truth
is both, it's both," I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
for our underestimated host spoke out,
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents Giordano Bruno,

brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offense against
authority, which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government, but rather is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move. "If God is not the soul itself, He is
the soul of the soul of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him
forth to die, they feared he might
incite the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask, in which

he could not speak. That's

how they burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in front
of everyone.
                     And poetry—
                                        (we'd all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on
softly)—
                  poetry is what

he thought, but did not say.

Who is Giordano Bruno?

“Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is
not intelligible save to the like. Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond mea-
sure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all time, become
Eternity; then you will understand God. Believe that nothing is impossible for you,
think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the
nature of every living being. Mount higher than the highest height; descend lower
than the lowest depth. Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire
and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea,
in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead,
beyond death. If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, sub-
stances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God.”

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 ― Giordano Bruno

Discussion Questions
1. What is the literal and visible situation in this poem?
2. Is this an example of contemporary poetry?
3. Who is Giordano Bruno? Why did the narrator of the poem thought of his
answer as the easy way out?
4. It is agreed that the merit of a true poem is on the strength of its
ambiguity, which part is that in this poem?
5. Regardless of time, changes in form and language, what elements of

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 poetry could not be sacrificed?

Conceptual frameworks have the capacity to simplify big ideas. For a

concept framework to be valid, it should lean to an opinion – which in this
case is the process that the reader undergoes in relation to the text, the
process that the author undergoes in relation to the craft, and the reality in
which both the reader and the author are caught in this time, of that place.

Task: Create a conceptual framework of the reader, author, and society

relationship. Back it up with 2 opinions of critics or authors on the act of
getting meaning from literature. Limit your boxes up to three only and the
explanation to 150 words including the supporting literature. This is a group
work composed of three students per group.

References

Heather McHugh, "What He Thought", from Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 ©
1994 by Heather McHugh and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University
Press. www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
Source: Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994)

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