ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 31st, 2020
I found this piece enticing, nonetheless. It follows the fashion trends in women’s clothing and centers around one designer in particular who revolutionizes the fashion industry. I started to ask myself the reason behind the desire women possessed to disappear. Continuing throughout the story, I noticed that the dresses became more elaborate; going the extra yard as even […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 31st, 2020
I’ve noticed that Millhauser writes a lot of stories about artists fighting to be understood by the world at large. Is he okay? Has anyone checked on him? Harlan Crane’s story in “A Precursor to Cinema” runs in the same cycles: Harlan does something fantastic. Newspapers criticize or ignore him. He has to find a […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 31st, 2020
The first sentence of Steven Millhauser’s “A Change in Fashion” states, “After the Age of Revelation came the Age of Concealment.” This is said so matter-of-factly that I didn’t even question it. It almost sounds like the opening line to an analytical historical paper. The description of the fashion reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which […]
Because of the fantastic talent of its protagonist, Harlan Crane, and the mysteriousness of his character, Millhauser’s “Precursor of the Cinema” seems like fiction. On the contrary, there are various instances throughout the tale that demand it be taken as truth. The beginning of the short story reads like a research paper or a historical […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 31st, 2020
In Steven Millhauser’s A Precursor of the Cinema, he is writing in a time that is trying to create a new machine to create being alone all day working on their artwork. Millhauser is showing the invention phase is trying to show that he is allowing things to be done more quickly, instead of requiring […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 31st, 2020
In reading “A Change in Fashion” I struggled to find the fantastic thanks to Lady Gaga. Could it be that women have gotten tired of being looked at as sexual objects that are judged by their looks and body? I doubt it since some women have always had a dislike of that issue. Possibly the […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 30th, 2020
When thinking about what to write in this post, I struggled to recognize the source of fantastic in Steven Millhauser’s “Change in Fashion.” While the formulation and expansion of the dress was meant to achieve a purpose, I argue that the motivation of this dress isn’t far off from modern fashion. With the goal of […]
Posted in Fantastic, Longing for Answers, Mystery, Point of View on Mar 30th, 2020
When I first read about the moving paintings in Steven Millhauser’s “A Precursor of the Cinema,” I was reminded of the moving paintings in the Harry Potter series, the ones that talked and moved from frame to frame, interacting with both the students and the subjects of the other paintings. In Harry Potter, we know […]
Posted in Autonomy, Defiance, Desire, Disappearance, Fantastic, Isolation, Obsession on Mar 29th, 2020
As I was preparing to write this post, I became curious about fashion trends throughout history that we, as modern people, might consider fantastic if there was no evidence to support their existence. One example is lotus shoes, which can only be worn by women with bound feet; foot binding was an ancient tradition for […]
Posted in coronavirus, dystopia, pestilence on Mar 28th, 2020
In an essay in the March 30 issue of the New Yorker entitled “What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About,” Jill Lepore offers a wide-ranging, squirm-inducing discussion of the “literature of pestilence.” Early in the article she writes: The literature of contagion is vile. A plague is like a lobotomy. It cuts away the higher realms, […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Over the last year, I have noticed that foreign writers have a different writing style than American ones. They capture the human experience so differently, they write about it so beautifully that I wonder if they know something we don’t. Is it because their culture and heritage is older than America’s? Were they raised with […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
I enjoyed this book. It did take me time to read it, and there were parts that I had to re-read because of the timeline jumping, but I liked the imagery and storyline. Out of all of the notes I made inside the book, this particular statement in the back summed it all up for […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
We have deemed this loss of time and type of isolation elements of the fantastic. However, I would argue that Gabriel García Márquez has managed to tell us the story of not only Colombia’s history but the history of many Central and South American countries. Of which were contempt living as they were before tourism, […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
In the ending of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez wants one to know that things take time and quite to be done. I also think that he is saying that you may not always be able to teach your findings to anyone that wants to learn it as one may not have […]
Posted in Animals, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
With this novel dealing with multiple elements relating to the fantastic, one component that stood out to me was death, or the use of “death” and the ritual surrounding it. Melquíades’ death, as it was described, was anticipated, but “ the process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical.” […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 26th, 2020
In my last blog post, I talked about the theme of circular time in One Hundred Years of Solitude. This theme can also be seen in the last pages of the novel, as Aureliano reads Melquiades’s parchments: Aureliano had never been more lucid in any act of his life as when he forgot about his […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Although the novel has many sad parts, the ending where Aureliano knew he would die touched me the most. Maybe because it was the end of the story or perhaps because it was the end of the family. “Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 26th, 2020
There is an advantage for an author using the novel form with the fantastic versus a short story or combination of stories as we have read previously in class. One advantage is the author’s ability to use foreshadowing and dropping hints of the fantastic. In OHYOS there are many fantastical elements at play. An example […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 26th, 2020
One Hundred Years of Solitude focuses more on the men of the story. They are the ones that go out, get married, make bad decisions, join wars etc etc. However I found women to be the most interesting characters of whole story. Especially seeing what qualities were considered to be the most “virtuous”. Marquez uses […]
Posted in Death, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
A good ghost story is something that has always been able to captivate me. It’s no surprise that the short section about Prudencio Aguilar was such a delight. However, there is something to the way that Garcia Marquez designed the encounter that stands out as both melancholy and terrifying. The terrifying part is in Aguilar’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 26th, 2020
In my opinion, Melquiades was one of the most important characters of the book. The fantastic components of the story often involved him and there were many things he seemed to know about that the other citizens didn’t. He was the one to introduce the inventions to Jose Arcadio Buendia and start his fascination with […]
Posted in Fantastic, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 26th, 2020
Of course, as we all know the entire novel OHYOS is fantastic — from the timeline, the gypsies, the incest, and the naiveté of the people of Macondo. In the second half of OHYOS there is many fantastic elements in the story. For example, when José Arcadio dies, the blood from his ear forms a trail that […]
Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude, time on Mar 25th, 2020
We were asked to offer our list of the fantastic or add to JGB’s list in one or two ways… I want to offer an alternative of how two of the fantastic elements that he offered may also be considered one. The idea of “reanimation” and “elasticity of time” happen to coincide in the sense […]
Posted in Isolation, Mystery, One Hundred Years of Solitude on Mar 24th, 2020
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, some of the big conversations are about how reality meets fantasy. Another conversation relating to that is how does the past meet the present (and how the present meets the future). This is where the Gypsies come into play. For years in the fictional town of Macondo, groups of Gypsies […]