1、EncoreJames PurdyLearningLearning ObjectivesObjectivesLiterary Elements Critical Thinking Reading StrategiesIntercultural Competence Literary Elements Reading Strategies Vernacular style Internal conflict Characterization through dialogueLearningLearning ObjectivesObjectives Read between the lines A
2、nalyze the tone of the speakers in the story Identify the moments of emotional and psychological crisis Critical Thinking LearningLearning ObjectivesObjectives Make inferences about the emotional state of the characters Analyze relationships among characters and their situations Analyze and interpre
3、t the gestures and behavior of the characters through empathetic reasoningUnderstand common themes of love in different culturesRecognize generational differences across culturesInterpret family problems from different cultural perspectives Intercultural CompetenceLead inLead inThe German poet Schil
4、ler says,“It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”For the Russian novelist Tolstoy,“Happy families resemble one another,each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”No matter what troubles and difficulties a family has to go through,it is best for family members to
5、 open their hearts to each other at all times.Understanding and communication are crucial amongLead inLead infamily members,because the love and care from those closest to us may also be most easily taken for granted.Sometimes it is easier to blame those who love us most for things that go wrong eve
6、n though they are the ones who really have our well-being at heart.In Text A,we hear a mother and her son asking a lot of questions and giving answers to each other.Do they understand each others real concerns?Do they give their answers honestly and directly?Text B,which is an excerpt from a play,is
7、 mainly an extended conversation between a father and his elder son.Follow the dialogue and stage directions and we will get to learn about the love-hate relationship between the two and relationships in the whole family.When you read the two texts in this unit,think about what bonds of love in a fa
8、mily mean to each one in itdo they always unite the family or do they sometimes become chains?Lead inLead inBackground KnowledgeBackground Knowledge1.About the AuthorProlific(a dozen novels,49 short stories,several collections of poems,and a number of plays)as James Purdy was,he remains a controvers
9、ial figure to critics as well as readers due to the exceptionally individual style and subject matter of his works.Purdy was born after three brothers in Hicksville,Ohiointo a Calvinist family of a farmer ancestry in 1914.His mother divorced his father in 1930 when the small business that he ran fai
10、led.From then on,Purdy had to shuttle between his mothers home,his fathers home,and sometimes his grandmothers home.During troubled childhood and teenage years,he wrote plays for his brothers,Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledgeanonymous anomalous letters of hate to the“unkind”people in his life
11、(never actually sent),and stories published in his own little private magazine to be given as gifts to his family.After finishing high school,he attended Bowling Green State University and earned a BA teaching degree in French.After Teaching French at Greenbrier Military School in West Virginia for
12、a short period,Purdy moved to Chicago in 1935 to study for his MA degree in English literature at the University of Chicago.Here he met and was befriended by painter Gertrude Abercrombie(nicknamed“Queen of the Bohemian Artists”)and spent much of his free time with her circle of African-American jazz
13、 musicians and artists.Then Purdy enlisted in the army in 1941 and served for a few years.AfterBackground KnowledgeBackground Knowledgehonorable discharge,he returned to the University of Chicago to study Spanish in 1944.After spending the summer of 1945 in the University of Puebla,Mexico,Purdy went
14、 to teach English in Havana,Cuba.He returned to the US the next year to teach Spanish at Lawrence College in Appleton,Wisconsin for the next nine and a half years.Purdy had kept his interest in writing alive and had produced a significant number of stories even though his attempts to get anything pu
15、blished had almost all failed.So far he had only been able to manage to sell two short stories.In the mid-1950s,he gave up his teaching job and moved back to Chicago to pursue a writing career that was apparently not quite promising.Sponsored by businessman and critic Osborn Andreas,Purdy had his fi
16、rstBackground KnowledgeBackground Knowledgecollection of short stories Dont Call Me by My Right Name privately published and sent copies to various critics and writers.The British poet and critic Dame Edith Sitwell responded warmly and called some of his stories“superb”and“nothing short of masterpie
17、ces.”Purdy sent her another privately published work 63:Dream Palace(a novella).Sitwell found a British publisher for Purdy and thus his first commercially published work 63:Dream Palace:A Novella and Nine Stories.Other British writers came forward and gave high praise for the book.After Purdy had e
18、stablished some reputation in Europe,American publishers approached him and began to publish his works.Finally James Purdy was becoming successful as a writer.In 1957,Purdy moved to newBackground KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeYork and eventually settled in Brooklyn and spent the rest of his lift livi
19、ng an almost reclusive life and writing story after story,play after play,and poem after poem,in a small apartment from memories of his early life in the Midwest.James Purdys works cover a wide variety of themes:smothering love,disillusionment,the collapse of the family,ecstatic longing,sharp inner
20、pain,despair,helplessness,and shocking eruptions of violence,often too dark to face.Such themes are presented through the usually agonized and agonizing lives of characters who are social outcasts or outsiders:women,African Americans,Native Americans,homosexuals living far outside the conventional g
21、ay communityliterally anyone who could be seen to be outside the circle of“normal”acceptability.Even Purdys final Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledgeshort story,“Adeline,”written at age 92,tells a tale of transgendered acceptance.And a sense of moral comprise and emotional damage pervades the l
22、ives of the characters.Most of his stories offer no beginning or ending in the traditional sense,as Purdys concern is never to have any problems solved for the characters or to satisfy the reader with some sense of integrity.The reader has to be ready to dig into the dark corners of humanity,to face
23、 the intolerable truth about the self,and to be haunted by the suffocating weight and lancinating pain of life.Unfortunately few contemporary readers were ready.Modest success and fame were only there for James Purdy to relish between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s,but even then critics were divide
24、dBackground KnowledgeBackground Knowledgeabout him and his works.Edward Albee,Dorothy Parker,Tennessee Williams,and Langston Hughes were among his fans.High praise and vehement condemnation went side by side.He was called an American genius and was attacked for his“distraught mind”.His readership wa
25、s never satisfactorily large enough.Purdys fame reached its peak when his classic novel Eustace Chisholm&the Works was published in 1967,but it did not quite appeal to the reading public and not many copies were sold.Purdy kept writing but was gradually neglected and forgotten.However,the 21st centu
26、ry has seen a modest revival of interest in him and a number of his works have been republished.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeMost of Purdys short stories are told in the third person objective perspective of narration and rely heavily on structurally compressed dialogues.Purdy is always q
27、uite stingy with words outside quotation marks,so he rarely exposes much about the situation or characters through description in his short stories.Simplicity in style is the reason why Purdy is called a minimalist writer by some critics.In our story,little specific information can be found about th
28、e exact time,the age or appearance of the characters,or the scene of the room in which the dialogues are carried out.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeThe readers have to give play to their imagination to put these dialogues in some sort of setting to make sense of the story,and this usually h
29、appens unconsciously through readers incorporating their own experiences into the reading process.Thereby the readers involve themselves in the writing process of the story and start communicating with the author in a sense.This is what Purdy wants from his readerscommunication.However,if this proce
30、ss becomes too demanding,requires too much deliberate effort,and slips toward the conscious,readers may just dismiss the story by accusing it of lacking clarity.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeOur story was written in 1957 and first published in the magazine Commentary in 1959.Readers of tha
31、t time were still accustomed to stories of a more expository style and could hardly appreciate such in story-telling.Almost all of Purdys earlier stories had been vehemently rejected by the mainstream magazines time after time on the grounds that there was no story in those stories.Of course todays
32、readers,quite used to such simplicity and brevity of the postmodern sense,wont find any trouble with Purdys stories innarrative style.Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledge2.StoryboardsFirst developed at Walt Disney Animation Studios in the 1930s,storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of i
33、llustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture,animation,motion graphic or interactive media sequence.A scene that can be displayed in the graphic form on paper has to be one static moment of the story.To create a storyboard for the story,you need to
34、 visualize the scenes by using your imagination,drawing inspiration from your personal experience,and supplementing as many details as necessary about the setting,the appearance of the characters,their postures,and probably the facial expressions they wear.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeThe
35、 following scenes could be considered in this story.1)Merta and Spence talking about Gibbs,Spyro,her life,with Spence sitting somewhere in the room;2)Merta standing in Spences way to detain him for more conversation,with Spence holding his hat in one hand and ready to leave;3)Spence putting on his h
36、at,talking to Merta,and leaving;4)Gibbs entering the room,carrying books and asking about the man who has just left;5)Gibbs kissing Merta surreptitiously;6)Merta trying to engage Gibbs in conversation while Gibbs playing his harmonica at one end of the room;7)Gibbs putting down the harmonica with im
37、patience while responding to Mertas offer of strawberry jello;Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledge8)Gibbs putting the jello dish down on the kitchen table with a bang while asking Merta what she wants to say but couldnt;9)Merta talking while sitting somewhere and eating the jello;10)Gibbs starin
38、g at Merta who is weeping and putting out one hand to him;11)Merta wiping her eyes with her handkerchief while Gibbs picking up the harmonica;12)Merta standing up all of a sudden as if to leave the room,cursing;13)Gibbs standing up,dropping the harmonica to the floor;14)Gibbs playing the harmonica w
39、hile being encouraged by Merta;15)Gibbs stretching out one hand toward Merta who asks him to keep playing the harmonica.Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledge3.“How High the Moon”and theme of the story“How High the Moon”by Nancy Hamilton(music)and Morgan Lewis(lyrics)is a jazz standard(a musical c
40、omposition which is an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians,in that it is widely known,performed,and recorded by jazz musicians as well as widely known by listeners).It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue(a show with songs,dances,jokes and short plays often about rece
41、nt events)Two for the Show.The song is best known in a 1951 recording by Les Paul(guitar)and Mary Ford(vocal).Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeThe lyrics go:Somewhere theres music/How faint the tune/Somewhere theres heaven/How high the moon/There is no moon above/When love is far away too/Til
42、l it comes true/That you love me as I love you/Somewhere theres music/How near,how far/Somewhere theres heaven/Its where you are/The darkest night would shine/If you would come to me soon/Until you will how still my heart/How high the moon/Guitar Solo/Somewhere theres music/How faint the tune/Somewh
43、ere theres heaven/How high the moon/The darkest night would shine/If you would come to me soon/Until you will how still my heart/How high the moon.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeJames Purdy wrote“Encore”in 1957 and would apparently expect his readers,if any,to at least have heard and thereb
44、y be familiar with the song.The lyrics echo one of the themes of the story,loud and clear:desperate yearning for love that is there but just impossible to pass over.Without a doubt there is the music of love somewhere between the mother and son,but somehow its tune is too faint to travel through the
45、 far distance that seems so near.Merta has worked very hard to provide for Gibbs and she has even managed to send him to a college full of snobbish youngsters.She has sacrificed the opportunities to improve her own living conditions.She is concerned over the kind of friend that Gibbs has.Her love fo
46、r her son is apparent.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeOn the other hand,Gibbs understands the hardships his mother has been through and the sacrifices she has made for him,especially at the moment when he notices her aging face.His love for her is seen in his eyes from time to time.But life
47、always gets messy somehow at some point.Gibbs becomes a misfit in college and has no friends there.Mertas concern over his friendship with Spyro becomes intrusion into Gibbs life and she is not even aware that she is being quite judgmental.The sacrifices that she has made give her the excuse to be l
48、ike that in the name of love,but her love is smothering her son.Love turns bitter.Background KnowledgeBackground KnowledgeSo its almost impossible for them to talk without turning the conversation into a fight;Gibbs just cant move when he feels strongly urged by love to weep with his sleepless mothe
49、r;he can only stare at Merta when she was overwhelmed by her love for her son and put out her hand to him;and Merta cant take Gibbs hand when he was overwhelmed by his love for his mother and stretched out his hand.Love just cant be passed over between them.They are each others moon in heaven,but th
50、e moon is too high to shine through the dark night of life.Every attempt fails,but at least they get the confirmation that love is still there somewhere,far and near.1.Text StructureText AnalysisText AnalysisDetailed AnalysisRhetoric and styleText StructurePart Para(s)Main idea I1-45Merta and Spence
