14/09/07
What does "Foe" mean?
Foe=enemy, antagonist, adversary, opponent , something prejudicial or injurious, armed enemy, an armed adversary(especially a member of opposing military force),a personal enemy.
The title reminds the surname of Robinson Crusoe's writer: Daniel Defoe. The real surname of Defoe was Foe. Adding "De", Foe socially marked his name. As a matter of fact, the prefix De is typical of the high social level class.
Foe is a very short word. Short titles strike the attention of possible readers/buyers of the book.
Foe is a word of ancient origin and a high register, usually used only in written English.
Metanovel=a novel that deals with the problem of writing novels.
There are no novels that are subsequently rewritten but that rewriting is part of the parcel of the act of writing itself.
17/09/07
Words don't have a stable meaning .It changes with the context in which they are used:"meaning is always differed ".Furthermore, the meaning of a text is made up by the reader, not by the novelist .Recycle= to put in a new cycle a classical model.
The title Foe is a word which is not longer used. It is not of today's common language but of the Middle Ages.
Foe can also be understood by readers as a short word for Defoe. There is an intertextual association between the two words.
Since Foe is a short word , it sticks into the reader's mind. Since it is posh, high meaning, unusual it attracts(people ask themselves what the title means. As a consequence, readers have an active position)
All writing is a rewriting. Time is an essential requisite for the art craft to survive. The concept of time always changes(that's why nowadays books shouldn't be to long. There is no time! We are always in a hurry... ).
An ideal reader is he or she who is able to "interlligere" all the linguistic and stylistic choices made by the writer on purpose .
We have analyzed Robinson Crusoe in:
- Defoe's novel
- Multimedia art craft
- Coetzee's Foe
- Last year's play
Referring to last year's play:
Somehow, the performance sent back to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe(the archytext)
The old text had been transformed in terms of:
- Storyline (shortened, selected story)
- Language( simplified: the target was a group of school adolescents. Clichés repetitions, songs, refrains, body language, gestures)
- Structure(reshaped in a one-act play)
- Space
- Time(reading time of the audience. Time is not linear in modernism and postmodernism.)
- Role of the audience(it has to elaborate the feelings created by music, and imagine the whole scene and its details. The audience is involved actively: there is an interactive aspect in the play)
18/09/07
Guidelines for the group work have been provided.
Postmodernism was born after the sixties as a response to modernism. It included(it recycled and readapted it) and excluded(it rejected the difficult style it had)modernism at the same time and looked back and beyond it.
Postmodernism includes the language of the media, of music, of art. It uses a language made up with readaptation .
Shipwreck means naufragio. An additional meaning to shipwreck is trouble. Trouble is connected to adventure. Adventure means to leave something to find something else, mysterious, hidden, unknown. By living an adventure, you go and undergo situations and events you cannot plan. The shipwreck is an adventure, a metaphor for meeting the unknown(your inner side).The sea makes the shipwreck a special experience. The sea is in a symbolical way the mother's womb, instinct, inner side(emotions).The typical media synonym for shipwreck is passion.
19/09/097
Foe is a seminal work of the typical Coetzee's structure:
- Existential effort
- Attention on the sufferance of the others
- Deep description of the characters
- Nature: friend or foe?
- Engaging society: civilization as a social construction
- Men develop a linear way of thinking, women a reticular(multitasking) one
Having a woman as a protagonist, Foe focuses on the relativistic attitude to life. The gender marked attitude of women(Foe)is compared with the attitude of men(Robinson Crusoe).Women are higher sensitive.
Questions raised by Foe:
- Why is representation different from reality?
- Why is Susan so worried about her book(passion for writing)?
- Why is Foe an enemy?
- What does it mean to be without a tongue(to be unable to express yourself with the normal code used by human beings)?
- Why is Cruso not interested in communication?(He is closed in himself and is afraid of what there is outside)
Immortal =something that can be transmitted
In Foe there is an examination on how language may contribute to oppression. Written history can itself be a method of oppression because it is controlled by those who write it.
20/09/07
Foe is both an example of postmodernism and postcolonialism. Postmodernism can be considered as an umbrella term. After and with postmodernism, it's wrong to call the narrator "author". As a matter of fact, the writer doesn't have a total control on his book. It depends on who reads.
When critics analyzed Coetzee's novel, they thought it was fictive and allegorical. An allegory is a figure of speech which works on the multiplicity of layers(multiple layers equals multiple interpretations). Coetzee knows that there are different ways to represent the word. So, there is no contradiction between the ways of thinking. Coetzee is worried about what meaning means. To make meaning means to make sense. Meaning is understanding.
Robinson Crusoe is a classical, colonial text. One of the problems Coetzee had to face in rewriting Robinson Crusoe was to introduce a character which in the master copy had no voice, was completely subjected.
Ghostwriters are writers who write for other people.
Coetzee puts into question the way in which Robinson Crusoe was written, and rewrites it using a different narrative voice.
If one writes a book, he has to decide whether to write the truth, or what he thinks about it (interpretation).
To cut Friday's tongue represented an advantage for the colonialists. What did the black think had never been taken into consideration in colonialist time. Susan, as a woman, represented a marginal part of society, such as Friday did.
22/09/07
Analysis of Foe's the first page
It starts with an ‘. This indicates that someone is talking to someone else. As a matter of fact, there is a first person narrator which speaks from the point of view of the main character. Also in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe there is a first person narrator, but it is a male. Coetzee's novel is gender-marked.
Foe starts in medias res. Susan tells us about her arrival on the island. She describes it by a physical point of view, through an emotional filter. Besides the effort she makes to arrive to the island, there is a beautiful image of her (she's "like an anemone". This comparison recalls Joyce's Ulysses, where flower metaphors are used to describe the protagonist's first sexual relation).
In order to describe her arrival on the island, Susan uses figures of speech as anaphora (my...my...my...) and alliterations (blistered, back, burned, body; slow strokes). The language used strikes our emotions and our bodies and appeals to our senses.
In Coetzee's Foe, there is a reduction of the narrative space. As a matter of fact, the first page of Foe equals half of the storyline of Robinson Crusoe.
Since Susan is a castaway (gettata via), Coetzee also discusses the topic of loneliness.
The description of Friday isn't as detailed as the one provided in Robinson Crusoe. Since Susan is highly sensitive (she's a woman), the description focuses on the feelings she has of him. On the contrary, Defoe is hyper realistic and wants to photograph reality.
26/09/07
Foe's novel starts in medias res. Right from the start I can, as an intelligent reader, realize that Coetzee have descript in a page the whole novel of Robinson Crusoe. But why did he restrict it? Was he interested in events? If not, what was he interested in?
There are no truths in the texts, there are just possible interpretations. The more the cultural background of the reader, the more fertile is the interpretation (the more are the cultural links one can see).
Why did Coetzee decide to restrict the storyline? The first chapter provide the reader with all facts. The reader, nowadays, is no more interested in what happens. Nowadays, life is frenetic. There's no time to do anything. Since the time of narration is shorter, the time of reading is shorter.
Coetzee:
- Is very demanding on the reader (also by a linguistic point of view)
- Is interested in providing a different vision of something we consider granted
- Puts the way reality was described in the past into question
To rewrite Robinson Crusoe, Coetzee:
- Borrows storyline, acts and facts
- Changes the use of language (language appeals to senses; feelings and body reactions of the characters come into surface)
- Changes the narrator (gender-marked novel)
Coetzee's answer to the question "What is reality?" is that there is no answer. Reality is made of actions and events, but they are not important if we not consider feelings and emotions connected to them.
Why does Susan look for a ghostwriter? She thought Foe was ready to change reality. But what is reality in comparison with fictional reality?
Books have some limits. In the case of Foe, nobody puts the adventure of the storyline into question (whether shipwreck is a metaphor or an action, it doesn't matter. But if I consider the shipwreck as a metaphor, my conception of the novel is different).
Coetzee didn't want to privilege the matter of fact side of reality, which affected Defoe.
In Defoe's time, travelling by ship was an adventure. In Coetzee's time, going by ship is a common fact that everyone experiences.
Reality isn't linear, because we perceive it with our mind. Our mind is restless, dynamic, bombarded by millions of stimuli every day. Reality is a continuous flux that crosses our minds.
Speaking of Joyce, T.S. Elliot said that "Joyce was creating a parallelism between the past and the present, trying to make clear what of the past survived in the present and what has changed".
How had the essence of life been transformed after the shipwreck? Without going through a shipwreck, you will never grow
Words don't have a stable meaning .It changes with the context in which they are used:"meaning is always differed ".
Furthermore, the meaning of a text is made up by the reader, not by the novelist .
Recycle= to put in a new cycle a classical model.
The title Foe is a word which is not longer used. It is not of today's common language but of the Middle Ages.
Foe can also be understood by readers as a short word for Defoe. There is an intertextual association between the two words.
Since Foe is a short word , it sticks into the reader's mind. Since it is posh, high meaning, unusual it attracts(people ask themselves what the title means. As a consequence, readers have an active position)
All writing is a rewriting. Time is an essential requisite for the art craft to survive. The concept of time always changes(that's why nowadays books shouldn't be to long. There is no time! We are always in a hurry... ).
An ideal reader is he or she who is able to "interlligere" all the linguistic and stylistic choices made by the writer on purpose .
We have analyzed Robinson Crusoe in:
- Defoe's novel
- Multimedia art craft
- Coetzee's Foe
- Last year's play
Referring to last year's play:
- Somehow, the performance sent back to Defoe's Robinson Crusoe(the archytext)
- The old text had been transformed in terms of:
Storyline (shortened, selected scenes
Language (simplified: the target was a group of school adolescents. Clichés repetitions, songs, refrains, body language, gestures
Structure (reshaped in a one-act play)
Space
Time (reading time of the audience. (Time is not linear in modernism and postmodernism.)
Role of the audience (it has to elaborate the feelings created by music, and imagine the whole scene and its details. The audience is involved actively: there is an interactive aspect in the play)
18/09/07
Guidelines for the group work have been provided.
Postmodernism was born after the sixties as a response to modernism. It included(it recycled and readapted it) and excluded(it rejected the difficult style it had)modernism at the same time and looked back and beyond it.
Postmodernism includes the language of the media, of music, of art. It uses a language made up with readaptation .
Shipwreck means naufragio. An additional meaning to shipwreck is trouble. Trouble is connected to adventure. Adventure means to leave something to find something else, mysterious, hidden, unknown. By living an adventure, you go and undergo situations and events you cannot plan. The shipwreck is an adventure, a metaphor for meeting the unknown(your inner side).The sea makes the shipwreck a special experience. The sea is in a symbolical way the mother's womb, instinct, inner side(emotions).The typical media synonym for shipwreck is passion.
19/09/097
Foe is a seminal work of the typical Coetzee's structure:
- Existential effort
- Attention to other people's suffering
- Deep description of the characters
- Nature: friend or foe
- Engaging society: civilization as a social construction
Men develop a linear way of thinking, women a reticular(multitasking) one
Having a woman as a protagonist, Foe focuses on the relativistic attitude to life. The gender marked attitude of women (Foe)is compared with the attitude of men (Robinson Crusoe). Women are higher sensitive.
Questions raised by Foe:
- Why is representation different from reality?
- Why is Susan so worried about her book (passion for writing)?
- Why is Foe an enemy?
- What does it mean to be without a tongue (to be unable to express yourself with the normal code used by human beings)?
- Why is Cruso not interested in communication? (He is closed in himself and is afraid of what there is outside)
Immortal =something that can be transmitted
In Foe there is an examination on how language may contribute to oppression. Written history can itself be a method of oppression because it is controlled by those who write it.
20/09/07
Foe is both an example of postmodernism and postcolonialism. Postmodernism can be considered as an umbrella term. After and with postmodernism, it's wrong to call the narrator "author". As a matter of fact, the writer doesn't have a total control on his book. It depends on who reads.
When critics analyzed Coetzee's novel, they thought it was fictive and allegorical. An allegory is a figure of speech which works on the multiplicity of layers(multiple layers equals multiple interpretations). Coetzee knows that there are different ways to represent the word. So, there is no contradiction between the ways of thinking. Coetzee is worried about what meaning means. To make meaning means to make sense. Meaning is understanding.
Robinson Crusoe is a classical, colonial text. One of the problems Coetzee had to face in rewriting Robinson Crusoe was to introduce a character which in the master copy had no voice, was completely subjected.
Ghostwriters are writers who write for other people.
Coetzee puts into question the way in which Robinson Crusoe was written, and rewrites it using a different narrative voice.
If one writes a book, he has to decide whether to write the truth, or what he thinks about it (interpretation).
To cut Friday's tongue represented an advantage for the colonialists. What did the black think had never been taken into consideration in colonialist time. Susan, as a woman, represented a marginal part of society, such as Friday did.
22/09/07
Analysis of the first page of "Foe"
It starts with an ‘. This indicates that someone is talking to someone else. As a matter of fact, there is a first person narrator which speaks from the point of view of the main character. Also in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe there is a first person narrator, but it is a male. Coetzee's novel is gender-marked.
Foe starts in medias res. Susan tells us about her arrival on the island. She describes it by a physical point of view, through an emotional filter. Besides the effort she makes to arrive to the island, there is a beautiful image of her (she's "like an anemone". This comparison recalls Joyce's Ulysses, where flower metaphors are used to describe the protagonist's first sexual relation).
In order to describe her arrival on the island, Susan uses figures of speech as anaphora (my...my...my...) and alliterations (blistered, back, burned, body; slow strokes). The language used strikes our emotions and our bodies and appeals to our senses.
In Coetzee's Foe, there is a reduction of the narrative space. As a matter of fact, the first page of Foe equals half of the storyline of Robinson Crusoe.
Since Susan is a castaway (gettata via), Coetzee also discusses the topic of loneliness.
The description of Friday isn't as detailed as the one provided in Robinson Crusoe. Since Susan is highly sensitive (she's a woman), the description focuses on the feelings she has of him. On the contrary, Defoe is hyper realistic and wants to photograph reality.
26/09/07
Foe's novel starts in medias res. Right from the start I can, as an intelligent reader, realize that Coetzee have descript in a page the whole novel of Robinson Crusoe. But why did he restrict it? Was he interested in events? If not, what was he interested in?
There are no truths in the texts, there are just possible interpretations. The more the cultural background of the reader, the more fertile is the interpretation (the more are the cultural links one can see).
Why did Coetzee decide to restrict the storyline? The first chapter provide the reader with all facts. The reader, nowadays, is no more interested in what happens. Nowadays, life is frenetic. There's no time to do anything. Since the time of narration is shorter, the time of reading is shorter.
Coetzee:
- Is very demanding on the reader (also by a linguistic point of view)
- Is interested in providing a different vision of something we consider grante
- Puts the way reality was described in the past into question
- To rewrite Robinson Crusoe, Coetzee:
- Borrows storyline, acts and facts
- Changes the use of language (language appeals to senses; feelings and body reactions of the characters come into surface)
- Changes the gender of the narrator (gender-marked novel)
Coetzee's answer to the question "What is reality?" is that there is no answer. Reality is made of actions and events, but they are not important if we not consider feelings and emotions connected to them.
Why does Susan look for a ghostwriter? She thought Foe was ready to change reality. But what is reality in comparison with fictional reality?
Books have some limits. In the case of Foe, nobody puts the adventure of the storyline into question (whether shipwreck is a metaphor or an action, it doesn't matter. But if I consider the shipwreck as a metaphor, my conception of the novel is different).
Coetzee didn't want to privilege the matter of fact side of reality, which affected Defoe.
In Defoe's time, travelling by ship was an adventure. In Coetzee's time, going by ship is a common fact that everyone experiences.
Reality isn't linear, because we perceive it with our mind. Our mind is restless, dynamic, bombarded by millions of stimuli every day. Reality is a continuous flux that crosses our minds.
Speaking of Joyce, T.S. Elliot said that "Joyce was creating a parallelism between the past and the present, trying to make clear what of the past survived in the present and what has changed".
How had the essence of life been transformed after the shipwreck? Without going through a shipwreck, you will never grow