ENGL 1005H Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Reminiscing, Fairy Tale, Microsoft Powerpoint
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ENGL1005H: Love and Hate
Wednesday, February 7th, 2018
Week 5 Notes – The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
From PowerPoint
Topics
Important
Popular Fiction Ideology
Gender and popular ideas
oFemale beauty is framed and seen by the male gaze and male desire
Representation of gender is familiar and traditional
Framed by male desire and male description – first recognition is external, body comes first, self-
exposure comes second – what she is told by others
Standards of female beauty is established by society
oGendered expectations around sex and gendered identity
Sex and sexuality – only man that she's ever had sex with, doesn’t expect him to say the same
thing
oTaught to paint and mentored by a man, then put off her painting by the "wrong man" then rescued back
to her creativity by a good man
Talent comes from inside her – giving birth to something – a gendered way of talking about it
(feminine creation) – paints her feelings
oThe liberation of the woman enabled by the man
Talent is framed by men – Lon tells her not to paint, Noah tells her she should get back into it
The freedom to create something from "inside her"
oConventional realism
oReproducing the man, and the house that he has rebuilt
oHer art finds fulfillment in recording not just him, but his creation
reproduction of Noah and his creation – recorder of male creation – directs it to the representation
of man and his own creativity
The Notebook and the Troubadour Tradition
Noah the Troubadour
oplays guitar, learned to speak from the poets (reciting them helped overcome his stutter), reads poetry to
Allie in a "musical voice" (34), keeps a journal, writes poetry himself
actually hears it as him singing it to her
Noah as the ones who sings his love, uses his love songs to win over the lady
The "Miracle" of Love
oCreated and maintained by the speaker's act of devotional reading and 'singing' to the beloved
Thinking of himself as a troubadour (self-understanding) – his purpose is to sing for his lady
every day and win her back to himself everyday by reciting the same story of their own love –
believes in the miracle of this
oThe utter domination by the divine ("miraculous", beyond science and reason) power of his love
Language of miraculous devotion to the woman
Mission is dominating his existence
On poetry
oTennyson? Eliot? Whitman?
Very specific and narrow sense of what poetry is
Isolation from nature
** quote on poetry from the book **
oestablishing a false binary around her own conception of poetry and what she wants from it: very specific
expectations
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Week 5 notes the notebook by nicholas sparks. Gender and popular ideas: female beauty is framed and seen by the male gaze and male desire. Representation of gender is familiar and traditional. Framed by male desire and male description first recognition is external, body comes first, self- exposure comes second what she is told by others. Standards of female beauty is established by society: gendered expectations around sex and gendered identity. Talent comes from inside her giving birth to something a gendered way of talking about it (feminine creation) paints her feelings: the liberation of the woman enabled by the man. Talent is framed by men lon tells her not to paint, noah tells her she should get back into it. Noah the troubadour: plays guitar, learned to speak from the poets (reciting them helped overcome his stutter), reads poetry to.
