Unit 10.01.07 | Yale National Initiative®

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 10.01.07

The Big Picture

Visual art and literature have an intimate relationship, a relationship exploited constantly throughout our modern society. Celebrities in print advertisement ask us if we "got milk" through their milky moustaches, George Lucas informs us of a story taking place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . ." against a backdrop of a moon–size space station and the sword play of light sabers, and in the pages of the classic Detective Comics, Batman knocks out bank robbers with a wham! and a bam! after announcing through a speech bubble that "criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot." ¹ The marriage of the two is found throughout our everyday society – to have the one without the other is becoming altogether rare. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's titular character's famed quote reinforces this concept: "What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" The opposite question, of course, is just as noteworthy: What is the use of a picture without books or conversations? This unit of study will not attempt to answer either Alice's question or its "looking–glass" image. Instead, it will inject back into the English classroom the importance of the relationship between literature and the visual arts.

Comments:

James Anthony Foltz

September 23, 2010 at 11:48 pm

Elizabeth Pain Gravestone Photo Credit:

Regrettably, Sean P. Aune - who so graciously gave permission to use his work - was not given a photo credit for the Elizabeth Pain gravestone. My sincerest apologies for this oversight.

Teacher Resources

A&A Studios, Inc. "The Museum of Mourning Photography & Memorial practice." http://antviz.tripod.com/mourningphoto (accessed July 31, 2010).

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. 1 ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995.

Maine Historical Society. "Maine Memory Network – Frances Appleton Longfellow by Rowse, 1859." http://www.mainememory.net/bin/Detail?ln=15474 (accessed July 31, 2010).

"Moby Dick's Coin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick_Coin.

Resheph, Philip. "The Iliad of Homer." http://www.philipresheph.com/demodokos/book1/pic60.htm (accessed July 31, 2010).

Smithsonian National Museum of Amiercan History. "NMAH Mountain of the Holy Cross." http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=259 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Walters Art Museum. "The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (French, 1823–1881)." http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=25737 (accessed July 31, 2010).

Notes

Kane, Bob, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," Detective Comics. May, 1939.

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995).

Cox, James. "Longfellow and His Cross of Snow." JSTOR 75, no. 1 (1960): 97–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/460431?seq=1 (accessed July 10, 2010).

Mcfarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. (New York: Grove Press, 2005).

Ryskamp, Charles. "The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter." American Literature 31, no. 3 (1959): 257–272.

Shackleton, Robert. The Book of Boston. Philadephia: (The Penn Publishing Company, 1916).

Rozakis, Laurie. "Another Possible Source of Hawthorne's Hester Prynne." American Transcendental Quarterly 59, March (1986): 63–71.

"Scarlet Letter Inspiration," http://www.celebrateboston.com/strange/scarlet–letter.htm (accessed July 10, 2010).

Garrison, Daniel. "Melville's Doubloon and the Shield of Achilles." Nineteenth–Century Fiction 26, no. 2 (1971): 171–184.

Connecting the Visual to the Verbal in the Classroom

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 10.01.07

Writing about the Big Picture: American Ekphrasis

The Big Picture

Comments:

James Anthony Foltz

Add a Comment