The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Michael Malay

Review of Michael Malay\u27s The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetr

FROM Daystart Songflight: A Morning Journal

This piece, an excerpt from an ongoing manuscript of plein-air nature writing, is one of forty projected journal entries involving excursions beginning before sunrise, with exploration of natural settings and observations of natural phenomena (birds, plants, mammals, insects, water, clouds, light, the sun, etc.) interwoven with readings about morning in scientific texts, poetry, and other kinds of writing

David Hockney

David Hockney is generally recognised as the most talented British artist of his generation. In my thesis I trace his development from his childhood until the present as a figure lionised by the establishment. Hockney has become highly respected, a Van Dyck of contemporary polite society. I show his place in a line of tradition in English painting, a tradition where painters stress the anecdotal above a purely visual language England has a commanding tradition of literature from figures such as Shakespeare, Bacon, Byron, Tennyson, Keats and Dickens, to name only a few. Due to this English society insisted on some literal content to their art. The outcome has been rather eccentric art. Painters comment in a narrative way on ideas, on morals and on social matters in a very personal way. David Hockney fits into this tradition in English painting. Chapter one deals with Hockney\u27s childhood, in the north of England. I talk about his early school days and the intellectual climate of the time. Hockney\u27s teachers were not concerned with art, and considered it to be of secondary importance. I also discuss Hockney\u27s understanding of art. He arrived at painting instinctively and from a basis of ignorance and even misunderstanding of the role of art and the artist in society. Chapter two deals with his arrival in London. In 1957 he became a student at the Royal College of Art. Where he met others young artists and was exposed to contempory art. Influenced by Ron Kitaj he overcomes his fear of figure painting, which was considered anti-modern at the time. I discuss his pictoral interests of this time, curtains, style and poetry. Chapter three sees him going to California and I discuss the affect it had on him; he began to paint the physical look of things. He becomes interested in the painting of water and glass, inparticular swimming pools. Also discussed are his portrait paintings. The conclusion sees him living in Paris, still interested in style as subject matter, in particular the French style of pointillism. I sum up by writing about my relationship with Hockney; what it is about his art and life I admire

Branches over Ripples: A Waterside Journal

Branches Over Ripples: A Waterside Journal is a fifty-entry plein-air writing project drafted between April 2013 and October 2014 by various bodies of water—rivers, brooks, lakes, bays, marshes, waterfalls, a vernal pond, a Japanese koi pond. Most of the writing was done in Nova Scotia locations, but some entries were drafted in New Brunswick, Montreal, Missouri, Manhattan, and London, England. I often walked from an hour to four or five hours, then sat down on bare earth, grass, sand, stone, or wood, and wrote, keeping attuned to my surroundings but also letting my mind and memory wander

The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Michael Malay

Review of Michael Malay\u27s The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetr

Computerized reading assessment using the star reading software

This thesis focused on the use of a computerized reading assessment program called Star Reading. Reading has been one of the most difficult areas across the curriculum to assess. Reading asssessment differs widely from teacher to teacher, and has traditionally been very subjective

Mobile limits and the limits of mobility in French representations of urban space

This dissertation proposes a new approach to conceptualizing the French city through a series of readings on twentieth- and twenty-first century literature, cinema and theory. This project uncovers liminal protagonists in French urban space, analyzes their Certelian practices, and considers what happens when they interact with urban limits in unexpected or unintended ways. Through the thematic lens of the border, my readings of the spatial practices of urban travelers breathe new life into canonical literary and cinematic texts, chronologically spanning from Louis Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris (1926) to Christian Volckman’s Renaissance (2005). Each chapter engages with cultural theorists—Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, Michel de Certeau, Régis Debray—and intellectual movements—existentialism, surrealism, posthumanism—that all emphasize the importance of borders as specific zones of creative possibilities. Such an approach requires a detailed engagement with French culture and history and offers novel research paths in the field of French studies. At the same time, this study stretches beyond the disciplinary boundaries of French studies, entering into dialogue with spatial theory, urban and borderland studies, and cybernetics. Chapter One focuses on interwar representations of New York in order to establish this project’s central terms: (im)mobility and spatial delinquency, two competing forms of urban mobility in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit and Paul Morand’s New York. Chapter Two initiates a discussion on borderland poetics in Louis Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris and Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, both of which center their narratives on borderlands in and around the nation’s capital. Chapter Three tracks the relationship between Parisian suburbanites and urban planners in relation to Michel Serres’ theoretical figure of the parasite in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Jean-Luc Godard’s deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle. Chapter Four follows two post-modern detectives along the various limits of invisible cities in Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps and Christian Volckman’s Renaissance, demonstrating how the experience of these detectives reflects the literary and cinematic creative processes