Lesson plan for week 7: general thoughts and notes

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 133TL, Prof. Huang
22 February 2012

Major topics:

1. Thought for the day:

   Translation was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree […] casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery […] which, by means of ingenious combination of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of the original tree. -Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister

2. Announcements:
   • My office hours are moved to 10 a.m. today, Wed, Feb 22, due to another meeting that I have.
3. Papers
   • OK to turn in papers at the end of section. OK to turn in papers in lecture. Both are not late.
     • However, if Professor Huang happens to end lecture early today, I will not wait around for 1:45 p.m., so turn papers in at beginning of lecture.
     • If late, turn in papers to my box (SH 3421) and send me e-mail immediately to let me know.
     • Reminders:
       • Clock is ticking on late papers.
       • Absolute final day to turn in late papers: Wed, 6 March.
     • I will try to get papers back in one week.
       • However, I'm a student too, and this will be a busy week for me. I will do my best, but cannot promise, to get on-time papers back by next week's section.
       • In this regard, I plan to prioritize students who get their papers in on time.
     • Any questions?
4. Questions for discussion:
   1. In their introduction to the volume, the editors of the anthology Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 write: The form is oftentimes compromised in order to retain the content, which we for historical reasons feel is our first priority. We do not claim adherence to the poets' original meters or rhyme-schemes. By imitating the poetic structure, we feel an injustice to the meaning of the poem would have been committed. In his Transpacific Imaginations, Professor Huang asks, What are the 'historical reasons,' and what is the 'meaning of the poem'? What do you think?
   2. How does the materiality of the Angel Island poems — their form as a physical object — affect their "meaning"? Is this inscription of poems on the wall related to other inscriptive processes that we have discussed this quarter?
   3. What forms of "translation" are involved in moving the poems from the walls to the anthology excerpted in the course reader?
5. Closing questions?