Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value

The inimitable Tom Waits as Renfield

Over the last 12 months I've posted a few things on this blog in regards to the Year 11 English Extension 1 module 'Texts, Culture and Value' and, now that it's 2019 and a few weeks out from a whole new Year 11 group starting, it felt like a good time to update and revise things. 

Here's the module and its resources in a single document for easy access:

• Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value

And here's the associated PowerPoints:

• 1-1. Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value PPT
• 4-4. Lexical Density PPT
• 6-1. Critical Writing PPT
• 8-1. Dracula and the Gothic PPT
• 14-1. Narrative Voice PPT

The main document is designed to be printed as a booklet and given to each student. There's a section at the front of the booklet that explains how each of the resources work, it's more for the teacher but it doesn't hurt for the students to see it and track their progress. The document also includes an assessment task. You can teach the whole unit as is, or pull it apart and use bits and pieces, rewrite stuff from it, etc.

Some notes to clarify a couple of things:

• I decided to take a back to basics approach - as Year 11 Extension English are feasibly coming from any mixed ability Year 10 class there's no guarantee that they've had exposure to the sort of support that a top-performing Year 10 student will have had. I therefore work on the assumption that these students don't really know anything yet. It's just the safest bet. I used to take the approach that I was working with high-performing students who would already know a lot of stuff, but you just can't tell what they do and don't know if you haven't personally taught them before. So now I just assume they're intelligent blank slates (and will be able to learn whatever I put in front of them). Having a vast store of English-based knowledge is not something that 15 or 16 year olds can be expected to have, and knowledge isn't the same thing as ability. This is why the unit booklet includes a few things not directly related to Dracula - I wanted to start from scratch with a few things like narrative voice, thesis statements, essay writing, critical reading, etc., that would help with preparing students for the assessment tasks.
• The biggest part of the resources is a Study Guide to Dracula (Resource X-1). I've posted an earlier version of this document to this blog before but the version in the updated module now includes student questions in the analysis column. I'm not expecting students to answer every question but, as a form of differentiation, students should aim to answer at least one question per page. They can choose which ones - there's a range of different kinds of questions; from comprehension to analysis to evaluation. Some of the questions just require students to read the information around it and reframe it into a self-contained response - it's not especially difficult but it's designed to build confidence and to help students learn a few things. I'm not assessing their ability to answer these questions; the questions themselves are simply a way to facilitate study notes.
• The readings included are mostly extracts sourced from online and a few books I've picked up over the last two years. There's information in the 'sequence of lessons' documents near the beginning of the booklet that explains where these readings are found (incidentally, if by some chance you happen to be the author of one of these extracts and don't want them in this non-profit educational document, please just let me know and I'll edit said document out). 

If you have any questions feel free to contact me by commenting below, or using the email address in the booklet.

Ars Poetica

             Portrait of the poet Eileen Chong

I am, admittedly, a late bloomer when it comes to appreciation of poetry. 

In my first prac as a student teacher I remarked to my supervisor that I wasn't much into poetry. She told me, in good humour, that I needed to get my act together. Grasping for some kind of validation, I told her a few days later that I'd picked up a bargain copy of a Pam Ayres volume. She was less than impressed and I was confused. I was fairly green when it came to the idea of a poetry canon; I'd read Coleridge at school some 15 years previously and all I could remember was that he smoked a bunch of heroin and wrote the poem that inspired the classic Iron Maiden song Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

It's been ten years since my practicum block and it feels like a lifetime ago.

I have had some time to read a bunch of poems since those days and the construction of effective poetry appeals to me a lot more now that I'm in my (late) 30s. I used to play in bands, write song lyrics, and have always loved a neat turn of phrase. Finding my way into poetry has been both a joy and a sadness. So far, the poets I've liked are:

• Ellen Van Neerven
• W.H. Auden
• Eileen Chong
• Dylan Thomas
• Tracy K. Smith
• Olivia Gatwood
• Kim Boey Cheng
• Anita Heiss
• Percy Mumbulla
• Oodgeroo Noonuccal

I find myself listening to singer-songwriters with a much more critical ear now too; Paul Kelly, Brian Sella, Francis Quinlan, Ted Leo, Wil Wagner - they're all pulling words from the ether to craft stories as song, and I find myself scanning them for swearwords to check if I can use them for junior English classes. 

I didn't post anything to this blog for December and as I'm currently working on some other writing projects I'm thinking my online output will probably slow down a little. So I wanted to post something... I wanted to put down some thoughts regarding 'Ars Poetica' too, and this seems as good an excuse as any to write something.  

'Ars Poetica' is a poem by the classical Roman poet Horace that offers advice on how to write poetry. The phrase 'Ars Poetica' (meaning 'the art of poetry') has become an emblematic term used to describe a metatextual work in which an author reflects on the why and how of literary creation.

I hadn't really heard of this term until about a year ago but, hey, I'm only about 2036 years late. Isn't that the way, though? That you hear or read a term like this and then suddenly you see it everywhere. I was reading The Tempest and doing some paratextual research and this is exactly what happened. In the midst of reading about John Dee's career as a spy, the doomed Virginian colony, and whether the Jacobeans were aware of their king's homosexuality or not, I came across W.H. Auden's 'The Sea and the Mirror'. This long, complicated, multi-perspective text features a series of interconnected poems in which the various characters of The Tempest talk to one another and the audience. Auden referred to it as his ars poetica, with the text acting as his own personal commentary about how we view art. In extension of this, Auden posited that The Tempest itself was Shakespeare's ars poetica.

Looking at Prospero's enigmatic epilogue, in which the magician implores directly for the audience to set him free, it's easy to see why so many academics have imagined an ailing Shakespeare speaking through the character. Whether this is really the case or not we will probably never know, but I can appreciate the romance and poetry of the Bard reaching the end of his career and wanting to create a final statement on his work in the theatre.

The Tempest as ars poetica is further supported by the play's thematic core as a narrative built around the motif of performance. Prospero 'performs' for his daughter, Miranda, by keeping certain facts from her. He uses metaphors relating to the stage to refer to his elaborate plans of manipulation and revenge. Ariel and the other spirits put on a masque as a symbol of Ferdinand and Miranda's union. The idea of performance is one of several keys to understanding the text on a deeper level.

Of course, the other side of this sentimental coin is that Shakespeare had no idea when he was going to die. The only real record of his cause of death is a possibly apocryphal tale told 50 years later that attributes Shakespeare's passing to a fever contracted after a wild drinking session. If this is even remotely true then it would make no sense to assume that he wrote The Tempest knowing it would be his last play. Any intention for it to serve as his ars poetica wouldn't be tied to his supposed retirement or demise.

Anyway. 

I've also been analysing Eileen Chong's Burning Rice collection in connection to the English Extension 1 Elective 'Literary Homelands' and pulling together any relevant paratext I can find that will support student parsing of her work. During this process I found the poem 'Burning Rice' referred to as Chong's ars poetica.

There's that phrase again.

The poem itself is a three stanza piece about memory, ancestry, and the preparation of rice. These fifteen short lines are so carefully poised and constructed, so central to Chong's writing in the rest of the volume, so metatextually ripe as a metaphor for creation, that they can indeed be seen as definitively representative of what her poetry is essentially about.

It's interesting and I can see Extension students, with further discussion of what ars poetica means, attempting to find examples of texts from other writers that metatextually represent what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

Dipping Our Toes into Victoria

Lockhart - the water tower in the background has recently been painted to depict some of the local birdlife.

Hello reader! Just thought I'd jot down my journeys this weekend for posterity.

Nicole and I came down to Wagga Wagga a couple of days ago so we could visit my brother in Lockhart. It's a short trip, just a few days, and I type this blog entry from the desk in our hotel room. We've been trying to get away somewhere for a little while but our last stretch of time off together was just spent at home due to some impending renovation costs. As it's (roughly) the Christmas season and my brother has just had his birthday it was nice to be able to come down to the Riverina and say hello to him, his wife, and my niece. 

But I tell you what - the first day driving down here was like riding in a space capsule that was orbiting closer and closer to the sun. The 45 degree heat was our third passenger in the car; constantly turning our air conditioner down, pushing my face directly into the hot window, and wringing every inch of sweat out of my forehead. We pumped the hotel's air conditioning all night and managed to get our bedroom down to a cool 30+ degrees.

While we were visiting the Lockhart Bartolos, my brother Jon suggested checking out Beechworth on our day of travelling. We were looking for somewhere new to go so we ducked down over the Murray River for the day and visited the historic Victorian town on his recommendation. 

Looking down the main street of Beechworth

Turns out Beechworth is a bit of a Ned Kelly spot owing to his incarceration in Beechworth Gaol. As you walk through the town's sandstone district and past the tourist shops it becomes evident that there are rusty steel effigies of the proto-hipster bushranger everywhere. The visiting tourists are an odd mix of upwardly mobile senior citizens who are drawn to the boutique stores, foreign visitors hoping to see some history, and foul-mouthed singlet-wearers who idolise Australia's most famous criminal. It was quite a vibrant scene.

A tree on the main street

Centre of town

We overheard someone talking about how great Beechworth Bakery is so we decided to go there for lunch. The place was absolutely packed; just a mess of queues crisscrossing everywhere and eight staff members behind the counter who all coincidentally had apparently just started working there that day. Well, I don't really know that, but it seems to be the most reasonable explanation for their lack of service skills. 

As I lined up I listened to two British tourists behind me as they read the menu. One explained to the other what kind of pies they have:

"What's the Australian pie?" the older one asks.

"Bacon, cheese, and egg. Do you want that one?" says the other.

His friend replies with a horrified, "Good lord, no!"

I tried not to laugh too loud.

When I got to the front I worked my way through the menu until the lady behind the counter and I could reach an agreement that my item of choice was available for purchase (some things on the menu were crossed out due to being out of stock, and some things on the menu weren't crossed out but also were out of stock). I got halfway through asking for a pepper steak pie when a customer came back and complained that her pepper steak pies had chicken in them. The lady behind the counter took them, looked carefully at their crust, and confirmed with the kitchen that some pies had been filled with the wrong recipe. This meant that, when I received my pie, said staff member stuck her finger under the lid of the pie in front of me and lifted it up to check what was inside it. 

So, yeah, that was a fun adventure. 

Beechworth Honey Shop

This pipe sucks bees in so they can create honey inside the store. This is easily my favourite thing about the store and I'd love to see more shops incorporate living animals in this way.

We kept exploring the rest of the town, visited the Beechworth Honey Shop, found a pretty cool secondhand bookstore inside an old church building. Nicole then did some preliminary research using the Information Centre (she loves Information Centres) and decided we could go visit the Yeddonba Aboriginal Cultural Site just a little ways to the north, so off we headed.

Bookstore in foreground

Visiting Yeddonba involved driving into Chiltern National Park via a series of dirt roads that spiralled further and further off the highway. The Yeddonba site is located in the middle of a semi-circular walking track that winds up into a rocky hillside that overlooks the box-ironbark forest. Once we found it via car the walk itself took only about 45 minutes.

Yeddonba is considered sacred to several local Aboriginal peoples, with the Dhudhuroa, Pangerang, Minjambuta and Jaitmathang all living in its vicinity prior to European invasion. There are several Aboriginal-authored signs around the track that explain the cultural significance of the local hillside caves and the rock art that can be seen here. 

The drive in. Not the worst dirt road we've unexpectedly found ourselves on!

View from the petroglyphs down into the national park. A beautiful spot - photo doesn't do it justice.

The rock art is quite impressive. Over time it has faded quite a bit but in the daylight it can still be seen clearly enough. The most interesting aspect is the depiction of a Thylacine, an animal that has been extinct on mainland Australia for at least 1000 years. The dating of these particular petroglyphs is estimated to be between 2000 and 10 000 years of age. 

There's something awe-inspiring about looking at artwork that has sat largely undisturbed on an ancient rock-face for an amount of time that dwarfs most of Western recorded history. In this one image of a Thylacine, without any need for scientifically-verified fossil records, we have proof that this marsupial lived on Australia's mainland. I try to imagine what the Chiltern forest was like before the Europeans arrived but pull up short of a reasonable replication - the history is too remote, too distant. All I have is this fading painting and a kind of Gothic solitude interrupted only by birdsong.

Despite my sense of isolation, or perhaps because of it, I feel immensely grateful that the Aboriginal elders of this area have allowed for visitors to share in experiencing it.

Other Australian Travels
North Coast NSW - Byron Bay, Nimbin
The Sapphire Coast 1, The Sapphire Coast 2 - Green Cape, Boydtown, Eden
The Snowy Mountains - Tumut, Adaminaby, Cooma, Candelo