Eye On Literature

Shakespeare and The Globe

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:09:00 +0000

In 1599, the first Globe Theatre was completed on the south bank of the Thames River. William Shakespeare, along with three other actors, bought a share in the Globe. It stood for 14 years and presented many of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. During a performance of Henry VIII in 1614, a stage cannon ignited the thatched roof and the theatre burned to the ground. However, it was quickly rebuilt and continued to present plays until the Puritans shut down all theaters in London in 1642. It was demolished in 1644.

The American actor Sam Wanamaker initiated the rebuilding of Shakespeare’s Globe after his first visit to London in 1949. Workers began construction in 1993 on the new theatre near the original site. The latest Globe Theatre was completed in 1996; Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the theatre on June 12, 1997 with a production of Henry V.

In 1596, a Dutch student by the name of Johannes de Witt attended a play in London at the Swan Theatre. While there, de Witt made a drawing of the theatre's interior. A friend, Arend van Buchell, copied this drawing. The sketch is the only surviving contemporary rendering of the interior of an Elizabethan-era public theatre. As such, it's the closest thing historians have to an original picture of what the Globe may have looked like, seating 1,500 people between the galleries and the "groundlings."

In addition, there are suggestive descriptions included in the plays themselves, such as the famous Chorus, which begins Henry V: ‘And shall this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France / Or may we cram within this wooden ‘O’...’

The Globe itself was not a truly circular building. An archaeological excavation of the Rose Theatre in 1989 revealed that the Elizabethan playhouses were polygonal buildings. In the same year, a small portion of the Globe itself was excavated and revealed that it was a 20-sided building with a diameter of 100 feet.

For more information about the Globe click here

View the video tour of the Globe Theatre and Exhibition:

William Blake's "The Tyger"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:35:00 +0000

William Blake
(1757–1827)
William Blake was born in London, in 1757. Although he had little formal education, he made his living with his engravings and watercolors.

In 1789, he published his book of engravings and poems entitled Songs of Innocence and a few years later, in 1794, he followed with Songs of Experience which included “The Tyger.” Blake was part of London’s intellectual circle though he was often labeled as eccentric and delusional. Among the recurring themes of his work were: good and evil, heaven and hell, knowledge and innocence. Blake was ahead of his time and spoke out in favor of sexual and racial equality, rejecting the teachings of conventional religion. Blake's work was not generally recognized by his contemporaries but today he is considered an important and unique talent of the English Romantic Period. He influenced many writers and artists as diverse as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison of The Doors, and the film director Jim Jarmusch.

Here are some links to more information about William Blake and his work:

http://www.vu.union.edu/~blake/life.html

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/blake.htm

http://www.duke.edu/web/secmod/biographies/Blake.pdf

For an introduction to Blake's poem "The Tyger" watch the You Tube video:

Fathers and Sons in Hamlet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a revenge play, but throughout the play we get a clear picture of the character of Hamlet as a man who sees his duty before him but who shirks it at every opportunity. Part of his dilemma is that he knows that the murder of his father was wrong, but he also realizes that vengeance is wrong.

There are 3 sets of fathers and sons in Hamlet: King Hamlet and Prince Hamlet, King Fortinbras and Prince Fortinbras, and Polonius and Laertes. Both Laetres and Prince Fortinbras serve as foils for Hamlet. That is, they provide a contrast to Hamlet and his character and behavior.

The Mayan City of Chichen Itza

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Chichen Itza is a Mayan City on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It was established hundreds of years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and most likely served as the religious center of the Yucatan.

Today it is the second most visited site of Mexico and is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The ruins include the Kukulkan pyramid which is also known as “El Castillo” (the castle).

The Maya originated around 3,000 years ago in present-day Central America and Mexico. The Mayan empire flourished in the southern regions from around 250 AD to 900 AD. The empire in the south collapsed around 900 AD, but the northern Maya thrived until the Spanish conquests of the 16th century AD.

The Maya were skilled farmers and created a sophisticated written language. They also carried on trade throughout a network of cities that went as far south as Panama and as far north as Central Mexico. They developed a number system which included the concept of zero and used their mathematical knowledge along with celestial observations to develop a sophisticated calendar and to create monuments to observe and commemorate movements of the moon, the sun, and Venus. Several of these monuments can still be seen at Chichen Itza today.

In the summer of 2008, we visited Chichen Itza. You can view a short video tour we created for Eye On Literature.

Chichen Itza

Poetry and the Writing Process with Michael Minassian

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:48:00 +0000

In this podcast recorded in the Summer of 2008, Professor Gary Kay and I talk about the writing process and poetry. During our discussion, I read three of my published poems and we talked about the evolution and background of each poem. The poem "Crazy Jane..." was workshopped at a 1999 Poetry Conference in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The leader of that workshop was a poet and editor named Robert McDowell. You can visit Robert's website and sign up for his Free Poetry Mentor Newsletter at:

Robert McDowell

During this podcast I also mentioned the writer Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way and several other excellent books on creativity and writing. You can find out more at:

The Artist's Way

Here is a video of our discussion

You can also hear us discuss a fourth poem entitled "The Arboriculturist" at my blog:

Michael Minassian

In Search of Literary San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:11:00 +0000

In July of 2008, my wife and I visited friends San Antonio, Texas. While we were there, my friend, Tom Davis a professor at San Antonio College, helped me track down three literary sites in San Antonio. The first two locations we visited were the residences of Robert Frost and his family members during the winter of 1936-37. Frost and his wife decided to take a break from their winters in Key West, Florida when his daughter moved to Mexico. However, due to an unusually harsh winter, Frost decided not to return to San Antonio after that year.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 and moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later spent some time at Harvard His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White and together moved to England in 1912. While in England, Frost published two full-length collections of poems and returned to the United States in 1915. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America -- his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England. Frost was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes for his books of poetry. He died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

For more on Robert Frost, the Frost Cottage in Key West, and the Robert Frost Poetry Festival see my Eye On Literature posting of TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2008:
The Robert Frost Cottage in Key West, Florida

Click here to watch the You Tube Video

The third literary landmark in San Antonio we visited was the O. Henry House. O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter whose short stories are famous for their ironic endings. He was born in 1862 on a plantation in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1882, he moved to Texas, where he held various jobs, including that of a ranch hand. Two years later, he moved to Austin, and in 1887, he married a local girl, Athol Estes, who was only seventeen years old. In 1895, Porter was accused of embezzlement for the time he worked as a teller at the First National Bank of Austin. Although he denied the charges, he was arrested and skipped bail before the trial began. O. Henry spent part of 1895-1896 in San Antonio, Texas working on his magazine The Rolling Stone. The house itself was relocated from the old Lone Star Brewing Company site to the corner of Laredo and Dolorosa and is managed by the San Antonio Conservation Society. In May of 1999 the restored O. Henry House was reopened to the public.

http://www.saconservation.org/places/ohenry.htm

For more on O. Henry and his time in Austin, Texas, visit my posting at:

http://michaelminassian.blogspot.com/2007/02/o-henry-house-museum-austin-tx.html

The Ernest Hemingway Home in Key West, Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:58:00 +0000

On March 7, 2008, I visited the Ernest Hemingway Home in Key West, Florida. Hemingway purchased the house on Whitehead Street in Key West and owned the property for thirty years from 1931 until his death in 1961. He actually lived in the house for ten years and wrote many of his novels in his studio which was located in the carriage house. A cat walk once connected the two structures but was blown down during one of the many hurricanes that passed through Key West. The surrounding gardens are also home to the first swimming pool ever built in Key West. The interior of the main house still holds many antiques and art work that Hemingway collected on his trips to Europe and Africa. The main house was built in 1851 by Asa Tift, a marine salvage specialist. Guided tours of the house and grounds are available daily.

To visit the website of the Hemingway Home
click on this link:

http://www.hemingwayhome.com/

Click here to view the movie of my visit to the Hemingway Home

Here is an interview with Linda, manager of the bookstore at the Hemingway Home:

Photos by Sue Minassian

The Robert Frost Cottage in Key West, Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Professor Michael Minassian at the Robert Frost Cottage in Key West, Florida

Photo by Sue Minassian

The Robert Frost Cottage in Key West, Florida is part of the Heritage House Museum at 410 Caroline Street, Key West. The Porter family home contains original furnishings, antiques, artifacts, books, and paintings which were collected by seven generations of the family. Frost's wife convinced him to accept Jessie Porter's invitation to spend time in the cottage behind the main house. The Frosts spent the next sixteen winters there.

Click here to view the Movie on You Tube

The Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida - written and produced by Michael Minassian

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:13:00 +0000

Jack Kerouac is the most famous of the Beat Generation novelists. The author of On the Road and Dharma Bums, Kerouac lived in Orlando and later in St. Petersburg where he died in 1969. The Kerouac House is located in the College Park area of Orlando and was largely forgotten until reporter Bob Kealing came across the house in 1996 and wrote a book entitled Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends. Kealing was also one of the founders of the Kerouac Project which bought the house and created a writer in residence program there. The house has since been declared a historic site and is the sole literary landmark in Orlando.

Watch the You Tube video posted here.

Kerouac did not actually own the house, but he rented rooms in the back of the house and lived there with his mother during part of 1957 and 1958. I was lucky enough to see the inside of the house while I was there and we were able to take several photographs (all photos by Sue Minassian) of the interior and exterior. The Kerouac Project now owns the house and sponsors a writers in residence program. Check out their web site at:

http://www.kerouacproject.org/

The poem I read in the podcast was published in the Spring 2007 issue (Vol. 4, No. 1) of The Dos Passos Review.

You can visit their web site at:

http://www.longwood.edu/dospassosreview/

While searching for images of Jack Kerouac, I came across this photograph of Bob Dylan and the poet Allen Ginsberg visiting Kerouac's grave in Lowell, Massachusetts:

For more information about the Beat Generation Writers and Poets visit:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/BeatGen.html

http://www.kerouac.com/

http://www.wordsareimportant.com/dharmabeat.htm

Here are some more photos of the exterior and interior of the house:

All photos by Sue Minassian (2007).
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Flannery O'Connor Home - Savannah, GA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:28:00 +0000

Michael Minassian at the Flannery O'Connor Home, December 2007

Photo by Sue Minassian

Click here to watch the Movie on You Tube:

The author Flannery O'Connor (1924-64) was born a few blocks from this house and spent the first thirteen years of her life at this location in a quiet Savannah neighborhood. In 1947, she graduated from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa with a Master's degree in Fine Arts.

Flannery O'Connor standing next to a self-portrait.

O'Connor is known as a Southern Gothic writer and is the author or two novels - Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960) - but she is best known for her collections of short stories A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965).

Photo by Sue Minassian

The Flannery O'Connor Home is located at 207 E. Charlton St., Savannah, Georgia. The house itself dates from 1856 and is a part of the Savannah area which has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

The house is open to the public on weekends only from 1-4 P.M. On December 23, 2007, we visited the house and spoke to Docent Toby Aldrich. After a tour of the living quarters, we set up our camera in front of the fireplace and Toby answered questions about O'Connor's life and career. The house is maintained by The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home Foundation. For more information visit:

http://www.flanneryoconnorhome.org/index.html

Another good site for information about Flanner O'Connor's life is the web site of the Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia where she spent the last thirteen years of her life:

http://www.andalusiafarm.org/