This week we’ll begin reading Pablo Neruda’s masterpiece Canto general, the text that is the subject of the final project. So far in class we’ve spent a good deal of time talking about collective versus individual voices, different forms of crafting narratives, and non-Western forms of textuality. The final project for this courses consists of two parts, a comic-style rendering of a section of Neruda’s text and a 3-5 page critical reflection on the comic you produce.
This assignment will require you to:
- synthesize course readings and discussions
- apply your thoughts and knowledge in creative ways
- meditate on the nature of what constitutes text and the possibilities inherent in different notions of textuality
For the comic I do not necessarily expect “great art,” but I do expect a thoughtful engagement Neruda and the theoretical perspectives we have discussed. Consider carefully your medium, your text, and how you present these. Stick figures are fine, but stick figures hastily scribbled on notebook paper the night before this assignment is due are not. Pay attention to how you are narrating this text visually and linguistically. What new interpretations come into being via how you articulate the relationships between images and words? I will not assign a specific “page length,” but a single image with no narrative arc does not by definition fulfill the assignment.
For the critical reflection you are encouraged to do a bit a independent research (a minimum of three critical sources not read in class). What was your experience like? How is rethinking textuality challenging/liberating/frustrating? Why did you make the representational choices you made? How do these illuminate or obscure what is in the original text?
We’ll be reading and discussing this in a bit more detail over the coming weeks, but go ahead and start thinking about these issues!