Assalamualaikum and good day everyone. Today we
move to the 20th century. We'll speak about major
issues in the 20th century, major names and major
literary texts. We are about to close this course.
And I want you always to imagine how the journey
of English literature moved from the oral Old
English tradition and then to Middle English, and
then to drama, Shakespeare, and poetry, and novel,
and prose, and then the 20th century. This has
been a fascinating journey. It's not easy, again,
to speak about everything in English literature in
just 30 or 40 classes. In the future, hopefully,
you will be studying more literature courses, and
you will go in-depth into more issues than we
discussed here. My aim was to give you an idea to
show you how literature and life interact, how
life influences literature, and how literature
also creates particular things in life in the
sense that it empowers people. It suggests new
ideas. It makes us grow in a way or another. And
how literature has always been used by the
marginalized, by the subclass, by women, by the
outsiders as a tool of resistance, of speaking
truth to power of expressing themselves in the
sense that literature is revolution and can cause
revolutions. Now, the 20th century is a
fascinating era to speak about in all issues,
whether we speak about technology, technological
advancements, industry, society, philosophy,
literature, arts, relationships, how the world has
become a really tiny village, especially with the
internet in the late 20th century. Now when we
speak about, before we speak about the literature,
I want just to mention the major issues here. I
can't cover everything again, but we'll have an
idea. So remember how people were lamenting the
loss of faith in the late Victorian Age. They were
sad, expressing their sadness because people were
no longer the people who used to be close, who
loved each other, who were, you know, in a way or
another living in a society in harmony. And how
this society, because of the city and the
Industrial Revolution, how everything was changing
and moving too. to the worst. Some people lamented
this in literature, especially in the poetry of
the late Victorian period. And we've seen the
crisis of faith in Matthew Arnold's famous poem
Dover Beach. And now when Arnold gave us a little
tiny ray of hope when he said, let us be true to
one another, suggesting that be honesty and truth.
and beauty are all important things that can at
least unite us despite the differences. Now, when
people had a little tiny hope, the Great War or
the First World War broke out. And millions and
millions of people were killed. I'm not sure how
many, but I think like over 20 million people were
killed. And most of them were white European
Christians. So I remember in literature we have
always this idea of the Western man being more
superior than the native Africans or Asians, being
smarter, more civilized. And now all of a sudden,
The Europeans among themselves, the Christians,
the white people are massacring each other for
more or less trivial things. Could be political
issues, but sometimes you go back to the origin of
how it all started, and it's a stupid thing. And
this was the final blow that people lost hope. So
many people lost hope. So the period between the
First World War and the Second World War,
especially in the 30s, is called the lost
generation, where people lost not only hope, but
everything. Even the tiny little spark of hope
they had of maybe this is the Western
civilization. It's going to be the best. history
has ever known. But then all of a sudden, one war
and another war, and tens of millions of people,
over 50, around 60 million people were massacred.
Because in a way or another, there's no hope.
Humanity is doomed to fail. Remember the
positivism of George Eliot that humanity is
advancing, progressing, the good is yet to come.
This proved that Many things were not true. Now,
the British Empire started to fall apart, to be
torn into pieces because of the liberation
movements and the resistance by the colonized
around the world. So England was shrinking. The
British Empire itself was shrinking until it's now
only a little tiny island. some symbolic authority
here and there. In the 20th century, we speak
about the rise of fascism, the rise of Nazism.
like, as too brutal, like, the worst of what
humanity has given, especially in modern history,
is fascism and Nazism, when people considered
themselves to be bitter just because of the color
of their skin, to be more superior, and to give
themselves the right to kill, massacre millions of
people just because they believe that we are the
chosen people more, more or less. Fascism or
Nazism could have ended with the fall or the
defeat of Hitler and Germany, but neo-Nazism and
Nazis are still alive and kicking around the
world. And fascists are also still alive and
kicking around the world. There are still many
people who believe that, for example, the white
people are the best, the most superior, and this
is called white supremacy. So no matter what
people do, like sometimes you say, why are people
like this? Why is it that this person hate me
because of... what I believe, what I wear, or what
I think, or how I look. Horrible people will
always be around, no matter what we do, no matter
how good we are, okay? So when we speak about
literature, because this is a literature course,
we speak about modernism. And when I spoke about
John Donne and the metaphysical poets, and I said
these were, in a way or another, modernist poets.
When I spoke about, what's his name, Lawrence
Stern, I said, His text Tristram Shandy is also a
modernist text. And when we spoke about Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, we said there are
modernist elements. Some people think that
modernism started in the 20th century. It's not
accurate. Modernism is not related to a particular
time. But the majority of modernist artistic
creation took place in the 20th century. So I
always give this funny example of, I say if
modernism is a pizza, at least two slices of it
happened before the 20th century. Examples, John
Donne, Herbert, Lawrence Stern, Mary Shelley have
generally experimental issues. When we speak about
modernism, it's basically how you try to bring new
forms of expression, new literary forms, how you
try to break the rules and the barriers of what
you have to do and you just do something new.
That's basically what it is. When we speak also
about literature, we speak about literary theory.
So we have literature. In the past 2,000 years ago
or more, we speak about Aristotle and Plato, you
know, Plato. Platon, Aristotle, those people spoke
about literature and they tried to give an idea to
help us understand literature. So it was
basically, if you follow these particular rules,
you're going to write great literature. And great
literature is great because of one, two, three,
four. And it helps us to appreciate and understand
a poem. So you look at the poem, you look at the
criteria they said, and say, oh, this is a great
text because one, two, one, two, three. And we
spoke about Shelley, who wrote an essay on
criticism. And also, what's his name? Alexander
Pope also wrote another essay on criticism and
literary criticism. So what is literary theory? I
don't want you to be bothered a lot here, but just
to have an idea. Basically, literary criticism or
literary theories, they are a set of theories to
help us, to guide us how to understand literature.
I'll speak about two examples here. Feminism, we
mentioned feminism before. Feminism is the
movement, the literary theory that locks a text
from the perspective of a woman, how women are
treated. It's basically a movement that says women
are equal to men or are different in their own
way, not worse. Some people say they are better
than men. It depends on how you take it. So
feminism goes to the literary text and tries to
see, OK, why are you depicting the woman in this
way? Why are you representing this woman in this
way? Why do most women die in their literatics?
This is anti-feminism. Why aren't you allowing the
woman to express herself? This is anti-feminism.
And women should have their own rights to speak,
to express themselves, to love, to hate, to do, to
act. This was a significant thing that empowered
women. The other thing is post-colonialism. And we
also... I'll just go through it in a bit. And also
post-colonialism, we spoke about it when we
mentioned Who's the founder, more or less, of post
-colonialism we mentioned before? What's his name?
Palestinian? Edward Said. Edward Said. Edward Said
is said to be, although he's quoted by some people
that say, like, no, I didn't invent post
-colonialism. But it is generally attributed to
Edward Said, post-colonialism. Now, post
-colonialism says, OK. It focuses mainly on the
relationship between the East and the West, the
imperial powers of Europe and the colonized
oppressed people in Asia and Africa and around the
world. So both of these theories invite us to
question, to challenge, to reread the canon. So
remember the canon? What is the canon? The set of
the most important... Writings, literary works,
whether poetry, novel, or drama. When we check
this again, thanks to these theories, they say,
okay, wait a minute. Why are all the writers men?
White. Europeans. Christians. No women, basically.
No people of color. Ah, there's something wrong
with this. So we reread the canon in a way or
whatever. So today, I'll speak about Edward Said,
Virginia Woolf. Edward Said is a post-colonialism
figure. Virginia Woolf is a feminist figure and
critic. I'll give you examples from three major
literatics, I guess. We'll have T.S. Eliot as a
poet, James Joyce as a novelist, and some will
break it as a playwright or a dramatist, just to
show you an idea about the 20th century, mainly
and briefly. T.S. Eliot. T.S. Eliot is said to be
the greatest 20th century poet and critic. His
famous poem is The Wasteland. And it's generally
translated into Arabic as... Okay,
so notice it's two words here, not one word. So
The Wasteland,
So The Wasteland, written around 1922 by T.S.
Eliot, is considered to be the most important poem
in the 20th century. It is one of the most really
fascinating poems of all time. And when you read
it, it's very interesting. Until you try to read
it, I understand you're still, you know, taking
the first steps into English literature and
English language. But give it a shot. At least
listen to poetry. The most significant thing about
poetry is to listen to it because poetry is meant
to be recited. Listen to the recitation on
YouTube. So this poem, tears in it begins, the
title, The Wasteland, is taken from the Bible. So
it's not his. And then he uses a myth, an ancient
myth about a woman named Sibel. This woman, you
know, an ancient mythology, mythology like the
stories from 2,000, 3,000 years ago with the gods
and goddesses, like unbelievable fictional stories
similar to Beowulf in a way. So Sibel was asked by
someone, like,
You have one wish. What do you want to wish? And
anything you wish, you will be granted.
Interesting, right? So what would you ask for?
What would you ask for now here? To read people's
minds. Oh, wow. That's spooky. To go back in time.
Back, not forward. Back in time. What else? What
else would you do? Get a full mark? Come on.
That's very simplistic. But yeah, it depends. So
what did she ask for? She asked for eternal life.
She wanted to live very ambitious, very everyone
wants to live forever. However, and this is where
the famous saying comes from. In English, they
say, careful what you wish for. So, sir, we want
the final exam to be all true or false. And I tell
you, careful what you wish for, because it could
be tough. OK? I tell you, like, it's better for
you if you write paragraphs, because you're
trained to write and express yourself. But true or
false, it's like true or false. OK? Black and
white, right? She forgot. She should have asked
for eternal health or eternal youth. Happiness,
but means death eventually. So she asked for
eternal life, and she was given eternal life. And
what happens here is that she grew very old and
very tiny. She kept shrinking and shrinking and
shrinking to the extent that she became like a
tiny little creature, like a little bird. And
people put her in a cage. And like after hundreds
of years later, the kids would be teasing her and
making fun of her. Hey, Sibel, what do you want?
So I remember at the beginning, she said, I want
eternal life. Now she's saying, I want to die. He
wants to die, and he can't even die. And this is
40 years earlier. This is something in the 20th
century. People wanted to die, but they couldn't
even die. Even death was difficult. So he goes
from the Bible to Greek and Latin language. He
doesn't write in English this. And then he
dedicates this poem to his friend, the famous poet
and critic Ezra Pound. Also, he uses Italian. So
Bible. Latin and Greek, Italian. And there is a
subheading for this section of the poem called,
The Burial of the Dead. And I think it's also
taken from the Bible. So what is he writing?
There's nothing by T.S. Eliot. And finally, when
we read, April is the cruelest month, we say,
finally, we come to the poem. And if you're smart
enough, I think you are, you will remember that.
Yeah, thank you. When we discussed Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, he started this by opening the
poem praising April. What does April generally
symbolize? Life, spring, rebirth, resurrection,
new beginning, new world, new experiences, new
ambitions, life, beauty, happiness. And this has
been the case in English literature. So spring
always represents new life, rebirth. But here,
what is bringing to England, to the West, to
Europe? Death and destruction. Millions of people
dying in the First World War. So it's like, in my
understanding, T.S. Eliot, this is called
allusion. You know allusion when you allude to a
text outside your own text, okay? So he's as if
he's going back in history. Remember we said
Chaucer is the father of English poetry? So it's
like he's going to Chaucer, dragging him by the
hand, dragging him by the hand, dragging him by
the hand, maybe by the collar, bringing him to the
20th century, and telling us all it's all been a
lie. It's a lie. Don't believe this. We are all
going to die. And even when we want to die, we
can't. Because April is not a beautiful month.
April is a cruelest month. Breeding lilacs out of
the dead. Because when the flowers and the trees
and the plants spring beneath this millions of
dead, bodies and land and mixing memory and
desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, at least like you don't go
out in winter, just try to forget. Covering earth
in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with
dried tubers. Summer surprised us. Now, in this
text, he uses so many languages. Like, after some
ten lines, he uses, for example, Latin, Greek,
Italian, German language, French language. He uses
Egyptian mythologies. He uses Chinese mythologies,
ancient mythologies. Like, when people first read
this poem, like, what's going on here? We don't
understand basically Everything. So later on, he
published something, and he added notes. He says,
OK, here I mean this, and here I mean that, and
here I mean this and that. But all just we need
here for the class is this, like April is the
cruelest month, and how literature in the 20th
century became more self-aware about itself. There
is a lot of metafictional elements here, like
always taking you outside of the text. If you look
at the structure here, you'll see that it's not
like the classical poetry. This is experimental.
This is modernist poetry. This is poetry that
doesn't follow the rules of decorum. And no
surprise, it was T.S. Eliot who praised John Donne
and showed how important he is. In a way, he
followed, he learned something from John Donne.
Like many other poets of the 20th century. Look at
even the rhyme scheme. Breeding, mixing, stirring,
grain like. It's almost the same in a way or
another. Does this make it less poetic than any
other poetry? This is the greatest poem of the
20th century. But I'm sure Johnson, Samuel Johnson
and Bob and Dryden would be pulling their hair
right now. Because for them, You have to follow
the rules, the rules of decorum in a way or
another. So this is basically what we need to know
about the wasteland. April is the cruelest month.
And then I'll give you an example from the novel.
Listen, it doesn't mean every single literary work
in the 20th century is a modernist text. But the
major trend, the most important famous trend,
modernist literature, although many people were
writing ordinary classical traditional poetry and
stuff. So James Joyce's Ulysses. Remember Ulysses?
I mentioned Ulysses. Homer, character from Homer,
from The Odyssey. And it was mentioned by other
poet, Tennyson, I guess. Anyway. So this text,
Ulysses, refers to the ancient mythology about
someone named Ulysses. Yeah, of course. There is
usually this allusion and metafictional element.
Sometimes even intertextuality if you use texts
from the past. So in this novel, James Joyce uses
the famous stream of consciousness technique of
narrative. Remember Lawrence Stern? So he was one
of the first people to use this. where you get
inside the mind, the thoughts of the character,
and you expose them, reveals as they develop, as
they come, how the ideas develop. But here, he
also mixes between first person and third person
narrators. Very experimental power. The text
covers only 18 hours in the life of the author.
And the novel, how long is it? Like three pages,
30 pages, 10 pages? If you go back home today and
write your own diaries, you write everything that
happened with you and even every thought that you
thought of or imagined. Maybe you write 100 pages,
50 pages, 70 pages, three pages, depends on how
imaginative you are. But 18 hours, almost 1,000
pages, that's a lot of pages. Why? Because of the
stream of consciousness technique. This novel is
considered... Many people hated this poem, by the
way, this novel. Like, what are you doing? Why are
you jumping from one... Sometimes you don't know
who the narrator is. But in a way, this reflects
something about the 20th century, the
difficulties, the new experimentations, the new
intellectualism, how people wanted to change, to
break all sorts of barriers. Someone not sure here
in this class or another class mentioned Kafka. Go
read something about Kafka. Also amazing stuff.
For example, in one of his novels, the main
character wakes up and finds himself to be a
beetle, I guess, or a small insect. Just he goes
out to work to the outside world as a small
insect, a small animal. Beautiful stuff. But yeah,
you have to have this idea about what modernism
and postmodernism is. Okay? One interesting fact
about this novel is that the last 50 pages have no
punctuation marks. Nothing. It's like 50 pages, no
punctuation marks at all. Why would he do this?
Yeah, why? Remember, if there is something, there
is a reason. If it's there, it's there for a
reason. If it's not there, it's not there for a
reason. That's basically literature. Yeah. that
he's a good writer and he has a different type of
style than other authors. Okay. But it's not about
only being a good writer. But yeah, he's being
different. But why would you write a whole page
sometimes or two or three pages without
punctuation marks? Maybe to reflect a case of
chaos. Okay, interesting also. reflect some chaos,
some lawlessness. I'm not following the rules of
grammar and punctuation. I'm not doing this. But
there's something else. Yes. That's okay. This is
his new way of writing.
Like what?
It's like just It's like they say, no matter how
big the dream is, it's only like seconds. So this
is just something that crosses your mind. No time
for punctuation. Good. But remember, what is the
narrative style? What is dream of consciousness?
Again, technique where We get inside the mind, and
we see the ideas and how they develop, how they
go, how they move, how they become, how they come
out. When you think, you don't think with
punctuation marks, do you? Now you hear maybe
daydreaming say, oh, I want this class to finish,
exclamation point. I wonder what my mom is cooking
for us today. Full stop. I hope she's not doing
Molokhia again. Exclamation mark. Please mom, do
something I love. Exclamation mark. You don't do
this. When we think, we don't even we don't pay
attention to grammar, right? Okay, I won. Oh, wait
a minute. I thought using the past simple, I
should be using the present perfect. We don't do
this. So this is reflecting the stream of
consciousness technique. Unless you want to think
using grammar, it's up to you. Another example
from the 20th century. This time it's a play.
Play. The name of the play is Waiting For. Godot,
and the T is silent, waiting for silent T, not
Godot, Godot. And it's half of God, right? It's
like an extra syllable on God here, playing. But
does it mean God? We don't know. Some people say
yes, some people say no. Remember Shakespeare? And
the plays consisted of basically five acts. Each
act has scenes, sometimes two, three, four, five,
seven, nine, more. And generally, scene act number
three has the climax and the top, the peak. And
after that, things go down for the resolution. So
the complication, the plot moves this way. So this
is the plot for a traditional Shakespearean play,
Greek ancient drama basically was like this. But
let's see Samuel Bickett. Samuel Bickett, famous
playwright, wonderful playwright. In Waiting for
Godot, it's basically two acts. And basically the
two acts mirror each other. What happens in the
first one basically happens in the second one. The
story of the play is that two people are Two
people were just waiting for someone named Godo.
Who's Godo? Nobody knows. Has anybody met him
before? Nobody knows. Does he come? He doesn't
come. They just don't. And that's why now it's a
famous expression. What are you doing here? You
could be waiting for the teacher, for the head of
the department, waiting for something, for the
electricity. What are you doing? Oh, I'm waiting
for Godo. Like, I'm waiting for something that is
not going to come, generally. Okay? So one of the
characters describes, summarizes even the whole,
in a way or another, the whole play saying,
nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes. So the
first act or seen, they're just waiting and
spending their time chatting about trivial, stupid
things. He finds a carrot somewhere, he eats the
carrot, he ties the, does the shoelace and unties
it and they want to hang themselves. Just doing
They're just gossiping about the most trivial,
unimportant things in life. And then at the end, a
boy comes, a messenger says, oh, sorry, God is not
coming today. God is going to come next day,
tomorrow. They say, OK, let's go. They don't move.
The curtains are closed. The second act, same
people again, and they speak about Like, we
realize that there's trouble with their memories
in a way or another. They can't remember basically
everything. And we don't know whether this is the
second day or like 50 years or 30 or 10 years,
basically like a couple of months or years later
on. And then they're still also waiting for Godot.
We have new extra characters, also minor
characters. But basically at the end, the boy
shows up. The messenger shows up. And he says, Mr.
Godot told me to tell you he won't come this
evening, but surely tomorrow. And again, they say,
OK, let's go. And they don't move. The curtains
are closed again. So un-Shakespearean, right? What
is it? What is the theme? Yeah. What is it about?
Many people were like, come on. This is absurd.
Ridiculous. And it was named, this type of theater
was named Theater of the Absurd, Masrah Al Abath.
Some people consider it Yeah? Absurd, ridiculous.
But some people believe that this is the most
significant drama after Shakespeare. Because this
is a modernist literature. Like how Ulysses is a
significant work. Like how T.S. Eliot's poem is
different and insignificant. The text could be
about nothing. But because... Yeah? It symbolizes
our... Our life. We wait. We always wait for
something. Look at us Palestinians here. We've
been waiting for freedom, independence. We've been
waiting for Israel to understand that we need our
rights, human rights, basic human rights. We're
waiting for the electricity to come. Four hours a
day of electricity is so unfair. We're waiting for
the siege to be lifted. We're waiting for the
occupation to end. We're waiting for the Rafah
crossing to open, to travel, to finish. We spend
all our lives waiting. We're waiting for the good
things to come, for hope, for a better life. But
nothing is improving. So what are we waiting for?
We're waiting for Godot. You could write an
article like, Palestinians are waiting for Godot.
Are Palestinians waiting for Godot? Meaning like,
we have no hope. So in a way, this is how in the
20th century, if the Victorian Age some people had
a tiny little shred of hope, here there's nothing.
God doesn't even come to tell them, I'm sorry, I
don't have time. Maybe tomorrow. He sends a little
boy, oh, sorry, he's not coming. Maybe surely
tomorrow. And he never keeps his promise. So this
is about the loss of faith, the loss of hope, the
loss of even the sense of direction, the sense of
purpose. Why are we here? It's about the very
existence of us, of humanity. Maybe, yeah. He has
other crazy plays, like one of his plays, I guess,
as far as I can remember, the main characters,
there are four characters, all dead, all in the
grave, and they're just chatting. What? And many
other plays. But again, remember this.
The fact that this is different from Shakespeare
and other playwrights doesn't mean this is bad
literature. Many people love this experimental
literature. I know many people like movies with,
you know, clear plot, the beginning and the middle
and ending, and it ends happily and you love the
movie. But many people love movies and texts that
shake us, texts that make us ask questions and ask
questions about ourselves, about life. What are we
doing here? What's going on? So this is another
example from 20th-century literature, Waiting for
Godot. Hopefully, whatever Godot is, he will show
up. So this is basically the three texts for 20th
-century literature examples. I'll give you an
idea about Virginia Woolf as a feminist writer and
critic, and I'll give you an idea about our friend
and fellow Palestinian, our cousin and our
neighbor, The one and only Palestinian Christian
intellectual and critic Edward Said in
Orientalism. We should be proud that Edward Said
is Palestinian, by the way. He's famous all over
the world. So now Virginia Woolf is a feminist,
one of the early 20th century feminists. She
lived, I think, until the 1950s, 40s, 78s,
something. I don't care. But she was one of the
leaders of the feminist movement who called for
not only human, but political, intellectual, and
all rights for women. She said women are even
better than men in many ways. Why? Because if
everything, all the odds are against you, your
parents are against you, your brothers are against
you, your society is against you, everything is
against you, if you manage despite all these
difficulties to write, to produce, to do
something, then you are amazing. Because
everything is against you. Like us, we are
Palestinians. Israel doesn't want us to do
anything, to study, to grow, to build, to invest,
right? So when you manage to succeed and become a
success story, that's an amazing thing because
people around the world don't have, like have so
many things. We don't have 1% of what they have.
So in here, famous article, a collection of
articles called A Room of One's Own, She basically
discusses not only literary figures like Aphra
Behn and George Eliot and other women writers. She
also discusses fictional women, like how women
were portrayed, for example, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
and later on. So the idea is that you can't
separate fact from fiction, because literature
also empowers us. I said this before. When you
read a text about a particular person who
struggles in a particular way, it influences you.
It shows you an example. It tells you how to do it
in your own way. So basically, she explores both
women as writers and characters. The most
interesting thing is that she discusses Many
people, many male critics, many men generally
would believe that it would have been impossible
for any woman to have written the plays that
Shakespeare wrote. Impossible. Why? For men, they
would be saying, because they are women, because
women can't write, can't express, can't explore
what Shakespeare and other men poets or writers
can explore. That's simple. And this is anti
-feminist. OK? Now, Virginia Woolf says, yeah, OK,
I agree. Yes. It would have been impossible
completely and entirely for any woman to have
written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of
Shakespeare, and she gives us reasons why. She
imagines a sister for Shakespeare, and she gives
him the name, the hair, the name of Judith. So,
Judith is Shakespeare's fictional sister, invented
by... Regina Watt. Does he have a sister? So why
does she invent her, create her? She doesn't have
a sister. But she says, okay, let's assume that
Shakespeare had a sister. She was as genius as
Shakespeare, as smart as Shakespeare, as
interested in art and literature and writing and
studying and reading as Shakespeare. Let's take
the journey together and see what her father would
do to her, what her mother would do to her, what
the society would do to her. So if she fails, it's
not because she didn't even try, or wasn't good,
or as smart as, as intellectual as. It's because
the society wasn't doing her. Someone read here?
Okay, raise your voice, please. Meanwhile, his
extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose,
remained at home. She was as adventurous, as
imaginative, as a dog to see the world as he was.
But she was not sent to school. Shakespeare goes
to school, she doesn't. She had no chance of
learning grammar and logic. So he went to grammar
school, learned logic, she doesn't. That's a lot
of reading Horace and Virgil. Horace and Virgil.
Okay, but Shakespeare, you know how boys are
generally careless and they throw, toss their
books around here. So she finds a book by
Shakespeare. Leaving it alone to the dust to study
the night before the exam. So she's like, oh,
maybe I can. I don't have to go to school. I can
learn by myself. And then the mother-in-law is
like, go make sandwiches. Go clean the dishes or
something. now and then, one of her brothers
perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her
parents came in and told her to mend the stockings
or mine the stew and not moon about with the book.
You don't say anything. Don't mention books. This
is not for you. Women are supposed to help around
at the house, to get married, have kids, spend
their time at home taking care of the husband and
the kids and making food. And that's it. This is
the mentality. Again, more extracts here. So she,
here referring to Judith, the fictional character,
fictional sister of Shakespeare, invented by
Virginia Woolf. So even if she, and then later on,
what happens? She's forced, Shakespeare, because
he's the boy, he gets married, but he leaves and
goes to London to pursue his dreams. She's forced
into a marriage that she doesn't like. And she's
beaten. And then her father begs her, tells her,
if you don't get married to this man I picked for
you, you're going to hurt me. Because I already
said yes to the family or to the father or to the
person himself. So this is what would happen. So
if she runs away, she imagines that, OK, she runs
away. She leaves the country. She would stand, for
example, at the door of the stage. Telling people,
I can perform, I am an actor, I have a talent, I
can act. Again, the men would be laughing at her
and would be like, oh, women acting. No woman, he
said, could possibly be an actress. It's
impossible. We've never seen a woman, not because
women didn't want to, but because they weren't
allowed. And again, at the end of the day, she
would find herself raped, maybe tricked, pregnant
with a baby, with a child, and then dies somewhere
in London. And this is how it ends for a woman. So
basically, she says, yeah, OK, women can try it
like Shakespeare. But not because... And you know
what she says? Very simple. She says, that's the
title of the article, A Room of One's Own. She
says, a woman has to have financial independence.
If you have your own house or your own room, you
can be independent, you can express yourself, you
can write. But as long as you're living in a house
that nobody respects you or your privacy, you will
not be able to... In the other class, I told the
students, at least if you have so many family
members here in Gaza, like houses would be having
10 and 12 brothers and sisters, at least have your
own drawer where you keep your own talent, your
own productions, if you write poetry, if you draw.
And it's very easy because of social media. Now
you can have your own account. You can use a pin
name, a pseudonym. You can have your own Facebook
page under a pin name where you can write. whether
in English or in Arabic. Now, remember, she
praises John Donne, and she also praises Aphra
Behn, considers her to be one of the leaders, one
of the pioneers. She started this. She showed the
women how? To speak their minds. That's why all
women all together ought to let flowers fall upon
the grave of Aphra Behn. She started this in a way
or another. Finally, Edward Said. And Orientalism.
This is his book. Orientalism. It's... You know
Orientalism? How it's translated into Arabic?
Orientalism? The orient is the east. Orientalism.
Orientalism.
Generally, what Western people, the studies
they're involved in, in order to understand the
east. It's called Orientalism.
So he again exposes how the West controls the
East, abuses, exploits the East, and how the West
always misinterprets the East, how generally,
especially Europe, for example, looks down upon
the natives, occupies them, controls them, abuses
them, steals their raw materials, their resources,
and then they leave us with nothing. And they, you
know, the divide and rule thing, principle, divide
and rule. So even when England, the British Empire
withdraws, we are fighting among ourselves because
of the division it created. So according to the
faith, Orientalism is part of imperialism and
colonialism. Like he says, English and Western
literature, in a way, helped prepare the minds of
the Western people to invade the world, colonize
the world, and occupy the world. We've seen this
in Shakespeare. We've seen this in Robinson
Crusoe, for example. He says this famous quote
from Edward Sayed, The Beginning of Orientalism.
The Orient, the East, us, has helped define Europe
or the West. That's good, right? But not in its
good sense here, as it's contrasting image. So if
the West is superior, the East is inferior.
Civilized, uncivilized. Developed, backward.
Scientific, sentimental and emotional. Scientific,
intellectual, superstitious. So the East has
always been looked at as a contrasting image. We
are always the negative opposite. The other side
of the coin. What does Edward Said say? Edward
Said brings the text and he tries to examine the
relationship between the East and the West. Like
we said this in The Tempest, remember? In Othello.
In Othello, for example, Edward Said would say
that Basically, there's a lot of racism here.
Basically, because the European white Christian
people there are racist, they consider themselves
to be more superior to Othello, not because they
are smarter or better or more powerful, but
because he's black, because he's originally an
African, a Muslim, an Arab. And that's racism. So
he tries to understand this unique relationship.
You know, Friday and Robinson Crusoe, the
relationship, why is Friday always there to be
cured, to be civilized, misrepresented to us?
Because of his origin and his color. He will
never, no matter what happens, be considered to be
a smart person compared to the Europeans. So this
is an example from The book, Kipling Kim. In the
book, the last example, just one minute. I want
you all to go to page 154. This is an example of
how Edward Said would be, for example, studying
this text. Kipling is an English novelist,
Victorian novelist, 20th century novelist. He
wrote this text. The text is called Kim. It's a
novel.
According to Edward Said, According to Dotsaid,
Kim is an imperialist novel, a colonialist novel.
When I say, remember when I said an allegory of
imperialism? In a way, basically, it teaches, it
shows the West that they are better, superior,
more civilized. And the East? It's a very
contrasting image. So this is Orientalism. This is
Edward Said's theory of post-colonialism to study
the colonial interaction between the colonized and
the colonizers. Now in this book, sadly, I love
this book. I say this many times. But this is an
example of the worst whitewashing I have read in
my life. Number one, the book says, Kipling shows
in Kim that he's sympathetic with the Indians. The
story is about an English boy who grows up in
India, and he works for the Secret Service, for
the British Secret Service, to gather information
and intelligence to help empower the British
Empire. That's basically it. So here he says,
Kipling shows that he has sympathy to whom? To the
Indian people. Okay, this is an opinion. I
understand. But then the text quotes this, Kipling
saying, not from the book, from a poem, the east
is the east, and the west is the west, and never
the two or the twin shall meet. And I think this
is racism.
He's saying the east is the east, the west is the
west, they will never meet. Because the east is
the east, and because the west is the west.
Because the east is civilization, modernity, what
else? Superior, smart, intellectual, scientific,
all the technological and industrial advancement.
And the East is what?
Backward. Uncivilized. Savages in a way or
another. So the book comments here, and this is
infuriating. I'm sure Edward Said is pulling his
hair right now. I'm sure he's spinning and
fretting in his grave because of this explanation.
So the book says the British Empire had tried to
make them meet, to make them east and west. and
become part of one whole. But in the new century,
a new process started, and things began to fall to
pieces. What? Are you describing hundreds of years
of slavery, of colonialism, of occupation, of
massacres, of ethnic cleansing, of pogroms? You're
describing this as England trying to make the East
and the West meet? This is horrible. I'm sure,
again, Edward Said is pulling his hair. This is
whitewashing. This is in the book. Yeah, it says
here in the book that the British Empire tried to
bring India and Africa and Europe together. This
is not true. The British Empire is about
occupation and imperialism. It's about control.
It's about supremacy. And it describes here the
new process. This is the movements of liberation
and independence. This is fighting back. This is
the natives trying to end the oppression. But it's
described as something like a process. And began
to fall. What began to fall into pieces?
Oppression, imperialism, colonialism, injustice.
Do you mean that they used this line to show that
they were great and they wanted to... Yeah, the
book here interprets, like, comments on Kipling's
line that the East is the East and the West is the
West and they will never meet again, saying that
the British Empire tried to make the East and the
West meet. They didn't. They went for control.
They went for control, to take, to assume
everything as theirs. And this is an example of
how a critic like Edward Said is inviting us to
reread literature, and Virginia Woolf inviting us
to reread literature in a particular way. I'll
stop here. Thank you very much. We have one more
class, and then we will do a review class on
Wednesday. Okay? Thank you very much.