Month: May 2016

At the end of this lesson you will find detailed instructions for this assignment. Your task is to take the story that Kings tells about how evil comes into the world at the witches conference [In “The Truth About Stories” ] — and change the story any way you want — as long as the end remains the same: once you have told a story, you can never take it back. So, be careful of the stories you tell, AND the stories you listen to. 

Then learn your story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. If you want, you can post a video of you telling the story, in place of text.

How Evil Came to Be 

There is a story I know. It’s about a woman who had two faces. But no one knew she had two faces, for, she only revealed one of them in the light of the day. Many thousands of years ago, this woman lived in a small town populated with folks of all kinds— merchants, labouring men, women, and their children. Now, this woman often stood behind a shoddy wooden stand in the town’s marketplace, auctioning off trinkets and bottled concoctions supposedly possessing metaphysical powers. The town folk were wary of her, though, and warned their children not to stray too far near her, for they had heard rumours of her wickedness from the animals that lurked the streets at night.

One fateful night, however, a young boy of no more than 6 found himself wandering through the cobblestoned marketplace, in search for the whale-shaped stone he had found earlier that day while playing near his father’s kiosk. His eyes, scanning the ground intently, were suddenly drawn to a rather curious looking jewel, which seemed to glisten in the light of the full moon. Lurching forward to pocket the strange ornament, he was startled by the hooting of an owl. And, when the boy looked up, he was startled again by the sight of an old woman standing before him, immediately noticing her straggly black hair, which hung to her waist, and her piercing blue eyes which swelled as though ready to spill out at any given moment. Of course, innocent as he were, the boy gestured the jewel to the woman thinking that it must be hers. But he froze petrified, in the midst of his movement, because the old woman’s head began to turn. And creak. And then turn again. Her head continued to turn until it had swivelled halfway around her wrinkly neck, revealing a face that was unknown to mankind— unknown to the innocence of a child. The boy’s body instantaneously fell lifeless, and with that, Evil prevailed and Innocence was lost forever.

The town’s animals, the only true witnesses, murmured amongst one another, mourning the fall of Innocence. They told the story of the two-faced woman far and wide throughout the town, but the people were stricken and most refused to listen. “But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world” (King, 10).

Commentary

My imagination has fallen quite a bit to the wayside since I was a child, and I think this shows in my story. I found it pretty difficult to come up with a preliminary idea that was completely original, but I guess all ideas draw from some previous influence (whether subconsciously or consciously). The difference between written storytelling and oral storytelling became so apparent to me through this assignment; I told my story aloud to friends and family and found the intonation of my speaking so important in portraying it how I imagined. With the written version, I found that it sounded more story-like to me if I wrote it out in the same way I would say it aloud. For example, usually I wouldn’t start sentences with “but” or “and,” yet the story seemed to flow much more organically when I did. I tried to leave parts of the story open to interpretation (names of characters and names of places) such that a reader/listener could construct the story as they saw it in their own mind. This was definitely a challenge to me creatively.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003. Print.

Popova, Maria. “Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity.” Brain Pickings. n.p. n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.

Question 7

At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?

Social media has revolutionized how we interact with stories through an array of customizable platforms available to anyone and everyone. Whether these stories be fact or fiction, in written or oral form, the very fact that mediation is no longer a requirement for publishing these stories means that they exist in great quantities online (just look at how many stories this fan fiction website contains). But what about the quality of these stories and their impact? As demonstrated continually in this week’s Edward Chamberlin reading, stories are vitally important and may even carry a certain moral weight. And so, the fact that anyone can publish an unmediated story on social media, I think, raises concerns about the morality of telling these stories.

In continuing with Professor Paterson’s point that stories are highly interconnected to time and place, perhaps it could be suggested that imaginary stories and real stories each have respective times and places to be told. However, according to Chamerblin, all stories are an intersection upon which imagination and reality are brought together, so I suppose it would be more accurate to say that predominantly imaginary and predominantly real stories each have their respective time and place to be told (3). To highlight this point, I’d like to compare storytelling on GoFundMe to (for simplicity’s sake) a cliché instance of storytelling around a campfire.

GoFundMe advertises their website as a platform to share stories, attract support, and create fundraising campaigns. Place, in this context, is the actual webpage which advertises one’s story. The time to do so, as indicated by the website’s FAQ, is during “life’s important moments” including for funerals or memorials. Given the contextual cues of place and time as indicated by the website, it’s fairly safe to say that sharing a predominantly imaginary story would be an immoral use of the website. It would even seem to be an immoral use of story as a medium alone. And while instances of this kind of violation are relatively uncommon, they do unfortunately exist and can be facilitated through social media. Hyperlinking, an integral tool used in social media, may also facilitate immoral use of storytelling; GoFundMe, in fact, encourages its users to garner support (money) from friends and family by linking and sharing their stories via the website’s “built in connections to Facebook, Twitter, & Email.”

In a different context of time and place, though, a predominantly imaginary story may be more morally appropriate. For example, on a cadet camping excursion, around a campfire, a mythical tale told in the dark of the night would most likely not violate the sanctity of storytelling, nor give rise to questions of morality.

What I’ve ultimately articulated in this blog post (or at least tried to), is that it is not solely the degree of truth or falsehood in a story which dictates the morality of telling the story; rather, it is both the degree of truth or falsehood as well as the specific context of time and place  that are integral in delineating whether it is moral or not to tell it.

The anonymity of social media coupled with its widespread popularity means, to me, that immoral uses of these platforms (especially in how stories are told) may become increasingly pervasive in time. Although this is perhaps a cynical view to hold, I do still believe that social media is mostly advantageous. As with anything else, the misuse of social media is ultimately a problem of the individuals misusing it, though it is still important to be wary of how these platforms may facilitate or even incentivize their misuse.

Works Cited 

Chamberlin, J. Edward. “If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground” Toronto: A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003. Print.

“Common Questions” GoFundMe. n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.

“Harry Potter Fanfiction: The Story Continues.” n.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1.2 Story & Literature.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres May 2016. University of British Columbia, 2016. Web. 20 May 2016.

Payne, Marissa. “Police seek person who set up fake GoFundMe account for high school athlete with cancer.” The Washington Post. 23 Dec. 2015. Web. 20 May 2016.

Hi everyone! My name is Victoria and I am currently in the midst of completing my third year at UBC while studying English literature. I was born and raised in the city of Surrey— a place many of you are surely familiar with, though probably for its high crime rate rather than for its vibrant multiculturalism. I am of mixed ethnicity (my father is Chinese while my mother is Polish/Irish), so I very much enjoy being able to experience a fusion of cultures, particularly for the food (I’m only half kidding).

Vegetarians/vegans beware. Cantonese styled crab aka mouth-watering goodness. 

A personal philosophy I subscribe to is one of admitting and accepting ignorance in order to truly gain critical insights into an issue, and so I will admit that I have only taken one Canadian literature course prior to enrolling in English 407 with all of you. I will also admit that I was unaware of much of Canada’s colonial history throughout high school and even into my first year at UBC, despite being fairly educated by then. Perhaps other Canadian citizens, like myself, have also been plagued by this same kind of ignorance; I have to wonder, then, if some of the widely idealized perceptions of Canada (just listen to the Americans promising to flee here if Donald Trump is elected) exist, at least in part, because atrocities concerning our Indigenous population (both past and contemporary) continue to be swept under the rug or denied altogether.

As outlined by Professor Erika Paterson, English 407 is a course which aims to help students “recognize colonizing narratives and representations.” As a literature major, my main focus in this course is to eventually “be able to discuss, research, and write about the intersections and departures between literature and story,” all while fostering compassionate sensibilities as I delve deeper into our country’s controversial past (Paterson). I am ultimately hopeful for an eye-opening introduction to Indigenous discourse.

I look forward to becoming better acquainted with you all!

Works Cited 

D’entremont, Deidre. “Seeking Justice for Canada’s 500 Missing Native Women.” The International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. Cultural Survival., Fall 2004. Web. 12 May 2016.

O’Keefe, Derrick. “Harper in Denial at G20: Canada has ‘no history of Colonialism.'” Rabble. N.p., 28 Sept. 2009. Web. 12 May 2016.

Paterson, Erika. “Welcome.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres May 2016. N.p., 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 12 May 2016.