{"id":120,"date":"2012-09-12T00:19:38","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T07:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/?p=120"},"modified":"2012-10-01T00:35:54","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T07:35:54","slug":"misconceptions-about-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/2012\/09\/12\/misconceptions-about-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Misconceptions About Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"art spiegelman - MAUS by bacci88, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/49028610@N04\/4706989377\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4052\/4706989377_9d7b994f38.jpg\" alt=\"art spiegelman - MAUS\" width=\"500\" height=\"380\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Due to copyright laws, I was unable to use an original image from Art Spiegelmen&#8217;s <em>Maus<\/em>, so instead, through the CC branch of Flikr, I found a fan&#8217;s snapshot of the book itself. \u00a0I chose this image because it is the first book that forced me to question one of my many pre-conceived notions of what constitutes literature and that was the belief that<strong> all literature worthy of reading should consist solely of words<\/strong>.<strong> <\/strong>Spiegelmen&#8217;s <em>Maus<\/em> is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel about his father&#8217;s experience as a Polish man, forced to live in concentration camps during the Holocaust.\u00a0 Until I came across this novel, I had understood that a book that consisted mainly of images used to tell a story was simply a comic book, the fast-food of the literary world, consumed quickly with no lasting intellectual value.\u00a0 As a child and teenager, I had read many Marvel comics and MAD magazines, but I would have never deemed them as literature.<\/p>\n<p>I came across <em>Maus<\/em> as an adult, and the book had a profound impact on me.\u00a0 It is a moving, beautiful piece of literature. What is fascinating about the text itself is that it deals with a disturbing time in history, but the story is told from the perspective of a mouse that represents the Jews.\u00a0 The Germans are replaced by cats and the Poles are depicted as pigs.\u00a0 Many questions spring to mind.\u00a0 By depicting these races as animals, does this format trivialize the experience?\u00a0 Or is it somehow more accessible?\u00a0 Would a format such as this speak to students moreso than a traditional text like <em>The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>?\u00a0 The possibilities of analysis of this text from an academic viewpoint are endless, and I hope to work through them in my upcoming presentation, but I thought I&#8217;d share this with you initially, as my introduction.\u00a0 I&#8217;m looking forward to this class and working together with all of you!<\/p>\n<p>Kiran Aujlay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Due to copyright laws, I was unable to use an original image from Art Spiegelmen&#8217;s Maus, so instead, through the CC branch of Flikr, I found a fan&#8217;s snapshot of the book itself. \u00a0I chose this image because it is the first book that forced me to question one of my many pre-conceived notions of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introductions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lled368\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}