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I. Unit of Study: Textures Unit
II. Lesson Title/Length of Time: Culteranismo and Saudade: Crossing cultures in the high
school classroom
Two 47-minute classes
III. Author/County: Louise Reynolds
Montgomery County, MD
IV. Grade Level/Subject Area(s): English 11A Honors
________________________________________________________________________
V. Abstract
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Portuguese trade and missionary expeditions left their cultural imprint from Brazil to Japan. In return, the Portuguese brought home elements of indigenous cultures, adapting them readily to serve their own interests and needs. This tendency is particularly evident in the arts—crafts, music and dance. In spite of their impressive accomplishments as world travelers, the Portuguese were not regarded with the same cultural respect as the Spanish or the French. At court, however, poets sought to remedy this perception through the practice of culteranismo, or poetry characterized by a very ornamental, ostentatious vocabulary, metaphorical murkiness, and a complex syntactical order.
In this lesson, students will investigate how art and literature are generally the product of a specific time and place as much as they are an expression of an individual vision. Students will collaborate to write a pantoum, a complex, patterned poem that reflects the desire to make an intellectual impression on the reader and incorporates their personal expression of saudade—in this case, teenaged angst. The lesson will prepare students for further discussion of Western poetry in its cultural and historical context, as well as provide them with an opportunity to work with the medium from the inside out.
VI. Background
Students will need a background knowledge of general historical context (the Age of Discovery and Portugal’s role in that period), as well as familiarity with the more fundamental literary devices that poets use.
VII. Materials
- Handout: Vocabulary/ “Age of Exploration” Map
- Categories of characteristics:
- Shape
- Function
- Surface Decoration
- Meaning of Decoration
- Image of Chinese ewer with Portuguese coat of arms
- Image of Benin saltcellar with figures
- Image of Sapi-Portuguese Oliphant
- Image of Ivory saltcellar, Nigeria, Edo peoples, kingdom of Benin
- Poster paper, markers, index cards
Teacher/students will also need:
- Access to laptop and LCD projector or computer with television for showing PowerPoint
- CD player for fado recording
- Access to http://turnitin.com or to Wiki (or something similar) for sharing and critiquing pantoums
VIII. Resources
IX. Standards/Learner Outcomes
Expectation 2.1: The student will compose oral, written, and visual presentations that inform, persuade, and express personal ideas.
- Indicator 2.1.2: The student will compose to describe, using prose and/or poetic forms.
- Indicator 2.1.3: The student will compose to express personal ideas, using prose and/or poetic forms.
Expectation 2.2: The student will compose texts using the prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing strategies of effective writers and speakers.
- Indicator 2.2.3: The student will revise and edit texts for clarity, completeness, and effectiveness.
Expectation 3.2: The student will identify how language choices in writing and speaking affect thoughts and feelings.
- Indicator 3.2.1: The student will choose a level of language, formal to informal, appropriate for a specific audience, situation, or purpose.
- Indicator 3.2.2: The student will differentiate connotative from denotative meanings of words.
- Indicator 3.2.3: The student will describe how readers or listeners might respond differently to the same words.
Expectation 4.1: The student will describe the effect that a given text, heard or read, has on a listener or reader.
- Indicator 4.1.1: The student will state and explain a personal response to a given text.
X. Objectives/Skills
- Students will gain an understanding of literature as a product of cultural and historical forces, as well as a personal expression
- By employing a wide range of figurative language, especially focusing on metaphor, students will gain a better understanding of the poet’s use of such literary devices.
- Students will activate their turnitin.com accounts and learn to use other applications of the database, beyond simple essay submission.
XI. Keywords/Vocabulary
- Kraak porcelain: a type of Chinese export porcelain produced from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. It’s named after the Portuguese ships (carracks—the Dutch corrupted it to kraak) that carried the goods from China to Europe. Kraak was the first Chinese export ware to arrive in Europe in large quantities. It is blue and white (and fueled a mania across the continent for “the blue and white”), decorated with stylized flowers such as peonies and chrysanthemums, and often features wide border panels. Because much of the porcelain was commissioned, the pieces demonstrate Chinese aesthetic sensibilities, but often feature the European form or iconography.
- Iconography: symbolic representation, especially the conventional meanings attached to an image or images.
- Culteranismo: a stylistic movement of the Baroque period of Spanish history. It began in the late 16th century with the writing of Luis de Góngora and lasted through the 17th century. Culteranismo is characterized by a very ornamental, ostentatious vocabulary and a message that is complicated by a sea of metaphors and complex syntactical order. The name blends culto ("cultivated") and luteranismo ("Lutheranism") and was coined by its opponents to present it as a heresy of "true" poetry.
- Pantoum: a verse form that derived from the traditional Malaysian improvised poem the pantun in the 15th century. Imported into the west by the 19th century French poet Ernest Fouinet, the pantoum is based on four-line stanzas (or quatrains) where the second and fourth lines of the preceding stanza become the first and third lines of the next. The conclusion circles back to the beginning by repeating the first and third lines of the first stanza. Look at the contemporary example of a pantoum by poet Wesli Court. (See attached Lesson Worksheet.)
- Fado: Fado music is the heart of the Portuguese soul. It is arguably the oldest urban folk music in the world. Some say it came as a dance from Africa in the 19th century and was adopted by the poor on the streets of Lisbon. Or perhaps it started at sea as the sad, melodic songs coaxed from the rolling waves by homesick sailors and fishermen. Whatever its origins its themes have remained constant: destiny, betrayal in love, death and despair. A typical lyric goes: “Why did you leave me, where did you go? I walk the streets looking at every place we were together, except you’re not there.” It’s a sad music and a fado performance is not successful if an audience is not moved to tears. By the early twentieth century, fado had become a fixture in the everyday life of Lisbon’s working class. It was played for pleasure but also to relieve the pain of life. Skilled singers known as fadistas performed at the end of the day and long into the night. Fado was the earthy music of taverns and brothels and street corners in Alfama and Mouraria, the old poor sections of Lisbon.
- Saudade: The essential element of fado music is “saudade,” a Portuguese word that translates roughly as longing, or nostalgia for unrealized dreams. Fado flowers from this fatalistic world-view. It speaks of an undefined yearning that can’t be satisfied. For Portuguese emigrants fado is an expression of homesickness for the place they left behind.
(both definitions taken from “Fado.” World Music Central, 2004. 21 July 2007. <http://worldmusiccentral.org/staticpages/index.php/fado>)
XII. Scope and Sequence
Day One
Motivation: Teacher will introduce lesson by showing examples of Afro-Portuguese ivories and kraak porcelain—not what we usually do in English class.
Teacher-directed:
- Students will share observations about these different forms; teacher will ask them to observe aspects of both European culture and African or Chinese culture.
- This will lead to a discussion of the Portuguese as explorers and traders during the Renaissance, and the resulting synthesis of art forms.
- Teacher will then introduce the stylistic movement of culteranismo and its presence throughout the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in European high society.
Guided practice:
Students will break into groups of four and brainstorm on a specific topic that they choose randomly from a set of index cards (possibly relating to themes in literature from upcoming units).
- Students will freely associate and record images (use poster paper and markers) as teacher leads the class through specific sensory categories (weather, time of day, taste, emotion, color, texture/feeling, movement, sound). This comprises list #1.
- For list #2, bearing in mind the concept of culteranismo, students will make a list of ostentatious vocabulary relevant to their topic.
- List #3: Because a successful metaphor is both surprising and revealing, students will work with lists one and two to make unlikely pairs, avoiding repetition of words within a group. These pairings, ostentatious and sensory, will form the imagistic substance of their poem.
Closure: Teacher will collect lists.
Day Two
Motivation: Students will arrive in class to the haunting strains of fado. Hmm… It’s not hiphop or rock.
Teacher-directed:
- Teacher will introduce genre of fado, explaining background and cultural significance, noting its availability through Itunes (i.e., it’s contemporary).
- Teacher will explain saudade, and ask students to apply the concept to their own lives—any expressions of teenaged angst?
- Teacher will then introduce the poetic form of the pantoum and discuss its hybrid history, using XXX as an example.
Guided practice:
- With fado music playing in the background and a color-coded schematic on the projector screen, each student will write two lines of the pantoum, using the word pairs from the day before as the controlling imagery of the line (rhyming is optional, but should be decided upon within the group, and with consideration for the final product). Writers should keep saudade in mind as they write.
- The teacher will circulate and encourage.
- Students will then put the poem together, following the pantoum pattern, and decide on an insightful title.
- Each student should have a complete copy of his or her group’s poem.
Closure: Students will reflect on the experience of collaboration and their general impression of the resulting product: does it live up to the classification of culteranismo?
Independent practice: At home that night, students will edit their group’s poem to polish and perfect it. They will then submit the poem to turnitin.com, where it will appear alongside poems from the rest of the class.
XIII. Assessment
This will be a minor grade. Students will read the work of their classmates on line and answer the following questions/prompts:
- Which poems used the pantoum form most effectively, using repetition to reinforce a theme? Why?
- Choose three metaphors that worked especially well in other groups’ poems. Why?
- Which poems best incorporated a tone of saudade? Explain your answer.
- Make a connection between the Afro-Portuguese ivories and the kraak porcelain and your pantoum.
They will print their revised pantoum and hand it in, along with their responses.
XIV. Closure/Reflection
Day Three
- Students will write a response to the following question on an index card:
- Did your poem achieve culteranismo? Explain.
- Teacher will collect cards and staple to the graded assessment, along with some feedback on the poem.
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