Composition 152

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Composition 152

• McHenry County College
• Instructor Mark Andel
• Week Two

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This weeks topics

• STATUS REPORT Evaluation Paper
• Evaluation Criteria
• How to analyze various works
• Poetry My Last Duchess
• Restaurants Phil Vettel Grace
• Painting Breughel (Two works)
• Music Springsteen (The Rising)
• Movie Roger Ebert (Shrek)
• Text Work Research Papers Chapter Two

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My Last Duchess

• by Robert Browning

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My Last Duchess
(Ferrara)
Robert Browning That's my last duchess
painted on the wall,Looking as if she were
alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now Fra
Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there
she stands.Will't please you sit and look at
her? I said "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never
readStrangers like you that pictured
countenance,That depth and passion of its
earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since
none puts byThe curtain drawn for you, but I)
10 And seemed as they would ask me, if they
durst,How such a glance came there so not the
firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was
notHer husband's presence only, called that
spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek perhapsFra
Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle lapsOver my
lady's wrist too much" or "PaintMust never hope
to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along
her throat" such stuffWas courtesy, she
thought, and cause enough 20For calling up
that spot of joy. She hadA heart - how shall I
say? - too soon made glad,Too easily impressed
she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks
went everywhere.Sir, 't was all one! My favour
at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in
the West,
The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke
in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode
with round the terrace -all and eachWould draw
from her alike the approving speech, Or blush,at
least. She thanked men - good! but thanked
somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked my
gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith
anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of
trifling? Even had you skillIn speech - (which I
have not) - to make your willQuite clear to such
a one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you
disgusts me here you missOr there exceed the
mark"- and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor
plainly set 40Her wits to yours, forsooth, and
made excuse- E'en then would be some stooping
and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled,
no doubt,Whene'er I passed her but who passed
withoutMuch the same smile? This grew I gave
commandsThen all smiles stopped together. There
she standsAs if alive. Will 't please you rise?
We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The
Count your master's known munificenceIs ample
warrant that no just pretence 50Of mine for
dowry will be disallowedThough his fair
daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting is my
object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice
Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a
rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze
for me.
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Find a Subject You Can Work With

• Interest yourself first.

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Find a Subject You Can Work With

• Your topic must interest your audience
• Your topic must lend itself to detail
• Your topic must be able to be covered in the
  prescribed number of pages
• What do you know and care about?
• What do you find yourself talking about? (This is
  good grist for the mill)

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Guidelines

• Audience Whos reading this and who do you want
  to read it?
• Make your experience relevant to your reader be
  respectful of your readers time commitment. Make
  it worthwhile.
• Present research in a conversational way let
  the reader hear your voice.

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Guidelines

• Make your experience your readers experience
  with well-chosen detail
• Make your reader see
• Make your reader feel
• Involve senses ALL of them
• Research papers can be heartfelt, too

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Reading Strategies

• Scan dont read entire book first
• Ask yourself some questions
• Answer the 5 journalism questions
• Make marginal notes in text (annotate)

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Annotate what you read
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Evaluation Paper
Write a clear, concise, well-thought-out
evaluation of a painting, a music CD, a
restaurant, a college course, a film, a play, a
television program, a job performance, or a web
site. Use the criteria of evaluation, including
an overall claim about what you are evaluating,
a description, statistics to support your claim,
testimony from a third party source, and
examples. Your final paper should present a
convincing, balanced, supported, fair evaluation
that is backed up by more than opinion and
personal biases. Format/Length
considerations Title (centered) Last name/page
in upper right-hand corner Stapled upper
left Keep margins at 1 default Double-spaced
text Indented paragraphs Normal font,
12-point 2-5 pages, which means a minimum of 2
full pages
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Evaluating Criteria

• Make an overall claim about what you are
  evaluating
• Include a description of the object, place, or
  event
• Include statistics to support your claim
• Include testimony from a third party source
• Offer relevant examples to illuminate your
  meaning.

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Restaurant Evaluation
Amazing Grace Randolph's newest face hears the
call of the wild  By Phil Vettel, Chicago
Tribune (Handout)
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Evaluating Criteria

• Make an overall claim about what you are
  evaluating
• Chef/owner Ted Cizma proves he's a master with
  game meats.

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Evaluating Criteria

• Include a description of the object, place, or
  event
• Both have an austere elegance in their decor
  Grace, with fewer and better-spaced tables, is
  the more comfortable of the two.
• A principal difference is light. Where Blackbird
  is all brightness and reflective surfaces, Grace
  is romantically dim, to the point that the votive
  candle at your table will come in handy when you
  peruse the menu. Hard brick surfaces are
  softened, at least to the eye, by silky sheer
  curtains. Soft glows emanate from planetlike
  lamps (whose rings subtly echo the halo in
  Grace's logo) and a gaggle of frosted globe bulbs
  that decorate the eastern wall.

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Evaluating Criteria

• Include statistics to support your claim
• (I've been here four times and the herbs look
  garden-fresh every time there are restaurants
  that don't change the oil in their fryers as
  often as Cizma changes the oil at his tables.)
• The wine list is nicely varied and thorough.
  By-the-glass pours are generous I wish a few
  more bottles were available this way. There are
  eight half-bottles available, however, and that
  is suitable compensation.

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Evaluating Criteria

• Include testimony from a third party source
• Chef and owner is Ted Cizma, last spotted
  cooking interesting global dishes for The Outpost
  in Wrigleyville. His cooking at Grace can be
  considered a more mature, more locally focused
  version of his Outpost food.
• NOTE Food critics are lone wolves, by and
  large, and rarely include the thoughts and
  feelings of other critics in their work.

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Evaluating Criteria

• Offer relevant examples to illuminate your
  meaning.
• First to the table is a basket of bread, where
  you'll find soft, inviting focaccia with a
  parmesan crust, perhaps studded with tomato a
  mini-baguette flavored with toasted cumin and a
  few parmesan-thyme breadsticks.
• The grilled wild boar tenderloin is a bit more
  assertive, the meat richly gamy.
• Starters with star power are earthy lamb
  sweetbreads, served with a refreshing
  watercress-peppercress mixture and dabs of blue
  goat cheese skillet-seared Maine scallops,
  perched over a fragrant lobster-anise broth and
  risotto with smoked pheasant, aged Edam cheese
  and toasted hazelnuts.

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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in
the Snow (2003) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
Austria   
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in
the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
Austria    The beauty of Pieter Brueghel the
Elder's (1525-1569) beloved painting, "Hunters in
the Snow," (1565) is extraordinary, and can be
enjoyed on many levels...just by looking at and
absorbing the totality of the work, then letting
the eye and mind range over it from area to area,
object to object...the beautifully painted
hunters, their dogs, the trees and village houses
scattered in the snow, the distant valley ponds
with skaters, the birds and expressively
thrusting distant peaks.  When we begin to think
about the painting and what the artist has done
to accomplish his vision, we find the beauty lies
in its vital design pattern of contrasting lights
and darks, its clarity of realistic, poetic
observation and the profundity of meaning he has
instilled in a scene that lesser artists would
make into mere anecdote, story-telling.  Brueghel
creates not only a painting of 16th Century
country life in Flanders, but a universal
statement of the beauty of life and nature, and
the aspirations of mankind.    While the dark
foreground hunters, their dogs and the trees
contrast beautifully, in terms of aesthetics,
with the snowy hill they trudge upon, the white
rooftops of houses and the distant white vista,
the darkness of the hunters also suggests a
downcast psychological, spiritual and emotional
state of being as well.    The painter's skill
and clarity of observation create forms that are
both very real and, at the same time, abstract in
their simple directness, merging
three-dimensional form with two-dimensional
pattern.  The artist is able to distill reality,
capturing its elemental essence devoid of any
extraneous detail (every great artist has their
personal understanding and manifestation of the
essentials of realistic form).  The basic design
movement of the composition is strongly diagonal
from the hunters in the lower left to the upper
right corner and its distant snowy crags, toward
which the hunters seem to walk with a certain
head-down weariness.  This diagonal movement is
strongly supported by the diminishing perspective
of the four foreground trees.  A diagonal
counter-movement from lower right to middle and
upper left cannot deflect the hunters' progress
toward the goal of the crags, though it clearly
creates the demarcation line between the
everyday, earthly life of the foreground and the
visionary distance.  
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in
the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
Austria    For this is the ultimate purpose and
meaning of the painting, and what raises it to
the level of a universal statement.  It expresses
the poetry of life man's quest for meaning and
purpose by means of, and beyond, the everyday
struggle for existence.   Because they are deeply
involved in their quest, the hunters and their
dogs are oblivious of the three small figures
they pass on their left, working around a fire in
front of the largest house.  The difference
between the hunters and the fire-tenders is that
the latter are unaware of any higher purpose or
quest beyond their daily tasks, while the hunters
doggedly pursue greater meaning, symbolized by
the distant, craggy peaks (they are "hunters,"
after all, men who "hunt," look for, seek to
find...not game in this instance...but
truth).   The hunters may be dispirited at the
moment, doubting, wondering if they will ever
reach their goal carrying their darkness with
them -- but they are aware that the goal exists,
and continue to plod forward despite their
weariness and doubt.  Four dark birds in the
twiggy tops of the trees, and one in flight the
latter seeming to aim directly at the crags, and
certainly providing a compositional link between
the hunters and the peaks create a directional
line of perspective convergence toward the crags
in conjunction with the tree trunks where they
enter the snow.  The flying dark bird,
overlapping the lower slopes of the peaks like an
airborne cross, seems symbolic of the spiritual
aspirations of the hunters as they seek to reach
the abode of deity in the snowy peaks.   by Don
Gray
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in
the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
Austria     Because of its unforgettably
inventive form and colouring, the closing (not
opening) painting of Bruegels series of the
seasons is the most well-known and most popular
of the pictures in this cycle. The hunters are
making their way back to the low-lying village
with their meagre bounty, a pack of hounds at
their heels. Their backs are turned towards us.
That, along with the perspective of the row of
trees, draws the observer down into the distance,
on to the remote, icy mountains on the horizon,
and at the same time out of the whole cycle. What
was then understood as an illustration of
seasonal labour a pig being singed in front of an
inn comes across only as a secondary scene at the
left edge of the painting. The winter idyll is
completed by a busy swarm of small figures in the
distant plain. From Kunsthistorisches Museum
Vienna catalog
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus   
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus   
Musee Des Beaux Artes W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old
Masters how well, they understood Its human
position how it takes place While someone else
is eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along How, when the aged are reverently,
passionately waiting For the miraculous birth,
there always must be Children who did not
specially want it to happen, skating On a pond
at the edge of the wood They never forgot That
even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the
dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind
on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance
how everything turns away Quite leisurely from
the disaster the ploughman may Have heard the
splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not
an important failure the sun shone As it had to
on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water and the expensive delicate ship that must
have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out
of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed
calmly on.
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Painting Evaluation
Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus   
background info Icarus was a Greek mythological
figure, also known as the son of Daedalus (famous
for the Labyrinth of Crete). Now Icarus and his
dad were stuck in Crete, because the King of
Crete wouldn't let them leave. Daedalus made some
wings for the both of them and gave his son
instruction on how to fly (not too close to the
sea, the water will soak the wings, and not too
close to the sky, the sun will melt them).
Icarus, however, appeared to be obstinate and did
fly to close to the sun. This caused the wax that
held his wings to his body to melt. Icarus
crashed into the sea and died.
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Painting Evaluation
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Painting Evaluation
Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles Jackson Pollock, An
American Saga, by Steven Naifeh
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Painting Evaluation
Blue Poles Number 11, 1952 On loan to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of
Australia Painted relatively late in Jackson
Pollocks career, this painting conveys the
unique skill that Pollock had by now achieved
with his infamous drip technique. Executed on
unstretched canvas laid flat on the floor, both
the artists dripping, splashing and pouring of
paint onto the works surface and the scale of
the painting itself, clearly reveals the highly
physical aspect of Pollocks technique. It could
equally be regarded as a performance. Pollock
believed that his abandonment of traditional
painting tools (he preferred to use sticks,
cooking basters or pour directly from the paint
can) and the paintings he produced reflected the
realms of unconscious experience but also
responded to contemporary life. As he stated
The modern painter cannot express this age, the
airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old
forms of the Renaissance or of any past culture.
In marked contrast to the artists classic works
of 194750, the electric colours of Blue Poles in
no way reflect the palette of nature as earlier
paintings had done. Blue Poles is for Pollock an
ambitious transitional work where not only
colour, but the artists handling of composition,
mark a conscious move away from previous work.
While in many ways continuing his now trademark
all-over composition, Pollock pushed his
endeavours in abstraction further by introducing
the bold presence of the eight blue poles that
intersect the canvas. Pollock uses the prominent
slashes of Blue Poles to reintroduce the
conventional notion of figure and ground into his
work, but without making any concession to
traditional concepts of perspective.
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Painting Evaluation
Blue Poles Number 11, 1952 On loan to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of
Australia So what is the point of this painting?
It's a big ("heroic" in the rhetoric of the time)
canvas, covered with tangled lines of
multicoloured oil paint. These lines weren't
brushed on, they were dripped or flung onto the
canvas with sticks or crappy old dried-up
brushes.Pollock wanted his paintings to express
big, universal themes - without resorting to the
use of actual imagery, (very uncool in
avant-garde circles immediately after the war.)
He got some ideas from the Surrealists,
particularly their idea of abstract drawing as a
means for exploring the subconscious mind, and
checked himself into Jungian therapy. - Craig
Schuftan
The Wal-Marting of Jackson Pollock http//www.w
almart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id2227131
cat20491type3dept3920path03A39203A582943
A187163A18723
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Painting Evaluation
Blue Poles Number 11, 1952 On loan to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of
Australia Now what is remarkable about Blue
Poles is the amount of movement within the
painting. There are several factors contributing
to this and all of them relate to the music I've
composed. First, there is the shape of the canvas
itself. Because it is wide, like "cinemascope",
it invites you to read it from left to right.
Most paintings do not. And because it is a large
canvas, it also invites you to take it in by
walking past it from left to right. In this,
Pollock's painting approaches the condition of
music, revealing itself in stages. The famous
poles themselves help this approach. On the most
obvious level they divide the painting into
sections so that the eye passes from one to the
next, adding to that sense of movement. And
because the poles are neither straight nor
vertical, but jagged and evidently about to
topple forwards, they contribute to the
painting's internal momentum. For me, they have a
further function. Those blue poles remind me of
crooked bar lines, with complex and brightly
coloured melodic strands cavorting across
them. There's a sense in which this painting
seems to dance. It's a characteristic that Blue
Poles shares with plenty of Pollock's other work.
The artist moved quickly across the canvas as he
dripped his paint. The paint moved more quickly
still, Pollock controlling it with the dexterity
of a puppeteer manipulating his puppets. The
painting is the result of those movements but
unlike most other paintings, Pollock's art makes
us continually aware of the act of creation - of
the action of creation. - Andrew Ford
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Music Evaluation

• CRITERIA
• Lyrics, Social Significance
• Sound/Melody
• Statement/Meaning
• Emotion/Delivery
• Comparison/Standard
• Historical Context/Value
• Will it hold up?

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Music Evaluation
Springsteens songs are usually character
studies. Its the little details in his songs,
the indirect way of approaching something as big
as Sept. 11, that makes him so effective.
Listened to separately, the songs could be about
almost any loss. Taken in sum 11 months later,
its obvious. It works. We need that perspective
he gives us. Any criticism that Springsteen is
simply cashing in on this tragedy (and there has
been some) is unfounded. Hes spent the last 30
years writing and recording songs that deal with
such topics as policemen firing 41 shots into an
unarmed man, a gay man with AIDS, and young male
illegal immigrants selling their bodies on the
streets of San Diegowhy should his music be any
different now because its too soon. It is
never too soon to start trying to understand,
cope, and heal. - Zach Everson
Bruce Springsteens The Rising
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Movie Evaluation

• CRITERIA
• Writing
• Acting Performances
• Directing
• Societal Value
• Statement/Meaning
• Comparison/Standard
• Human Condition

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Movie Evaluation Shrek
SHREK (PG) BY ROGER EBERT There is a
moment in "Shrek" when the despicable Lord
Farquaad has the Gingerbread Man tortured by
dipping him into milk. (VIDEO) This prepares us
for another moment when Princess Fiona's singing
voice is so piercing it causes jolly little
bluebirds to explode making the best of a bad
situation, she fries their eggs. This is not your
average family cartoon. "Shrek" is jolly and
wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow
possessing a heart. The movie has been so long
in the making at DreamWorks that the late Chris
Farley was originally intended to voice the jolly
green ogre in the title role. All that work has
paid off The movie is an astonishing visual
delight, with animation techniques that seem
lifelike and fantastical, both at once. No
animated being has ever moved, breathed or had
its skin crawl quite as convincingly as Shrek,
and yet the movie doesn't look like a reprocessed
version of the real world it's all made up,
right down to, or up to, Shrek's trumpet-shaped
ears. Shrek's voice is now performed by Mike
Myers, with a voice that's an echo of his Fat
Bastard (the Scotsman with a molasses brogue in
"Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me"). Shrek
is an ogre who lives in a swamp surrounded by
"Keep Out" and "Beware the Ogre!" signs. He wants
only to be left alone, perhaps because he is not
such an ogre after all but merely a lonely
creature with an inferiority complex because of
his ugliness. He is horrified when the solitude
of his swamp is disturbed by a sudden invasion of
cartoon creatures, who have been banished from
Lord Farquaad's kingdom. Many of these creatures
bear a curious correspondence to Disney
characters who are in the public domain The
Three Little Pigs turn up, along with the Three
Bears, the Three Blind Mice, Tinkerbell, the Big
Bad Wolf
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Movie Evaluation Shrek
and Pinocchio. Later, when Farquaad seeks a
bride, the Magic Mirror gives him three choices
Cinderella, Snow White ("She lives with seven
men, but she's not easy") and Princess Fiona. He
chooses the beauty who has not had the title role
in a Disney animated feature. No doubt all of
this, and a little dig at DisneyWorld, were
inspired by feelings DreamWorks partner Jeffrey
Katzenberg has nourished since his painful
departure from Disney--but the elbow in the ribs
is more playful than serious. (Farquaad is said
to be inspired by Disney chief Michael Eisner,
but I don't see a resemblance, and his short
stature corresponds not to the tall Eisner but,
well, to the diminutive Katzenberg.) The plot
involves Lord Farquaad's desire to wed the
Princess Fiona, and his reluctance to slay the
dragon that stands between her and would-be
suitors. He hires Shrek to attempt the mission,
which Shrek is happy to do, providing the
loathsome fairy-tale creatures are banished and
his swamp returned to its dismal solitude. On his
mission, Shrek is joined by a donkey named the
Donkey, whose running commentary, voiced by Eddie
Murphy, provides some of the movie's best laughs.
(The trick isn't that he talks, Shrek observes
"the trick is to get him to shut up.") The
expedition to the castle of the Princess involves
a suspension bridge above a flaming abyss, and
the castle's interior is piled high with the
bones of the dragon's previous challengers. When
Shrek and the Donkey get inside, there are
exuberant action scenes that whirl madly through
interior spaces, and revelations about the dragon
no one could have guessed. And all along the way,
asides and puns, in-jokes and contemporary
references, and countless references to other
movies. Voice-overs for animated movies were
once, except for the annual Disney classic,
quickie jobs that actors took if they were out of
work. Now they are starring roles with fat
paychecks, and the ads for "Shrek" use big
letters to trumpet the names of Myers, Murphy,
Cameron Diaz (Fiona) and John Lithgow (Farquaad).
Their vocal performances are nicely suited to the
characters, although Myers' infatuation with his
Scottish brogue reportedly had to be toned down.
Murphy in particular has emerged as a star of the
voice-over genre.
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Movie Evaluation Shrek
Much will be written about the movie's technical
expertise, and indeed every summer seems to bring
another breakthrough on the animation front.
After the three-dimensional modeling and shading
of "Toy Story," the even more evolved "Toy Story
2," "A Bug's Life" and "Antz," and the amazing
effects in "Dinosaur," "Shrek" unveils creatures
who have been designed from the inside out, so
that their skin, muscles and fat move upon their
bones instead of seeming like a single unit. They
aren't "realistic," but they're curiously real.
The artistry of the locations and setting is
equally skilled--not lifelike, but beyond
lifelike, in a merry, stylized way. Still, all
the craft in the world would not have made
"Shrek" work if the story hadn't been fun and the
ogre so lovable. Shrek is not handsome but he
isn't as ugly as he thinks he's a guy we want as
our friend, and he doesn't frighten us but stir
our sympathy. He's so immensely likable that I
suspect he may emerge as an enduring character,
populating sequels and spinoffs. One movie cannot
contain him.
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Research Papers Chapter 3

• Finding a Subject and Narrowing to a Topic (p.
  74)
• Subject vs. Topic
• Brainstorming, Clustering (p. 75)
• EXERCISE (p. 291) The Titanic
• Choosing a Topic within a Subject

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Research Papers Chapter 3

• Going from general to specific (p. 78)
• PRACTICE Narrowing subjects (p. 79)
• Forming a Research Question (p. 83)
• Exploring Point of View (p. 85)
• What Makes a Good Question? (p. 88)
• Writing a Research Proposal (p. 96)

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Evaluation Paper
Write a clear, concise, well-thought-out
evaluation of a painting, a music CD, a
restaurant, a college course, a film, a play, a
television program, a job performance, or a web
site. Use the criteria of evaluation, including
an overall claim about what you are evaluating,
a description, statistics to support your claim,
testimony from a third party source, and
examples. Your final paper should present a
convincing, balanced, supported, fair evaluation
that is backed up by more than opinion and
personal biases. Format/Length
considerations Title (centered) Last name/page
in upper right-hand corner Stapled upper
left Keep margins at 1 default Double-spaced
text Indented paragraphs Normal font,
12-point 2-5 pages, which means a minimum of 2
full pages
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Assignments

• Continue working on Evaluation paper
• Quotation Quiz next week