Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Ugliness also lies in the eye of the beholder.

The Libido for the Ugly

Henry L. Mencken

• "There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers." • "It is hard enough to put into them what one thinks; it is a

sheer impossibility to put into them what one feels." – Such skepticism, however, never kept him from trying.

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

• I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Quotes from Mencken

Outline• 1. Pre-reading tasks

– Lead in– Contexts

• 2. While-reading tasks– Comprehension (global and local)– Appreciation (linguistic and rhetorical)

• 3. Post-reading tasks– Points for consideration– Description– Assignments

Teaching Procedures

1. Pre-reading tasks

• 1.1 Questions as lead-in

• 1.2 Understand Contexts– Social background– Authorial background– Comments about Mencken

Pittsburg

Mencken hate these architectural forms.

Mencken favors these architectural forms.

• I opened A Book of Prejudices and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it. . . . I identified myself with that book. ----

Richard Wright

• Mencken’s is some of the most biting and humorous writing ever in America. He rarely had much good to say about anybody or anything, though of course much of his writing is satiric. For those who aren’t familiar with the master himself, I’m presenting an on topic sample for your enjoyment. Though his views are not necessarily mine, I thought this would help illustrate that the critique of America’s built environment as ugly...

Aaron

2. While-reading Tasks

• 2.1 Global understanding (skimming)– Main idea of each paragraph

• Para 1: Stark contrast of great wealth of the region with the abominable human inhabitations

• Para 2: Ugliness in the rural area• Para 3: Ugliness in house design• Para 4: ugliness in brick color• Para 5: worst ugliness of the Westmoreland valley • Para 6: a contrast between the United States and Europe• Para 7: Assumption: libido for the ugly• Para 8: make explanations for the aforesaid assumption• Para 9: conclusion

2. While-reading Tasks

• 2.1 Global understanding – Macrostructure

• Part I (Para 1) introduction (with a striking contrast) • Part II (Para 2 to Para 5) description of the

ugliness in Westmoreland.• Para III (Para 6 to Para 9) the libido of the whole

American race for the ugliness.

2.2 Q & A 1. What is the function of paragraph 1?

2. What kind of houses covers the hillsides? What does the author say about them? What might be the appropriate houses does the author suggest for this region? (Paragraph 2)

3. What How does the author describe the houses in that region

4. What is the effect produced by the elliptical sentence “But what brick! ”(Paragraph 4)?

5. Why does Mencken refer to other towns and villages in America (Para 5)?

6. What is the purpose of Mencken’s saying “The peasants, however poor, somehow manage to make themselves graceful and charming habitations, even in Spain”? (Para 6)

7. What does the first sentence in Para 7 imply?

8. How do you understand the word “mellow” in Line 111 (Para 8)?

9. What is the thesis of the whole essay?

10. What is the tone of the essay? Why do you pass this judgment?

2.3 Paraphrase

It (the dreadful scene) reduced the whole aspiration of man to macabre and depressing joke. (Para 1)

This dreadful scene makes all human efforts to improve their destiny appear a ghastly and saddening joke.

• Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity. (Para 4)

• Red brick, even in a steel town, appears respectable with the passage of time.

• I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer. (Para 5)

• I give the highest award for ugliness to Westmoreland after a lot of research efforts and continuous praying.

It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. (Para 7)

It is impossible to attribute the wallpaper that ruins the beauty of average American home of the lower middle class to mere carelessness or oversight, or to the indecent humor of the manufacturers.

• 2.4 Appreciation – 2.4.1 Syntactical scheme

• Long and complex sentences– Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center

of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth--and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke.

• How this sentence is structured?

• 2.4 Appreciation – 2.4.1 Syntactical scheme

• Patterns (SVO, with + n+ pp phrase)– It is, in form, a narrow river valley, with deep gullies

running up into the hills. – And one and all they are streaked in grime, with dead

and eczematous patches of paint peeping through the streaks.( Para 3)

– The function of the above syntactical schemes

• Right-branching sentence• Increased formality

• 2.4 Appreciation – 2.4.2 Figures of speech

• Hyperbole• Sarcasm and irony• Metaphor• Simile

Hyperbole

• Here was wealth beyond computation(Para.1)

• …of every house in sight (Para.2)

• From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that did not insult and lacerate the eye. (Para. 2)

•

• But in Westmoreland they prefer that uremic yellow, and so they have the most loathsome towns and villages ever seen by mortal eye.(Para.4)

• But nowhere on this earth, at home or abroad, have I seen anything to compare to the villages that huddle along the line of the Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh yards to Greensburg. (Para.5)

• I have seen, I believe, all of the most unlovely towns of the world; they are all to be found in the United States. (Para 5)

• But nowhere on this earth, at home or abroad, have I seen anything to compare to the villages that huddle along the line of the Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh yards to Greensburg. (Para.5)

Sarcasm and/or irony

• I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer.

• They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable in design. (Sarcasm in Para.5)

• It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius, uncompromisingly inimical to man, had devoted all the ingenuity of Hell to the making of them. (Irony Para.5)

• It is incredible... achieved such masterpieces of horror. (Para.6)

• But in the American village and small town the pull is always toward ugliness, and in that Westmoreland valley it has been yielded to with an eagerness bordering upon passion. (Sarcasm Para.6)

• It is incredible that mere ignorance should have achieved such masterpieces of horror. (Sarcasm and irony Para.6)

• But they chose that clapboarded horror with their eyes open, and having chosen it, they let it mellow into its present shocking depravity. (Irony Para.6)

• Obviously, if there were architects of any professional sense or dignity in the region, they would have perfected a chalet to hug the hillsides.

• In precisely the same way the authors of the rat-trap stadium that I have mentioned made a deliberate choice. (Para.8)

• The effect is that of a fat woman with a black eye. (Para 8)

• It is that of a Presbyterian grinning. (Para.8)

Simile• Some were so bad, and they were among

the most pretentious--churches, stores, warehouses, and the like--that they were downright startling; one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with his face shot away. (Para. 2)

• a crazy little church just west of Jeannette, set like a dormer-window on the side of a bare, leprous hill (Para. 2)

• By the hundreds and thousands these abominable houses cover the bare hillsides, like gravestones in some gigantic and decaying cemetery…(Para.3)

3. Post-reading Tasks

• 3.1 Points for consideration– Do you agree with Mencken’s idea that there

was a natural or biological pull toward ugliness among Americans? Or do the Americans voluntarily accept the ugly?

– In Para 2, we find such phrases or statements as “Unbroken ugliness” and “hideousness without a break” or “They have taken as their model a brick set on end”. Explore the reason why the author chooses these words.

Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

“Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”

Benjamin went on to say

• In principle a work of art (including architectural art) has always been reproducible.

• Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men.

• Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works.

Pupils are working, with their master standing by.

• The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping.

Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity.

• Woodcut graphic art

The age of Engraving and etching (Renaissance)

Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The silver, gold, steel, or glass may be engraved. These images are also called engravings.

Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acids to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a

design in relief in the metal.

The age of lithography(1796)

a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water.

Photography

Photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens.

3D printing(1984)

Digital press (1993)

(Herbert Marcuse,1898-1979)

• A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization.

• Marcuse pointed out advanced industrial society made people one-dimensional men who lost their creativity and freedom and dared not pursue an alternative life different the real life.

• Its (advanced industrial world) productivity is destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties… its growth dependent on the repression of the real possibilities...

• 3.2 Description

Description• Outline

– Why do we need to describe?• Not all texts are of expository or argumentative nature• All fictions involves description

– What is description?• Etymology• A working definition• Two elements• Types• Appreciation

– How to create a descriptive piece?

1. What is description?

1.1 Etymology

1.2 A working definitionThe art of translating perceptions into words.

1.3 Two elements1. Object: what is seen or heard

2. Observer: he who sees or hears it

1.4 Types

• A. Objective description

• B. Subjective or impressionistic description

A. Objective description

• Objective description attempts to report accurately the appearance of an object;

• It is primarily factual, omitting any attention to the writer, especially with regards to the writer's feelings.

• The observer seems to be an impersonal scanning machine.

B. Subjective or impressionistic description

• Subjective description includes attention to both the object described and the writer's emotional responses (internal, personal) to the object described.

• Subjective description does not seek to inform but to arouse emotion or appeal to senses.

1.5 Appreciation

A• Chestnut street sings a music of its

own. There is the light sliding swish of trolley poles along the wire, accompanied by the deep rocking rumble of the car, and the crash as it pounds over the cross-tracks at Sixth Street. There is the clear mellow clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between metals.

What rhetorical devices have been

employed here?

Parallel elementsthe clear mellow.., the musical trill…, and the rattle…Alliteration: the repetition of two or more initial consonant sounds in words within a line. Sliding swishConsonance: the repetition of two or more consonant sounds within a line.Clear mellow clang

Assonance: the repetition of two vowel sounds within a line.Trolley gongs

• B• It was a narrow room, with a

rather high ceiling, and crowded from floor to ceiling with goodies. There were rows and rows of hams and sausages of all shapes and colors—white, yellow, red, and black; fat and lean and round and long rows of canned preserves, cocoa and tea.

Polysyndeton is the use of conjunctions or connecting words frequently in a sentence, placed very close to one another.

The Roman historian Suetonius provides us with some insight into the character and personality of Julius Caesar:

• "He was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather full faced, with eyes black and piercing; he enjoyed excellent health except toward the close of his life when he was subject to sudden fainting fits and disturbances in his sleep. He was likewise twice seized with the 'falling sickness,' while engaged in active service.

• … there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet. He was dressed in an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an undertaker's uniform at a funeral; round his neck a rope of black silk was knotted in a large bulb, with flying ends projecting beyond the collar of his coat; his turned-down shirt-collar disclosed a sinewy muscular yellow neck, and above that, nestling in a great black mass of hair, bristling and compact like a ruff of mourning pins, rose the strange quaint face and head, covered with its thatch of wild, republican hair, of President Lincoln.

William Russell, a reporter for the London Times, kept a diary of his impressions about Abraham Lincoln:

President-elect Lincoln

in February 1861

March 27, 1861

How a writer may manipulate our reading experience?

• The kitchen table is rectangular, seventy-two inches long and thirty inches wide. Made of a two-inch-thick piece of oak, its top is covered with a waxy oilcloth patterned in dark red and blue squares against a white background. In the right corner, close to the wall, a square blue ceramic tile serves as the protective base for a brown earthenware teapot. A single white placemat has been set to the left of the tile, with a knife and fork on either side of a white dinner plate, around nine inches in diameter. On the plate are two thick pieces of steak.

• Our lives at home converged around the pleasantly-shaped kitchen table. It was the magnet that drew our family together quite warmly. Cut from the sturdiest oak, the table was tough, smooth, and long enough for my mother, my two sisters, and me to work or play on at the same time. Our favorite light blue ceramic tile, stationed in the right corner, was the table's sole defense against the ravages of everything from a steaming teapot to the latest red-hot gadget.

In the objective description,

the observer use his or her eyes to scan the table, but there is no emotional response provoked by the scene.

In the subjective description,

The narrator scans the table, and put his or her personal emotions or feeling into the descriptive piece. Therefore, the table takes on a sense of "utility" and "meaning“ (the narrator explain the importance of the table to the household harmony and warmth.

Explore differences

3. How to create a descriptive piece?

Description is organized usually by space order. Here are some strategies:--- from a fixed position to moving position --- from close up to distance--- from general to specific --- from subjective to objective

Exercises-Guided writing

• Scene 1: 他坐在桌子边，敞开着衣领，低着头，手拿着笔，准备写一封长信。

• Collar off, head down and pen in hand, he sat at the table, preparing to write a long letter.

• Scene 2: 她脸上带着温和的微笑走出来迎接我，两只大大的眼睛闪闪发光。

• She came out to greet me, with a warm smile on her face and her large eyes flashing.

• Scene 3:小流氓朝他步步紧逼，手里摇晃着一条鞭子。

• The young ruffian [hooligan] was advancing upon him, with a whip swinging in his hand.

• Scene 4: 在我们面前展现一大片金色的稻谷，稻穗随风飘，稻香遍村庄。

• A vast expanse of golden rice spreads before us, with the ears waving in the breeze and the fragrance drifting over the village.

• Scene 5:老头坐了下来，由于痛苦脸色发白，两颊上还带有泪痕。The old man sat down, with his face pale with pain and traces of tears on his cheeks.

• Scene 6: 工程师把两手放在裤子口袋里，踱来踱去，显得焦虑不安。

• Vexed, the engineer is pacing to and fro, with his hands (placed) in his trousers’ pockets.

Exercises- free writing

• 3.3 Assignments– Writing project (no less than 300 words)

• Option 1: A critical essay about the libido for the ugly?

• Option 2: Libido for the stupid• Option 3: A descriptive piece about the people

waiting at the bus stop for No.5 Bus in Nanchong

– Preview

Thank you!