Teju Cole "Open City"
Context for Interpretation
Thank you for your attention!
PS Literature/ SS 15
Bibliography: (MLA)
- Vermeulen, Pieter. "Flights of Memory: Teju Cole's Open City and the Limits of Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism." Journal of Modern Literature 37.1 (2013): 40- 57 Print.
- Dallen, Hamisch. "The Idea of "Third Generation Nigerian Literature": Conceptualizing Historical Change and Territorial Affiliation in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel. "Research in African Literatures 44.4 (2013): 15-34 Print
- Lizbeth Goodman. "Approaching Literature. Literature and Gender" (1996):7-9
Flaneur: "someone who strolls around , who makes walks around without destinations"
- subjective view
- instability to establish a relationship with a female
- no interest in sexual relationships?
- fugueur and flaneur
fugueur: "someone who unaccountably walks away from life and, when found, is unable to remember what happened on these trips"
Female Characters
"Oma"
"Oma"
Female Characters
- no description of physical appearance
- easy and open-minded
- Life during WW2
- Rape by men of the Red Army?
- importance of this rape? We can't trust Julius
- good relationship, admiration
- strong, self-determined
- how a woman should be
- reunion unlikely to happen -> absurd behavior of Julius
- desultory efforts!
- Still alive? Living in Brussels? Facts about her?
Moji
Meeting Moji:
"We experience life continuity and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuity. The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float" (p.155)
Dr. Maillotte
Focus
Dr. Maillotte
- detailed description of her appearance
- Idea of what Julius sees as "beautiful"
- a lot of general knowledge, direct
- gives away a lot of private info
- her surgical training as gender issue
- Julius does not see her as a "typical old woman"
In the park:
"I looked at her and found her puzzling. She was too tall and her eyes were too small. Her face was dark, so dark that it had faint purple notes in it , but she was not beautiful in the way I expect dark women to be" (p. 198 )
- Julius enjoys her company
- asks for her opinions
- strong, educated character
- she might be the "grandmother" he was looking for
Conversation (rape):
"Things don't go away, just because you choose to forget them" (p.245)
- Female characters in "Open City"
- How does Julius see and describe this character?
- Does he describe appearance, clothes etc.?
- Julius' representation of women
- Secondary literature
Terminology
Table of Content
Gender -> refers to ways of seeing and representing people and situations based on sex difference. Socially and culturally constructed
Gender on the agenda -> we read texts with a concern for gender issues that affect the writing
- Introduction
- Terminology
- Focus
- Analysis
- Conclusion