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Anne of Green Gables - Comments and DiscussionThis is the comment and discussion page for the article Anne Of Green Gables in the classroom, published in Directory : Language Arts : Children's Literature.
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Douglas Twitchell says:
Quote I tried to teach them that one of the characteristics of classic art of any form is that it is timeless.
This made me think of something Kenzaburo Oe said, in relation to junbungaku, or "pure literature"...
"the role of literature - insofar as man is obviously a historical being - is to create a model of a contemporary age which encompasses past and future, a model of the people living in that age as well."
So true literature, in his mind, is that which models not just a contemporary age, but is also, as you said, timeless.
shelley says:
I'm currently reading Kenzaburo Oe's story Ahgwee The Sky Monster, which is about a man who goes mad after killing his baby son because he thought he had a birth defect.
The interesting thing is that Oe has a son with a severe birth defect, so if anyone could understand the character in the story, it would be the author. Perhaps that's what he means; his own story is made more powerful by the fact that he has modeled his character after himself to some extent.
All of which has nothing to do with Anne Of Green Gables, except to make me wonder if Montgomery's childhood was at all like Anne's?
Now that I think about it, Ingalls (Little House On The Prairie) and Alcott (Little Women) did the same thing, right? Modelled their characters/stories after their own life experiences?
Douglas Twitchell says:
wow...from Anne to Aghwee in one short jump!
I just started reading "The Four Feathers" by A. E. W. Mason, and in the introduction, it talks about how Mason, like Kipling, has somewhat fallen out of favor, because he writes without rancor about an age of imperialism which we now shake our heads at.
But the introduction makes this interesting comment: "The second act of literature, however, is that a work of art can come to have a life distinct from its context."
In other words, even though we have come to disapprove of certain aspects of the culture (context) from which the author wrote, we still find value in the reading.
Which is what Oe (and the author of the article) are saying. Though none of us experience life as Anne did, certain aspects of her story transcend the "context" of her time and place.
Douglas Twitchell says:
Quote Now that I think about it, Ingalls (Little House On The Prairie) and Alcott (Little Women) did the same thing, right? Modelled their characters/stories after their own life experiences?
I just thought of another one. The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald. It was written based on his experiences with his older brother Tom, growing up in small town Utah.
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