Literary Arts

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UPCOMING DELVE SEMINARS

Our traditional Delve seminars meet once a week for 6 weeks. Read below for brief seminar descriptions. Remember to enroll early; each seminar is limited to 16 participants. All seminars are from 6:30–8:30 p.m. and tuition is $175 unless otherwise noted.

LEO TOLSTOY: ANNA KARENINA

MONDAYS, MARCH 19–APRIL 23, 2012
6:30PM–8:30PM
LITERARY ARTS, 925 SW WASHINGTON STREET
Portland Center Stage generously offers a ticket for each participant to its production of “Anna Karenina.”

Anna Karenina begins: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” From there, Tolstoy’s troubling classic unfolds, a story regarded by many as one of the greatest works of realist fiction ever written. We will read the book in hopes of having the sort of experience that causes us to affirm its greatness, while examining what constitutes realism and greatness, and to whom.

GUIDE: Lucas Bernhardt MAs in English and in Writing from Portland State University, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He teaches writing at Portland State University and is managing editor of Propeller, an arts and culture quarterly.

ON NATIVE GROUNDS: CEREMONY & FOOLS CROW

TUESDAYS, MARCH 20–APRIL 24, 2012
7:00PM–9:00PM
LITERARY ARTS, 925 SW WASHINGTON STREET

Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977) and James Welch’s Fools Crow (1986) are major contributions to the canon of Native American literature. Each novel draws on both Native American and Euro-American literary and cultural traditions in order to represent the historical experience of Native American communities and the dilemmas of Native American identity. In this seminar, we will study both novels thoroughly and in detail, giving special attention to each author’s effort to develop a unique fictional vision of the American experience.

GUIDE: Chistopher Zinn is an independent literature scholar who has led several Delve seminars. He teaches humanities at the Portland Waldorf High School.

THE RAPIER WIT: FOUR LITERARY SATIRISTS

WEDNESDAYS, APRIL 11–MAY 16, 2012
6:30PM–8:30PM
LITERARY ARTS, 925 SW WASHINGTON STREET
$200 tuition for this seminar includes a generously discounted ticket to Portland Opera’s May 11, 2012 production of “Candide”.

The Age of Enlightenment produced a treasure trove of social and literary satirical works. This Delve, centered around Leonard Bernstein’s joyous adaptation of Candide as produced by Portland Opera, will start in the Renaissance with Machiavelli’s scathing comedy La Mandragola, jump to France for Voltaire’s wry classic, shift to England for the nation’s favorite send-up The Beggar’s Opera, and conclude with Jane Austen’s gothic parody, Northanger Abbey.

GUIDE: Mead Hunter holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Yale and a PhD in Critical Studies from UCLA. He serves frequently as a literary and theater consultant at venues around the country. In Portland, he is editor-in-chief of SuperScript Editorial Services, a writer’s resource.

HARUKI MURAKAMI: 1Q84

THURSDAYS, APRIL 26–MAY 31, 2012
6:30PM–8:30PM
LITERARY ARTS, 925 SW WASHINGTON STREET

Destined to become a modern classic, Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 was published in Japan to meteoric sales and rapturous reviews. This novel, now available in English, contains all the strange and insightful elements his famously frenzied fan-base has come to love. This seminar explores the novel both as a piece of imaginative fiction (the complex Murakami universe of alternate worlds and strange characters) and as a dramatization of contemporary life (its title provocatively borrows from George Orwell’s 1984). Along the way, we consider the pleasures of the Murakami novel – the intricate narrative architecture, the surreal sense of humor and the beautifully rendered moments of contemporary life.

GUIDE: Bruce Suttmeier is Associate Professor of Japanese and Chair of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department at Lewis & Clark College. He researches and writes on Japan in the 1960s, and his current project / obsession involves the changes in public space in Olympic-era Tokyo.

THE POETRY OF MARIANNE MOORE & ELIZABETH BISHOP

TUESDAYS, MAY 1–JUNE 5, 2012
6:30PM–8:30PM
LITERARY ARTS, 925 SW WASHINGTON STREET

The lifelong friendship between Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore was founded on a curious event: on a trip to the zoo, Moore convinced Bishop to distract some adult elephants with breadcrumbs while she snipped a few hairs from a baby elephant’s head (in order to repair her rare, elephant-hair bracelet). As two of the most influential 20th-century American poets, Moore and Bishop are broadly admired for their perceptiveness, subtlety, and originality. We will read their poems with reference to Moore’s lasting influence on Bishop, and alongside other important modernists such as Gertrude Stein and H. D.

GUIDE: Lucas Bernhardt

Delve engages readers with discussion-based seminars led by professional writers and scholars on classic and contemporary literature.

Each seminar is limited to 16 participants who will complete designated reading in advance and come prepared to discuss the text in an informal, friendly atmosphere. No previous knowledge of the author or text is required.

PROGRAM LINKS

For more information on Delve: Readers’ Seminars, please contact Jennifer Fejta, Delve Program Manager, at 503-227-2583×101 or by email at jennifer@literary-arts.org.