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Dutchman, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) 1964, play: Racial struggle for social rights: assassination of Malcolm X in 1965- engages Black Nationalism. The Black Aesthtetic repudiates the white culture of art and politics, dismisses the work of previous black literature (unconscious imitation of white models/values). Jazz only valid model for the expression of black experience (criticised by Lula, she tries to extract from him a consciousness of being black that he resuses, this verbal aggression ends up when he smacks her on the face and then she stabs him) Clay in the same way that Rich does in her poem announces what is to come, he tells Lula about the Western rationalism and their justifications to kill her (red hair, short dress, behaviour)Rhetorical method employed (exaggeration and imagery of violence)Baraka chose drama for his +committed works because he could transform characters into “living metaphors.” Dutchman, play, era of racial conflict, revealed unseen personal conflict embedded in black movement. Criticises the middle-class integrationists who had embraced white ideology and its representations (Lula criticises Clay for wearing a narrow shoulder jacket with three buttons and a tie and she tells him that his grandfather was a slave and that he did not attend Harvard). Didactic fable that doesn’t allow a perverse reading of it, allegorical structure offers several reading levels and a set of recognizable symbols; subway trains (exploration of issues below the surface of reality at a hidden “the subterranean.” The initiatory journey contributes to the plays’ organization as much as to its significance. The apple (provides rhythmic pattern and allusive overtones, reinforces the Eveness of the main female character, the symbolic power of the fruit includes both Lula’s body and one’s self-knowledge. Clays book (Genesis, tree of knowledge, curse for not knowing to use it). Knife (phallic weapon, sexual union, instrument of execution (clay is judged and killed by Lula). Clay’s name (allusion to the primary matter) reinforces the pattern of the forbidden fruit and the following fall. Remind us of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Clay is presented as attempting invisibility as a black citizen, disguising himself as a white man (language, clothes). The meeting of both characters foreshows the fail of relation (white/black, women/man, middle vs “fake” middle-class). Themes: racial prejudice (individualistic attitude not approved), revision of play by Professor Alan Flint (society’s judgement of black people even if they are well-dressed, educated or superior). Symbolic fall of man: reinterpretation of Adam and Eve instead of humiliation and expulsion from Eden. In the play America’s Eden= subway train (undesirable place to live, so Clay’s expulsion lacks the tragic echoes of the Christian scheme. The second Adam can be seen as a Black Messiah who will redeem both tempter and tempted, but as discussed by Taylor this young man is condemned to the same tragic and violent end. Manhood: mental emasculation (loss of identity and male role). The knife used at him as a phallic instrument controls and causes physical and spiritual death. History as an oppressing force: protagonists cannot remove themselves from their own heritages of oppression and slavery.(Lula tells clay near the end that they will pretend that both are free from their own history)  Ursula Le Guin, She Unnames Them, 1985 narrative/ Raymond Carver 1983 Narrative.Term “Fabulation” and “fabulist fiction” coined by Robert Scholes’ critical study The Fabulators. Genre seen as a parodical treatment of past literary conventions, not innovative in their form. “Magic Realism” is another term frequently used to refer to narratives that share the same space for reality and fantasy. After WWII saw the emergence of literature that till now had been considered frivolous (science fiction, westerns, stories, etc)The non-fiction novelists. The great amount of significant social and political events in the 60s (Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam War) confront the imaginative outcome of fiction writers.  The 80s is the “Me Decade” in the USA. In this period there’s a return to common events of ordinary experience, the authors of the period conform to the Realist style but also contribute to its renewal.  “She unnames them” is a fabulist rewriting of the Genesis, tells us about the story of Adam and Eve with a twist.  First published in The New Yorker in 1985 and two years later became part of the collection Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences. Volume combines fiction, essay and poetry. It also contains the idea that unity with nature has been lost and that this communion will never be achieved again while the misleading notion of human superiority over nonhuman life persists.  Postmodern interest here in retelling the Genesis, God grants Adam the power to name animals and woman. As in other postmodern works the original story is the starting point and the readers will construct meaning from their knowledge of the previous version.  Intertextuality enters the story because readers are aware straight away of the Genesis, thus the story must always be read in relation to the preceding text. Intertextual modes include allusions (Jonathan Swift, Eliot) and quotation (the key to Eden), and palimpsest (medieval practice consisting on writing on a surface that has already been written on and thus suggest that there is more than one “layer” or level of meaning. Often palimpsest attempts to offer a traditionally silenced or ignored point of view. Already in the title we find those who have been ignored by the myth. “she” and “them” according to biblical references where the ones who received names from Adam without previous consultation. The title has already taken the woman’s and the animal’s names, something that we will find out later when she unnames the animals and we realise who these pronouns refer to. The title also signals the binary oppositions “she” depends on “him” and “them” depend on “us,” language shapes reality as much as cultural frames do, and power relations are determined in linguistic utterances.  Problems with dogs and birds (they spoke) and with yaks. They were all unnamed now but and the narrator feels closer to them now that the barrier of the names isn’t between herself and the animals. This unnaming suggests a path from a postlapsarian moment (after the fall) to a prelapsarian in the sense that there is no distinction between the hunter and the prey, or the eater from the food. The narrator tells Adam that she is returning to him what his father and himself gave to her, she though he would ask for the reason of giving the gift back, but he paid no attention and continued with what he was doing. She said she hoped to find the garden key (remember their expulsion of the garden), while his answer was “when’s dinner.” After this the narrator walks goes away and tells him she is leaving with the...but then she stops talking realising how difficult it would be to explain this and marches of with them. Removes the accepted understanding of this female myth as passive and secondary to Adam (for Adam was created first), Le Guin’s Eve is an active, knowledgeable figure who subverts God’s dispositions. The story borrows in this sense from the Bildungsroman form because the narrator becomes aware of the established values that surround her. The narrator doesn’t give us any exact reference to spatial or temporal settings. Several allusions to prominent figures function as cultural reference with an ideological purpose. Another set of allusions refers to the inadequacy of language to organize experience; the words of writers’ o scientists alike are dismissed. Nevertheless we find a domestic air on the story: God is absent from the seen, Adam is fiddling around, the garden key is missing, and dinner is expected. Language as suggested by Le Guin’s works is the barrier for the coexistence of all the creatures. We also find that we do not know the narrator’s name, but cultural background will help use fill in the gap. Ecofeminism: critical approach that examines the relationship between feminism and ecology. The retelling of Genesis, established a correspondence between Man’s dominion over animals and naming. By unnaming the animals and herself the narrators breaks this barrier of domination. This story seems to imply the similarities between the rights of women and animals. “Cathedral” -Raymond carver is seen as the activator of the Realist revival in American literature. His work is regarded as a fusion of many forms; it has also been called “Dirty Realism” because he looks deeply into disagreeable aspects of American life and because he explored on the most disconcerting side of the American promise. His dirty Realism is seen in cathedral in the self-portrayal of the narrator, the reader progressively places him among those who have been left out of the American Dream of success and self-fulfilment. Another term used to define his work was that of Minimalism, implying the noticeable but simplified imitation of reality. Carver didn’t consider himself as a minimalist just because he eliminates every unnecessary detail in his stories; instead he preferred to be regarded as “precisionist.” This Minimalist style is characterised by economy of words and detail,  insignificant plot and compression of events, for only examining the outside of things and by a short characterization (wife not depicted,  whereas the depiction of the blind tells us about his age, stooped shoulders, starting to go bald, with a beard. The stylish way he was dressed is also depicted and we also get to know that he didn’t use a can or dark glasses). His own depiction is carried out by the prejudices he exposes and his insensitivity. The crucial moment of the story is when the blind man asks him to describe what a cathedral is like and he confesses that cathedrals aren’t anything to him; they are just something he has seen on TV. Blind holds narrator’s hand and start drawing together, then he tells him to close his eyes (empathy). The issue of televisual culture stands as a sign of consumer and media culture where sensitivity and sensibility are disintegrated by audiovisual strategies. This televisual culture is twofold in Carver’s story: 1- the humming sound of the television provides the same hypnotic effects as alcohol or drugs. 2- Carver’s fragmentary and skeletal prose is much indebted to the characteristic qualities of televisual production and reception. For the first time, in one of his works, Carver offers a moment of revelation to one of his characters. Some scholars have attempted to approach Carver’s stories by reconsidering the term “epiphany” redefining it to the sense of learning and growth. The characters’ realization of some discovery does not find verbal expression because they fail to take hold of its social and emotional connotations. In “Cathedral” the speaker progressively disadvantages the telling of his ironical and prejudiced attitude, until the odd climax leaves him spiritually and almost linguistically without response.  Carver saves this character from his metaphorical blindness, although he is incapable of articulating the significance of what he has just learned. His words about this experience “I didn’t feel inside anything” reveals the narrator has experienced a spiritual awareness through a physical perception of space.  Written in first-person we find a homodiegetic narrator who tells the story in a way that seems an oral storytelling. This work reveals a narrator who is not involved with the story even if he is participating in it, this allow him the necessary distance to show sarcasm, prejudice, and suspicion. He also uses reported speech to be ironic about the relationship of his wife with the blind man. He manifests insecurity and lack of enthusiasm about their relation because he doesn’t know first-hand that part of the story the wife has told him. Normally homodiegetic narrators obtain the reader’s empathy towards the speaker, but here the narrator’s tone and attitude doesn’t call for this feeling. He presents himself as an inarticulate man who cannot deal with life’s difficulties. Irony and distance are useful instruments to handle emotions. When he is telling us about the blind man’s wife dying, which tends to empathy to a certain point, but then he add talks about the way they had (married, had sex, worked and lived together, buried her) while he didn’t even know what he looked like (giving more importance to the outside) The setting depicted in Carver’s works are normally indoors settings with a threatening atmosphere. This atmosphere is perceived as suffocating in this story, since the narrator senses himself as closed up in his living room with an unwelcomed visitor, in opposition to the overpowering image of the cathedral whose most distinguishing trait is its vast size and ever-expanding design. Furthermore, cathedral of medieval days were built as to reach up for the sky, thus giving an idea of growth that draws out the contrast to the protagonist’s limited space and life.  The only names he gives to us are the blind man’s, (Robert) and his wife’s (Beulah), even when talking about his own wife’s previous husband he refers to him as her childhood sweetheart and he states –why should he have a name? Starts telling story from the present moment giving an explanation of what had happened and his feelings towards a blind man coming to his house. Then he starts talking about the past. Irony: Maybe I could take him bowling. Insensible: states he hasn’t got any blind friends.