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Presentation Outline: Alastair Reid
- Brief Biography of Alastair Reid (born in 1926)
- Eager to leave his hometown at age of 7
- Stumbled upon Spain after traveling with the Navy
- Faced disdain from family and friends upon returning to Scotland
- Son Jasper was born sans mother in Spain
- Bought a houseboat and sailed through Great Britain. Neruda (Chilean) becomes a friend as does Borges (Argentine).
- Traveled throughout Latin America and Europe as well as USA becoming friends with prominent writers and expatriates.
- Brief stint at New York Times in youth and taught at Antioch College in Ohio and Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
- Still alive. As of 2003, Reid has published 30 books.
- Read “Curiosity” aloud to the class
- go through the terminology and dissect the writing
- discuss the symbolism of cats and dogs
- conveys the representation of two types of people
- Reid is a cat?
- Tone, Enjambment, Caesura, Paradox, and Irony
- Discuss Literary Criticism
- Biographical Approach
- Reid was very ambitious and free-spirited in his youth
- Never let go of those qualities
- Benefited from his wandering ways
- How would that innate curiosity be harmful?
- Marxist approach
- Idea of free mind and independent thinking
- How does that correlate with our present day politics?
- Rejection of economic privilege in favor of pursuit of independent thought; economics acts as a restriction on the well-being of society.
- Personal curiosity acts as a tool for people to utilize in order to understand more about themselves, the world around them, and the relations between them both.
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