English Extension Creative and Reflection (Literary Worlds)

Creative and Reflection from Part A – Creative Composition- Imaginative response Read the following excerpt: Their world was charmed and protected, but not ignorant: news from beyond the municipal limits filtered through. That the lives of others might not be so charmed was clear to them, at least in abstract. They dropped generous donations into the church Christmas Bowl and Easter Appeal each year; they fostered a World Care child in Bangladesh after the birth of Ben, and after Emma’s birth fostered another in Ecquador. Once a year a Christmas card and letter arrived from each child, written with obsessive neatness in Spanish, or the weird extra-terrestrial script of Bengali. Typed, misspelled English translations always accompanied both letters, their tones identically flat and formulaic despite their separate origins, as if written by the same child, or by the same computer. Snapshots were sometimes clipped to the letters, and perhaps these were also of the same child: a small, bony waif, dressed in ill-fitting Best Clothes, probably an older sibling’s, posed in front of a squalid shanty, half Kim, half Oliver Twist. Peter Goldsworthy, ‘Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam’, in The Australian Long Story (Ed. Mandy Sayer, pub. Penguin Books, 2009, pp. 85-86). Consider the following statements: • • • • • • • • Part B – Reflection Literary worlds empower Literary worlds exist in time, geography, magic, history, culture Literary worlds convey social critique Literary worlds exist IN literary worlds Literary worlds reveal the private and/or the public Literary worlds convey values Literary worlds represent the imagination Literary worlds reveal the limitations of art Using the extract as a stimulus, and drawing on at least TWO of the above statements, craft a sustained imaginative response (1000-1200 words) that represents your understanding of the Module. How and why do composers create literary worlds? In your answer, reflect on both your own composition and your study of Literary Worlds. (500 words).