Module 7 - Part 2: Explorations and Exercises

Other parts of this module include:
Index  |  Part 1: Overview  |  Part 3: Texts and Contexts  |  Part 4: Web Resources

Fantastic Travels in the Premodern World

To respond to these exercises, it helps to have some appreciation of the cultural assumptions explored in them. Click on Web Resources for further insights into the way social, historical, and religious ideologies color the literary texts that we are studying.

These questions are arranged into three color-coded categories.

Level A invites you to look closely at some specific aspects of individual texts. Answering these questions shows that you have read carefully and understand the significance of important words and ideas as they appear in context.

Level B asks you to think more deeply about the implications of some of the details that you have isolated.

Level C allows you to build on the findings of the first two categories to theorize broadly about the relationship of the text to social and historical forces beyond the work itself.

Topics in this module's Exploration and Exercises section include:

• Focus on Monkey: Starting out
• Other travel narratives in the Norton Anthology of World LIterature, 2e
• Compare Monkey with other travel narratives: Pilgrimage motifs in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese narratives
• Focus on Texts and Contexts

Focus on Monkey: Starting out

Level A

1. How do the pilgrims assemble? Where and how are they found?
   
   1. Who is the original pilgrim? How does he meet his attendant?
   2. How easily is each additional pilgrims added to the group?
   3. How is the nature of each pilgrim indicated?

Level B

1. What principle has been consulted in selecting the pilgrims? Why are they ready to take on the onerous burden of the journey to the west?
   
   1. Where is each of the pilgrims located? What is significant about the landscapes and habitats from which they emerge?
   2. What do their individual histories tell us about them?
   3. Which get the least attention? Why is there less to say about some than about others? 

Level C

1. How does the process of getting the pilgrims together enunciate some of the major themes of Monkey? What does Monkey keep forgetting to say? What does his failure of memory signify?

In the Kingdom of Crow-cock

Level A

1. How does Tripitaka learn of the problem besetting the Kingdom of Crow-cock?
   
   1. Where is Tripitaka when he first learns of the problem in Crow-cock?
   2. What is significant about the source of his information?
   3. How does he know that it is reliable?

Level B

1. How does Monkey create the means by which Tripitaka and his attendants are able to get to Crow-cock?
   
   1. Give some examples of the level of his attention to detail.
   2. Why does he go to so much trouble? How does his inventiveness contrast with Pigsy's response to the situation? 
   3. How do their different responses define the innate difference between them?

Level C

1. How do the events in Crow-cock develop? How does the episode illustrate the truth of the Heart Sutra: "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form." What is the difficulty in judging from appearances?
   
   1. What does Monkey willingly endure in order to distinguish the Magician?
   2. Are all of the elaborate efforts he undertakes to help the King of Crow-cock necessary in the long run?
   3. What lessons does Monkey learn as the truth becomes clear at the end of the episode?
   4. How does this episode emphasize the value of traditional Mahayana Buddhism and undercut the Zen Buddhist views of behavior implied by the site in which Tripitaka dreams?

Other travel narratives in The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 2e

Çelebi's Book of Travels

Level A

1. Cities have many functions. What areas of The City of Boudonitza does Çelebi dwell on?
   
   1. What is the difference between the inner and the outer city? 
   2. How does geography influence the disposition of architecture in the city? What role do the mountains play in fortifying Boudonitza?

Level B

1. Çelebi writes like a newspaper reporter in the first part of the City of Boudonitza. What details does he select to describe the crowds of refugees he encounters as he makes his way toward the castle? How do those details involve the reader in the judgments they imply?
2. Who is Captain Giorgio? How does Çelebi's comment on the Captain's entry into Boudonitza expose the failings of the ruling powers there? 

Level C

1. Like many travel narratives, Çelebi's work includes important references to pilgrimage sites. How did Sultan Veliullah become a figure to be venerated? How does this miracle that sanctified him gain credibility from the sober description of the fort of Boudonitza that precedes it?
2. What virtues are associated with the Sufis who live in the cloister associated with Veliullah's shrine? How is the looting of the infidels contrasted to the behavior of the Sufis? What human (as opposed to sectarian) values are celebrated in Çelebi's account of the punishment of the looters?

Gulliver's Travels

Level A

1. Read Columbus's Letter to Santangel, noting the way he discusses the natives he encountered, and compare Gulliver's first description of Yahoos and Houhynhnms.

Level B

1. What is unusual about the relationship of Gulliver, the supposedly civilized European, to the Houhynhnms? How does the way Gulliver sees himself in relation to these natives give us insight into the state of Gulliver's troubled mind?

Level C

1. How does Gulliver's Travels lead the reader to reconsider the flawed assumptions of the standard travel reports that Swift parodies in his book? 

Candide

Level A

1. List the places visited by Candide. Which receive realistic descriptions?
   
   1. Compare and contrast the descriptions of actual sites like Westphalia, Paris, Venice, and Constantinople. Where does Voltaire seem interested in real events and phenomena?
   2. Candide was written in the aftermath of the great Lisbon earthquake. How do his feelings about that event contribute to the development of his story?

Level B

1. What kinds of comparisons does Voltaire invite us to make as we move from place to place with Candide?
   
   1. What differences do you see between the treatment of the Old and the New World? 
   2. Where is Eldorado? How do Candide and Cacambo reach it? Can they return to it once they leave?

Level C

1. How do the different conceptions of place focus Voltaire's satiric targets in Candide?
   
   1. Why does the narrator liken Candide's departure from the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh to an ejection "from the earthly paradise"? In what ways do Candide and Cunegone resemble Adam and Eve?  
   2. What contrasting values are associated with countries like Holland and Portugal? 
   3. What does Voltaire show the reader about the impact of Europeans on the Americas? What does the discussion of the price of sugar that takes place in Chapter 19 mean?
   4. Why do we come to rest in a garden in Constantinople? What elements of life there does Voltaire emphasize? How do they teach us how to live?

Compare Monkey with other travel narratives: Pilgrimage motifs in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese narratives

Level A

1. Kannon is the Japanese name for Kuan-yin. Where is pilgrimage to this saint's shrine mentioned in Bewitched?

Level B

1. In the vernacular tradition of Saikaku and Akinari, how is pilgrimage regarded? Compare the treatment of religion in Voltaire's Candide.

Level C

1. How would you compare Basho's North with Hsuan Tsang's West? What is the difference in the nature of their goals?
2. How does Basho's rejection of the two frightened girls who ask for his companionship along the way manifest an essential Buddhist attitude toward the mundane world and its concerns?

On the road

Level C

1. What human predators are encountered along the way in the various travel narratives you have read? Compare and contrast the robber kings met by Monkey and Tripitaka with the various pirates and thugs met up with by Çelebi, Candide, and others. What kinds of obstacles do the various attacks mounted on the travelers represent?
2. Discuss the role of religion in each of the narratives you have read. Why does it figure so prominently in the literature of travel? In what ways do journeys lend themselves to fictional and spiritual ends?
3. Every time Tripitaka and his entourage reach a new territory, they have to produce their papers. Candide invariably has some kind of shocking experience when he reaches a new place. Why is the idea of the transition from place to place so suggestive in the literature of travel? Where exactly are we when we are on the borderline? 

Focus on Texts and Contexts

Level C

1. Read the full text of the "Heart of Perfection of Wisdom Sutra" and elucidate it as best you can. How does it help us understand Monkey's tribulations and Tripitaka's character?
2. Jonathan Swift tells a kind of travel narrative in "The Fable of the Spider and the Bee," which represents the battle between the Ancients and the Moderns. Read the fable and explain which side of the argument Swift supports. How does his view of the value of travel reflect on his view of the modern world?  Does Gulliver resemble the bee in his voyages? Does he improve because of his travels?