English world literature

ENG 221-A: F. Fajardo-Acosta Spring 2017

FINAL EXAM ESSAY

Write an essay (500 - 1000 words) relating the images of Claude Monet's Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge (1899) to the ideas and images in Jorge Luis Borges' “The Garden of Forking Paths.” It is fine if the essay exceeds the word limits so long as the discussion is substantial.

All ideas and writing in the essay have to be your own work. No collaboration of any kind is allowed. Any ideas or language from outside sources have to be thoroughly acknowledged at the place where they occur and in a list of Works Cited at the end of the essay. References are not required but it is expected that the essay will include quotations from the text of the story.

You are free to determine the specific focus, thesis, or main ideas of your essay. It is expected you will identify the concerns and engage the ideas that may be most relevant to what you have learned during the semester and that demonstrate your understanding of the works and their relationships in terms of their possible meanings and messages.

You are welcome to engage any ideas or other works discussed this semester so long as they are relevant to the main task of connecting the painting and Borges' story.

An image of the painting is attached here for your convenience. The original is kept at the Princeton University Art Museum. You are encouraged to visit the museum site and read the description of the work there:

http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/31852

The museum's catalogue description is as follows:

Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge represents two of Monet’s greatest achievements: his gardens at Giverny and the paintings they inspired. Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and immediately began to develop the property. For him, the gardens were both a passion and a second artistic medium. His Asian garden was not part of the original estate; it was located on an adjacent property with a small brook, which he purchased and enlarged into a pond for a water garden in 1893. He transformed the site into an inspired vision of cool greens and calm, reflective waters, enhanced by exotic plants such as bamboo, ginkgo, and Japanese fruit trees and a Japanese footbridge. It was not until 1899, however, that he began a series of views of the site, of which this is one.

A careful craftsman who reworked his canvases multiple times, Monet was committed to painting directly from nature as much as possible and for as long as he had the correct conditions; thus, he could work on as many as eight or more canvases a day, devoting as little as an hour or less to each. In this case, he set up his easel at the edge of the water-lily pond and worked on several paintings of the subject as part of a single process.

Monet’s gardens and paintings show the same fascination with the effects of time and weather on the landscape. Both are brilliant expressions of his unique visual sensitivity and emotional response to nature. At Giverny, he literally shaped nature for his brush, cultivating vistas to paint. (http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/31852)

An image of the painting is included below for your convenience. Visit the museum site to download an image allowing you to zoom in on details:

http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/image-download?id=31852&img=y1972-15.jpg

Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge (1899). Oil on canvas. 90.5 x 89.7 cm (35 5/8 x 35 5/16 in.). Princeton University Art Museum.