WHAT IS THE TRICK? (A SECONDARY SCHOOL LESSON ON THE CREATIVE ACTIVITY OF M.YA. BORODITSKAYA)

Abstract

The article describes a lesson-portrait model which deals with works of modern poetess Marina Boroditskaya and considers an approach to studying the poems of the poetess in the basic course of literature (after learning mythology in grades 6-7). The lesson focuses on the ability of the children’s poet to transform reality and to create magic. In the course of discussion of the poems it turns out that Marina Boroditskaya creates metaphors in which objects and phenomena turn into their opposites: a little boy becomes the Creator (From Hooligan Motives…) and the war turns into a wedding feast and embrace (Plasticine Army).The lesson is organized in the form of heuristic talk employing such techniques as comparison between the poem and the biblical creation myth (in terms of vocabulary, intonation and plot coincidences), transformation of the poem into a comic, correlation of the images in the poem and certain fragments from the series “Creation of the world. Heaven and Earth” drawn by the French cartoonist Jean Effelas, and predicting of the poem finale. For her variant of studying the works of Marina Boroditskaya with senior pupils, the author chooses two poems. The first poem (From Hooligan Motives...) interprets the cosmogonic myth, and the second one (After the Artist Has Left...) deals with the eschatological myth. Thus, the lesson provides the insight into the personality of the poetess who features a humorous view of life and plays freely with the text of culture.

Keywords

• modern poetry
• russian poetry
• russian poets
• poetry
• russian literature
• methodology of teaching literature
• methodology of literature at school
• students
• literature lessons