Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
10th Lyric Poetry
Lyric Poetry
Expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker in highly musical verse.
Never tells a full story; it focuses on an experience or creates and explores a single effect.
Historical situation and conflict is not described in depth.
“Jade Flower Palace”
Lyric poem that expresses the speaker’s feeling about the impermanence of power and glory.
Setting = images of scurrying rats, ruins, and ghost fires
Message = power and glory are fleeting
“The Moon at the Fortified Pass”
Setting = active kingdom – its people are alive and its armies on the move. Lonely mountain setting.
Images = soldier’s homesickness and fear of death
Meaning = emphasize the senselessness of war
“The Guitar”
Images/Sounds = mournful notes of a guitar
Meaning = compares to a wounded heart
“What are Friends For”
Images = mother’s cynical view of friendship contrast with a daughter’s positive attitude
Meaning = friends offer support not material things
“Making a Fist”
Images = the fist
Meaning = the speaker’s mother answers her fearful question about death by saying that you know you are going to die “when you can no longer make a fist”
“Some Like Poetry”
Images = words (Some, Like, Poetry) & feelings about poetry
Meaning = Like is a vast understatement for the author’s feelings. Poetry is not to everyone’s taste, but for those who value it, the message and imagery within poetry can be life-changing.
Expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker in highly musical verse.
Never tells a full story; it focuses on an experience or creates and explores a single effect.
Historical situation and conflict is not described in depth.
“Jade Flower Palace”
Lyric poem that expresses the speaker’s feeling about the impermanence of power and glory.
Setting = images of scurrying rats, ruins, and ghost fires
Message = power and glory are fleeting
“The Moon at the Fortified Pass”
Setting = active kingdom – its people are alive and its armies on the move. Lonely mountain setting.
Images = soldier’s homesickness and fear of death
Meaning = emphasize the senselessness of war
“The Guitar”
Images/Sounds = mournful notes of a guitar
Meaning = compares to a wounded heart
“What are Friends For”
Images = mother’s cynical view of friendship contrast with a daughter’s positive attitude
Meaning = friends offer support not material things
“Making a Fist”
Images = the fist
Meaning = the speaker’s mother answers her fearful question about death by saying that you know you are going to die “when you can no longer make a fist”
“Some Like Poetry”
Images = words (Some, Like, Poetry) & feelings about poetry
Meaning = Like is a vast understatement for the author’s feelings. Poetry is not to everyone’s taste, but for those who value it, the message and imagery within poetry can be life-changing.
11th British Literature
Stream of Consciousness in "The Looking Glass"
In psychological terms, “stream of consciousness” is a metaphor for our ever-changing, ever-moving human thought processes.
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.” (William James, , 1890)
The first stream of consciousness novel in English was by British writer Dorothy Richardson. This novel, Pointed Roofs, published in 1915, was part of a long semi-autobiographical series, and one of its reviewers, May Sinclair, used the term “stream of consciousness” to describe Richardson’s writing in 1918.
“She has invented, or, if she has not invented, developed and applied to her own uses, a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender. It is of a more elastic fibre than the old, capable of stretching to the extreme, of suspending the frailest particles, of enveloping the vaguest shapes.” (Virginia Woolf, in a review of Richardson’s book Revolving Lights, 1923)
Stream of consciousness writing can be characterized by:
Interior Monologue of a principle character, “overheard” by the reader
Abrupt shifts in topic mid-sentence or mid-paragraph, following thought association rather than chronology
“One must refuse to be put off any longer with sayings and doings such as the moment brought forth - with dinners and visits and polite conversations. One must put oneself in her shoes. If one took the phrase literally, it was easy to see the shoes in which she stood, down in the lower garden, at this moment. They were very narrow and long and fashionable - they were made of the softest and most flexible leather. Like everything she wore, they were exquisite.” (“Lady in the Looking Glass”)
Sensory details like sights, smells, and sounds, recording the narrator’s perceptions of the world as they occur.
Sentences of varying lengths, often very long and often violating standard grammar rules
“The quiet old country room with its rugs and stone chimney pieces, its sunken book-cases and red and gold lacquer cabinets, was full of such nocturnal creatures. They came pirouetting across the floor, stepping delicately with high-lifted feet and spread tails and pecking allusive beaks as if they had been cranes or flocks of elegant flamingoes whose pink was faded, or peacocks whose trains were veined with silver.” (“Lady in the Looking Glass”)
In art, we might compare stream of consciousness writing to Impressionism, another style that tries to evoke the way the viewer sees reality rather than one objective view of reality.
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. … Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. (Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction,” 1919)
Stream of consciousness, especially as deployed by Virginia Woolf, is sometimes thought of as a writing style particularly suited to capturing women's experiences and state of mind:
“…the masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets the standard, which establishes Whitaker’s Table of Precedency, which has become, I suppose, since the war half a phantom to many men and women, which soon—one may hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where the phantoms go…” (Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall”)
How does Virginia Woolf use both the writing style and the content of this story to challenge our assumptions about a singular, objective view of reality?
How do you describe the narrator of this story? What is the narrator’s attitude toward Isabella Tyson?
What material objects does the narrator use to imagine Isabella’s life? What personality or psychological traits do these objects represent in Isabella?
What is the significance of each part of the title of this story? What does the title imply about the story’s purpose? About Isabella as a character?
What is the connection between the last paragraph (below) of the story and the rest? Is there one true view of Isabella Tyson?
In psychological terms, “stream of consciousness” is a metaphor for our ever-changing, ever-moving human thought processes.
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.” (William James, , 1890)
The first stream of consciousness novel in English was by British writer Dorothy Richardson. This novel, Pointed Roofs, published in 1915, was part of a long semi-autobiographical series, and one of its reviewers, May Sinclair, used the term “stream of consciousness” to describe Richardson’s writing in 1918.
“She has invented, or, if she has not invented, developed and applied to her own uses, a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender. It is of a more elastic fibre than the old, capable of stretching to the extreme, of suspending the frailest particles, of enveloping the vaguest shapes.” (Virginia Woolf, in a review of Richardson’s book Revolving Lights, 1923)
Stream of consciousness writing can be characterized by:
Interior Monologue of a principle character, “overheard” by the reader
Abrupt shifts in topic mid-sentence or mid-paragraph, following thought association rather than chronology
“One must refuse to be put off any longer with sayings and doings such as the moment brought forth - with dinners and visits and polite conversations. One must put oneself in her shoes. If one took the phrase literally, it was easy to see the shoes in which she stood, down in the lower garden, at this moment. They were very narrow and long and fashionable - they were made of the softest and most flexible leather. Like everything she wore, they were exquisite.” (“Lady in the Looking Glass”)
Sensory details like sights, smells, and sounds, recording the narrator’s perceptions of the world as they occur.
Sentences of varying lengths, often very long and often violating standard grammar rules
“The quiet old country room with its rugs and stone chimney pieces, its sunken book-cases and red and gold lacquer cabinets, was full of such nocturnal creatures. They came pirouetting across the floor, stepping delicately with high-lifted feet and spread tails and pecking allusive beaks as if they had been cranes or flocks of elegant flamingoes whose pink was faded, or peacocks whose trains were veined with silver.” (“Lady in the Looking Glass”)
In art, we might compare stream of consciousness writing to Impressionism, another style that tries to evoke the way the viewer sees reality rather than one objective view of reality.
Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. … Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. (Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction,” 1919)
Stream of consciousness, especially as deployed by Virginia Woolf, is sometimes thought of as a writing style particularly suited to capturing women's experiences and state of mind:
“…the masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets the standard, which establishes Whitaker’s Table of Precedency, which has become, I suppose, since the war half a phantom to many men and women, which soon—one may hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where the phantoms go…” (Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall”)
How does Virginia Woolf use both the writing style and the content of this story to challenge our assumptions about a singular, objective view of reality?
How do you describe the narrator of this story? What is the narrator’s attitude toward Isabella Tyson?
What material objects does the narrator use to imagine Isabella’s life? What personality or psychological traits do these objects represent in Isabella?
What is the significance of each part of the title of this story? What does the title imply about the story’s purpose? About Isabella as a character?
What is the connection between the last paragraph (below) of the story and the rest? Is there one true view of Isabella Tyson?
Monday, April 16, 2012
11th British Literature
Excellent study guide for "Araby"
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/Araby.html
The Lady in the Looking Glass
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/Araby.html
The Lady in the Looking Glass
9th Short Story Conflict
In literature, Conflict is the inherent incompatibility between the objectives of two or more characters or forces.
By its nature, conflict is unstable. One side must always win and one side must always lose in the end. However, this instability is desirable because it helps hold a reader's interest in a story.
Conflict is most visible between two or more characters, usually a protagonist and an antagonist, but can occur in many different forms.
Three Basic Conflict
Internal conflicts occur when a character is in disagreement with him or herself. Specifically, this occurs when a character has two or more values or traits in opposition. Examples:
§ A police officer who discovers his partner is taking bribes and must choose between loyalty to his friend and upholding the law.
§ A middle-aged woman struggling with a decision to follow the teachings of Jesus or remain an unbeliever.
Relational conflicts are incompatibilities in how two or more individuals relate to one another - Fathers to Sons, Bosses to Employees, Slaves to Masters, etc. Note that the incompatibilities need to grow organically out of the personalities of the individuals rather than from external circumstances. Examples:
§ The classic love triangle plot where a girl must choose between boy A and boy B.
§ A mother who attempts to regulate the life of her wildflower daughter with diabetes who is now an adult.
External conflicts arise from obstacles located outside the protagonist including nature, the supernatural, or society. Examples:
§ A teenage father who desires to provide for his family but has a criminal record that severely limits his job opportunities.
§ A brave knight who faces an ugly troll to free a captive princess.
§ The classic outdoor survival plot: man versus the wild.
Seven Basic Conflicts
Man against Man, Man against Nature, Man against Himself, Man against God, Man against Society, Man caught in the Middle, Man & Woman.
Character v. Character
A conflict arising between two or more characters of the same kind. An example would include a fist fight between two boys.
Character v. Nature
A character pitted against one or more forces of nature. This theme is found in many disaster films. It is also commonly found in stories about survival in remote locales such as the novel Hatchet or Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire".
Character v. Machine
A conflict between a character and an artificial entity such as a computer, robot, or android. The emphasis is on contrasting the character as a natural organism with a synthetic creature. Certainly the Terminator movies fit in this category.
Character v. Self
An internal conflict involving a character wrestling with conflicting emotions, thoughts, or desires.
Character v. Supernatural
A character at odds with elements outside of the natural realm. These include encounters with ghosts, extraterrestrials, and other speculative or theoretical phenomena. Both The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project have elements of conflict in this form as do most Horror stories and many Thrillers.
Character v. Society
A conflict between bad and good. (Series of Unfortunate Events)
Character v. Destiny
A character attempting to break free from a future path chosen without his or her consent. It can also be referred to as a conflict between fate and freewill. A common example is Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
10th Dramatic Poetry and Poetic Forms
Poetic Forms (Structures)
Haiku – unrhymed lyric poem of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. It usually includes an image from nature
Tanka – five unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven and seven syllables. Like haiku, tanka also includes simple, straightforward images.
Sonnet – fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter (five unaccented syllables each followed by an accented one)
Villanelle – lyric poem written in three-line stanzas and ending in a four-line stanza. It has two refrains formed by repeating line 1 in lines 6, 12, and 18 and line 3 in lines 9, 15, and 19.
Quatrain – group of four lines
Cinquain – group of five lines
“The Waking”
Villanelle that reflects upon our daily process of waking up – literally and figuratively – the process of becoming “awake” to the world of nature and the meaning of life.
Two refrain lines: 1,3, 6 & 12; Variations appear in lines 9 & 15
These lines express the central meaning of the poem: that waking up to life and learning about life represent a gradual process that cannot be rushed or planned.
The speaker advises us to appreciate nature, which can teach us to appreciate the beauty of life.
Tanka & Haiku
Japanese poems that reflect on traditional Buddhist emphasis on contemplation of nature as a path to wisdom and understanding. Vivid, fleeting images from nature express ideas and feelings about human experience.
The poem is usually one sentence or phrase.
Images
Cold & winter/autumn = sadness
Spring & flowers = freshness and new beginnings
Dramatic poetry involves a narrative poem of a person in a specific situation. It can involve emotions, but has so much more to it. An example of this type of writing is in Shakespeare's plays.
All conclusions about character and situation must be inferred from what the characters say in the dialogue, similar to a play.
“The Bridegroom”
Variation on the familiar folk motif of a worthy young person standing up to declare independence and becoming heroic. By doing so. it raises questions about fate, whishes, and particularly about making choices for yourself.
“The Stolen Child”
Faries tempting a child to leave his life as a human.
“La Belle Dame sans Merci”
“The Beautiful Woman Without Pity”
Thursday, April 12, 2012
11th Social Commentary
Social Commentary
-writing or speech that offers insights into society
-can be unconscious, as when a writer points to a problem caused by social customs without explicitly challenging those customs
-can be conscious, as when a writer directly attributes a problem to social customs
-usually about an aspect of humanity
Persuasive Techniquies
-appeals to logic based on sound reasoning
-appeals to readers’ sense of morality
-appeals to emotion, addressing readers’ feelings
Jane Austen
-rights and sensibility of women (legal and social standings)
-love and marriage
-wrote On Making an Agreeable Marriage
Charles Dickens
-Industrial Revolution and Education
-social and economic pressures
-wrote Hard Times
James Joyce
-national identity
-history and culture
-morals
-fruitless journey and idealization
-wrote “Araby” in Dubliners
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