11th Dictionary

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.

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?

11th British Literature

Excellent study guide for "Araby"
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.

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”

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

11th British Romantic Poetry

British Romanticism does not refer to Mick Jagger making out with a bimbo. It refers to a literary movement in England that took place roughly between 1785-1830.

The Romantics rejected the idea that reason could explain everything and pledged their faith in the powers of nature and the imagination.

The imagination was a creative force comparable to that of nature and was the fundamental source of morality and truth, enabling people to sympathize with others and to picture the world.

Simplicity and directness of language

Expression of spontaneous, intensified feelings

Profound responses to nature, in which nature appears to reflect the soul and contemplation of nature leads to a deeper awareness of self

Gothic Literature because a popular feature of the Romantic Movement.

-events take the reader from the reasoned order of the everyday world in to the dark and dreadful world of the supernatural.

                -set in dark towers, eerie monasteries with underground passages, disquieting, mysterious atmosphere

-word Gothic describes the style of architecture used in many European castles, and the literary tradition was given this name for its uses of these castles as settings

                -novels like Frankenstein and poems like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

                -modern science fiction, horror and ghost stories

               

Romantic Poets

Romantic Poets include Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Byron.

·         Characteristics of Romantic Poets

Beauty of the Supernatural: British Romantics believed something existed beyond the physical world. The Spirit world, according to Romantics, had unleashed its power and inspiration to overthrow tyranny in government and in literature. Unlike the American Romantics who wrote of ghosts, demonic cats, and rope-gnawing rats, British Romanticism's treatment of the supernatural excluded horror and the macabre and focused on supernatural energy and beauty.

Championing of the Individual: Revolution in Europe brought to light the importance of the individual. Ordinary people now became the subject of lofty language. British Romanticism attempted to free itself from traditional forms and subjects.

The Importance of Nature: The poet, according to the Romantics, is only at peace when in nature; moreover, while in nature, the poet intervened with the great Universal Mind. Romantic poets made frequent use of personification with nature, ascribing human traits to daffodils, fields, streams, and lakes. Nature, in essence, became emotionally expressive.

The Dangers of Technology: A natural consequence of celebrating nature was a disdain for technology and industrialism.

·         Major Early Romantic Poets

The following share characteristics of Romantic poets:

William Blake (1757-1827): Blake's poetry dwelt upon his divine vision and rebelled against traditional poetic forms and techniques. He created his own mythological world with man as the central figure. His more famous poems include The Lamb, The Tyger, The Chimney Sweeper, and The Clod and the Pebble. What makes Blake's poem especially attractive for teaching in high school is he often wrote two poems with the same title--one poem negative and one poem positive, excellent for compare and contrast writing.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The most famous of the British Romantics, Wordsworth is considered the nature poet. He revolutionized poetic subjects, focusing on ordinary people in rustic settings. He, in addition, wrote about and considered the poet as superior to all other writers. His most famous poems include I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, We are Seven, and I Travelled Among Unknown Men. Most high school literature textbooks have at least one poem by Wordsworth.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Coleridge and Wordsworth are often grouped together as The Lake Poets, and for good reason. Together they are credited as the founders of the Romantic movement. Coleridge's most famous poems, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Kahn, and Christabel have a distinct supernatural element and strongly influenced American Romantics such as Poe and Hawthorne.

·         Later Romantic Poets

The following share characteristics of later Romantic poets:

Lord Byron (1788-1824): Lord Byron enjoyed unmatched popularity. Byron's most famous creations are his dark heroes, called Byronic heroes, who, in fact, were not heroes at all, but stood out from ordinary humans as larger than life. The Byronic hero brooded, possessed insatiable appetites and incredible strength, rebelled against societal norms, and forced upon himself exile. Byron's most famous works include Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Lord Byron is generally reserved for university level literature courses and is rarely found in high school anthologies.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Like all Romantics, Shelley was a radical non-conformist. He campaigned for social justice, even marrying the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, an English leader in the women's rights movement. His wife would later write Frankenstein. His most famous poems include Mutability, Ozymandias, and Ode to the West Wind.

John Keats (1795-1821): Perhaps the most popular Later Romantic poet, Keats accomplished great things during his short life. His Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode on Melancholy find their way into anthologies throughout the English speaking world. Keats considered contact with poets as a threat to his independence and therefore shunned his contemporaries.

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

-written in a dreamlike language, set in an indeterminate past, and filled with supernatural events – is part of the British tradition of fantasy literature

-fantasy writers like Coleridge use strange settings and supernatural tales to break the spell of ordinary life.

- by plunging the reader into a wild, unfamiliar world, they remind us that human imagination can always envision worlds beyond the one into which we are born

-encourages power of scientific discoveries and social reform

Occasion = wedding

The Mariner kills the Albatross with his crossbow and wears it around his neck as a sign of his crime of killing it.

The Mariner’s shipmates drop dead as a symbol for the ways in which guilt can cut off an individual from others.

The Albatross falls off the Mariner’s neck because his guilt has been forgiven.

The Mariner’s lifelong penance is to wander the Earth telling his tale and teaching love of all things great and small.

His listener is sadder and wiser…much like a mature adult becomes after gaining knowledge and experience in the real world and discovering the truth about things. This point is much like the same which William Blake alludes to in his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

9th Short Stories Characterization & Setting

Setting – time, place, environment and mood

The definition for setting is time and place. Understanding the setting of a story, however, means more than listing time and place. It means discussing how the setting impacts characters and events.

Characterization –

the method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others.

Round Characters (dynamic) - see multidimentions, multiple aspects

Flat Characters (static) - never change, only see one side

Problems faced

• What problems were faced by individuals of different ages?

• What caused these problems and why were they important?

• In what ways do young and old people face similar problems?

Decisions

• What important decisions were made by the characters?

• What influenced individuals in their decisions?

• In what ways did family members or peers exert strong influences in decisions?

• What resulted from these decisions?

• In what ways, if any, would the decisions affect them in later life?

• What other choices did individuals have, and would they have changed the results?

·         Do you think the same decisions would have been made if the characters were younger? Older?

• What decisions do you or other family members make which are similar to the those in the story?

Physical circumstances

• What did the individual(s) look like?

• How important were physical appearances to the story?

• What were the historical and geographical settings?

• Did the setting make a difference to the story?

• How would the story have been different had it taken place in a different time or setting?

Personal qualities

• What personal attributes, such as kindness or impatience, did individuals have which determined the course of the story?

• In what ways do you see these qualities in younger and older persons you know?

Values and goals

• What did younger and older individuals in the story value most?

• Give examples of behaviors that reflect these values.

• What did younger and older individuals want out of life? What were their goals?

• In what ways do you see people today seeking similar goals?

“The Cask of Amontiado”

Time – Dusk during a huge town carnival

Place – Underground vaults in an empty house

Mood/Tone – sinister, ominous, chilling

Irony – the word “cask”

-Fortunado in a jester costume

-Family coat of arms or crest “A huge human foot d’or, ina field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel”

Family motto “Nemo me impune lacessit” “No one attacks me with impunity”

"The Necklace" Summary

Madame Loisel is miserable. She wants to be high class, but she's married to a clerk. Her husband, the clerk, comes home one afternoon, after a hard days work, no doubt, with an invitation to a party at the Minister of Education's house. Madame Loisel is unhappy for she has no dress to wear. Her husband, who has worked hard, no doubt, to save up money for a gun, uses the money to buy Madame Loisel a dress. She's still not happy, for what use is a really nice dress if you have no necklace for it?

That's where Madame Forestier comes in. She has lots of jewels, including a beautiful necklace she reluctantly loans to Madame Loisel for the party. Now, Madame Loisel's happy...until she loses the necklace. They must borrow money to replace the necklace and spend the next 10 years of their life, working hard, no doubt, earning enough to pay back the money they borrowed. One day while "strolling along the Champs Elysees," Madame Loisel runs into Madame Forestiere and tells her what happened. Forestiere, taken aback by Madame Loisel's sorry plight, informs her that the necklace she lent her that day ten years ago was a fake.

High Cinquain: five-line poem

·         noun

·         adjective, adjective

·         ing-verb, ing-verb, ing-verb

·         four word statement

·         synonym or equivalent of line 1

Example:

The Necklace

priceless, elegant

borrowing, wearing, losing

I must borrow money

materialism

You can find homework stories for tomorrow at http://ng002.k12.sd.us/

10th Imagery Poetry

Probable Passage:

Match these phrases with the given terms in the graphic organizer according to what senses you believe the phrases refer to.  You may find that some phrases fit in more than one place, choose the one you think is best.

·         Roofs of houses

·         Naked feet along the beach

·         Sit at table at dinner

·         Honey-bees busy around the hive

·         Movements of machinery

·         Light and dark

·         Summer forenoon

·         Exquisite, thin curve of the moon

·         The sea

·         Children at sports

·         Savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera

·         The frames, limbs, organs, of men and women

·         Admirable sight of the perfect old man

·         The streets of Manhattan

Imagery and Senses

Auditory (hearing)	Visual (seeing)
Tactile (touching and feeling)	Olfactory/Gustatory  (smelling/tasting)

10th Poetry and Songs

“Funny the Way it is,” by The Dave Mathews Band

Lying in the park on a beautiful day

Sunshine in the grass and the children play

Sirens pass and fire engine red

Someone’s house is burning down

On a day like this

And evening comes and were hanging out

On the front step and a car goes

By with the windows rolled down

And that war song is playing

Why can’t we be friends?

Someone is screaming and crying

In the apartment upstairs

Chorus

"Funny the way it is"

If you think about it

Somebody’s going hungry

And someone else is eating out

Funny the way it is, not right or wrong

Somebody’s heart is broken

And it becomes your favorite song

The way your mouth feels

In a lovers kiss

Like a pretty bird on a breeze

Or water to a fish

A bomb blast brings a building

Crashing to the floor

Hear the laughter

While the children play war

Chorus

Funny the way it is

If you think about it

One kid walks 10 miles to school

Another’s dropping out

Funny the way it is, not right or wrong

On a soldier’s last breath

His baby is being born

Standing on a bridge

Watch the water passing under me

It must have been much harder

When there was no bridge just water

Now the world is small

Compared to how it used to be

With mountains and oceans and winters

And rivers and stars

Watch the sky

A jet plane so far out of my reach

Is there someone up there

Looking down on me?

A boy chase a bird

So close but every time

He never catch her

But he can’t stop trying

10th Poetry

Musical Devices – makes poetry sound a certain way

(equivalent to harmony and melody for music to create effects)

Alliteration – repetition of the first sound of several words, as in silent swinging or roaring rise

Onomatopoeia – the use of words to imitate actual sounds, as in bang, tap, swish

Assonance – repetition of similar vowel sounds, as in deep, beneath, dreamless

Consonance – repetition of rhythms; a pattern of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, as in "pitter patter" or in "allmammals named Sam are clammy".

Repetition and rhyme- repeated words and words that have the same sound

When regular rhythm is broken, the poet wants to draw attention to spot or line.

“In Flanders Field”

Background – American military cemetery and memorial in Belgium. The 368 American men who are buried there died in World War I, fighting to liberate Belgium from German occupation. In the middle of the cemetery is a chapel, on whose walls are inscribed the names of 43 Americans missing in action – soldiers whose remains were either never identified or never recovered.

Theme: This poem, in its stark simplicity, calls on the living to acknowledge our bond with the dead – and our debt to those who gave their lives. The dead, the speakers of the poem, call upon us to take up the fight for a better world.

Imagery – the descriptive language that recreates sensory experiences

Sensory Language – words the poets use to create images or form a mental image