World Lit Test 1
"concert of society"
quote towards a supportive philosophy for students who have chosen a course of study not wholly approved by their parents
What did the Modernists feel were the limitations of Realism?
realists could not see what was behind the mirror (subconscious, unconscious, id, etc.), lacked perspective
emergence of first autobiographies
romanticism
french revolution
romanticism
What does Woolf mean to suggest in her brief biography of Judith Shakespeare?
she could never be as famous as her brother, billy, because of her gender.
Romanticism Key Figures
-William Wordsworth (1770-1850) -John Keats (1795-1821) -Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)
The text includes the lines ". . . for many a time/ I have been half in love with easeful Death,/ Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme."
"Ode to a Nightingale"
Modernism
"the modernist artist wants to recreate meaning through art. Thus, meaning becomes not a divine being, but a human endeavor. And art has to be something so breathtakingly awesome and original that it's almost a kind of divine breath that works the artist."
Romanticism Political Philosophy
-"natural laws" as basis for social organization --crafted new state constitutions based on them -"romantic nationalists" --community based on natural ties that united a group instead of on kings or laws -Brotherhood of Man instead of Hierarchy
Enlightenment Key Figures
-Denis Diderot (1713-1784) -Jean le Rond D'Alembert (1717-1783) -Alexander Pope - Essay on Man - "Whatever is, is right." promotes optimist views unlike in ---Candide -Voltaire
Enlightenment (Reason, Science, Knowledge)
-Encyclopedia project to systematize knowledge, make "what could be known" available to all. "The unification of knowledge centered around humankind rather than god. -The Academy system establishing a kind of control over the most learned men by their sponsors—the kings. --broadening of education -clash between the moderns and the ancients -Divine revelation ⇒ human forms of knowledge -Salons - for intellectuals - some hosted by women ⇒ gave them access to intellectuals
Enlightenment Society
-In the 17th and early 18th century, the sense of obligation to society had far more power than it possesses today. Public life mattered more than the private. -Well defined codes of behavior. -Voltaire might criticize the misuse of codes of behavior, but not the codes themselves, which if followed would result in a harmonious society. -Expressiveness to articulate the will of the community, not the eccentric ideas of the individual. -The individual submits to the good of the group. -social organization had evolved into elaborate hierarchical structures -rise of the middle class -new sense of equality ⇒ demand for universal human rights -international commerce ⇒ rise of mercantile class
Romanticism Society
-Institution = repression, distortion of nature -Genius is an innate quality
Why do they leave El Dorado?
-Love. Lack of Cunegonde -Hierarchy. Lack of distinction. -Storytelling. Cacambo, in particular, is glad to return after his travels to become the storyteller of his adventures.
Romanticism Literature
-Lyric poem ⇒ less formalistic --few set rules/ freedom from set conventions -a rejection of neoclassical styles -embraces a turn inward to the emotions, dreams, & fantasies -Individual & uniqueness -imagination -written in local dialects -poets now looked to children and to "primitive" people who seemed closer to nature as models for social experience -Idealized heroes
Modernism Literature
-Reality broken up into discontinuous fragments, which the perceptive audience would have to piece together to be granted understanding. -elements of fragmentation, discontinuous narratives, shifting narrators and points of view, stream of consciousness, and other kinds of experimental techniques. --used in lit. to rearrange the perceptions of the reader -Experimental, avant-garde -it becomes aware that this mirror held up to nature can only capture the surface. --there is much that lies under the surface -Modernists expect their reader to have cultural knowledge --sometimes seen as Elitist
Enlightenment Literature
-Shift in the direction because of an increasingly prosperous and literate bourgeoisie. -Also more inexpensively produces books, journals, etc. -Neoclassical literature versus the modernites in France. -EPIC -Institutions = order -Has Genius (understands Classics) -relied on convention -attempted to control an unstable world -SATIRE --satire calls attention to the powerful presence of the irrational, opposing it with the clarity of the satirist's own claim to reason & tradition -TRAVEL NARRATIVE -RISE OF THE NOVEL
Enlightenment Nature
-Shows the inherent order, the sensibility of things. -A system or pattern is represented, showing the perfection of God's creation . Human nature likewise.
Modernism Key Figures
-T.S. Eliot -Virginia Woolf -Charles Darwin (1809-1882)—challenges church doctrine on creation -Friederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)—questions the values of "the meek" and of acceptance of suffereing, advocating instead a "will to power." detested "the herd" "the herd" refers to the people who go along with life content with what is given to them without questioning it -Karl Marx (1818-1883)—sees the meta-system of economics and exchange as always in service of the rich and powerful, to the disadvantage of the worker. Materialist -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)—Offers a map of the psyche that demands that people take the inner life of the human seriously -James Fraser (1854-1941)—his anthropological work, The Golden Bough, challenges Euro-centric superiority by showing parallels in other civilizations to European practices
In one section, a stage manager bellows something about poodles dancing. What is this ridiculous sight compared to?
-To women acting. the manager says they are unable too.
Enlightenment History
-Voyages of discovery and exploration. More global, and more cross-cultural exchange. -slave trade -transformation of capital -7 years war - the first global war (1756-63) -rise of the middle class -encyclopedia and dictionary projects -state and church both lose power
Modernism History
-about the time of WWI -the horror and devastation of this war caused thinkers to question any stable and meaningful, ordered existence. Add to that the disorienting effect of such nineteenth century thinkers as Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, and these artists are prepared for upheaval.
Which is not a reason that Candide, when he was finally reunited with Cunégunde, was married to her?
-he was a man of honor and had said he was going to do it, so he did it -Her brother was still against the union, and he wanted to triumph over this brother -he loved her for her wit, charm, and beauty -upon their reunion, Cunégunde expected this wedding to happen
Romanticism History
-industrial revolution --agricultural life ⇒ crowded cities ⇒ nature became exotic and valuable -french revolution -Reign of terror --leads to disillusionment -First modern autobiography written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who also wrote The Social Contract --kind of the theoretical underpinning of democracy
Romanticism Nature
-irrational, un-understandable -We might understand the attitude towards nature in two ways. --One is the gentle beauty of the pastoral, which in many senses may be thought to reflect in nature the gentler states of being found in man. --The sublime is considered to be that in nature which is terrifying, awe-inspiring, incomprehensible--the storm in the high mountains, the view from atop a sharp crag, the sheer immensity of the ocean, etc.
Enlightenment Political Philosophy
-questioning of royal power - notion of divine right destroyed -reason instead of faith as guiding light -religion still applies, but aided by reason. "god as a watchmaker" -Deism... encouraged separation of ethics from religion. -Philosophers believe that through reason humans can guide towards a more perfect world.
The first person that Candide and Cacambo meet after their departure from El Dorado causes Candide to renounce optimism. Who is this person?
A slave that is missing a leg and a hand.
romance
An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.
Known as an art critic, one of his principles for the artist is that "[H]is passion and profession is to merge with the crowd."
Baudelaire
Love between two characters is theorized to be proof of happiness, and a wager is even placed on it—but the truth below the surface proves otherwise.
Candide
Love, as a kind of innocent ideal, is the driving force that compels the hero to go on quite a few adventures.
Candide
How might it also fit the definition of parody?
Candide can also be considered a parody because it tends to parallel real world events and people. It also has many moments of bizarre, out-of-place jokes in order to lighten the mood. (Think Candide's sexual joke upon learning of Cunegonde's wound upon her thigh)
In discussing Voltaire's Candide, we spoke of the difference between parody and satire. How does this text fit the description of satire?
Candide fits the definition of a satire because of it's use of incredibly exaggerated people (caricatures) and situations in order to make a statement about things Voltaire finds ridiculous within society, primarily WRT religion and politics.
How does the philosophy of Candide's companion Martin compare to that of Candide? How is this represented in the conversation the pair have about the ship captain who had cheated Candide out of his fare and his last sheep?
Candide has Optimism while Martin has pessimism. When Candide finds out that the ship that sunk belonged to the ship captain that stole his sheep with the jewels, he rejoiced. Martin asks Candide why the others on the ship had to suffer.
One genre of literature that Candide resembles is the genre of the picaresque. Briefly explain what characteristics of this genre Candide shares.
Candide is a low born and naive explorer, travels from place to place in order to survive. He constantly escapes punishment for his crimes and in the end he learns nothing basically. He is an outsider and an ironic and satirical survey of societies corruptions and hypocrisies. Candide is an initially lone traveler who continues to pick up companions along his journey.
One main character who doesn't end up in the extended household with Candide is the brother of Cunegunde. Why does he leave the group, and where does he end up?
Candide sells him back into slavery to work on the ship because even though he is fond of Candide, he still doesn't want them to get married.
chameleon poet
Chameleon poet: You can change to your surroundings temporarily, and you can move to different identities to hide from the world. Let your imagination take you away- Negative Capability is the way Keats escapes- possibly allowed him to cope with the knowledge that he didn't have long to live. But you are still a chameleon even when you have changed your colour. Underneath, Keats is still Keats, no matter what he does to escape the harsh reality.
conscious inertia
Conscious inertia is better than the way an ordinary man lives, even though the narrator envies the ordinary man
Near the end of "The Burial of the Dead" there are these lines: "A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought that death had undone so many." Which classic literary text does Eliot refer to in this passage?
Dante's Inferno
El Dorado presents a great contrast to Europe or South America. How are priests different?
Everyone is a priest! They do not ask God for things, but rather thank him
Candide keeps trying to prove to the Manichean that this is the best of worlds. He hopes to prove so through the example of a couple in love. Why does this example fail?
Giroflée is a Friar and Paquette is a prostitute
List characteristics or actions performed by Jacques the Anabaptist that might define him as a good man that Candide meets along the way. The guy that fell off the ship and Pangloss told Candide not to rescue him.. He also saved Pangloss and Candide in Belgium?
He gave Candide money and food when the religious sect he encountered would not. Because of this juxtaposition and by virtue of the fact that Voltaire was a non-religious man, Voltaire presents him as good simply because of his Anabaptist nature.
In these lines form Keats' Ode to a Nightingale," Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Who is he referring to as "thee"?
He is flying on the wings of poesy to Nightingale
Cogito, ergo sum
I think; therefore, I am. -Rene Descartes -declares the mind as the source of truth and meaning.
Earned a degree in medicine while composing his first written work for the public.
Keats
discontinuous fragments
Reality is broken up into discontinuous fragments, which the perceptive audience would piece together to be granted understanding.
In the course of the story of the old woman's misfortunes, she meets a man who had been castrated in his youth. Where had she first met this unfortunate man, and what is the last thing he does in her story of her life?
She first met him long ago, as he was a worker in the palace in which she grew up. He, of course, makes the remark about how he curses his lack of balls, otherwise he would have raped her. He promises to save her and then promptly sells her into slavery
With whom does Candide leave Cunegunde? An extra 2 full points if the full name is given, with exact spelling.
The Governor, Don Fernando d'lbaraa y Figueroa y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza
Of the people agaisnt whom Candide had drawn his sword or his musket, which had he put to death?
The Jesuit Brother of Cunégunde
crystal palace
The Underground Man mocks the utopian fascination with the idea of the crystal palace, an indestructible edifice that epitomizes rationality. He fears the crystal palace because he is unable to stick his tongue out at it.
How are kings different?
The king lacks the kind of ceremonial hierarchy, ("The ceremony. . .is to embrace the king and kiss him on both cheeks")
What happens in this excerpt: "Suddenly these reflections ended violently and yet without a sound. A large black form loomed into the looking-glass; blotted out everything, strewed the table with a packet of marble tablets strewed with pink and grey, and was gone."
The mailman came by "The man had brought the post"
Candide travels with Cunegunde to South America. What is the cause of their hasty separation?
They were pursued by an alcalde (municipal magistrate) and some alguazils (police) for the murder of the Grand Inquisitor and theft of his jewels. The Governor, Don Fernando d'lbaraa y Figueroa y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza
The time he spent in England among the great thinkers including Pope, Swift, and John Locke gave him great respect for the freedom of thought practiced in that country.
Voltaire
His/her motto in life and writing was "Ecrasez I'infame!"
Voltaire "Crush the infamous"
During the old woman's narrative, she tells of how she came upon a speaker of her native Italian, who said to her "O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!" What is this fellow survivor of the massacre in Morocco saying (roughly translated)?
What a pity to lack the equipment with which to rape you
Responsible for such innovations in narrative as the use of "stream of consciousness"
Woolf
The attention to nature present in his work is influenced by his childhood in the Lakes District of England
Wordsworth
This work describes a state of mind rather than a person. In former days it was a love that was all passion, and now has become tinged with a capacity for reflection and intellectual evaluation.
Wordsworth "Tintern Abbey"
In "The Lady in the Looking Glass" the second paragraph describes the narrator's position as
a camouflaged naturalist observing animals in the wild
postmodernism
a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.
By whom did Candide and his band inspired to adapt the need to work and the motto, "You must cultivate your garden"?
a local farmer
ode
a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter.
Romanticism
a period that fosters individuality and a profound connection to nature.man and his feelings are important, and these can be found reflected in and as a reflection of nature. -French Revolution to the end of 19th century (overlaps with others, like realism). -lasted roughly from the 1780s to the 1830s
Candide must flee Buenos Aires, and thus be separated from Cunégunde. Why did he flee?
a ship had arrived looking for the killer of the Grand Inquisitor
"the herd"
a term disliked by Nietzsche, refers to people who act like sheep or mindless zombies
"underground"
a twisted deranged soul who deserves no compassion and who should exist in a hole
verisimilitude
appearance of being real or true
prologue
before the opening of a story
abbey
catholic monastery or convent, sometimes protestant
plain speak
clear, succinct writing/audiotary designed to ensure the reader/listener understands as quickly and completely as possible.
objective correlative
combination of events, images, words, phrases, etc that evoke an emotion within the reader. Usually not one of these alone because it is the combination itself that creates the emotion
What is the natural disaster the travelers experience in Lisbon?
earthquake
lyric poem
expresses a process of perception, thought, or emotion, often in the first person
salons
gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. Mostly run by women.
satire
has political value and makes a statement by mocking something and insulting you
sonnet
is a type of poem that has a 14 line iambic pentameter & 10 syllables per line
Candide is sure he saw Pangloss hanged by the Inquisition, but he finds he is still living much later in the book. How did he survive being hanged?
it was raining on execution day, and the knots were wet
The poem, "The Infinite," by Giacomo Leopardi, tells a kind of a story. Describe the state of mind of the speaker of the poet. Describe the transition from the first part of the poem to the last, and what it is that causes this transition. How might Keat's concept of negative capability fit the scenario described by the poem?
it would fit keats concept of negative capability because in the infinite, the speaker of the poem gets lost in endlessness. He celebrates the feeling of drowning in the endlessness. it extends beyond his own restricted vision.
framing narrative
narrative where the speaker is not omniscient and is biased by his own motives, perspectives, etc and becomes a character in the story. Such a narrative switches between viewpoints
Most literary movements are founded on a dissatisfaction about the movement that preceded it. What was the problem with the Enlightenment Culture, according to the Romanticists?
not enough focus on individuality/emotion
picaresque
of or relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero (candide, slaughterhouse 5) -a fool/naive person on a lot of adventures, doesn't learn much about the world when adventure ends
"forlorn"
pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely.- ode to a nightingale...it's the word that snaps him out of his trance
The old woman claims that the hardships experienced by Candide and Cunégonde are trifles compared to those she suffered. How, for instance did this once fair daughter of a pope come to be riding on only one buttock?
she had experienced cannibalism at the hands of janissaries in Turkey
The poem, "To Autumn," is said to emphasize different senses. Which sense is primary in the last stanza?
sound
parody
spoof funny without making you have to think hard
travel narrative
stories about traveling, with a higher form of literary value.
When Candide was reunited with the good philosopher Pangloss, Pangloss was "a beggar who was covered with pustules, his eyes were sunken, the end of his nose rotted off, his mouth twisted, his teeth black, he had a croaking voice and a hacking cough, and spat a tooth every time he tried to speak." What had "reduced Pangloss to this present pitiful state?
syphilis
stream of consciousness
technique used by modernists, notably james joyce, virginia woolf
negative capability
the ability to be satisfied w/o knowing something or chasing answers
Enlightenment
the age of reason (1650-1789)
"The Wasteland" is a longer poem, and is dense with footnotes. What does Eliot intend to convey, or describe, in this poem?
the cultural crisis in europe after WWI. talks about earth as a wasteland where all meaning is lost.
development of standardized language rules in dictionaries
the enlightenment
the speaker of the poem
the narrator of the poem, the speaker
"measured out in coffee spoons"
the sameness of everyday in terms of life
sublime
the side of nature that is awe-inspiring, frightening, and incomprehensible (ie the vastness of the ocean). The counterpart to pastoral
pastoral
the side of nature that is peaceful and calm, as if looking at a pasture. The counterpart to sublime.
How is the prison system different?
there is no prison system. There's no courts because there is justice everywhere. (Everyone has a matching system of ideals)
In lecture, Doherty pointed out a high irony in the use of Hamlet by Eliot in this poem. What is this irony?
they are both indecisive but he sates "he is not Hamlet"
Eliot uses the classic figure of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a figure against whom Prufrock compares himself. What does Prufrock say of himself in relation to Hamlet?
they are both indecisive, but he takes it back and says he is not as majestic/charismatic as Hamlet
paradoxicalist
when your thinking contradicts itself - Dostoyevsky
What is it, according to the Turkish farmer, that "keeps us from the three great evils: boredom, vice, and need"?
work
