Generals Test Try Two
Crown of Sonnets
"A crown of sonnets or sonnet corona is a sequence of sonnets, usually addressed to one person, and/or concerned with a single theme. Each of the sonnets explores one aspect of the theme, and is linked to the preceding and succeeding sonnets by repeating the final line of the preceding sonnet as its first line. The first line of the first sonnet is repeated as the final line of the final sonnet, thereby bringing the sequence to a close." Crown sequence=recursive like love, always enacting a volta that is a turn AND a return An advanced form of crown of sonnets is also called a sonnet redoublé or heroic crown, comprising fifteen sonnets, in which the sonnets are linked as described above, but the final binding sonnet is made up of all the first lines of the preceding fourteen, in order. The fifteenth sonnet is called the Mastersonnet.>>>Donne and Wroth have done this In Wroth's crown of sonnets in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, it seems to be a triumph of measure over excess, but the repetition of the last line=her melancholic excess , enacts the repeated self-flagellations of the melancholic (melancholy was defined as an excess)
Ostranenie
"defamiliarization" "estrangement" Encouraging people to see common things as strange, wild, or unfamiliar; defamiliarizing what is known in order to know it differently or more deeply
Mise en abyme
((placed in the center/abyss) Self-reflection within a literary work. A frame story in which the core narrative illuminates some aspect of the larger narrative. Russian doll structure. Mise en abyme occurs in a text when there is a reduplication of images or concepts referring to the textual whole. Mise en abyme is a play of signifiers within a text, of sub-texts mirroring each other (hall of mirrors). This mirroring can attain a level where meaning may become unstable and, in this respect, may be seen as part of the process of deconstruction. The film-within-a-film, where a film contains a plot about the making of a movie, is an example of mise en abyme. The film being made within the film refers, through its mise en scène, to the real film being made. The spectator sees film equipment, stars getting ready for the take, crew sorting out the various directorial needs. The narrative of the film within the film may directly reflect the one in the real film. Examples=Frame story of Canterbury Tales (the conglomeration of these pilgrim-stories), Play within the Play of Hamlet (the murder of gonzago), opening dream-vision frame of allegory (Pilgrim's Progress, i Dreamt this), the manuscript at the end of Foe.
skaz
(From the Russian). A technique of narration that mirrors ORAL (huge emphasis here) narration with its hesitations, corrections, grammatical mistakes, interactions, etc. Catcher in the Rye uses this, but also Huckleberry Finn, amongst others (also "My Last Duchess"). Typically, the narrator is a simple man of the people with restricted intellectual horizons and linguistic competence, addressing listeners from his own social milieu in a markedly oral speech). Skaz enhances ostrenanie. Markedness between author and narrator, who is inexperienced and clumsy. Spontaneous narration rather than preplanned. Double-voicedness: telling the stories of himself/other characters but also talking to us.
Pamela or Virtue Rewarded
(Full title= Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded), Samuel Richardson, 1740
dramatic lyric
(might be confusing since many of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues were printed in a book of the name: Dramatic Lyrics) Dramatic lyrics are essentially dramatic monologues EXCEPT they do not care to reveal the speaker's temperament and character. Dramatic lyrics' focus=speaker's elaborately ingenious argument rather than on the character Example: "The Canonization" or "The Flea" by John Donne
Paradise Lost, Milton
- Epic poem in blank verse based on the biblical story of the fall of man; studied the motives of those who reject God; attacked divine right; rejected Catholicism. - Criticized the Stuart monarchs and justified the execution of Charles I.
Romantacism
-Rejects Enlightenment philosophy which stresses logic/reason. States that humans should rely on emotions and natural passion as guide to living, and should also love spontaneously. Close affinity between mind and nature French Revolution of 1700s made it so poetry no longer belonged to the aristocracy alone; similarly, scientific revolution made everyday natural world>>religious experience Tendency for Christ-Complex? (Whitman, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and perhaps Keats?) Paul de Man: "Is romanticism a subjective idealism, open to all the attacks of solipsism that, from Hazlitt to the French structuralists, a succession of de-mystifiers of the self have directed against it? Or is it instead a return to a certain form of naturalism after the forced abstraction of the Enlightenment, but a return which our urban and alienated world can conceive of only as a nostalgic and unreachable past?" (Waserman, like me, takes Wordsworth to represent the extreme form of subjectivism whereas Keats, as a quasi-Shakespearean poet of negative capability, exemplifies a sympathetic and objective form of material imagination." Coleridge, though, he thought of as a reconciler between these two, conflating phenomenal world of understanding with that of noumenal world of reason, subjects with objects) De man's answer=not a dialect between subject and object, rather one of allegory and symbol. "A conflict between a conception of the self seen in its authentically temporal predicament and a defensive strategy that tries to hide from this negative self-knowledge." symbol=illusory identification with the non-self, with a timeless temporality that self does not have (the thing that endures under the materiality/decay of nature), defensive strategy against negative self-knowledge (death), escape from the unimaginable 'touch of time' allegory=temporal sequence, death, that humans inevitably follows, Romantics de-prioritized it because they were afraid of it. Allegory=identity construction based on neoclassical principles, of identity as fixed, over an erased origin, fixed subjects/objects symbol=creative identification with God, making something out of nothing, the symbol as material vessel that takes in the divine, conflating subject/object Another trait that English romanticists share=they love Milton Robert Southey=referred to the school of Byron/Shelley as belonging to the Satanic school of Romantacism (Blake belongs here, too). Keats/Mary Shelley are the true Miltonians who can capture him in all his ambivalence.
Robert Browning
1812-1889
Scriblerus Club
A club organized in London in 1714 by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope to satirize literary incompetence. It expressed its opinions of the false taste of the age, particularly of learning, through satiric fragment. Gulliver's Travels arose out of this club
Modernism
A cultural movement embracing human empowerment and rejecting traditionalism as outdated. Rationality, industry, and technology were cornerstones of progress and human achievement. Modernists were interested in the experience of urban life, the intersection and influence of global cultures, in science and technology, and in formal fragmentation and surprising juxtaposition. But following Modernism's contradictory states, it's also the modernist belief that rationality, technology are inferior to art/religion (Godfrey St. Peter/Eliot in the Wasteland). As Susan Friedman points out, many of its definitions are contradictory, and contradiction might itself be at the heart of modernism (postmodernism seems to just be explicitly about contradiction). Modernism somehow embraces both elitism and rebellion, a centrifugal break from tradition and yet a centripetal pull towards organization/definition/a master narrative, was both for the low and especially the high, uses parataxis and yet there is the implication of hypotaxis, promises freedom and yet build static models, reflects alienation and yet builds a community. Another strange binary: modernism promises unlimited artistic freedom, as Eliot says "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal," and yet this was also a period of INTENSE guarding of intellectual property rights, e.g. Joyce and Samuel Roth story (another good quote from 'Roth', i.e. Paul Saint-Amour,: "And yet if the different shades of modernism share anything, it seems to me, it is a preoccupation with these indispensable shadows--with the criminality that delimits innocence, the obscenity that galvanizes decency, the unconscious that sponsors conscious life, the debts that bankroll equity, the chaos that undergirds the cosmos."--Joyce himself was a plagarist, taking his brimstone passages in A Portraist from Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti Common techniques: aesthetic self-consciousness; JUXTAPOSITION AND PARADOX (Winter will keep us warm) /montage/fragmentation (Du Bois's chapters; Faulkner's parts between the siblings); paradox/uncertainty; demise of the unified subject (Friedman's piece has an AWESOME chart for the differences between modernism/postmodernism on page 4; one awesome distinction: M=signified, PM=signifier) Baudelaire: "The transient, the fleeting, the contingent" (modern as insistence upon the Now) Must be remembered that it comes not only after the traditional but also before the postmodern, so it's in a liminal, never fully stable state. And no definition of modernism would be complete without the Harlem Renaissance (jazz, linguistic/rythmic experimentation, intertextual signifyin') "The lifeblood of modernity's choas is its order. The impulse to order is the product of chaos." Zambreno: "So much of modernism is myth-making — who gets to be remembered? Whose writing is preserved and whose is not?" The perfect storm of violence and technological innovation that was WWI had also cast doubt on old Victorian notions of humankind's onward march of progress over the centuries. Generally speaking, the Modernist movement in literature—of which Stevens is a key poet—is viewed as a response to a world undergoing wide-reaching and rapid change. Modernism=self-critique, "the circus animals' desertion," but this critique of oneself through art, linguistification of the self begins occurs, too, in Shakespeare/Milton/and probs Chaucer, it's just a matter of HOW this occurs Examples: Yeats, Elliot,, Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
What is the difference between poetic form and structure?
A good way of thinking about the relationship of forms to structures is that poetic forms--also known as genres--are structures that have been stabilized and used again and again by poets through time.
Soliloquy
A long speech expressing the thoughts of a character alone on stage or with other actors keeping quiet on stage. that is to say, unlike dramatic monologue, soliloquies are not addressed to other people within the narrative framework. Truthfulness of soliloquy is thrown out the window by Iago, whereas a soliloquy by Hamlet doesn't really tell us much because it's so constructed, though it is very beautiful for its existentialness. Browning's Caliban achieves a sort of dialogic soliloquy in its ramblingness and aleatoire nature, picking up on various perceptions here and there (which gives us insight into what the unconscious is attracted to)
poetic persona
A persona, from the Latin for mask, is a character taken on by a poet to speak in a first-person poem. A persona, from the Latin for mask, is a character taken on by a poet to speak in a first-person poem. Persona refers to the voice a writer creates to tell a story or to define the speaker in a poem. Sometimes the writer may share real-life experience or feelings in autobiographical writing. Or he may write as a detached observer, keeping a distance from events in the poem, or an imaginary character. What is the function of the persona? Function of Persona In literature, authors use persona to express ideas, beliefs, and voices they are not able to express freely, due to some restrictions, or because they cannot put into words otherwise. Persona is also sometimes a role assumed by a person or a character, in public or in society.
Ars Poetica
A poem about writing a poem A poem that explains the "art of poetry," or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem. a poem written on the subject of poetic art, usually explaining poet's reasons for writing Ars Poetica=is what distinguishes the poetic consciousness of early modernism, as a conscious move toward poetic self-consciousness, it's an opportunity to construct the self, to project the self to reader Professor New: "it is commonplace for poets to date their birth as poets to the moment in childhood or adolescence when they realized that time was passing. Not coincidentally, many of the poems we'll read in this final part of the course, poems exploring what it means to read poetry at all, what it is to be a poet, evolve out of some childhood incident, where realization of the sweetness of the present moment coincides with understanding that moment is temporary unless we can somehow hold it in language."
Country House Poem
A poem in which the author compliments a patron or friend through a description of his country house. Common practice in Johnson's time for poets to write flattering poems for rich patrons in the hope of obtaining a long-term job, which his is (though Johnson never received additional commissions from the family) These owners of these houses also owned and ruled the land around them much like a King. element of noblesse oblige, which stems all the way from Illiad, a social responsibility of the nobility to maintain their status, the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged
Parable
A simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson
free indirect discourse
A style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech. Race: reflects the spit voice of double-consciousness Ex.=Their Eyes Were Watching God, No-No Boy (it's the hyphenation in African/Asian-American) Modernity=represents the fragmentation of modernity, division rather than fictional-psychological unity Theory: reflects the split voice of a moral person disconcerted by larger systems/ideology, Sianne Ngai: ""the novel's investment in the tension between life and theory is perhaps best epitomized by its major innovation, free indirect discourse, and its oscillation between first-and third person perspectives respectively aligned with the "aspirations of a socially minded moral participant" and a "bleak[er] systems view."" Examples: Perhaps Foe or Nervous Conditions?? Midnight Children?? (need to recheck)
burlesque
A work of literature meant to ridicule a subject; a grotesque, mocking, lewd, ludicrous imitation. Parody is essentially the act of mocking something in style, by using the elements or literary/dramatic techniques of an individual or genre to make fun of it. More of a subtle mimicry that implicitly shows the flaws of the thing being parodied Burlesque is a direct mockery, often in a lewd or vulgar way, of something in particular—either a play, film, or novel. much more explicit, harsh than parody.
The Description of Cookham
Aemilia Lanyer, 1611, look at 1500-1670 Notes
Ulysses
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (future and longest Poet Laureate of Great Britain),
Allegory
Allos=other+agoria=speaking, to speak other, hyponia=sub-meaning, personification (prosopopoeia) very related. trope/discursive mode that lies between metaphor (y axis/paradigmatic/absence) metonymy (x axis/syntagmatic/contiguous) (pars in toto) Four levels: Literal, Allegorical (symbolic/past), tropological (moral/ethical), anagogical (typological/future) A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. A literary work in which characters, objects, or actions represent abstractions.a story, poem, or picture that lays out its own interpretive framework to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. allegory's tendency to read itself, or (as Frye says) to prescribe the direction of its commentary, suggests the formal/phenomenological affinities of the genre with criticism/psycho-analysis. Allegory as allegory of desire: "think of the self-propelling, meandering impulse of the Canterbury Tales, how it begins the scene with people who "longen" to go on pilgrimage to Canterbury, but also the way the tales themselves set off towards allegorical space." Fineman, allegory as recuperative originology: "It is as though allegory were precisely that mode that makes up for the distance, or heals the gap, between the present and a disappearing past, which, without interpretation, would be otherwise irretrievable and foreclosed'---" >>allegory=metaphoric metonymy and a metonymic metaphor (each has a tint of the other) (think of spenser's forests that metaphorize his heroes while they wander through them)--Fletcher, all the side characters and incidents refer back to the fixation/destiny of the main character Angus Fletcher, rhythm of allegory to that of obsessional neurosis paradox of allegory=sentenious/didactice/abstract moral-mongering + most empty and concrete (structuralist) of the poetic figures allegory initiates and continually revivifies its own desire, an insatiable desire born of its own structurality Perhaps this is one reason why, as Angus Fletcher has remarked, allegory seems by its nature to be incompletable, never quite fulfilling its grand design. So too, this explains the formal affinity of allegory with obsessional neurosis...[deriving] precisely from such a search for lost origins, epitomized in the consequences of the primal scene, which answers the child's question of where came from with a diacritical solution that he cannot accept and that his neurosis thereupon represses and denies (then builds upon). Teskey on the violence of allegory in PP: "the uncannily familair characters of Bunyan (Talkative now Spiriutalist in modern age), who seem to be turned into writing by a force that bends all their actions to suit what they are called." ( "The greatest allegorical poets do not simply transform life into meaning. They exacerbate the antipathy of the living to the significant by exposing the violence entailed in transforming the other.)--Allegory=expression of ideological/theological violence that is needed to make sense/order of the world. ALSO=violence of judgement. Examples=Pilgrim's Progress/Faerie Queen Found in=Paradise Lost, Pilgrim's Progress
New Materialism
Also referred to as the "biological turn," Post-constructionist, linguistic turn... Instead of prominence given to language/culture/representation, let's explore the material/somatic realities beyond their ideological articulations and discursive inscriptions. the primacy of matter as an underexplored question. Matter as formative impetus/agent not only sculpted by but also productive in conditioning and enabling social words.
Walt Whitman
American poet
"The Garden"
Andrew Marvell
Harlem Renaissance
Black literary and artistic movement centered in Harlem that lasted from the 1920s into the early 1930s (even 50s) that both celebrated and lamented black life in America; Partly the product of the Great Migration (of formerly enslaved Black people coming to the North/Midwest/West) and Black people coming from the Caribbean (McKay) and Africa Most certainly a factor in Modernism (musical form of Jazz, of the cinema of the movement)-fragmentation, liminality, alienation, self-fashioning A question to ask is how writers look back to the before-Harlem period? Erase or embrace it? Examples: Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Rita Dove, Nella Larsen (?!)
The Goophered Grapevine
Charles Chesnutt, 1887
Augustan Literature
DEFINITIVE TRAITS: - Satirical (especially in terms of politics) - Parody -Neoclassical (parallels between the contemporary world and the ancients) (eg. a classical poem could be recast in a 17th-century setting, or myth like Nisus/Euryalus being equated to a relationship between satirists--hence how poetry became more PERSONAL, precursor to romantacism) - Political from a philosophical/detachetd position (Gulliver) -Yes heroic couplets but also experimented with adaptations (Dryden's triplet rhyme alexandrines in "Oldham" that "mellows" the poem) LIFESPAN: Early - Mid 18th century AUTHORS: - Alexander Pope - Jonathan Swift WORKS: - Gulliver's Travels Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope, who had been imitating Horace, wrote an Epistle to Augustus that was in fact addressed to George II of Great Britain and seemingly endorsed the notion of his age being like that of Augustus (who loved learning and poetry), when poetry became more mannered, political and satirical than in the era of Julius Caesar.
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Defoe
manuscript culture
During the Middle Ages (400-1500 CE), a period in which books were painstakingly lettered, decorated, and bound by hand. During this time, priests and monks advanced the art of bookmaking (were considered the earliest professional editors) In the Renaissance, sonnets were written this way too, to be shared as hand-written manuscripts. They were passed around among members of the court. In a way, they were more like secret notes passed between groups of friends than published poems. Mary Wroth's group was the 'Sidney Circle." Manuscript culture also shaped the style of Renaissance poetry. Sonnets are dense and it can be hard to know what everything references because the sonnet is intended for a very limited audience who would have understood the coded references. That audience was also aristocratic with lots of time to puzzle over tricky poems and respond with their own complicated verse. As print became more accessible, and more and more poems were written for publication, poetry became better suited to a broader audience. Conversation poems of the Romantic period undermine the hiearchies of aristocratic audience in manuscript culture for more colloquial environs.
Classicism in novels
Early novels appeared in an era that held classical literature in high esteem, and novelists consciously adopted aspects of classical literature, such as Aristotle's insistence on moral value, Greek dramatist's use of divine intervention and epic poetry's focus on the hero's journey. Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" serves as an extended lesson on the values of middle-class morality and presupposes the involvement of God in personal affairs. Novels such as "Robinson Crusoe," "Gulliver's Travels" and "Don Quixote" center on the hero's journey as modeled in works by Homer and Virgil.
Vivienne Haigh-Wood
Eliot's wife
poetic meters
English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. IAMBIC (x /) : That time of year thou mayst in me behold TROCHAIC (/ x): Tell me not in mournful numbers SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a voice that is still DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl) Pyrrhic=(x x): "TO A green thought IN A green shade" Bacchius (x / /)=(slow, plodding) "my heart aches"
The Sound and the Fury
Faulkner, 1929,
Evelina
Frances Burney 1778
roman a clef
French for a novel (with a key) in which historical events and actual people appear under the guise of fiction Examples=Rape of the Lock, Princess de Cleves
Helen Burns
Helen Burns is Jane's close friend at the Lowood School. She endures her miserable life there with a passive dignity that Jane cannot understand, but Jane does admire her personal strength and even temperament for Jane. Helen is a withdrawn intellectual with an optimistic religious views of universal salvation that contrasts with St. John's beliefs. Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms. She does show Jane how to be "restrained" in her emotions, as when she tells her life story to Helen and Miss Temple (which serves as a dress rehearsal to the story she tells us readers), careful to not indulge into much self-pity/"resentment", which helps her keep them as friend-family. Along with Mrs. Temple, they teach Jane that beauty comes from within not without, both Mrs. Temple giving her tea/cakes after Mr. Brocklehurst's visit and Helen's devout religiosity. Helen also promises that even if the whole world despised her, Jane would still find friendship and protecting love in her faith. When Helen is whipped across the neck by Miss Scatcherd, Jane is amazed that Helen doesn't flinch or cry. Jane tells her she should be furious, but Helen explains her philosophy of turning the other cheek, of a beautiful afterlife that gives her hope and patience to endure suffering in this world. I believe Helen helps Jane find a balance between her instinct towards submission and finding freedom on her own terms. Her doctrine of universal salvation might have have affected Jane to save Rochester. Her death from tuberculosis=recalls the deaths of Charlotte Brontë's sisters, Elizabeth and Maria, who died of the disease in childhood as a result of the conditions at their school Helen: "It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil...Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear." Helen=Jesus, hate the crime but forgive the sinner, because it is logical not to extend evil through uncontrolled emotions, contain evil where it can, should, and must be contained. Her name is interesting: because Helen of Troy (most beautiful woman that started the Trojan wars, after Aphrodite allowed Paris to woo him off from King Menaleus), + Burns, the foreshadowing of the burning of Thornfield On her gravestone="resurgam" I will rise again, out of the ashes/ruins, like the chesnutt tree Jane sees on her wedding day, out of the ashes of the Thornfield residence
Philomela and Procne
In Ovid's twisted story, a woman named Philomela is raped by her sister's husband, Tereus, who then cuts out her tongue to keep her from telling the world. Philomela manages to explain the crime to her sister Procne by weaving an embroidery about it. Procne's idea for revenge is to serve her son to her husband for dinner (like we said, twisted). When he learns of this nasty trick, Tereus tries to kill the two sisters, but the Greek gods save them by turning them into birds: Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. The irony is that the woman who lost her voice (and her tongue) becomes the bird with one of the most beautiful voices in all of nature.
Comedy
In classic terminology, a comedy is a work that begins in misery or deep confusion and ends in elation or happiness. In Shakespearean comedy, the play often begins in confusion — couples breaking up or separating, but ends with everyone finding the right partner. In other words, a comedy is not something one would laugh about, but an ascension from a low state of confusion to one where all people are combined for the greatest happiness.
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen: (Fanny Price raised with Uncle Thomas Bertram's 4 kids; Fanny loves cousin Edmund who loves Mary Crawford; Mary's brother Henry loves Maria Bertram then Fanny Price then Maria again; Edmund finally marries Fanny)
No No Boy (1957)
John Okada, 1957, P
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift, 1726
novel of manners
Just as the name implies, it's a novel that emerges from and is limited by the manners, values, or mores of a particular social class in a particular time and place. The conventions of the society dominate the story, and characters are differentiated by the degree to which they measure up to the uniform standard/ideal of behavior or fall below it. A subgenre of literary realism. Dominated by de rigeur thinking, of what is required by etiquette or current fashion. Examples: Mansfield Park, Evelina, Jane Eyre (?)
"Like to the Indians scorched with the sun"
Mary Wroth
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
McKay (1889-1948) was born into a farming family in Sunny Ville, Jamaica. McKay received an education in classic British literature, but his instructors encouraged him to write poems in Jamaican dialect that addressed the Jamaican experience. McKay used a stipend he won from his first two collections of poems to finance a trip to America in 1914, and he quickly found himself in New York City. Outraged by the racism that he saw there, McKay wrote increasingly politically charged poetry and became a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His first and most famous novel, Home to Harlem (1928), offers a harrowing and intimate portrait of black life in New York. -Known for his socialist politics. Different from the others in the Harlem Renaissance (Modernism) because he adhered to old forms to write his protest poetry. The Lynching, Harlem Dancer, America, Africa and If We Must Die are all sonnets.
Passing
Nella Larsen, 1929
John Keats (1795-1821)
One
Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Rape of the Lock
Pope
Invisible Man (1952)
Ralph Ellison Narrator reminds me of Dostoevsky's Underground man ("Notes from the Underground"), a la Bakhtin, not only in his anonymity, but in the fact that he constructs himself in unfinalized forms. Both are, in themselves, autonomous discourses, pure voices. We do not see them, but hear them; they fashion themselves through their own words; everything we know about them outside their words is not essential. "Who knows but that, on lower frequencies, I speak for you?" Narrator is unfinalized/indeterminate, not defined even by Ellison.
adnomination
Repetition of words with the same root word.
Bertha Mason
Rochester's clandestine wife, Bertha Mason is a formerly beautiful and wealthy Creole woman who has become insane, violent, and bestial. She lives locked in a secret room on the third story of Thornfield and is guarded by Grace Poole, whose occasional bouts of inebriation sometimes enable Bertha to escape. Bertha eventually burns down Thornfield, plunging to her death in the flames. In Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic, they read the figure of the violent double in Victorian texts as an unconscious incarnation of the female author's own rage and alienation, her "desire to escape male houses and male texts."
Parabasis
Scene in classical Greek Old Comedy in which the chorus directly addresses the audience members and makes fun of them or expresses the author's political or religious views of the day. Now it is known as the "self-conscious narrator," the author's intrusion that disrupts the fictional narrative
Ashberry
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Soonest Mended
Difference between Milton and Spenser's projects?
Spenser=there is a system to his allegory that he more or less sets out from the start with Redcrosse, he thinks with the poem, it organically grows and fractals like his Spenserian Stanza form (look up), look up also Tassus letter controversy and allegory Milton's allegory is actually literary literalism, Death will actually kill you, the poem more or less has been set for all of time, rigid like the 10 syllables of each line
Ergodic literature
Texts that invite and require readers to actively navigate their way in order to generate a story or a storyline (like video games in a certain sense) examples include: I Ching, Calligrams, I would argue ZONG!, more representative equal Nabakov's Pale Fire, Danielewski House of Leaves (which is itself a critique of academic writing, the footnotes have footnoes) το εργον, Ergon=Greek for work, η ὁδος hodos=path, a path to work for meaning within the text
Nathanial Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Old Manse-description of his home that he happily lived in for three years with his wife
Pathetic Fallacy
The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature; for example angry clouds; a cruel wind. John Ruskin first coined this term, which was actually an attack on the sentimentality of the romantics, and with Tennyson, objects were viewed more scientifically in terms of sense perception P.F.= "emotional falseness," (pathetic=emotional, fallacy=falseness more generally in the Victorian era), a product of overly strong emotions that project onto the outside world.
What is the difference between Medieval and Renaissance period?
The divide comes from the rebirth of classical sources in society/literature, state takes more power than religion, printing press (Gutenberg 1436) most people end the medieval ages by 14th century but that's when Chaucer publishes Canterbury Tales...
Satire
The use of humor, irony, EXAGERATION, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues (social institutions/conventions). Satire is VEILED ATTACHMENT TO THING BEING SATIRIZED. Examples: The Rape of the Lock (reader removed from the world), Gulliver's Travels (the reader is being satirized/critiqued, at least intimately involved with the world, we are worse than yahoos using our reason to do unspeakable things), Huck Finn (both, at once emphasized as a work of fiction and dialogized through dialect/skaz narration)--Huck Finn seems to be the most closely united with Fielding's definition--Huck is corrected (at least somewhat in the end). Fielding: 'corrects the fault for the benefit of the person, like a Parent' (in contrast to libel, which tries to execute the person by humiliating/showing them to the public)
Beloved
Toni Morrison Beloved brings us closer to the way trauma and possession is dealt with, A political allegory for violence done unto the enslaved despite the antiphrastically innocuously name of the plantation home "Sweet Home" (political allegory's structure=antiphrasis)
"A slumber did my spirit seal"
Wordsworth Paraphrase: Despite his confidence and his love, Lucy did die but he takes comfort in that she is part of nature
NW
Zadie Smith,
Pastiche
a dramatic, musical, or literary work made up of bits and pieces from other sources; a hodgepodge Jameson implicates it as the direct culprit in the stripping of historical meaning from all style Pastiche=certain homage, reverence to the thing be imitated (FOE); while parody there's usually a burlesque, derisive element to it. (GULLIVER'S TRAVELS). Also seems to be more of an emphasis on the hodge-podge of styles that make the novel up, ie newspaper excerpts or radio transcription. parody is how the novel comes into being, but with postmodernity it is reduplicated, and thus made different, as pastiche (exercising the very function of repetition/parody/pastiche); it is a mimesis that becomes poesis Ex.=dogeaters, FOE
Syllepsis/Zeugma
a figure of speech in which a word is applied to two others in different senses (e.g., caught the train and a bad cold ) or to two others of which it grammatically suits only one (e.g., neither they nor it is working ).
Menippean satire
a form of satire, usually in prose, which has a length and structure similar to a novel and is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities (Horatian satire) ex. Gulliver's Travels
Catachresis
a harsh metaphor involving the use of a word beyond its strict sphere (intentional/planned) the use of a word in a way that is not correct, for example, the use of mitigate for militate.
dissociation of sensibility
a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets". It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry. sensibility=synthetic faculty that can amalgamate disparate and often opposite expereinces/feelings Dante/Shakespeare/Donne=unified individual/tradition, thought/feeling, temporal/eternal Explains the change in poetry AFTER the heydey of the metaphysicals. According to Eliot, the dissociation of sensibility was a result of the natural development of poetry after the Metaphysical poets, who had felt "their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose"; this phenomenon—the "direct sensuous apprehension of thought," or the fusion of thought and feeling—which Eliot called a mechanism of sensibility, was lost by later poets. Eliot gave evidence of the dissociation of sensibility in the more elevated language and cruder emotions of later poets. Hence, Eliot thought Milton, Dryden, the Romantics and Victorians (esp. Tennyson and Browning) divided thought/feeling, which is bad for poetry. It's not like Eliot's poetry unifies thought/sensibility--you telling me Prufrock, or Wasteland, with all its allusions/intellectualism, is unified in thought/sensibility?
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. A poem in praise of something. Nersessian: "Odes, roughly speaking, are poems meant to celebrate something or someone, but because they are written from a place of emotional excess or ferment it's easy for them to tip over into more private preoccupations." They are best studied in isolation, and that too is the condition of the ode which, like any lyric poem, understands solitude as the prerequisite for entertaining a problem Each of Keats's odes are more or less modified/better sonnets. And they are all love poems: it is hard to tell when they are over.
Dandy
a man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance, outside of a family with a freedom to walk/flaneur
Cataletic line
a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line.
Romanticism
a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. Nature as the foundation of spiritual experience Romantic poets generally had no interest in mechanistic allegory Romantic writers seem to love making themself Christ figures (Blake in Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Shelley in Ode to Westwind). Self-abnegating ones though. "Interestingly, the Romantic period is so called because it overlapped with a surge of interest in medieval romances— long poems or novels written, according to an influential essay by the eighteenth- century scholar Richard Hurd, to process social anxieties about rape. The Middle Ages, Hurd says, were a brutal time, during which the threat of sexual violence would have been perpetual. By celebrating the chivalric commitment to defending women at all costs, the romance created a fantasy world to make up— however feebly— for the horrors of the real one." Romantics LOVED neoplatonism, of the emanating one in all of us, artist as God. (Coleridge/Blake/Shelley especially)
Sonnet
a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line. Sonnet began as a form of popular song, sung in the medieval Italian taverns/festivals. Thanks to Petrarch, became of the most popular/prestigious forms of poetry, travelling across Europ in the 14-16th centuries. England=one of the last places to adopt the form. The form first entered English in the 1530s and 1540s when poets like Thomas Wyatt began translating/imitating Francesco Petrarch's poems, becoming an increasingly popular form among the aristocracy, who used it to write about their illicit affairs and to find favor at court. Wyatt chose iambic pentameter, rather than hexameter like the French, because of Chaucer, who adapted the meter from French models. problem/solution, "The traditional subject matter of the sonnet is unrequited heterosexual love: a male poet writes about an exalted and unattainable woman whom he adores with a fervor that borders on worship. Unlike poems that narrate personal experiences, the sonnet is generally suited for argumentation: sonnet writers tend to have a point, they want to convince you of something. This is true even when they're writing about something deeply personal, like love. Thus when Shakespeare decides to write about his mistress and her physical appearance, he does so in the form of an argument—with prior poets, with his audience—about what beauty is and how it should be written about." a splitting centered a volta (usually) splitting an octet and sestet (or three quatrains and a couplet), hence double and even multiple conciousnesses The African American sonnet tradition began during Reconstruction in the late nineteenth century and has continued until today--though the subversive purpose of using a form that indicates intellectual accomplishment began even earlier, in the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and authors of slave narratives. African American poets used the sonnet form to assert identity, individual voice, and cultural mastery in a range of modes, from earlier imitative poems to the more obviously experimental poems of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. But whether overtly provocative or more subversive, use of the form has served to challenge the limitations imposed on African American voice and power. Ex. Claude Mckay Italian sonnet=ending two lines don't rhyme, English=heroic couplet Sonnets have a Janus-faced "capacity to remain at once a closed formal structure and, at the same time, a mere fragment of a much larger, more open, lyric statement" Lover as a homeland=popular renaissance trope, stemming from Stoic tradition Giles Menage (17th century french poet)=the sonnet is a procrustean bed (Προκρούστης, he who stretches, a robber who forced travellers to lie on a bed and made them fit it by either stretching them longer or cutting them shorter)--exacting conformity to a strict standard
Ecologue
a short poem, especially a pastoral dialogue, Virgil=the paramount (εκλογη=literary selection), Spenser's Shepheardess Calendar=prime example, one ecologue for each month...)
Lyric Poetry
a short poem, often with songlike qualities, that expresses the speaker's personal emotions and feelings. historically, have a musical quality intended to be sung and accompanied by musical instrumentation. But free verse is not lyric poetry because it doesn't have a musical meter (hence, why Dickinson writes lyrics but Walt doesn't). Lyric NOW describes a broad category of non-narrative poetry, including elegies, odes, sonnets, and dramatic poetry. My answer=an open space where consciousness, single or otherwise=explored(by poet/persona/reader)
Victorian Literature Characteristics
a term that describes the rule of Queen Victoria over Britain and its Empire from 1837 to 1901. It was a time of seismic change, particularly inspired by advances in scientific understanding. It was during this time that Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859), which cast doubt on the religious certainties of previous eras (Eliot, key to myth + general conception of religion as art) and reactions against it were Hopkins/Rossetti who thought religion>>art). Charles Lyell, a prominent geologist, made major contributions to society's understanding of time and humanity's relationship to the lifespan of the Earth (similarly undermining the literal narratives of the Bible). That said, it was still a deeply religious time. Church-going was an activity woven into the fabric of day-to-day life ("Crossing the Bar"), and the notoriously strict Victorian sense of morality was deeply embedded in religious tradition. Hence, ambivalent relationship to God: Dover Beach, Crossing the Bar (in that he can only refer to him symbolically as a Pilot). The Victorian era also saw significant advances in technology, which in part helped facilitate Britain's extended reach around the world through colonization (Ulysses). Trains became a prominent mode of travel, and increasing industrialization contributed to higher population density in cities like London and Manchester (When Caleb Garth gets attacked by the mob for telling the farmers to make room for the railroads). "Higher Criticism,"=treated the Bible as a historical document Unlike the Romantics, many Victorians thought of nature as another Book of Revelation to be used for the same practical ends as the Bible: to inculcate lessons in the religious life. Social concern for women's/children's/industrial rights=as in "How do I love thee" (on her 'free choice' to love, which is also her illness, her loss faith in saints) Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, somewhat Heart of Darkness, At once: most 'progress' achieved (1 in 4 people on Earth were under Victoria's rule)+a deep sense of something lost, a melancholy Historical self-consciousness (Carlyle: Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe, from Romantic Introspection to Higher Moral purpose, ie morality/ethics, New is in her travails) Victorian Literary characteristics=overabundance of energy (GMH) More helpful than a strict 'Victorian' monolith is separating into 3 phases= 1. Early Victorian (30-48) (Tennyson/Brownings) Reform Act of 1832 (when lower middle class got the right to vote) Poor WOrking/Economic conditions, stark contrast between Rich/Poor 2. Mid-Victorian (1848-70) (Female Browning) Victorian 'Age of Improvement," optimism 1851=Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, The Crystal Palace=symbolized the triumphant feats of Victorian technology Crimean War=1854-6, Colonialism 'White Man's Burden' at its peak, 1876=Victoria as Queen of India, 3. late Victorian (1870-1901) (Middlemarch) 67, 85, 95=Marxism, utopia could be achieved only after the woring classes had, by revolution, taken control of government/industry Part of why High Modernism spurned Victorian poetry (deemed it anti-intellectual) is because it became democratized, widely available in everyday culture. Poems were printed in newspapers/periodicals/became part of the school curriculum.
Hysterical Realism
a type of literary genre James Wood coined: typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization, on the one hand, and careful detailed investigations of real, specific social phenomena on the other Wood described Zadie Smith's White Teeth (and Infinite Jest) this way, a pejorative denoting a "big, ambitious novel" that knows a thousand things but does not know a single human being." Turning fiction into social theory, tells how the world works rather than how somebody felt about something (Pynchon=forefather). NW=not hysterical realism according to Wood
Dithyramb
a wild choral hymn of ancient Greece, especially one dedicated to Dionysus Now it is used to describe a short poem in an inspired wild irregular strain, a statement or writing in an exalted or enthusiastic vein.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1854
allowed government officials to arrest any person accused of being a runaway slave; all that was needed to take away someone's freedoms was word of a white person; northerners required to help capture runaways if requested, suspects had no right to trial
Sentimental Novel
an 18th century literary genre; a novel type that was written with a wide range of emotion in the characters and with a plot that focuses on (and is arranged around) the advancement of character emotion; the purpose of the writing is also to elicit a refined yet intense emotional response from the reader. documented the adventures of an emotionally sensitive [sensible/sentimental] hero or heroine as they navigated fashionable society. any novel that exploits the reader's capacity for tenderness, compassion, or sympathy to a disproportionate degree by presenting a beclouded or unrealistic view of its subject. In a restricted sense the term refers to a widespread European novelistic development of the 18th century, which arose partly in reaction to the austerity and rationalism of the Neoclassical period. Bakhtin: "The hero's misfortunes are no longer a matter of his fate; his misfortunes are simply caused, inflicted upon him by wicked people...The sentimental hero is most suitable for tendentious works--for arousing extra-aesthetic social sympathy or social hostility."
Eclairecissement
an enlightening explanation of something, typically someone's conduct, that has been hitherto inexplicable/mystified. (pure example: when the reader realizes the "last" in last duchess=most recent, making the speaker a serial killer/or Isabel Archer in chapter 42 and her serpent in the grass Gilbert Osmond) >>>this describes a lot of the mechanics of the novel, of explaining the previously indescribable manners of a character, of how that character is related to (true) nobility though their origins have been obscured (Evelina). For the bourgeoise novel, it restores order in a very alarming way, making us forget that the protagonist was ever considered low socially. The reveal that the protagonist was nobility/elite all along demystifies why they fit so well, in fact too well, within noble society. Their time in low society makes them more sensible than high society (perhaps like Lanyer?), but it suggests then that upper class can only be remolded from within; intensifies the exclusion of the low from the high. suggests social mobility is impossible (Evelina again) In general, reveal is a huge plot device of the novel, whether it be of character or conduct.
Respectability Politics
attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as continuous and compatible with mainstream values rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference. Respectability narratives are representations of marginalized individuals meant to depict them as sharing similar traits, values, and morals that align with the dominant group's definition of "respectability."
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
created monster to have friend or someone like him/ similar to relationship with God and man/looks like monster bc doesn't look like us(beautiful features poorly put together)/lots of books deals with issues of reproduction/likeness--> sense of identity/not a lot of women in story William: "Thinking of Mary Shelley, the real monster isn't what must be hidden, but what has the power to hide."
Double Consciousness (W.E.B. DuBois)
describes the two behavioral scripts, one for moving through the world and the other incorporating the external opinions of prejudiced onlookers, which are constantly maintained by African Americans. Du Bois suggested that as outsiders within a culture, African Americans were both subject to exclusion and inheritors of a special insight, which Du Bois called "second sight," into the full spectrum of American and experience. Double Consciousness= 1. alienation, separation, obligation, burden of performance, insincerity, playing to White expectations. 2. distance, irony, more incisive critical thinking, a more intelligent view of White stupidity. In his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois described "double-consciousness" as "a peculiar sensation [...] of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," in which one "ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings."
different waves of feminism
first wave feminism, dealing with property rights and the right to vote (culminated in the 19th amendment which just gave white women the right to vote in 1920); second wave feminism, focusing on equality and anti-discrimination (equal rights act of 1972, +Roe V. Wade), and third wave feminism, which started in the 1990s as a backlash to the second wave's perceived privileging of white, straight women. Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and marginalization of women in society. Fifth wave=anti-work (we shouldn't have to work endless, meaningless jobs to get the healthcare and housing we need) abolition, defund the police "Fifth wave feminism aims to destroy our current systems and build a new world that prioritizes the needs of all marginalized people by recognizing that American politicians, regardless of gender, are by definition antithetical to this work." Mainstream feminism often categories the phases of its movement as "waves." According to The Gender Press, the metaphor is meant to describe the surge of activity at the beginning of a particular feminist phase, which then reaches its peak in the form of a concrete accomplishment--for example, during first wave feminism, the wave crested when white women were given the right to vote. Afterwards, the wave crashes, and there's a lull until a new wave forms. While Black feminism is focused on liberation, white feminism is consumed entirely by power. White feminists, Kamala Harris included, are only interested in securing political power for themselves and bestowing it on those they deem worthy and equally powerful, a category consisting overwhelmingly of wealthy white women. White feminism seeks a seat at the table, while Black feminism seeks to destroy the table all together. White feminism seeks to have the phallus, black feminism deliberately seeks to castrate it. To truly be feminist, one must be anti-capitalist.
Metaphysical Poetry
highly intellectualized poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity and subtlety of thought, frequent use of paradox, no more (heavy) reliance on allusion (Jonson still would allude a little bit), and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression. Metrical flexibility. A reaction to the equitone poetry of Spenser. Reflects the loss of the music universalis operating system, of a resonance between the higher universe and sublunary. New ontological systems supplied by the poets (Donne-εγω, Johnson-society [though he was a cavalier poet], Herbert-God, Marvell-conciousness) Purpose, as Teskey, says: to startle the mind, not settle it into complacency What Jonson would call "infinite agitation of wit" of these "degenerate learners' (not poets!!) Not Royalists poems often take a line of reasoning/argumentation akin to that of lawyers, satire/parody carpe diem
Hysteron Proteron ("later-earlier")
inversion of the natural sequence of events, often meant to stress the event which, though later in time, is considered the more important. "I die! I faint! I fail!" "I was bred and born in the patch" Yoda speech too
Epic Poem
long narrative, once upon a time sung or recited, in VERSE form (usually set by region/poet) that retells the heroic journey (physical or mental) of a single person or a group of persons. Elements that typically distinguish epics include superhuman deeds, fabulous adventures, highly stylized language, large scale warfare, and a blending of lyrical and dramatic traditions. usually starts in medias res (as Milton's does, does Pope's?) Signifies intellectual heroism (like setting off to write a poem in heroic verse without ryme, apparently the first time ever tried in English--cough Milton)/literary genius >>Spenser's conception of epic=didactic, "to fashion a gentleman" like the ancients did...but also to paint the Queen in all her glory (this last bit feels ironic, given her fading view in the poem) (though his didacticism=creates more questions than answers. But also, in alluding to Aristotle's division between the poet/historian, the former showing things as they should be by ensample (Sidney=to make nature golden), also suggests the Poet=exalted prophet "a poet thrusteth into the middest...recoursing to things forepast, and divining of things to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all.) To Aristotle, tragedy is better at achieving its aims, because it is shorter, and is therefore better than epic. As he defines epic=should be constructed in plot like tragedy, center upon a single action whole/complete, shouldn't be constructed like the common run of histories. Isn't restrained by time and can be indefinite in length. Huxley=epic represents life going on...which is reflected in the ending of PL/general spontaneity of FQ (life never stopping).
Structuralism
most popular in 50s/60s, based on linguistic theories of Ferdinand De Sassure: signifier/signified=sign (signification), which is joined arbitrarily and can make sense in relation to other signs. Structuralism challenged the belief that a work of literature reflected a given reality; instead, a text was constituted of linguistic conventions and situated among other texts. Examined underlying structures (such as characterization/plot), how these patters were universal. Thinkers=Roman Jakobsen, Northrop Frye (to categorize Western literature by archetype) and Claude LEvi-Strause.
dramatic monologue (poetry)
poems where a speaker is identified as someone other than the author, speaks to a silent audience (specifically to someone else and implicitly the reading/hearing audience), in a single vivid scene, the narrative of the that reveals something about the speaker's psychology or history it compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative sense of the speaker's history and psychological insight into the character. "Dramatic because there is a bit of a theatrical element to it; not a soliloquy because there is someone else there. The form parallels novelistic experiments of point of view, where readers must assess the reliability and intelligence of the narrator, who is different from the actual author. The dramatic speaker is usually trying to convince a specific person something, and so it is important to remember that the views of the narrator and author are separate. Though the form is chiefly associated with Browning, "The Wanderer" is another good example. What Browning particularly adds is subtlety of characterization and complexity of dramatic situation, which the reader pieces together through the speaker's DIGRESSIONS and casual remarks (sort of similar in Wayfarer concerning the last remark about heaven in the absence of the Lord). Dramatic monologues are interesting in that we learn more from the unconscious slip-ups in freely spoken dialogue than we do in constructed soliloquy
picturesque painting
refers to an ideal type of landscape that has an artistic appeal, in that it is beautiful, defined, and artistically formed, but also contains some elements of wildness, wandering or err. Between the awe-inspiring terror of the sublime and the peaceful, tamed beautiful.
Antanaclasis
repetition of a word in two different senses. "Your argument is sound, nothing but sound." anti=back, anaklan=reflecting back light or sound
Epizeuxis
repetition of one word (for emphasis) (never never never never never-King Lear, The horror the horror-Kurtz in Heart of Darkness)
epistrophe
the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." — The Apostle Paul, in the Bible, 1 Cor 13:11 (King James Translation)
malapropism
the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar "Texas has enough electrical votes"
Blank Verse
unrhymed iambic pentameter (English's version of heroic verse, which varied by language) Henry Howard, Early of Surrey, introduced the form, along with the sonnet and other Italian humanist forms, to English. Milton revived blank verse with P.L. conjures a feeling of thoughtful rambling (both physical walking and in thought)--interesting for Milton's mazy error
hendiadys
use of two words connected by a conjunction, instead of subordinating one to the other, to express a single complex idea. "sound and fury"
Cavalier Poetry
very light and lyrical; easy to understand; more apt to say what they mean in plainer phrase; Carpe Diem theme; celebrates sensuality, drinking, good fellowship, honor, and social life; a more social form of poetry than metaphysical..
