Literature Seminar 1: Handout W. Wordsworth

Handout
Literature seminar 1
W. Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood 1. Reconstruct the conflicting constituents of the principal themes and categories within the text. 2. See how the poets awareness of the rhetorical level of language expresses itself. 3. See how W.W.s relation to history is conceived. 4. Detect characteristics of the poetic discourse, achieved in this particular poem. 5. Formulate what you consider is the key to an understanding of Wordsworth. S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Describe how ambiguity and ultimate mysteriousness of motive is/are rendered. 1. Identify the symbols in the poem. 2. Speak about peculiarities of form. 3. Describe atmosphere through imagery: provide evidence. 4. Detect possible religious connotations in the poetic discourse. Literature seminar 2 G. G. Byron, Don Juan, from Canto 4 [Juan and Haide] Explore the sources which might have contributed to its being an intertext. 1. Detect intertextual traces within the text. 2. Consider some on-going appeals of the poem. 3. Think of points of similarity and difference between Byrons hero and the original Don Juan. 4. Express your thoughts on how tone and atmosphere are achieved. 5. Detect the strategies for achieving the comic. P.B. Shelley, Mutability Compare and contrast the two poems in point of structure and imagery. (see guide to poetic discourse in Seminar Outline) Literature seminar 3 J. Keats, Ode to a Nightingale Detect mood by identifying means of construing the meaning. 1. Explain the function of rhetorical figures in the economy of the text. 2. Identify the features triggered by the word Ode in the title. 3. Identify the included participants or growth points vs. excluded participants in the text. 4. Draw a matrix of intra-textual and extra-textual participants. 5. Comment upon the poems symbolism. Literature seminar 4 Alfred Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters; The Lady of Shalott. Demonstrate how Tennyson builds his outward imagery. 1. Exemplify how Tennysons language functions in the context of the two early 19th century theories of language. R. Browning, My Last Duchess; Andrea del Sarto; Fra Lippo Lippi. Name the challenges you feel confronted with, when reading the poem. 1. Identify artistic ways of exposing the minds deviance. 2. Re-construct the compositional elements (theme, form, tropes and tone). 3. Identify features of the dramatic monologue.
Literature seminar 5 G. M. Hopkins, The Starlight Night; The Windhover; As Kingfishers Catch Fire. 1. Check how LOGOPOEIA fits the poets own theory of verse making. 2. Sprung Rhythm and the wave of anapests in the 19th century. 3. Explain how I.A. Richardss definition of the poem = economy of mental effort holds true with Hopkins. 4. Swinburne s Nephelidia and MELOPOEIA. 5. Identify how instress informs inscape. 6. Look for Hopkinss stumbling blocks. (Bridges) 7. Suggest ways of overcoming difficulties with Hopkinss poetic discourse. Literature seminar 6 & 7 Methods of Analysis of narrative discourse on texts from: Ch. Dickens, Th. Hardy, G. Eliot, E. Bront. 1. Analyse the rhetoric of the text 1.1 principle of end-focus 1.2 segmentation and syntax 1.3 simple and complex sentences 1.4 iconicity 1.5 cohesion 2. Dismantle the articulations of the narrative texts: identify how TIME, FOCALIZATION, NARRATION function. 3. Consider how CHARACTERS are designated in the text. 4. Establish the role of SETTING and describe how it correlates with CHARACTER(S), EVENT(S). 5. Identify instances of stylistic features and relate them to the different narrative functions of each extract. 6. Construct your own image of each novelist under scrutiny: Choose one essay topic from the list below, and develop the subject in a logical line argument (1. thesis to demonstrate one paragraph; 2. supporting argumentsthree paragraphs; 3. enriching conclusion one paragraph)
Essay Topics (a) Discuss strategies of foregrounding meaning in Dickens Great Expectations/Bleak House/Oliver Twist/David Copperfield/ (b) Discuss strategies of developing narrative perspective in the novel you have chosen. (c) Identify the deictic elements which contribute to the readers anchoring in the textual world at different levels of understanding (temporal, spatial, sensitive). (d) Check for the ways in which E. Bront carefully builds Lockwoods dreamconsciousness so as to make his receptivity creatively instrumental. (e) If you were to find opposite pairs in E. Bronts novel, who would you associate Lockwood with? Is he a hero or anti-hero/opposite vortex, necessary to transform melodrama into passion? (f) Find examples, in the novel you have chosen, of phrases/utterances that may justify the say that literature is always parabolic. (g) See how punctuation may help (re)create possible worlds and mental spaces in a fragment from a Victorian novel.
(h) Check for how deictic elements (modals; tenses; pronouns) help us see things virtually from the perspective of the character or narrator inside the text-world, fact which creates coherence across the literary text. (i) Hardys Tess of the dUrbervilles explores gender relationships at different levels of representation. When you read such a novel how do you refer to the issue of gender? What evaluating standards do you apply? (j) The narrative gives Tesss perspective of things most often. Can you find examples of sentences which clearly show in whose interest-focus they are formulated? Can you identify a voice in the narrative which differs from that of the narrators? (k) Do you feel manipulated when you read such forceful demonstrations packed with ethical/moral dilemmas such as Hardys Tess/Mayor/ Jude? Do they help you to understand yourself or life better? (l) What distinctive spoken/written mode features do you detect in the novel you have read? What kind of audience does the text assume? What shared knowledge does the text count on? (m) Come with clear arguments which, according to you, have informed choice of tense and aspect in the text (think of: author/reader relationship; topic intricacy; evaluation of topic/agency/degree of involvement; focalization; focus-shift). (n) Comment on the (un)predictability of textual prominence devices (grammatical patterning, register type; informativity; deviance; clustering; clefts; intertextuality; etc.) in the text you have read. (o) Identify textual devices informing the writers decisions as to how some things may be made prominent or left as background. Check for: cohesive links; wordorder; tense; aspect; reference pointing; cleft constructions. (p) Consider how character/setting/time/atmosphere/focalization/narration is designated in the text. (q) Establish the role of setting and describe how it correlates with character(s), events. (r) Identify instances of stylistic features and relate them to the narrative function of the extract you choose to discuss.

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