literature

Literature: notetaking and answers

old english period: 1066
Middle English period: 1066-1500
Renaissance: 1500-1660
Neo-classical period (the Age of Reason): 1660-1800
Romantic period: 1800-1840
The Victorian period: 1840-1900
The modern period: 1900-… (post romantic period, war literature, beat generation, stream of consciousness, post modernism, alternative realism, science fiction, detectives).

Neo-classical period
This period is sometimes called ‘the age of reason’, because It shows the flowering of rational, scientific thinking. Reason is men’s guide and writers aim at precision, elegance and perfection. They find their examples in the classical writers and their writing are based on intellect and common sense. This doesn’t mean that they reject emotion: they just keep it under perfect control, because they think it is bad taste to show emotion.

In poetry the heroic couplet* is very suitable for control, precise expression, so that it becomes the most important verse form.
In poetry as well as prose, satire* is often used in this period. Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift are famous satirists in this period. In a period which values reason higher then emotion, it is not surprising that prose is more important than poetry. The newspapers appear and the first novels are published.

* 1
a) 2 lines of poetry
b) rhymed
c) written in iambic pentameter 5 x U— per line
d) expressing one idea
iamb=

U= unstressed syllable. --- = stressed syllable.

Example:
•
U ----- / U --- / U --- / U ---- / U -----
A heavenly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eye she rears.
U --- / U ---- / U ---- / U ---- / U -----
Idea: she loos in the mirror.
•
U ---- / U ------ / U ---- / U ---- / U ---- /
Words are like leaves, and where they most abound, (5 iambs)
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. (5 iambs)
U ---- / U ---- / U ----- / U ---/ U ----- /

Idea: the more you talk the less you say.
Alexander Pope is the author of this heroic couplet.

*satire= biting criticism, often meant to improve a situation.
poetry: poems, further meanings
prose: telling stories

Books: Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
Robinson Crusoe: described the life of Robinson who tries to survive on an uninhabited island for over 28 years. The book is full of realistic detail: weights, measures, dates (diary) etc. The boos is based on a real event: Alexander Selkirk=>  8 years on the island of Juan Fermandez off the coast of Chili.

Gulliver’s Travels consists of 4 parts.
1. Lilliput =>  in this country people are 12 times smaller then regular people. Gulliver helps the king to win a war, but finally he has to leave, because of the great quantities of food he uses and there is a suspicion of treason.
This part is a satire on England. The difference in heights stresses the satire.

2. Brobdingnac: people are 12 times taller than Gulliver. It’s a satire on politics in Europe.
3. (the flying island of) Laputa: on this island you find all kinds of technical institutions, universities, academies in which scientists are experimenting on all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s a satire on science.
4. Houyhnhnms: Gulliver follows a horse and he comes in their communities. They are very intelligent horses and they’re perfect. They don’t lie and have the seven versions.
Yahoos: mix between man and beast, dirty creatures. They are afraid of the horses, which are the inferior creatures. Gulliver becomes friends with the horses and he learns to speak the language.
After three months he washes in the river and the yahoos steal his clothes. A mere sees him and she sees that Gulliver actually looks like a yahoo. That means that he betrayed the horses. Gulliver has to go, he is going home and he buys horses and lives with them because he wants to be perfect. After months he eats with his wife and he thinks she stinks and he sees her as a yahoo.
It’s a satire on man.

The rise of the novel is closely connected to the rise of the middle classes. They were chiefly interested in true stories in which they could recognize themselves. They did not care for poetry which they considered to be written for the upper classes. For these reasons the early novels are characterised by great realism and a lot of circumstantial detail.

In between the age of reason and the romantic period, there is a group of writers who have elements of both:
a) from the age of reason: heroic quatrain * (4 lines of poetry).
b) from the romantic period: interest in nature, emotionalhorrific elements.
This group is called the Grave Yard poets. Example of a writer: Thomas Gray.

’The unfew tolls the knell of parting day, (a)
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea (b)
The plowman homeward plods his weary way, (a)

and leaves the world to darkness and to me.’ (b)
this is a heroic quatrain. The definition of it is: 1) 4 lines of poetry 2) 5 iambs per line 3) rhymed 4) expression one idea.
The idea here is: the plowman heads home because it is getting dark.
The main theme of these poets is death=> emotion.

On the end of the 18th century there are great changes in political, social and individual thinking.
The French Revolution (1790), the American War of Independence (1776) and the Napoleonic wars on the continent give rise to a new spirit of freedom. It is only natural that these changes are also found in literature.
In 1769 James Watt invents the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution brings great prosperity and power, but at a high price. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Part of the literature in this period is concerned with the fate of the poor, the weak and down-trodden. Writers feel a deepening sympathy for man, especially for simple people and children. This is not only because the pity them, but also because they believe that poor people and children live closer to nature and have purer emotions than rich, educated people. Emotion is valued higher than intellect (! Romantic Period), inspiration is found in nature, in little known times of the past (Middle Ages), in unknown countries of the east and in the supernatural stories about ghosts and witches.
Older verse forms are used (ballad, sonnet) and as far as the language is concerned, writers express themselves by means of simple words used in a natural way.

form=ballad* (origin: Middle Ages, 1500-1660). Art ballads in the Romantic Period: 1800-1840. *: - poem telling a story
– rhythm = U --- U --- U --- U --- (4x iamb) U --- U --- U --- ; (3x iamb) U --- U --- U --- U --- (4x iamb) U --- U --- U --- . (3x iamb) – rhyme: abcb ( or abab) – often repetion – is/was/could be a song.
Middle Ages=> bards, minstrels, troubadours.
Now, from 1930, the ballads are never to go away (in the music).

Age of Reason (1660-1800) Romantic Period (1800-1840)

Form: heroic quatrain Grave Yard poets=>  transition poets
emotional
Thomas Gray

1066-1500=>  origin
1350=>  ballad ‘fair Maragaret and sweet William great
1830=>  we are seven ; similarity
- -
art ballad=>  not sung=>  in the Middle Ages they did.
artificially composed

Pages 58 and 59. From: The rime of the ancient mariner.
The word from says that this is only a part of the whole poem.
Theme: loneliness, lost on sea.
He (old sailor) tells the story what happens on sea. The bright-eyed tells the story to a wedding-guest.
Couplet 4, line 1: first indication for a mysterious poem.

The writer (S.T. Coleridge) was probably addicted to opium so he wrote a lot of weird things under influence of the opium.
Stanza 23: dehydration=> see things like slimy creatures on the sea. Can also be because the writer was an opium addict and saw over natural things.
Stanzas 37-50 are weird/scary bit=>  slimy creatures etc.
51-60=>  the dead bodies stand and start to work the ship.

Summary: Rime of the ancient mariner
It’s a ballad of an old sailor who tells a wedding-guest how he and 200 of his crew sailed across the oceans and suddenly found themselves in a storm which blew them into the oceans and suddenly found themselves in a storm which blew them into the Antarctic where they got stuck. An albatross came to the ship, bringing good luck, the ice split and they were free. But then the sailor shut the Albatross with his cross-bow. They arrived at the equator, the wind dropped and the crew died of thirst, heat and dehydration. The old sailor then sees a ship coming near, although there is no wind. It is a ghost ship and the crew consist of a leprous witch-like woman (life-in-Death) and Death himself, who are throwing dice for the lives of the sailors. She wins and the result is the old sailor and so he cannot die. But by blessing gods creatures, he can pray and the spell is broken. The ghostly crew start to work the ship but before they reach England, she makes a sudden jump and the sailor falls unconscious. The pilot brings the ship into court. The sailors punishment is that he has to tell his story to everybody he meets on his way.

Moral: If you love Gods creatures, God will love and save you.

Page 8 stencil.
The cloud by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
He is the poet who not only writes about nature, but also the first to identify himself with it. In this poem the cloud is the ,I’ person, a powerful phenomenon that rules over rain, shade, dew, thunder, wakens the flowers, snow, lightening, sunrise, sunset.

Poem ‘We are seven’. Written by William Wordsworth.
Stanza 1. ballade: poem telling a story
Introduction: telling a story to his brother Jim.

Line 4: rhetorical question: it doesn’t need an answer, it’s just a statement.
2. cottage girl
4-6: describing her home situation.
2=>  Conway 2=>  sea 2=>  died: buried in the churchyard 1=>  the girl who lives in the churchyard cottage with her mother.
7. The man doesn’t count the two who have died.
8. reminder that they still belong to the family.
10. Line 3: she’s done this very often
11-12: what she does on the grave
12: supper: real family feeling
13: she went away: euphemism for died.
14: summer/spring
16: ‘O master’=>  impatience anger
17: extra emphasis, she has the final say.
10-15: answer from the girl. Information about the two died siblings.

Summary: a man asks a young girl how many they are at home. Because two have died, the man says they are five (reason=arithmetic, intellect, 7-2=5). The girl persists in saying that they are seven, because to her imagination those two still belong to the family.
Question: Who is right? Answer: 1) the girl, final word? Girl: ‘nay, we are seven’ 2) it’s a romantic period. Emotion wins over intellect.


Page 4 stencil.
Fragment 1: rape=verkrachter. Lock=pluk haar. The rape of the lock: verkrachter van het plukje haar. To solve the feud of the families, Alexander Pope decided to write a poem. Overdo it=>  ridicule.
Heroic couplets. All the time two lines together.
Lines 7+8: the maid is going to help the Goddess to make up.
Fragment 2: Fair sex: mooie geslacht (meisje). It’s a satire.

Robert Burns: writes Romantic poems. Elements of Romanticism: a keen sense of liberty, an effusion of personal emotions, a rich imagination, a real sympathy for the poor and humble people and a great love of nature and animals. Express his emotions.

‘Composed upon Westminster bridge’ page 55 of the book.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by.
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless aire.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God: the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

It’s a sonnet composer by Wordsworth, in which he described the beauty and the silence of the morning, standing on Westminster Bridge in London.
City: much cleaner, smaller and more silent. He is impressed.
Line 12: river: Thames
line 14: heart=heart of the City

Characteristics:
a) 14 lines, with a special rhyme scheme=sonnet
abba/abba/cdcdcd=italian sonnet
-      -        -
two quatrains sestet (could vary)
second /: break: Not so/Never/But
1. personal emotions
2. simple lines, words
3. form of the poem (sonnet)

Answers Literature Stencil
C. 1. Addison and Steele
2. The Spectator
3. Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels)
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
E. 4. a fictitious narrative, consisting of a series of epistles. Collection of letters.
4. Samuel Richardson (Pamela or virtue rewarded)

6. Fielding has read Pamela of Richardson and then he wrote his first novel entitled Joseph Andrews: a parody on Richardson’s work.
7. Joseph Andrews, first meant as a joke, parody. False morality.
8. Tom Jones
9. Gothic novel
10. Has melodramatic and supernatural* elements also contributed its share to novel-writing and appealed to a great number of people in the latter part of the 18th century.
*: not according to the rules of nature. Examples: pictures moving on the wall. Doors opening/closing of their own free will.
F. 1. The poets of this time lost the freshness of the Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Lyrical poetry was hardly written at all. They consulted the French taste in everything. Blank verse was discarded and rhyme was introduced. The majority of the dramas were written in a couplet which was called the heroic couplet after the term heroic drama.
2. The heroic couplet consisted of two iambic pentameters. Rhyming aabbccdd.
3. John Dryden
G. 2. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
6. emotional
7. elegy=eligie=klaagzang. Song/poem of grief and sorrow.
8. Thomas Gray
H. 1. Robert Burns is of Scottish descent=>  Scots words in his poetry
3. My love is like a red red rose

That’s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune
4. because a red rose symbolizes love
5. because of the poem. Red rose. He will always love her, forever, till the seas gang dry and the rocks melt with the sun.
6. Yes, he symbolizes his love beautifully with all sort of imaginary thoughts and expressions.
hyperbole=exaggeration.
7. a) time b) place c) natural phenomena
8. I will always love you, no matter what happens. You’re my red rose. He expresses his everlasting love for his beloved.
9. a) an effusion of personal emotions, a rich imagination, nature. Emotion/imagination. b) repetition: ballad c) simple words/language
10. More a tear-jerker than a sincere poem, because he puts his emotions to the front, you can feel what he feels.
11. Same rhyme, same rhythm, comparisons are different with other stuff there is compared with, repetition.

12. Parody: lightly satirical version of.
I. 1. see notes
2. The story teller
3. rhetorical question=>  answer=obvious. A little girl knows nothing about death.
4. cottage girl/country girl
5. The man doesn’t understand
6. She goes there very often and knows exactly where they are buried.
7. To her imagination they still belong to the family
8. probably somewhere in a dark season or early spring.
9. winter time
10. frustration/irritation/impatience
11. he persists in his arithmetic (7-2=5)
12. the girl, emotion wins over intellect and she has the final say in the poem.
13. Bohemian, unhappy life+marriage, opium, supernatural poetry.
14. lines 21 and 22.