Introduction to Literature Lecture 2

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Introduction to LiteratureLecture 2

• Literature and Literary Studies As a Discipline

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How to make sense of texts by establishing
connections

• within the text
• between or among texts
• between texts and their context

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William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon,
oil on canvas, 1842 NPG
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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)I Wandered
Lonely As a Cloud (1804-1807)

• I wandered lonely as a cloud
• That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
• When all at once I saw a crowd,
• A host, of golden daffodils
• Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
• Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
• Continuous as the stars that shine
• And twinkle on the milky way,
• They stretched in never-ending line
• Along the margin of a bay
• Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
• Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

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I Wandered Lonely As a Cloudcont.

• The waves beside them danced but they
• Out-did the sparkling waves in glee
• A poet could not but be gay,
• In such a jocund company
• I gazed and gazed but little thought
• What wealth the show to me had brought
• For oft, when on my couch I lie
• In vacant or in pensive mood,
• They flash upon that inward eye
• Which is the bliss of solitude
• And then my heart with pleasure fills,
• And dances with the daffodils.

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The original three stanza version published in
William Wordsworth Poems in Two Volumes Moods
of my Mind (1807)

• I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high
  o'er Vales and Hills,When all at once I saw a
  crowdA host of dancing DaffodilsAlong the
  Lake, beneath the trees,Ten thousand dancing in
  the breeze.The waves beside them danced, but
  theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee --A
  poet could not but be gayIn such a laughing
  companyI gaz'd--and gaz'd--but little
  thoughtWhat wealth the shew to me had brought

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Three stanza version, cont.

• For oft when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in
  pensive mood,They flash upon that inward
  eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude,And then my
  heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the
  Daffodils.

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(No Transcript)
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Clark, Colette, ed. Home et Grasmere. Extracts
from the Journal of Dorothy Wordworth and from
the Poems of William Wordsworth. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex Penguin Books, 1978, 192-193

• Dorothy Wordsworth The Grasmere Journal.
  Thursday, 15 April 1802
• When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park
  we saw a few daffodils close to the water side,
  we fancied that the lake had floated the seed
  ashore that the little colony had so sprung up.
  But as we went along there were more yet more
  at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw
  that there was a long belt of them along the
  shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike
  road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they
  grew among the mossy stones about about them,
  some rested their heads upon these stones as on a
  pillow for weariness the rest tossed and reeled
  and danced seemed as if they verily laughed
  with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake,
  they looked so gay ever dancing ever changing.
  This wind blew directly over the lake to them.
  There was here there a little knot a few
  stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so
  few as not to disturb the simplicity unity
  life of that one busy highway. We rested again
  again. The Bays were stormy we heard the waves
  at different distances in the middle of the
  water like the Sea.

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The Lake District is a mountainous region in
North West England.
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Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater in the Lake District
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Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater in the Lake District
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Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater in the Lake District
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(No Transcript)
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• Topographical poetry
• Nature poetry
• Meditative poetry

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• Stanza form
• Rhyme pattern
• Metrical form

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Connections within the text

• Repetition of a word, an image, a metaphor, a
  metrical pattern
• Repetition straightforward repetition
• repetition with a difference variation
• repetition by offering a contrast

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Connections between or among texts

• among works by the same author
• among works by various authors within a genre,
• within the literature of a period,
• within English literature,
• within literature written in English
• within literature available in English (not
  necessarily limited to Western culture)

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Resolution and Independence(1804-1807)

• III
• I was a Traveller then upon the moor,
• I saw the hare that raced about with joy
• I heard the woods and distant waters roar
• Or heard them not, as happy as a boy
• The pleasant season did my heart employ
• My old remembrances went from me wholly
• And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

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Resolution, cont.

• VIII
• Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
• I saw a Man before me unawares
• The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey
  hairs.
• XI
• Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
• XV
• He told, that to these waters he had come
• To gather leeches, being old and poor

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Leeches
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Leeches

• Leeches are segmented worms. The majority of
  leeches live in freshwater environments. They are
  predominantly blood suckers that feed on blood
  from vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Leeches
  have been historically used in medicine to remove
  blood from patients.

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Resolution, cont.

• XX
• And soon with this he other matter blended,
• Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
• But stately in the main and when he ended,
• I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
• In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.
• "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure
• I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely
  moor!"

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Ode Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood (1802-1804)

• XI
• Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
• Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
• To me the meanest flower that blows can give
• Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

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The Solitary Reaper(1805-1807)

• Behold her, single in the field,
• Yon solitary Highland Lass!
• Reaping and singing by herself
• Will no one tell me what she sings?

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Solitary, cont.

• Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
• As if her song could have no ending
• I saw her singing at her work,
• And o'er the sickle bending
• I listened, motionless and still
• And, as I mounted up the hill
• The music in my heart I bore,
• Long after it was heard no more.

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Gill, Stephen, ed. William Wordsworth. The
Oxford Authors. Oxford Oxford University Press,
1984, 716

• The poem was inspired by Thomas Wilkinson Tours
  to the British Mountains (published 1824) which
  Wordsworth read in manuscript.
• Passed by a Female who was reaping alone she
  sung in Erse as she bended over sickle the
  sweetest human Voice I ever heard her strains
  were tenderly ,melancholy and felt delicious,
  long after they were heard no more.

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Context of history of English poetry

• The poem anticipates Keatss Ode to a
• Nightingale and Ode on Grecian Urn, both
• being meditations on art. It also anticipates
• Keatss Ode to Autumn in which poem the
• figure of a girl reaping in the fields appears.

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Robert Herrick(15911674)To Daffodils

• Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
•         You haste away so soon
• As yet the early-rising sun
•          Has not attain'd his noon.
•                         Stay, stay,
•                 Until the hasting day
•                         Has run
•                 But to the even-song
• And, having pray'd together, we
• Will go with you along.

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Herrick, cont.

• We have short time to stay, as you,
•          We have as short a spring
• As quick a growth to meet decay,
•          As you, or anything.
•                         We die
•                 As your hours do, and dry
•                         Away,
•                 Like to the summer's rain
• Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
• Ne'er to be found again.

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Robert Herrick

• HESPERIDES
• or, The Works both
• humane and divine.
• London John Williams
• and Francis Eglesfield,
• 1648.

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Carpe diem

• short-lived nature of life
• fleeting passage of time
• melancholy and sadness
• lamenting the waste of beauty
• thoughtful mood

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Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
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Ted Hughes Daffodilsin Birthday Letters
(1998)

• Remember how we picked the daffodils? Nobody
  else remembers, but I remember. Your daughter
  came with her armfuls, eager and happy, Helping
  the harvest. She has forgotten. She cannot even
  remember you. And we sold them. It sounds like
  sacrilege, but we sold them.

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Hughes, cont.

• The daffodils Were incidental gilding of the
  deeds, Treasure trove. They simply came, And
  they kept on coming. As if not from the sod but
  falling from heaven. Our lives were still a raid
  on our own good luck. We knew we'd live forever.
  We had not learned What a fleeting glance of the
  everlasting Daffodils are.

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Hughes, cont.

• Every March since they have lifted again Out of
  the same bulbs, the same Baby-cries from the
  thaw, Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers
  In the draughty wings of the year. On that same
  groundswell of memory, fluttering They return to
  forget you stooping there Behind the rainy
  curtains of a dark April, Snipping their stems.
  But somewhere your scissors remember. Wherever
  they are. Here somewhere, blades wide open,
  April by April Sinking deeper Through the
  sod-an anchor, a cross of rust.

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Ted Hughes (1930-1998)and Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963)
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Ted Hughes Daffodilsin Flowers and Insects
(1986)

• I had not learned What a fleeting glance of
  the everlasting Daffodils are. Did not recognise
• The nuptial flight of the rarest epherma -
• My own days!
• Hardly more body than a hallucionation!
• A dream of gifts opening their rustlings for
  me!
• I thought they were a windfall. I picked them. I
  sold them.

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Connections between texts and their contexts

• Between (among) literary texts and the sister
  arts
• Between (among) literary texts and other spheres
  of language and culture, including philosophy,
  history, law, medicine, natural sciences, as
  well as the daily life, politics, or popular
  culture characteristic of a period at any
  given time/place

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Poem (or part of it) as motto

• Thomas Hardy
• The Riddle (1917)
• Stretching eyes west
• Over the sea,
• Wind foul or fair,
• Always stood she
• Prospect-impressed
• Solely out there
• Did her gaze rest,
• Never elsewhere
• Seemed charm to be.

• John Fowles
• The French Lieutenants Woman (1969)
• Its heroine, Sarah
• Woodruff is likened to
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
• the protagonist of
• another novel by Hardy of
• the same title (1891).

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Title of a novel, drama, film

• Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
• Thomas Gray Elegy Written in a Country
  Churchyard (1750)
• There are several films based on this book. The
  best known is John Schlesinger adaptation (1967).
  
• In 1998 Nicholas Renton directed a tv adaptation.
• No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American
  thriller written and directed by Joel and Ethan
  Coen, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the
  same title
• W. B. Yeats Sailing to Byzantium (1927)