Introduction to Literature: Analyzing and Comparison

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Introduction to Literature Analyzing and
Comparison

• Not a Conclusion
• 2006/1/12

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This course

• selects interesting English poems, short stories
  (and a novel next semester) and plays for us to
  read and
• -- appreciate how literary texts convey their
  meanings to us through both form and content 
• -- understand different literary genres, their
  conventions and components, (e.g. romance,
  gothic)
• -- analyze different parts of a text and how they
  are connected to its overall meaning and, most
  importantly,
• -- relate the knowledge and experience we have in
  reading English literature to our understanding
  of ourselves and our society. ? You need to be
  analytical, imaginative and self-reflexive!

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Reading Process

• Understanding (with your own horizon ???) ?
  Appreciation ?
• Interpretation and Analysis ?
• Your Self-Understanding and horizon broadened.
• Lets use a metaphor!
• A patient spider

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From Personal Appreciation to Careful Connections

• And you O my soul where you stand,
• Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of
  space,
• Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking
  the spheres to connect them,
• Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the
  ductile anchor hold,
• Till the gossamer thread you fling catch
  somewhere, O my soul.

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(1) Understanding (broadening your horizon of
expectation) ? Learning Activities (1)

• Reading Annotation Summarizing Paraphrasing
  --attentive to details, taking notes reading
  comprehension
• Relating Form to Content sensitivity to language
• Answering study questions Quiz in class active
  thinking
• Group Discussion self-expression understanding
  multiple viewpoints

scaffolding
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(1) Understanding (broadening your horizon of
expectation) ? Learning Activities (2)

• Creative Adaptation (play performance using a
  metaphor to compare yourself) concrete
  understanding, self-understanding creativity
• Comparison broader understanding of issues
  themes
• Essay Writing organizational skills
• Mid-Terms Final Exam summative test (more
  later)

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(2) Analysis Collecting Details? Patterns within
a Text

• Pattern (repetition, similarities and
  differences sound and sense)
• How, when the aged are reverently, passionately
  waiting For the miraculous birth, there always
  must be Children who did not specially want it
  to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the
  wood
• Sacredness vs. everyday life Regularity
  irregularity

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(2) Analysis Collecting Details? Patterns in
Text ? Those in Life

• Pattern (repetition, similarities and
  differences sound and sense? irony and
  ambiguity)
• Since then-- 'tis Centuries--and yet each
• Feels shorter than the day
• I first surmised the Horses' Heads
• Were toward Eternity-
• (spondaic since then and -- Century --
• ?iambic feels shorter than the day?
• Eternity different from Immortality?
• contrast ? ambiguity and irony ? in historical
  context)

Optimism???
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(2) Analysis Collecting Details? Patterns and
Complexities in Pygmalion (1)

• In sentences (long and short) -- epigrams
• "The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad
  manners or good manners or any other particular
  sort of manners, but having the same manner for
  all human souls in short, behaving as if you
  were in Heaven, where there are no third-class
  carriages, and one soul is as good as another."
• Dialectical thinking
• possible only in heaven Higgins idealistic
• in reality not considerate not possible even
  for himself
• flawed idealism

Mid-Term
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(2) Analysis Collecting Details? Patterns and
Complexities in Pygmalion (1)

• Patterns in plot e.g. Two major encounters in
  Act 1 (two minor ones) two visitors to Mr.
  Higgins in Act 2 two parties in Act 3 Es
  confrontation with two men in Act 4 the results
  of two transformations in Act 5.
• Parallel Thematic development (transformation)
  //social superficiality in languagesmall talk
  and rhetoricand in morality)

Mid-Term
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Larger Patterns Comparison Some Examples

• How do we make comparison?
• Finding out similarities and differences
• Be careful in your explanation
• e.g. A Rose for Emily and Pygmalion both
  reveals the importance of marriage for women, but
  their backgrounds (American south Victorian
  society) are quite different.
• e.g. Those Winter Sundays My Mother and the
  Bed -- different social contexts
• ? ? We all ignore our parents efforts?

Journal
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Larger Patterns Comparison Some Examples

• 4. For those which can be compared, make
  Sense of them by
• Showing your awareness of the basic or inevitable
  differences (e.g. between a poem and a story)
• Selecting the important differences, analyzing
  them both in terms of form and content
• explaining why (e.g. in terms of historical and
  social background, the authors views, some
  general issues, etc.)
• Expressing your opinionsoptional

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Some Possible Connections general issues
1. Gender Relations and Marriage 2. Family Relations Eliza and Higgins (P) Doolittle and Eliza Araby Aunt Jennifers Tigers Hour Those Winter Sundays
3. Life ideal (the tragic) vs. the ordinary Higgins classless society Musée Days
4. Knowledge, Science vs. the Human Higgins (P) Astronomer uses charts
5. Social Changes and Attitudes towards them Language (accent slang), Class Mobility (P) Metro Terrorist Rose for Emily
(P) Pygmalion
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Some Possible Connections (2)

• Love and Romance How are they different in
  different societies and times?
• e.g. AP, A Rose for Emily, The Story of an
  Hour and Araby
• Pygmalion different endings suggest different
  views of romance and self-made woman
• More later

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Essay Writing Main Argument and Structure

• poet uses different method to express themselves
  including ironic tone, rhyme and repetition. And
  natural element is frequently used as a symbol of
  other issues. (Name them!)

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Essay Writing Main Argument and Structure --rev.

• main argument Both poems show a contrast
  between art and naturearts patterns and
  natures liveliness. If both poems find art
  productive of meanings, nature in Musée des
  Beaux Arts is part of the human world, while in
  Anecdote of the Jar, it is wildness
  domesticated but not incorporated into human
  world.

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Journal Writing General Comments

• Give your main argument in the introduction one
  paragraph one main idea (topic sentence).
• punctuation quotation marks for poem (We Real
  Cool), italics for book and play titles
• (evidence) (where) ? meaning I need your evidence
  to be convinced
• Stay close to your texts.

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Journal Writing Close Analysis

• In the third line with cracked hands that
  ached we know that his father really loved
  them.
• Rev. The fathers love is expressed quietly
  through his making fire and polishing shoes with
  cracked hands that achedfrom labor in the
  weekday weather.

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Journal Writing Logic

• We Real Cool Since they are not interested in
  going to school, the teenage boys strike
  straight. This suggests that they are vigorous,
  but repulsive(why?). Thus, all the clues that
  Ive mentioned show that they have a weak sense
  of identity.
• Rev.? The teenage boys left school possibly
  because they are not interested in studying. Out
  of school, they are active in drinking
  (thinning gins), talking nonsense (jazzing
  June) and in using their brutal force (
  striking straight). All of this suggests that
  they are vigorous, but not productiveeither
  socially or for themselves. No wonder they have a
  weak sense of identity.

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Main Argument and Structure --rev. (2)

• Arts pattern
• in Musée des Beaux Art
• three paintings and the old maters
  interpretations, (Here you should still explain
  the main point of the poem.)
• repetition of how
• occasional rhymes
• in Anecdote of the Jar
• the jar, its roundness, and the human hand of I
  (Here you should still explain the main point of
  the poem.)
• occasional end rhymes
• internal rhymes of round and surround
• Natures role --
• in Musée des Beaux Art
• part of the human world and an ironic contrast to
  it sun, dog and horse
• in Anecdote of the Jar
• surrounding human artifact
• Simply different life-producing ? less
  anthropocentric view

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Final Exam A Summative Exam

• Altogether you should answer 6 questions.
• Close Analysis-- Choose 3 (from the Quiz
  questions 30 )
• -- 3 sentence interpretation of the meaning and
  significance of the poetic lines.
• Short Essay Questions 2 (30)

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Final Exam

• Altogether you should answer 6 questions.
• Long Essay Question (40)
• All the texts we have read deal with the
  relations between an individual and his/her
  society/community in one way or another. Pick up
  2 texts (one of them has to be a poem) and
  compare them.
• 1. Define the types of social community the
  individual characters/speakers have to deal with.
  How are they positioned in it? (By conforming
  to it, rebelling against it, being detached from
  it and/or seeking companion in it?)
• 2. What do we know about the characters/speakers
  (their identities) through the ways they handle
  their social positions and/or their social
  relations?
• 3. What can possibly be the texts main
  message(s) about society or our social identity?

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Self-Reflexivity

• What do these texts tell YOU about the following
  issues?
• Family Relations Class
• Our Positions in the Modern world
• Science vs. the Human (or Nature vs. Culture)
• Changes and Attitudes Towards Change
• Love
• Individual in Society,
• Etc, etc.