10.03.15 23:26If its a square its a Sonnet

Can tell its a Sonnet when it looks like a square. Because 14 lines is about the same length as one line of poetry.

Sonnets are important because theyre so common in the english language.

Why is it important to learn about the structure of poems? Wouldnt it be good enough to just enjoy the poem as it is? I would agree for the most part. What good is any poem if it isnt beautiful and doesnt have a certain aethetic touch to it? It conveys ideas, emotions, etc. all of which is very remarkable. Just enjoy the experience. After youve had your first pleasure, though, one of the additional pleasures is seeing how the poet worked that magic on you. There are many ways a poem can charm the reader: choice of images, music of the language, idea content, cleverness of wordplay. And at least some part of the answer, if that magic came in a sonnet, is form.

There isnt much space in a Sonnet for narrative. Regardless though it can achieve two purposes. Most have two parts one octave and one sestet

Different types of SonnetsPetrarchan binds octave together with rhymes and the sestet together with rhymesShakespearean Divides up by four. 1st 4. 2nd 4. 3rd 4. And last 2 (couplet). First two groups unify together. The 3rd four and the last two do too.

An echo by Willow Wood by Christina Rosetti

This poem is made of two sentences. The first period marks the end of the octave (first 8 lines) and the other marks the end of the sestet (6 lines) and of the poem.

Octave- unusual rhyme scheme abbaab; sestet cddcdc

Octave- event of two lovers on the verge of an event

Reference to Narcissus demonstrates the feeling of danger, because Narcissus looked into his reflection and fell in love with it causing him to drown.

Poets write Sonnets not because theyre lazy but because they want to convey an idea in this form (which takes a lot of effort).How to read Literature like a English professor

Now where have I see her beforeNo such thing as a wholly original piece of literature

Tim O Briens Goin After Casciato (1978)OBrien borrowed a lot from other writers but that doesnt make his writing anything less than original. Halfway through the book, OBriens characters fall through a hole and the only way to get out is to fall back out. (Alice in wonderland reference by Lewis Carroll) There is a Vietnamese girl who is brown-skinned and guides mostly white men, she knows where to go, where to get food (Sacajawea reference; this assosciation lets the reader understand how desparate Paul Berlin is for guidance)10.03.15 23:26

Its all about Shakespeare10.03.15 23:26

... Or the BibleEast of EdenThe author knew the book of Genesis really well. Being east of Eden means to be in a fallen world.

Araby by James Joyce

Eudora Welty Why I Live at the P.O.

A name has to sound right for a character BUT also has to carry whatever message the writer want to convey about the character or the story

How do you find biblical allusions?10.03.15 23:26resonance test: If something seems to be out of the scope of the immediate dimensions of the story or poem, if it resonates outside itself, start looking for allusions to older and bigger texts

Hanseldee and Greteldum

You dont have to use the entire part of a fairy tale. Just a part that helps demonstrate what youre trying to accomplish.

10.03.15 23:26But why fairy tales? Because were all familiar with them. Every kids show on TV uses plots relating to the originals. The familiarity and warmth of proximity well recognize when we are approached by a similar element.

Virgils Oddysey was based on Iliad by Homer

Ironic example: Aenas and his followers are survivors of Troy and here we have this Trojan hero acting out the patterns set down by his enemies.

2,000 years later. WalcottMore symbolic derivative. The theme of protecting ones family. Need to maintain ones dignity: Achilles. The determination to have faith: Penelope. The struggle to return home: Odysseus.

Other greek works of mythologyOvids Metamorphoses.

Franz Kafka referenced it in the Metamorphosis.

Indiana Jones looks like a typical Hollywood movie but the intrepid searcher after fabulous treasure goes back to Apollonius and The Argonautica, the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

There is no form of dysfunctional family or no personal disitegration of character for which there is not a Greek or Roman model. Examples:

10.03.15 23:26Wronged woman gone violent in her grief and madness? : Aeneas, Dido, or Jason and Medea.

There are 2 disservices people do when it comes to symbolism.1) They always want to know that one thing it is. Its up to perspective, as long as you have literary evidence. 10.03.15 23:262) Its not just an object that can be symbolic, a action can too.

Its all about politics

Charles Dickens A Christmas CarolDickens caricatures this Malthusian thinking in Scrooges insistence that he wants nothing to do with the destitute and that if they would rather starrve than live in the poorhouse or in debtors prison, then by golly, they had best hurry up and do it and decrease the excess population. What a guy! Some announcements early in the story are almost verbatim from Malthus or his Victorian descendants.

He hates political writing ones that are really obvious and dont have anything to offer for contemporary readers. They work for lots of us only as cultural anthropology. For example Ezra Pound and his writing about why he supports fascism and the evils of lending and borrowing between the world wars.

The type he likes: Dickens Gabriel Garca Marquez and Toni Morrison, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard ShawD.H. LawrenceRadical individualism

Edgar Allen Poe The Masque of the Red Death criticizes European class system, which privileges the unworthy and the unhealthy. Brother burries the sister dead. She escapes and when he hugs her they both fall over dead. The house collapses into the black and lurid tarn. = what Europea represents is degraded and decaying. Inevitable and even just outcome of a corrupt social organization.

Sophocles wrote his plays at a very old age. Oedipus at ColonusTheseus protects Oedipus from poetential harm and guides him to the sacred spot where the old man is fated to die. End of his lifeEnd of fifth century B.C. end of Athenian GreatnessIn play Creon attacks (real life Spartans)Suggests if they have another Theseus as a leader, then the spartans wouldnt attack

Virginia Woolf Mrs. DallowayYou do yourself a huge disservice if you dont understand the milieu of the author and the problems they wrote about.Lady Bruton invites Richard Dalloway (MP) and Hugh Whitbread (position at court); dictates them material she wants to see introduced into legislation; people wouldnt take her seriously if it came directly from her^Criticism of the notion that women arent capable of critical thinking10.03.15 23:26

Yes, Shes a Christ Figure, tooCulture is heavily influenced by its religious traditions.

A man, old, poor, humble profession (fisher for example), people dont like him, boy believes him, parents tell their boy to be far away from him. = good with children, maybe disciple, world he lives in is rather sullied and unworthy, fallen even. Catches huge fish, takes him into wilderness, his hands get bruised really badly, gone for 3 days, when he comes back (resurrection), he carries his mast (looks like a cross from some directions). Even doubters start to believe him again. ^The Old man and the Sea by Hemingway.

Dont have to hit all the marks. (look at stories of Flannery O Connor)

Clues: certain age, certain behaviors, provides for certain outcomes, or suffers in certain, provides for certain outcomes, literary antennae should twitch.10.03.15 23:26

BaptismJudith Guests Ordinary PeopleConrad and his big strong athletic brother are out in the storm of a sea/ brother dies/ Conrad survives. People think Conrad should have died instead of his strong athletic brother. Conrad learns he was strongerKnow he has to learn to live with it.Hes alive all over againConrad that went out to the sea is not the same one who comes back.And not just in terms of Heraclitus (greek philosophers who wrote that everything is changing and that you cant step into a river twice) apothegms of change written by Heraclitus about constantly shifting nature of time. Conrad is reborn: symbolically the same pattern we seen in baptism: death and rebirth through the medium of water.

Wonderful Love Medicine by Louise ErdrichHenry Lamartine Jr., Vietnam veteran sufferung from posttraumatic stress disorder. Comes out of it a little when his brother Lyman damages carWhile having a great time Henry runs into the flooded streamThrough dying Lyman thinks Henry has purchased his share of the car and rolls it down the stream

Analysis: The characters deaths are a form of choosing, of exerting control in a society that has taken control from them.

Song of SolomonMilkman is immersed in water 3 times. Stepping in small stream, given a bath by Sweet, and swimming with Sweet in the river. He becomes nicer, more considerate, less of a sexist pig. The thing about Baptism is you have to be ready to receive it. He loses things that mark him as a fine city man. He has to lose all the outer remnants of his raiment, all the things he has acquired from being the son of his father. He returns the favor of bathing to Sweet, which is important because of what it implies. When he is immersed in water when he swims, he whoops and hollers. Hes a changed man and he can feel it (dying, rebirth).

Beloved by Toni MorrisonPaul D. escapes from prison by digging a hole in the ground is swimming out into his new life.

*Baptism can mean a host of things

Mother kills her daughter on the Ohio River, so she doesnt have to experience slavery. River could symbolize the river Styx through which people crossed over to the underworld to Hades.

The Horse Dealers Daughter by D.H. Lawrence Mabel, a young girl, nearly drowns, rescued at the last moment by the local doctor. Family horse farm has been sold off after her fathers death. And wont go to a manor house, the only place thatll take her in. She cleans her mothers gravestone (its depicted that she would like to join her). When Dr. Fergusson recues her, almost dying in the process, he cleans her of this nasty fluid surrounding her. When she wakes up she is wrapped in a towel and feels as clean as the day she was born. (She is reborn). Theyre both new people and see something in each other their previous selfs, limited by their assosciations with the rest of the family, couldnt possibly find.

What does it mean if a character drowns?Rebirth/Renewal are always really similar to each other but drowning always means something different. Or in the words of Tolstoy in Anna Karenina: All happy families are the same, but every unhappy one has its own story. Drowning can have different purposes: character revelation, thematic developmeant of violence or fialure or guilt, plot complication or denouement.10.03.15 23:26

Geography matters

Faulkner usually has it take place in his made up place: Yoknapatawpha County Mississippi.

Thomas hardy: Wessex, the southwest corner of England

Most writers arent as tied to a certain place like these two.

The Old Man and the Sea by HemingwayCould only take place in the caribbean.The place brings with it history, interaction between American and Cuban culture, corruption, poverty, fishing, and baseball.

The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnCould only travel the river in Mississippi, to make that story possible. It matters when they reach Cairo and the Ohio emtpies into the big river. When they get to the Deep South.

Literary geography is about humans inhabiting spaces. Geography is the literal sense is setting but also can be psychology, attitude, finance, industryanything that can forge in the people who live there.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan PoeThe setting creates a dark, scary feeling, which the character makes worse. He puts normal human specimens in that setting, where no one can feel safe.

Bean Trees by Barbara KingsolverMissy wants to escape from Kentucky, where the life is hard (tobacco farming), no one has much from it. The narrator also feels her horizons circumscribed by whawt seem like local certainties: early pregnancy and an unsatisfactory marriage to a man who will probably die young. She gets away, and renames herself to Taylor Greer (rebirth). She finds herself in a completely alien but inviting landscape. Big horizons, clear air, brilliant sunshine, and open possibilities.

Geography can be character

Going after Cacciato by Tim OBrienTunnels are everywhere. Tunnels turn into the enemy because they house the Vietcong fighters only to deliver them virtually anywhere, produce surprise attacks and sudden death. Bullet come from a VC near a village. Soldiers decide to burn down the village. Its Geography: center of mystery and threat, as alien environment, as generic home of potential enemies and uncertain friends.

Geography as plot role

E. M. Forsters early novelsIn a room with a ViewLucy Honeychurch travels to Florence. She attains freedom and much of it stems form the passionate, fierynature of the Italian city.

Lady Chatterleys Lover by D.H. LawrenceEmploy geography as a metaphor for the psyche. When characters go south theyre really digging deep into their subconcious, delving into that region of darkest fears and desires.

Running south = running amok

The snows of Kilimanjaro by HemingwayContrasts leopard dying and preserved in the snow on the peak, with the writer dying of gangrene down on the plain. The leopards death is clean, cold, pure, while the writers death is ugly, unpleasant, horrible. Final result is the same but one is much less wholesome than the other.

10.03.15 23:26Its place and space and shape that bring us to ideas and psychology and history and dynamism.

So does Season

That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruind choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Deaths second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou seest the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourishd by.This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

ShakespeareSeasons having their appropriate emotions- fear no more the heat o th sun, Nor the furious winters rage

Henry JamesAmerican girl Daisy Miller;playful, flirtatiousAmerican man/long resident of Europe Frederic WinterbourneYou know things cant end well because Daisies cant flourish in Winter.

Different Seasons meaningsSpring: childhood and youthSummer: adulthood and romance and fulfillmetn and passionAutumn: Decline and middle age and tirednesss but also harvestWinter: old age and resentment and death

Sometimes its not obvious what season it is

Robert Frost Not explicitly state that its Autumn but the fact that the narrator just got done picking apples suggests that it is Autumn. Not only agricultural but also personal harvests. Results of our endeavors. We reap the rewards and punishments of our conduct. Doesnt just talk about the sleep of the woodchuck but suggests also a longer sleep, the big sleep. For Frost such a dual gaze (Janus: one face looking backwards, one looking forwards) applies equally well to the autumn and the harvest season.

Never assume seasons can only be used in one way. Look at how they are used.

10.03.15 23:26

One StoryIts impossible to write a completely original story. A good writer makes his work acquire depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts.

Books are more comforting because we recognize elements in them from our prior readig.

IntertextualityEverythings connected. And everything is having a dialogue with each otherIs there whether you think it is, or not.

ArchetypeArchetypes take on power with repetition. We can never get to the pure level of myth or the original Archetype. We as readers or writers, tellers or listenersunderstand each other, we share knowledge of the structures of ourmyths, we comprehend the logic of symbols, largely because we have access to the same swirl of story. We have only to reach out into the air and pluck a piece of it.

10.03.15 23:26

Marked for GreatnessWhen people in real life have imperfections it means nothing thematically, metaphorically, or spiritually.

But scoliosis on Richard III. Shakespeare is very much a product of his time in suggesting that ones proximity to or distance from God is manifested in external signs.

Difference is always rich with possibility in literature, while sameness doesnt present us with metaphorical possibilities.

Usually heroes are marked. For example: Harry Potters

Milkman Dead- one leg being shorter than the other.^to demonstrate how life marks him as you go on

Character differentiationKing blinds himself.

Oedipus feet are bound together as a child which causes a minor wound.

The Sun also Rises by Ernest HemingwayPresents a society that has been rendered barren --- spiritually, morally, intellectually, and sexually --- by the war.How do we know Jake Barren is the fisher king? He goes fishing. Parallel to the Wasteland Myth. Perhaps with a touch of Isis and Osyris thrown in; Osiris was torn apart, and the goddess Isis succeeded in reassembling him except for the part that makes Jake Barnes resemble him. Isis takes in other lovers. Much like Lady Brett Ashley.

Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence DurrellTwo characters with eye patches and one with a glass eyeEveryone is damaged as they go through life. But they arent particularly incommodated. Clea the painter reports late in the final novel that her prosthetic hand can paint. The gift lies not in her hand, in other words, but in her heart. her mind, her soul.

FrankensteinThe monster represents the aftermath of the scientist-sorcerer, forging an unholy alliance with dark knowledge that scares us; forbidden insights, a modern pact with the devil, the result of science without ethics. Faustian pact with the devil.

10.03.15 23:26Vicotr represents the dual nature of man. No matter how well made or socially groomed, a monsterous Other exists. --- exact opposite of the hunchback of Notre Dame.

Hes Blind for a Reason, You knowOften blindness is not the inability to see the physical world but the inability to see what is really going on.

OedipusOedipus is blinded because he doesnt really see what is going on and Tiresias who is blind understands what is going on. Every scene includes who saw what. And images of light and darkness.

Araby by James JoyceThe street the narrator lives on is called Araby = dead end street.10.03.15 23:26A good story is one that lets us feel that theres something more going on in the story --- a richness, a resonance, a depth --- than we picked up at first, so we return to it to find those elements that account for that sensation.

Its Never Just Heart DiseaseHeart has been the symbolic repisotory of emotion and is also the pump that keeps us alive.

The remorseful day by Colin DexterKills off his recurrent detective Morse. Killed by heart attack. The emphasis is on his humanity, not his misdeeds.

The man of adamant by Nathaniel HawthorneHis heart turns to stone.

Lord Jim by Joseph ConradJim makes bad decisions, the novel questions his strength of the heart, both in terms of bravery and of forming serious attachments. Do to one of his miscalculations, his best friends and the son of the chieftain dies. He promised if any of his decisions cause the death of people, Jim will forfeit his own life. Doramin(the leader) shoots him through the chest. Led a life by a true heart can only die because his heart stops functioning.

More commonly heart troube takes the form of heart diseaseLolitas Humbert Humbert by Vladimir NabokovSelf absorbtion leads him to cruelty, rape, murder and the destruction of several lives. Only one death symbolically appropriate to this situation.

10.03.15 23:26irony

And rarely just illness

The sisters by James JoyceNarrator mentions that his priest is dying. Priest has no hope. Literary antenna should go off! Whats important is WHY he is has paralysis. Boy witnesses priest begin the slow decline after earlier strokes (his clothing covered with bits of tobacco and ash, his movement awkward, his speech affected). Priest gets released from his parish. Lives his last years as a recluse in the back of his sisters house, which indicates the degree to which emotional or mental paralysis had already set in before his stroke.

For Joyce, paralysis --- physical, moral, social, spiritual, intellectual, political ----informs his whole career.

Before the 20th century diseases were a mystery/treated superstitial and still are e.g. button your coat, or youll get sick.

Principles for disease in literature:1. It should be picturesque; tuberculosis: sufferer acquires a sort of bizarre beauty. The skin becomes almost translucent; the eye sockets dark, so that the sufferer takes on the appearance of a martyr in medieval paintings.2. should be mysterious in its origin3. should have strong metaphorical or symbolic possibilities. Tuberculosis was a wasting disease, both in terms of the individual washing away, growing thinner and thinner, and in terms of the waste of lives that were often barely under way.

Doesnt have to be labeled tubercular.delicate, fragile, sensitive, washing away symptom or two would suffice for the audience who were all too familiar with the disease.

4. a sufficiently compelling metaphor can induce an author to bring an otherwise objectionable illness into a work. Example: plague; in terms of suffering not good; but in terms of widespread societal devastation its a champion.

Oedipus RexThebes is hit by various plagues; divine wrath

The Plague by Albert CamusInterested in philosophical possibilitiesThe isolation and unvertainty caused by the disease, the abdsurdly random nature of infection, the despair felt by a doctor in the face of an unstoppable epidemic, the desire to act even while recognizing the pointlessness of action.

This is how writers use illness when it is less central.Daisy Miller by Henry JamesKills Daisy off. He gives her Roman fever AKA malaria.Malaria works great metaphorically: Bad air --- malicious gossip--- and hostile public opinion --- throughout her stay in Rome. Formerly thought it was contracted from hot air. Romans make her frantic to join the elite.

Destroyed from the clash between her own vitality and the rotten atmostphere of this oldest of Old World cities.

A Dolls House by Henrik GibsonDoctor is dying of tuberculosis of the spine. He says he contracted it from his fathers dissolute living.

AIDSNot picturesque; but has the same wasting quality as TBMysterious YESSymbolic? Mother lode of symbol and metaphor; Tendency to lie dorman for so long, then make an appearance, its ability because of that dorman period to turn every victim into an inknowing carrier, its cirtual one hundred percent motality rates over the first decade or so of its history, all these things offer strong symbolic possibilities. Hit the gay community hard. Scource in artistic circles. Because of its demographic- political angle.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham10.03.15 23:26Personal calamity unique in its time but has the universality of great suffering and despair and courage, of a victim seeking to wrest control over his own life away from the condition that has controlled him. Its a condition, Cunningham reminds us, that differs only in the specific details, not in the humanity those details entail.

Dont read with your eyesThe dead by James JoyceCelery in a vase; roasted Goose; American apples and oranges on the sideboard. Pretty remarkable unless you live in preelectrified Dublin.

Celery is from America and therefore quite expensive; Success of this event needs to be seen from their eyes.

Sonnys Blues by James Baldwin10.03.15 23:26Deals with two brothers. One who goes to jail because of heroin possession and he is also a jazz musician. His brother doesnt understand what drives him to jazz and music and substance abuse. This drives them apart. At the end they listen to jazz and the good brother hears some of the suffering as well as the joy that lie behind it. So he sends an offering, a scotch and milk, that indicates understanding and brotherhood. Cup that shimmers like the very cup of trembling --- biblical. Its about redemption NOT recovery.

Is he serious? And other IroniesIrony trumps everything

Authors that use IronyJohn BunyanMark TwainHerman MelvilleRobert FrostJack KerouacTom RobbinsEasy RiderThelma and Louise

Waiting for GodotTwo tramps: Vladimir and Estragon that wait for a Godot by a Road. They never take the road.

Theyre in a desolate country beside an avenue of escape they fail to take.

A Farewell to Arms by HemingwayHero, Frederic Heny experienced the death of his lover (Catherine Barkley), and her baby during child birth. Distraught he goes out for a walk in the rain.

There is nothing rejuvenating about the rain here; ironyAt the end, mother and child, rather than existing for each other, as experience has taught us to expect, slay each other, the infant strangled by the umbilical cord, the mother dead after a series of hemorrhages. Even the Title A Farewell to Arms is ironic

The signifier, while being fairly stable itself, doesnt have to be used in the planned way. Its meaning can be deflected from the expected meaning.The Arrow of Heaven by G.K. ChestertonThe victim is in a high tower with higher windows, so there is no way for a straight shot except from heaven, which presents us with an insoluble problem: no one could have shot him with a straight arrow except for God.

Father Brown, Chestertons little hero/detective/priest figures out that the murderer mustve been with him in the room and used the arrow to stab him = deflection

Irony chiefly involves a deflection from expectation.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde[your] hair has gone quite gold from grief

Ancient Greek MythEiron subservient weakAlazon - insults a pompus arrogane, clueles figure called the- Alazon

A Passauge to India by E.M. FosterHowards End by E.M. FosterLeonard Bast tries to better himself by reading approved books and attending lectures/concerts.He meets people of the higher classes: Schlegel sisters and Wilcox family

Ironically the events that he thinks are going to improve his life/make him hapier do the opposite:1)Wilcox convinces him to get a more secure job. Leaving his banking position, he joins a company in which his position gets eliminated while his old company prospers. 2) In his despair, he spent a night with Helen that has left her pregnant

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia WoolfSeptimus Warren Smith, her damaged war veteran, commits suicide because his enemies are coming to get him. Enemies=doctors A Clockwork Orange by Anthony BurgessAlex = Christ figureHes a rapist, murderer. But he has followers, is succeeded by one of them whose name is Pete. And at the very end falls off of a cliff (temptation that Christ resisted) died, and revivified.

And the ending conveys a profound, religious message. Argument: Why is there evil if the world was created by an almighty benevolent being? Without evil, there cannot be good. Moreover the possibility to choose freely is important because compelled faith is no faith at all. At the very end Alex gets to choose goodness after all the evil-doings he is committed.

In the very end Alex is purged of his free will to choose, but he still wants to choose evil. Society committed a far worse crime against him by taking away his free will, which for Burgess is the hallmark of the human being.

Because of the multivocal nature of irony, we hear those multiple voices simultaneaously, readers who are inclined toward univocal utterances simply may not register that multiplicity. (for example The Satanic Verses by Rushdies did not register with some Muslim clerics because of the nature of its subject.)