Download File - Ms. Gallien`s Classroom

Allusion:
an expression
designed to call
something to mind
without
mentioning it
explicitly; an
indirect or passing
reference
Example:
When he calls to me, I am
ready
I’ll wash his feet with my hair if
he needs
Forgive him when his tongue
lies through his brain,
Even after three times, he
betrays me.
Lady Gaga, Judas
What does this song allude to?
Why? (What is the intention
of the songwriter?)
Diction:
the choice and
use of words
and phrases in
speech or
writing
Example:
“Heard melodies are sweet, but
those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft
pipes, play on
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that
cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the
spring adieu.”
John Keats, “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
What does the use of the formal
diction (ye vs. you; adieu vs.
good-bye) convey?
Tragedy:
a play dealing with
tragic events and
having an unhappy
ending, especially one
concerning the
downfall of the main
character.
Aristotle defines Tragedy in his famous work
“Poetics” as:
“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is
admirable, complete (composed of an
introduction, a middle part and an ending), and
possesses magnitude; in language made
pleasurable, each of its species separated in
different parts; performed by actors, not through
narration; effecting through pity and fear the
purification of such emotions.”
From the above definition, we can understand
the objective of the Greek tragedies i.e.
“…purification of such emotions” also called
catharsis.”
Catharsis is a release of emotional tension, as
after an overwhelming experience that restores
or refreshes the spirit.
What other tragedies can you think of that align with
Aristotle’s definition?
Motif:
a distinctive
feature or
dominant idea
in an artistic or
literary
composition
Example:
The motif of weather in The Great Gatsby
unfailingly matches the emotional and
narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and
Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain,
proving awkward and melancholy; their love
reawakens just as the sun begins to come
out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with
Tom occurs on the hottest day of the
summer, under the scorching sun (like the
fatal encounter between Mercutio and
Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills
Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby
floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in
the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time
and restore his relationship with Daisy to
the way it was five years before, in 1917.
What other motifs can you think of in The
Great Gatsby?
Example:
Symbol
a thing that
represents or
stands for
something else,
especially a
material object
representing
something
abstract.
In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.
Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters,
Not one knows.
-Wild Asters by Sara Teasdale
What things or objects symbolize abstract ideas in
this poem? There are several! What can you
uncover?
Theme
A major theme is an idea
that a writer repeats in his
work, making it the most
significant idea in a literary
work.. It is a truth that
exhibits universality and
stands true for people of
all cultures. Through
themes, a writer tries to
give his readers an insight
into how the world works
or how he or she views
human life.
Examples:
Love and friendship are frequently occurring
themes in literature. They generate
emotional twists and turns in a narrative
and can lead to a variety of endings: happy,
sad or bittersweet.
How many works of literature can you
remember that share this theme?
The theme of war has been explored in
literature since ancient times. The literary
woks utilizing this theme may either glorify
or criticize the idea of war.
How many works of literature can you
remember that share this theme?
Example:
Iamb
An iamb is a literary device
that can be defined as a
foot containing unaccented
and short syllables
followed by a long and
accented syllable in a
single line of a poem
(unstressed/stressed
syllables).
Much of Shakespeare is written in iambic
pentameter:
Duh DUH Duh DUH Duh DUH Duh DUH Duh DUH
Duh DUH= 1 iamb
Pentameter= 5 iambs (penta=5)
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief, (Romeo
and Juliet by William Shakespeare)
Example:
Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a popular
literary device often used
in drama to reveal the
innermost thoughts of a
character. The word
soliloquy is derived from
Latin word “solo” which
means “to himself” and
“loquor” means “I speak”
respectively.
“Peace. It is providence, and no great change;
we are only what we always were, but
naked now. . . Aye, naked! And the wind,
God’s icy wind will blow.”
John Proctor in The Crucible
Although modern plays hardly use any
soliloquies, The Crucible has some used in
the second act. This short form of soliloquy
comes at the end of Act 2 where John
Proctor faces the open sky when talking to
Mary Warren.
Examples:
Aphorism
Aphorism is a statement of
truth or opinion expressed
in a concise and witty
manner. The term is often
applied to philosophical,
moral and literary
principles.
Shakespeare:
“Having nothing, nothing can he lose.” (Henry VI)
“Life is a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth)
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (A Midsummer
Night’s Dream)
From “To Kill a Mockingbird”:
“You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view – until you
climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Alexander Pope (18th century essayist)
“To err is human, to forgive divine.” (An Essay on
Criticism)
Question:
Resolution
If resolution is the removal of
conflict at the end of a
piece of literature, what is
the resolution of Oedipus
Rex?
Antithesis
literally means opposite, is
a rhetorical device in which
two opposite ideas are put
together in a sentence to
achieve a contrasting
effect.
Antithesis emphasizes the
idea of contrast by parallel
structures of the
contrasted phrases or
clauses, i.e. the structures
of phrases and clauses are
similar in order to draw the
attention of the listeners
or readers.
Alexander Pope in his “An Essay
on Criticism” says: “To err is
human; to forgive divine.”
Fallibility is a trait of humans
and God, his creator, is most
forgiving. Through these
antithetical ideas, Pope
reveals the basic nature of
human beings. He wants to
say that God is forgiving
because his creation is erring.
Parallelism
the use of components in a
sentence that are
grammatically the same; or
similar in their
construction, sound,
meaning or meter.
We see William Blake employ
Parallelism in his poem “The Tyger”:
“What the hammer?
what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil?
what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”
What is the effect of the use of
parallelism in this case?
Syntax
It dictates how words from
different parts of speech
are put together in order
to convey a complete
thought.
Syntax and diction are
closely related.
Diction refers to the choice
of words in a particular
situation while syntax
determines how the
chosen words are used to
form a sentence.
“That night I sat on Tyan-yu’s bed and waited for him
to touch me. But he didn’t. I was relieved.”
(The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan)
“They left me alone and I lay in bed and read the
papers awhile, the news from the front, and the
list of dead officers with their decorations and
then reached down and brought up the bottle of
Cinzano and held it straight up on my stomach,
the cool glass against my stomach, and took little
drinks making rings on my stomach from holding
the bottle there between drinks, and watched it
get dark outside over the roofs of the town.” (A
Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway)
How does the syntax differ between the two
examples above, and how does it affect your
understanding of the characters?
Mood
a literary element that
evokes certain feelings or
vibes in readers through
words and descriptions.
Usually, mood is referred
to as the atmosphere of a
literary piece, as it creates
an emotional situation that
surrounds the readers.
“There was no moon, and everything
beneath lay in misty darkness: not a
light gleamed from any house, far or
near all had been extinguished long ago:
and those at Wuthering Heights were
never visible…”
“Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing;
and the full, mellow flow of the beck in
the valley came soothingly on the ear. It
was a sweet substitute for the yet
absent murmur of the summer foliage,
which drowned that music about the
Grange when the trees were in leaf.”
The above are two different places being
described in the same novel (Wuthering
Heights). How would you describe the
difference in mood between the two
descriptions?
Meter and
Stress
English poetry
employs five
basic rhythms
of varying
stressed (/)
and unstressed
(x) syllables
The meters with two-syllable feet
are:
IAMBIC (x /) :
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
TROCHAIC (/ x):
Tell me not in mournful numbers
SPONDAIC (/ /):
Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O
Sea!
Meter and
Stress
Continued!!
Meters with three-syllable
feet are:
ANAPESTIC (/ x x):
And the sound of a voice that is still
DACTYLIC (x / /):
This is the forest primeval, the
murmuring pines and the hemlock
(a trochee replaces the final dactyl)
Meter and
Stress
Mixing it up!!
iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables):
That time | of year | thou mayst | in me |
behold
trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables):
Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers
anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables):
And the sound | of a voice | that is still
dactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a
trochee replaces the last dactyl):
This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring
| pine and the | hemlocks
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Sonnet
The word sonnet is derived
from the Italian word
“sonetto”. It means a small
or little song or lyric.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
In poetry, a sonnet has
fourteen lines and is written
in iambic pentameter.
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Each line has 14 syllables. It
has a specific rhyme scheme
and a “volta” or specific
turn, usually in the third
quatrain.
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
From Hamlet:
Couplet
A couplet is a literary
device which can be
defined as having two
successive rhyming lines in
a verse and has the same
meter to form a complete
thought. It is marked by a
usual rhythm, rhyme
scheme, and incorporation
of specific utterances.
“The time is out of joint,
O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set
it right!”
Dynamic
Character
A character who
experiences changes
throughout the plot of a
story. Although the change
may be sudden, it is
expected based on the
story’s events. This change
is often internal, such as a
change in personality or
attitude. Note: dynamic
character doesn’t describe
the character. You can be
reeeeally boring and also a
dynamic character at the
same time!
Examples:
The Grinch whose heart
“grew three sizes.”
Ebenezer Scrooge in “A
Christmas Carol”
Harry Potter!
Others?
Static
Character
A character who is largely the
same person at the end of the
story as he was in the
beginning. Any character in a
compelling story experiences
some life changes and
variation in his environment,
but what distinguishes a static
character is usually his
existing persona, confidence
and appeal to readers. Heroic
and charismatic characters
often work better as static
characters than ones who must
undergo change to appeal to
the audience and to
significantly affect a story.
Examples:
Sherlock Holmes (he stays
the same, everyone else
swirls around him).
Tom Sawyer (he remains
unaffected by the changes
happening around him and
within others).
Others?
Anaphora
In writing or speech, the
deliberate repetition of the
first part of the sentence in
order to achieve an artistic
effect.
This is probably the oldest
known literary device.
Read the following examples and describe the
emotional or artistic effect brought on by the
use of anaphora:
“This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this
England
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings […]
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land.”
-Shakespeare, Richard II
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season
of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair.”
-Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”
Examples:
Satire
Satire is a technique
employed by writers to
expose and criticize
foolishness and corruption
of an individual or a
society by using humor,
irony, exaggeration, or
ridicule.
It intends to improve
humanity by criticizing its
follies and foibles.
“…that for above seventy Moons past there have
been two struggling Parties in this Empire, under
the Names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan from
the high and low Heels on their shoes, by which
they distinguish themselves.” –Jonathan Swift,
Gulliver’s Travels
“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t
help the poor, either we have to pretend that
Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got
to acknowledge that He commanded us to love
the poor and serve the needy without condition
and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report
What is being satirized in each of the above
examples?
Examples:
Apostrophe
A writer or a speaker, using
an apostrophe, detaches
himself from the reality
and addresses an
imaginary character in his
speech.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee!
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”
-Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all
about to mock me; if ye really pity me,
crush sensation and memory; let me
become as nought; but if not, depart,
depart, and leave me in darkness.”
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Explain how each of these is an example of
apostrophe.
Examples:
Idiom
The term refers to a set
expression or a phrase
comprising two or more
words. The expression is
not interpreted literally.
The phrase is understood
as to mean something
quite different from what
individual words of the
phrase would imply.
“Every cloud has its silver lining but it is
sometimes a little difficult to get it to the
mint.”
“I worked the graveyard shift with old people,
which was really demoralizing, because the
old people didn’t have a chance in hell of
ever getting out.”
Dramatic
Monologue
The occurrence of a single
speaker saying something
to a silent audience. This
monologue often comes
during a climactic moment
in a work and often reveals
hidden truths about a
character, their history and
their relationships.
Famous Dramatic Monologues in Poetry:
Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”
Robert Frost and T.S. Elliot also wrote them.
Sometimes these characters created by the
poets seem to take over the story line of the
poem itself.
Metonymy
Examples from everyday life:
The pen is mightier than the sword.
The Oval Office was busy in work.
Let me give you a hand.
a figure of speech that replaces
the name of a thing with the
name of something else with
which it is closely associated.
What do the underlined words symbolize?
Generally, metonymy is used in
developing literary symbolism. It
gives more profound meanings to
otherwise common ideas and
objects. By using metonymy, texts
exhibit deeper or hidden
meanings and thus drawing
readers’ attention. In addition,
the use of metonymy helps
achieve conciseness. For instance,
“Rifles were guarding the gate” is
more concise than “The guards
with rifles in their hands were
guarding the gate.”
“The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirror Him must someday die,”
-Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
Examples from literature:
“As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling”
-Robert Frost “Out, Out”
Where is the metonymy and what is being symbolized?
Examples from real life:
Synecdoche
a literary device in which a
part of something
represents the whole or it
may use a whole to
represent a part.
It may also use larger
groups to refer to smaller
groups or vice versa. It may
also call a thing by the
name of the material it is
made of or it may refer to
a thing in a container or
packing by the name of
that container or packing.
The phrase “gray beard” refers to an old man.
The word “sails” refers to a whole ship.
The word “suits” refers to businessmen.
The word “boots” usually refers to soldiers.
Examples from literature:
“Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
The hand that mocked them.”
Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Where is the synecdoche in those lines?
Examples of Lyric Poetry from the Romantic
Movement:
Lyrical Poetry
a type of emotional
songlike poetry,
distinguished from
dramatic and narrative
poetry.
The word ‘Lyric’ comes
from the Greek word ‘Lyre’,
a stringed musical
instrument.
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”
From “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
Pastoral
Poetry
the pastoral tradition
refers to a lineage of
creative works that idealize
rural life and landscapes,
while the term “pastoral”
refers to individual poems
or other works in the
tradition.
Examples:
“A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.”
From “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” by
Christopher Marlowe
“The time has come for my groaning ox to drag
My heavy plow across the fields, so that
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against
it.
Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield what the farmer prays for...”
-Virgil (38 BC)
Elegy
a form of literature which can be
defined as a poem or song in the form
of elegiac couplets, written in honor of
someone deceased. It typically
laments or mourns the death of the
individual.
Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and
daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces
turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
“Captain, Oh My Captain” by Walt Whitman about Abraham Lincoln
Examples:
Foil
a character that shows
qualities that are in
contrast with the qualities
of another character with
the objective to highlight
the traits of the other
character.
Milton’s “Paradise Lost Book I” is based on the
comparison of two contrasting characters: God
and Satan. Satan, in the entire work, appears as a
foil to God. The negative traits of Satan and the
positive traits of God are frequently compared
which consequently brings to the surface not
only the contrast between the two characters
but also “justify the ways of God…” We reach a
conclusion that it is only just for Satan to be
expelled from the paradise because of his refusal
to give in to the will of God.
What character is a foil to Victor Frankenstein?
Anti-heroes in TV and movies:
Anti-hero
A prominent character in a
play or book that has
characteristics opposite to
that of a conventional hero. A
protagonist is generally
admired for his bravery,
strength, charm, ingenuity
etc., while an anti-hero is
typically clumsy, unsolicited,
and unskilled and has both
good and bad qualities.
Instead of having two
different people to represent
two extremes, an anti-hero
combines both into one
person and thus shows the
real human nature.
Dexter, Gollum, and….
Anti-heroes in literature:
Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels
Jean Valjean in Les Miserables
And….
Allegory
a figure of speech in which
abstract ideas and
principles are described in
terms of characters, figures
and events. The objective
of its use is to preach some
kind of a moral lesson.
Animal Farm, written by George Orwell, is an
allegory that uses animals on a farm to
describe the overthrow of the last of the
Russian Tsars, Nicholas II, and the
Communist Revolution of Russia before WW
II. The actions of the animals on the farm
are used to expose the greed and
corruption of the revolution.
Moral: Orwell makes his position clear about
the Russian Revolution and exposes its evils.
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an example
of spiritual allegory. The ordinary sinner
“Christian” leaves the City of Destruction
and travels towards Celestial City, where
God resides, for salvation.
Moral: the road to Heaven is not easy and it is
full of obstacles.
Example:
Apposition
A syntactical structure
where a noun is followed
by an noun phrase, where
the noun phrase explains
the noun further.
Ms. Gallien, my English teacher…
Green bell peppers, the nastiest vegetable of
all…
Please write three more appositive phrases:
Ambiguity
a word, phrase, or
statement which contains
more than one meaning.
This serves the purpose of
lending a deeper meaning
to a literary work. By
introducing ambiguity in
their works, writers give
liberty to the readers to
use their imagination to
explore meanings.
Examples:
A good life depends on a liver.
Each of us saw her duck.
Poetry Example:
“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy”
-William Blake
Example:
Juxtaposition
a literary technique in
which two or more ideas,
places, characters and
their actions are placed
side by side in a narrative
or poem for the purpose of
developing comparisons
and contrasts. The
comparison drawn adds
vividness to a given image,
controls pacing of poem or
a narrative and provides a
logical connection
between two various
vague concepts.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the
age of foolishness, it was the epoch of
belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was
the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was
the winter of despair, we had everything
before us, we had nothing before us, we
were all going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way…”
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
What ideas are being juxtaposed here?
Example:
Enjambment
The running-over of a
sentence or phrase from
one poetic line to the next,
without terminal
punctuation; the opposite
of end-stopped.
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
“Between Walls” William Carlos Williams
What is the effect of the enjambment on the tone of the
poem?
Examples:
End-Stopped
A metrical line ending at a
grammatical boundary or
break—such as a dash or
closing parenthesis—or
with punctuation such as a
colon, a semicolon, or a
period. A line is considered
end-stopped, too, if it
contains a complete
phrase.
Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;
Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest today is as completely so,
As who began a thousand years ago.
“An Essay on Man: Epistle 1”
Alexander Pope
In contrast to the poem on the previous slide, how is the
tone in these rhyming couplets affected by the endstopped lines?
A few famous epigraphs:
Epigraph
A short quotation or saying
at the beginning of a book
or chapter, intended to
suggest its theme.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell
us that dragons exist, but because they tell us
that dragons can be beaten.” GK Chesterson
From Coraline by Neil Gaiman
“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
Juan Ramon Jiménez
From Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
-Charles Lamb
From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
What would you infer the themes are of the above
novels?
Some fun ones:
Epigram
A brief, clever, memorable
statement
“Little strokes/Fell great oaks” Benjamin
Franklin
“Here is my wife: here let her lie! Now she is at
rest, and so am I” John Dryden
“Candy/Is dandy/But liquor/Is quicker”
Ogden Nash
“To be safe of the fourth/Don’t buy a fifth on
the third” James H. Muehlbauer
Copy your favorite!