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Poetry and prose :

-the distinction between poetry and prose seems obvious at firt glance

-it i showever, complec and debatable subject

-one difference between these two forms which is frequently mentioned has to do with language or dictions;

Poetry is commnonly associated with :

Images – are words, which evoc feelings or mentalimages

-concrete descriptive phrases

-the figurative language of similes and metaphors

-the speacial „poetic diction“ (finny tribe – fish, feathered floc - birds)

-prose is associated with plain, straight forward statements, notaffected by imagery, and close to everyday or colloquial speech.

-though it is possible to agree with the statment that the language of poetry is more consciously chosen, with more attention to precision and suggestiveness than the language of common speech,

-there is not always a very sharp dividing line.

Shakespeare´s sonnets or Keat sodes are indeed rich lyimagistic, but there are lines which seem hardly .

-the refined and elevated „poetic diction“ was cutivated only at certain periods (eigtheenth century)and it was characteristic mainly of certain literarytypes, such as the heroicepic and the pastoral

-modern poets, and especially postomodern ones, may quit econsciously choose colloquial and even slangy diction

-on the other hand there are prose passages which are extremly ornate and figurative

-even in more simple, utilitarian prose- JohnLocke – explanatory similes and metaphors are used from time to time for emphasis

Any difference in language would be then only one of degree

-the same can be said about another commonly held as sumpiton, i.e. that meter and rhythm distinguish prose from poetry

-on the one hand, meter is not characteristic to all poetry

-and although poetry indeed tends to have a strongly marked rhythm, certain poems, as e.g. written in freeverse, have what might almost be considered prose rhythms.

-on the other hand, prose may have such strongly marked rhythm, as in the incantatory passages of the King James Bible or some of Ahabs speeches in Moby – Dick that it can be scanned .

-another possible distinction between poetry and prose seems at first glance to be too obvious to beworth mentioning.

-we have to say that the rist he intermediate form of prose poetry, in whichwords are arranged as if they made up a prose paragraph but have the ponounced rhythm of poetry

-on the whole, however, it seems fair to say that poetry and prose simply look quite diferent on the printed page

-although this may sound like a very sperficial distinction, it suggests a more fundamental point.

-itexpressesmeaning in a more concise and concentratedfashionthan prose, usingmany more ofthepossiblitiesofverbal art.

-to achievesuchconcentrationitusesvariousdevices, allusions, multipleconnotations, etc.,,,,

THE COMPOSITION OF POETRY

-the most important feature of poetry is its graphical appearance

-while prose can be , on the whole „divided into sentences, paragraphs and chapters.

-poetry is divided intoline and stanzas, lengt hierpoetical Works into books or cantos..

-absence of narrator so the rthan the poet himself

-absence of dialogues

THE COMPOSITION OF POETRY PROSODY

-the study of the principles of verse structure

-it is the poetic pattern of meter, rhyme, and stanza

The basic rhythmical unit in a poemis a line – the line can be divided into smaller units – syllables (long&short or stressed and unstressed)

-there are pauses between individual syllables

-usually we find the one stressed syllable forms a combination with one or two unstressed syllables and several such combinations in a line thus form a more or less regular pattern called metrical norm or measure or meter.

It´s a part of the literary theory;

Genre and Convention : genre – from Latin genus, generis – kind, sort, type

- What makes a genre genre is often controversial – many times it is just convention.

- Ancient classification : Drama , Epic, Lyric

- Modern classification : Poetry, Prose , Drama

Ø Subgroups – of lyric – elegy(žalospev), ode, sonnet, ballad.

Of drama – miracle play (life of a saint), mystery play (episodes of Old and new testamenst )

Morality play – in Middle Ages

In the Renaissance Chronicle or history play ;

Of epic – picaresque novel (picaro - rogue) Don Quixote, epistolary novel (S. Richardson´s Pamel), Bildungsroman (education), Kunstlerroman (artist)- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Ø Psychological novel (The Brothers Karamazov)

Ø Socilogical novel (Steinbeck)

Ø Roman clef (characters stand for actual people),

Ø The Gothic novel

Ø Western

Ø The historical novel

Ø Detective story

Ø Science fiction, utopia, dystopia, etc.

-but also shorter genres : fabliau (in Middle Ages), fable, short story, long short story, novelette;

Elements of Fiction

Component parts of literary works – narrative Works:

§ Plot

§ Character

§ Setting

§ Point of view

§ Genre

§ Theme

PLOT :

Work of art as a complex unity;

It´s meaning – result of various tensions – contrasts, oppositions, even apparent contradictions .

Tension between form and language. Manner of writing and subject matter.

Critical reading – analysis of parts and details and a generalization on a total effect of a story or poem.

-any discussion of a literary work has to take into a consideration the fact that a work of art is a complex unity – its meaning , if we can speak about a unified meaning at all, is the result of various tensions – contrasts , oppositions, even apparent contradictions

Critical reading then consists of , usually an analysis of parts and details and a generalization on a total effect of a story or poem – structuralist approach

Plot is regarded to be one of the main components of Narrative Fiction (prose)

The plot is a narrative of motivated action, involving some conflict or question which is finally resolved;

A narrative does not necessarily mean a simple sequence of events although the normal mode of development in fiction is chronological, i tis often altered for special purposes

-flashback (scenes that occurred earlier)

-flash forward (e.g. Faulkner used it when he interrupted the flow of time to describe what is going to occur years after the events now being narrated)

If we say that plot is narrative of motivated action we mean that it differs from simple story because it includes causality.

-forster alsou introduces the element of suspense – essential to the mystery story

In his Poetics he insists on the three unities (action, time and place)

In his analysis of the complex tragic plot, he offers categories as peripeteia, etc

He refers to the part of the tragedy which precedes the critical change in fortune as the compication and thaht which follows as the unraveling or denouement.

This is later extended to include as many as 7 parts:

Exposition, inciting moment, developmnet, climax, denouement, final suspense, conclusion

-the events in a story may have symmetry (Illiad)

-may follow a linear movement in space of a quest Divine Comedy or Huckleberry Finn

-may move backward in memory and forward in time (Faulkner)

-the movement may appear to be aimless and loose (Faust)

-A B C D E – story

- C B E A D – plot

CHARACTER : usually appears in fictional Works, because there is a plot;

-the actions are performed by particular characters

-the chief character in a work is called the protagonist (or the hero or heroine) – also antihero

-if he or she is pitted against an important oponent, that character is called the antagonist (e.g. Hamlet protagonist, King Claudius antagonist)

-the relation between them is one of conflict (cf.Abrams)

E.M. Forster introduced new terms for characters:

- a flat character (a type or „two – dimensional“), according to Forster, is built around „a single idea or quality „and is presented without much individualizing detail – can described in one word or sentence ;

-a round character is complex in temperament amd motivation – represented with subtle particularity – similar as a person in real life, i.e. difficult to describe with adequacy, can always surprise us

-whether characters are flat or round depends on their function in the story : Hamlet, Gatsby – round, but Sherlock Holmes – flat

-characterizing – establishing the characters in a narrative by :

- showing – letting the characters to act and supposing that the reader himself will determine their qualities (dramatic method)

- telling – the author himself describes

-since the times of Henry James telling has been considered less artistic.

SETTING : the WHERE and WHEN of the story

-artificial

-natural

Has to be connected with character

POINT OF VIEW :

-any narrative has to be told by someone

-the someone is called narrator

With this category we are usually faced with a question : Whose words or minds are we reading when we read a poem or a story? – sometimes the answer might be easy – Daniel Defoe, Alfred Tennyson, William Faulkner, etc, - so the points of view are Defoe´s Faulkner´s

-but in the technical sense critict use the terms as referring to the eyes .

-omniscient point of view – it is the most familiar point of view in fiction – he takes us from place to place with ease and even move freely into and out of the mind of his characters.

-intrusive narrator

-unintrusive narrator

-third person limited – the narrator tells the story conventionally.

-first person narrator – can be distinguished between the narrative „I“ who is a witness of the matters he relates (Conrad), who is a minor participant in the story (Ishmael in Moby -Dick), or who is a central character (Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye)

-steam of consciousness – not the written words but the thoughts become the medium of the story (Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner)

-ultimate attempt by a writer to absorb plot into character

-character´s point of view is central

-the mode of developmnet neither logical nor strictly chronological but psychological

-developmnet by association of ideas

-more objective – realism

-more subjective – modernism

THEME

According toAbrams : .. (theme) is applied to a general claim, or doctrine, whether implicit, or asserted, which an imaginative work is designed to incroporate and make persuasive to the reader. Milton states as the explicit theme of Paradise Lost to „ assert eternal Providence/ and justify the ways of God to men“

-explicit theme – clearly stated by the work

-implicit theme – dramatized by the interaction of meanings and imagery

Accoridng to Jonathan Culler in his Structuralist Poetics – „theme .. is the name we give to the forms of unity which we can discern in the text or to the ways we succed in making various codes come toghether and cohere“

Russian formalists at the beginning of this century suggested that „ the total structure of a literary work can be divided into the smallest thematic segments called motifs“

Tomashevsky claims that „ each sentence contains a motif of its own“

„Raskolnikov killed the old woman“, „The hero died“ , „A letter was received“

-each of these sentecnes expresses a motif of different importance and different dynamic character : some are dynamic (epic, open) Raskolnikov killed the old woman

Static (lyrical) It´s dark

-Raskolnikov killed the old woman – important motif which appears throught the whole story – leitmotif – striking clocks in Mrs. Dalloway;

Anglo American literary cholarship understands motifs a little bit differently

-i.e. as recurring themes :

Platonic love – the love of physical beauty will lead to love of the beauty of the soul and indirectly to the eternal absolute beauty

Courtly love – the lover is a devoted servant of his mistress who is not his wife

The Petrarchan convention – variation of platonic and courtly love – artificial diction, many puns and antitheses, pleading lover who is either lamenting the hard – heartedness of his mistress or urging her to relent;

-with themes are connected allusions – when a writer takes over the very phrases of earlier work to recall their context to the reader´s mind;

.this is done either, in case of earlier writers, to relate their subject to a long and glorious tradition;

-or for ironic purposes – in Joyce (Ulysses parallels between heroic is patterned on the Odyssey )- characters too – heroic Greek characters – ironic Irish characters (Leopold Bloom – Ulysses, Molly Bloom - Penelope)

-postmodern allusions – ridiculing - palimpsestic

-subject mater - story (látka)

-main idea – simplification of the theme

English is easy come on and join in ! :)

streda 18. januára 2012

Blake

streda 9. novembra 2011

Dnešná prednáška

pondelok 7. novembra 2011

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POETRY (20.10.2011)

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