(Or, as I like to call it, the warm and fuzzy place where you can feed your heart and mind.)
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- Slide 1
- (Or, as I like to call it, the warm and fuzzy place where you
can feed your heart and mind.)
- Slide 2
- Tips for Class Discussions Remember, each day is worth 5
points. Be attentive. If there is something you dont understand,
ask. Speak up. Be articulate and dont be afraid if I ask clarifying
questions. Be courteous. Listen to other peoples opinions and dont
dominate the discussion. (Leave that to me.) Take notes. Moments of
brilliance occur during class time. Its not cheating; its called
using every available resource.
- Slide 3
- The Basic Building Blocks
- Slide 4
- The Librarian Lied... Read the text once through without making
any marks, notations, or comments. Then walk away for 24 hours.
Read the text for the second time making the text yours. Then walk
away for another 24 hours. Read the text again for the third time
on the same day as class discussion. Read it for the forth time for
your journals.
- Slide 5
- ... You will not go to Hades Making the text yours: Mark up the
text Underline phrases and key words that are important. (Dont
highlight everything or nothing will stand out.) Flag key sentences
Create your own short hand system in the margins. Talk back to the
text Write questions and comments in the margins. Look it up Circle
the unfamiliar words and write the definitions in the margins.
- Slide 6
- When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her
funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a
fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the
inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servanta combined
gardener and cookhad seen in at least ten years. It was a big,
squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with
cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome
style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select
street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated
even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house
was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the
cotton wagons and the gasoline pumpsan eyesore among eyesores. And
now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august
names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked
and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at
the battle of Jefferson.
- Slide 7
- Positionality Reading is a sense-making activity. It is a
three-way transaction between the author, the text, and the writer.
The writer is a person with knowledge, attitudes, assumptions,
values, and a moral code. Sometimes the author deliberately tries
to hide these positions and sometimes he doesnt.
- Slide 8
- We, too, have our own knowledge, attitudes, assumptions,
values, and a moral code. These two positionalities interact with
each other when we read texts.
- Slide 9
- Lenses, Windows, and Microscopes Lenses. A metaphor for putting
on a specific POV to view a text in a different light. This is the
first step. We will almost always start with a biographical lense.
You are required to do a simple search on the author. Holiday Wish
List: Bents Readers Encyclopedia
- Slide 10
- Windows. A way of looking at something from a particular
perspective. This is the second step The text is a window looking
into a specific time, place, or culture.
- Slide 11
- Microscopes. Beginning to examine the text closely, paying
attention to specific words and phrases. This is the third step.
Unlike the other two which approaches the text holistically, here
we begin to break down the text into its parts.
- Slide 12
- What to Look for Watch for whats happening As in movies, some
stories are filled with action and excitement. Others, often ones
that deal with inner struggles, move more deliberately and with
less external action. Watch for who it is happening to Pay
attention to the characters their appearances, personalities,
values, attitudes, struggles, weaknesses, strengths, and so forth.
Watch for why What happens that leads to the situations and
actions? What causes the action? What motivates the
characters?
- Slide 13
- Breaking Down Plot
- Slide 14
- Story The term story is an account of a related series of
events in sequential order. Short Stories are brief fictional
narratives in prose that often focus on the essential aspects of a
character and on a single event or episode often a life-changing
circumstance. Both provide the materials (the events, the
characters, the outcome) from which a plot is constructed.
- Slide 15
- Plot At its most basic, plot simply means somebody doing
something. It is the action or actions that he or she sets out to
do, which may or may not actually occur, that provides the
structure of a story. With plot, we focus on not what happens, but
why it happens and the implications or results of what happens. As
a story is converted to a plot, some things are left out,
rearranged, and causal connections between key events are brought
forward.
- Slide 16
- Plot: In Medias Res Means into the middle of things A plot
usually starts at a point that directly and significantly relates
to the series of events being recorded. Background events and
information are filled in later as needed with flashbacks or
exposition.
- Slide 17
- Flashbacks vs. Exposition Flashback Prior events are presented
as an inserted narrative. Usually written as a character
remembering earlier times. Exposition Prior events are presented as
a speech, usually by the narrator.
- Slide 18
- Plot: The Conflict Conflict is defined about as you would
expect. It is a struggle or confrontation between opposing
characters or between characters and opposing forces. The range of
possible opposing forces is large, but ordinarily they fall into
three broad catagories:
- Slide 19
- Physical Conflict This is the most basic kind of conflict.
Usually occurs as a physical struggle or confrontation between a
character or group of characters. Can also involve humans
struggling against nature.
- Slide 20
- Social conflict A common motif in modern fiction. Involves
personal or societal relationships or values.
- Slide 21
- Internal or Psychological Conflict Here we see the struggles
within a character as s/he wrestles with competing moral claims or
a difficult decision. Often appear at crucial moments in a persons
life: death, identity crisis, or self-awareness. Equally important
is a lack of inner conflict. Belief Crisis reexamines the
foundations of what s/her puts faith or trust in. Value Crisis
something forces a person to decide how to make a moral or ethical
decision.
- Slide 22
- Plot: Structural Techniques Suspense Has fallen out of favor
with modern lit in lieu of conflict. Holds the readers interest
with uncertainty or concern about how things will turn out.
Foreshadowing Usually found in both the beginning and the middle of
the plot. Defined as anticipations of things to come usually
references death.
- Slide 23
- Repetition Draws our attention to especially important aspects
of the plot. Climax Sometimes referred to as rising action of
complication. Usually found in the middle of the plot. Terminology
originated from action-based plots where the most intense moment is
the peak of the conflict.
- Slide 24
- Epiphany A type of climax identifying the moment when a
character experiences a sudden moment of illumination or
revelation, especially as result of perceiving a commonplace object
in a new way or through a new context. Dnouement Literally means
unknotting or the untying of the threads that are tangled and
knotted, the solution of the mysteries, and the explanation of the
secrets and misunderstandings.
- Slide 25
- Whats a Narrator and What Does he Do?
- Slide 26
- A Narrators Duty A narrator is a person or the voice who tells
us the facts. These facts are typically told in one of two ways: By
someone involved in the action; By someone wholly outside of the
action. There are two POVs: Physical POV is the actual action
taking place; Psychological POV the narrators prejudices cannot be
discounted. lively vs. garish
- Slide 27
- The Types of Narrators 1 st Person Narrative Usually writes in
the I form. Conventions: Limited to what s/he thinks, feels, saw,
& heard. Reasonable assumptions can be made concerning others
but must hedge bets. Good News: Brings the reader closer to the
action. Bad News: Lacks both flexibility and objectivity.
- Slide 28
- 3 rd Person Narrative Usually referred to as omniscient.
Conventions: Can tell the reader anything pertinent to the story,
no matter when and where it occurred and who it occurred to. Can
enter the minds of all the characters and explain what they saw,
thought, & felt. Good News: More flexible. Bad News: Seems
colder and more distant.
- Slide 29
- Limited 3 rd Person Narrative Convention: Speaks of the action
from a POV outside of the events thus gaining objectivity and
distance but is limited to only one characters perspective. Good
News: The most reliable of all narrators; we tend to trust the info
as truth. Bad News: Its usually the author and he or she has
positionality that we must contend with.
- Slide 30
- A Narrators Credibility Just like when a jury hears a case,
readers have to determine whether the narrator is unreliable. Does
s/he have something to gain by lying? Is s/he confused or
disorientated? Is s/he emotionally unstable? Unreliable narrators
create an ironic relationship between the narrators POV and our
POV
- Slide 31
- Characters: Flat, Round, Major, and Minor
- Slide 32
- It is said that the characters are what make a story come alive
not the plot, theme, imagery, or the twists. It is the characters
that we remember long after we have read a story that speaks to us.
We may forget the author and the title, but we never forget that
character who laid claim to our hearts.
- Slide 33
- Protagonist The person whom the plot revolves around Antagonist
The person in conflict with the protagonist Major Characters Those
characters who are central to the plot Minor Characters Those
characters who flavor the plot Flat Characters Embodies a single
trait or stereotyped group of behaviors Round Characters Has
psychological depth to them and they can surprise us
- Slide 34
- Two Types of Round Characters: Static Character: This
characters perception of the world and him/herself never changed.
Developing Character: This characters perception of the world and
him/herself changes somehow either positively or negatively by the
end of the text.
- Slide 35
- And Just When you had it Figured Out... Enter Stream of
Consciousness... In 1890, William James wrote Principles of
Psychology to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thoughts,
and feeling of the waking mind. In Psychology, this was a
breakthrough... In literature? This was a nightmarish hell for
future students.
- Slide 36
- It is a technique that, when used describe the unspoken
thoughts and feelings of the characters without resorting to
objective description or conventional dialogue. It is usually
written in flux of a characters thought, impressions, emotions, or
memories without logical sequence or syntax and exact presentation
of thought. Please refer back to 1 st Person Narrative and why we
cant trust them. They lie. They lie to themselves. They lie to us.
If you liked T.J.O.G.W., try Joyce, Woolf, and Proust.
- Slide 37
- The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
- Slide 38
- Setting
- Slide 39
- The setting suggests the actions that take place within it. A
story must be carefully placed in an appropriate and effective time
and location. We know, in part, how to read settings from actual
experience. Youre at restaurant. How do you identify 1 st dates?
Last dates? Setting is frequently used as an indicator of social
status and mirror the characters mood.
- Slide 40
- Juxtaposed vs. Dichotomy Sometimes the setting deliberately
doesnt match: Tone; Character; Positionality. We always need to
figure out why.
- Slide 41
- Symbolic Settings Ruling Power/Order/Hegemony/Patriarchal Main
Street Center of Town Post Office Bank Faith/Belief/ Good Reins
Over Evil Church Gardens Destiny Isnt set in Stone Pathways
Roads
- Slide 42
- A Rose for Emily Our perspective: we, like the townspeople, see
Miss Emily's house from the outside looking in until the very end.
Symbolizes: emblem of money probably earned in large part through
the labors of slaves, or emancipated slaves. Is the fact that it
was allowed to decay and disintegrate, a judgment on the authors
part? Isolation. Like most of us, Emily wanted a house she could
love someone in, and a house where she could be free. But something
went terribly wrong. This something turned her house into a virtual
prison she had nowhere else to go but home, and this home, could
never be shared with others.
- Slide 43
- A Rose for Emily Cont. Setting isnt always an object; it can be
a concept. That concept is TIME. The pocket watch When members of
the Board of Aldermen visit Emily to see about the taxes a decade
before her death, they hear her pocket watch ticking, hidden
somewhere in the folds of her clothing and her body. This is a
signal to us that for Miss Emily time is both a mysterious
"invisible" force, and one of which she has always been acutely
aware. With each tick of the clock, her chance for happiness
dwindles.
- Slide 44
- Hair When Emily no longer leaves the house, the town uses the
old manservent's hair to tell time, watching as it too turns gray
The narrator tells us that Homer's final resting place hadn't been
opened in 40 years, which is exactly how long Homer Barron has been
missing. But, Emily's hair didn't turn "iron-gray" until several
years after Homer's death.
- Slide 45
- Stationery The stationery points back to the tensions between
the past, the present, and the future, which this story
explores.
- Slide 46
- Style and Tone
- Slide 47
- Style The way a writer chooses words and arranges them
determines his or her style. This voice conveys a tremendous amount
of meaning and inflection should we choose to listen. We can
determine the characters gender, age, socio- economic position, the
prejudices, and sometimes, where they grew up. We do that by
studying the authors diction and syntax. This is commonly referred
to as Deconstruction.
- Slide 48
- Deconstruction Criticism attempts to dismantle the literary
work and show that it does not mean what it appears to mean. The
aim is to demonstrate the instability of language in texts, thereby
revealing how apparently clear meaning splits into contradictory,
incompatible, and ultimately undecidable possibilities. critics
operate on the premise that language cannot be controlled by
writers. As a result, literary works mean more than their authors
are aware of, and their meanings are as unstable as the language of
which they are constructed. Critics favors terms like "unmasking,"
"unraveling," "recovering," "suppression," and contradiction.
- Slide 49
- To help you, rent or watch Lie to Me.
- Slide 50
- Tone Very easy. We read tone all the time. We read it so well,
you understand it w/out us having to work at it. We have learned
that through interpreting non-verbal language. How we stand, sit,
walk, and make facial gestures. We can figure out whats the
positionality of the author through his or her tone.
- Slide 51
- Add the Biographical Perspective to Tone and we get... Gilman
relies on the reader's own enduring (and often ugly) human feelings
to give you a deeply disturbing snapshot of what you might be like
after something as simple as a summer inside and that snapshot is
no pretty picture. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is counting on the fact
that you know something about claustrophobia or resentment so that
you can sympathize with the narrator of this short story in her
slow trajectory towards madness. Gilman wants you to feel every
crawling inch of craziness. She knows you've got an imagination.
It's tough to read this story without wondering if, under similar
circumstances, you yourself might start crawling out of the yellow
wallpaper. because the story's language is powerful enough to reach
out of the page and make you feel like maybe you're cracking
up.
- Slide 52
- The Wallpapers Pattern Its definitely not a coincidence that
the woman in the wallpaper is trapped behind a pattern. We can
conceive of societal norms and mores as types of patterns that
metaphorically restrict our movements. The woman whom the narrator
imagines she sees trapped behind a pattern is simply a more direct
embodiment of that metaphorical restriction. The Paper Scholars
have made much of the fact that the narrator starts referring to
the wallpaper as "the paper." Given that the narrator has a
repressed literary bent, it is no great stretch of the imagination
to posit that the (wall)paper becomes her text. Her intellect
restrained from reading and writing, the narrators mind instead
turns to her surroundings and settles upon the wallpaper as an
intellectual challenge. Moonlight In "The Yellow Wallpaper,"
moonlight represents as time for the feminine. During the day, the
narrator writes that the woman trapped in the wallpaper is
motionless and immobile. As moonlight strikes the wall, however,
the woman begins to move or, perhaps more accurately, to creep.
This pattern mirrors the narrators own daily movements. During the
day, she sleeps; at night she lies awake, alert, and invested in
the intellectual activity that she must suppress during the day
while her husband is watching.
- Slide 53
- Combine Setting and Tone and we get Araby Nietzsches God is
Dead The empty two story house The Fall The garden in back Ash
Wednesday and dust 40 pieces 0f silver Bazaar and Eastern
enchantment Freemasons
- Slide 54
- Light vs. Dark Days of Winter Violet sky Feeble lanterns Bodies
glowed Dark muddy lanes Dark dripping gardens and nasty smells
Hiding in shadows Mangans sister defined in light vs. brown figure
Flaring streets Dark rainy evening