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Pistes [B.O.]

Autobiographie, mémoires, journal intime

L’écrivain dans sa langue, l’écriture comme jouissance esthétique,

l’expression des sentiments, la mise en abyme

Je de l’écrivain et jeu de l’écriture

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Starting blocksLiterature is about plots and characters and it is also about who is speaking to whom. The

reader has to question the narration: who is the narrator? Whom is he or she addressing? About

what? Should the words be taken at face-value or is there more than meets the eye?

Writers also enjoy the very act of writing. They play with words and their own language to

express the protagonist’s or character’s ideas and feelings, the narrator’s and sometimes even

their own. Indeed, the author, the narrator and the protagonist are very often not so clearly

differentiated and it requires a reader to pull the thread and unravel the story and make up

his or her mind about Who’s Who, so to speak.

However, none of this is possible without a preliminary agreement between the writer and

the reader. Whatever the genre chosen by writers, they need readers to cooperate, to apply

the willing suspension of disbelief* as defined by the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor

Coleridge (1817) to go with the flow of the plot.

This collaboration is best exemplified by Samuel Johnson’s quotation:

“A Writer only begins a book

A reader finishes it”

To sum up, first-person narrative*, stream of consciousness*, omniscient* narrator, mise en abyme* and the like are the tools used by writers to unsettle the reader and raise deeper

issues. In other words, twists and turns help build up stories within stories, and it’s up to the

reader to read between the lines and decipher the encoded message.

List of texts under study

Text 1 j Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789 & 1793) by William Blake

Text 2 j “(The) Daffodils” (1804) by William Wordsworth

Text 3 j “The Oval Portrait” (1842) by Allan Edgar Poe

Text 4 j “The Canary” in The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories (1923) by Katherine Mansfield

Text 5 j I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou

Text 6 j “An Unauthorized Autobiography of Me” (2000) by Sherman Alexie

Text 7 j Any Human Heart (2002) by William Boyd

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TEXT 1

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1793)

by William Blake

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

Identify the following elements. Try and connect them in various artistic fields such as painting,

sculpture or poetry.

To understand this extract, you need to take into account the Industrial Revolution

that transformed the landscape of European cities as in London. It was also a period of

political and social revolutionary ideas which were implemented in the new-born United

States of America (1776) as well as in France during the French Revolution (1789).

Background

The Enlightenment (the 18th century) was

also called the Age of Reason because

intellectuals from all over Europe meant

to denounce superstitions and abuses in

societies dominated by the Church and the

government. They intended to spread the

lights of knowledge, to promote sciences, to

exchange ideas on philosophy and how to

reform societies. Many famous intellectuals—

including the Dutch philosopher Spinoza

(1632-1677), the English philosopher and

physician John Locke (1632-1704), the physicist

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) or the philosopher

Voltaire (1694-1778)—took part in this cultural

movement, which roughly dates back to the

middle of the 17th century. The Age of Reason

was epitomized by the edition of the great

Encyclopédie (1751). The collective work of

major intellectuals was one of the triggers of

the American Revolution and eventually of the

French Revolution. Romanticism* emerged and

stressed the superiority of emotion opposing

the ideals of reason and reform.

In the wake of the Enlightenment,

Neoclassicism* paid tribute to the cultures

of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The

ideas of grandeur and reasonable organisation

were a response to the philosophical ideals

of the age.

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William BLAKE (1757-1827) was an English poet but also a remarkable painter

and printmaker, he illustrated his own poems with engravings. His prophetic

style went unnoticed during his lifetime, caught between eighteenth-century

Neoclassicism* and the Romantic* Age. He is now acknowledged as a major

Romantic artist before his time both in poetry and visual arts. He used philosophy

and mysticism but his work is mainly based on the Bible. This atypical poet was a

believer but totally rejected the Church of England among many institutions, including

traditional marriage and the rationalism encouraged by the Enlightenment.

NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT

“Introduction” Songs of Innocence (1789) and “Introduction” Songs of Experience (1793)

by William BlakeSongs of Innocence was the first collection of poems printed. Five years later, a volume enriched with a set of new poems was printed under the title Songs of Innocence and of

Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

Songs of Innocence (1789) “Introduction”Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”

So I piped with a merry chear.

“Piper, pipe that song again;”

So I piped: he wept to hear.

“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy chear:”

So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

“Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read.”

So he vanish’d from my sight,

And I pluck’d a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain’d the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs,

Every child may joy to hear.

Songs of Experience (1793) “Introduction”Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past, & Future sees;

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walk’d among the ancient trees,

Calling the lapsed Soul,

And weeping in the evening dew;

That might controll

The starry pole,

And fallen, fallen light renew!

“O Earth, O Earth, return!

Arise from out the dewy grass;

Night is worn,

And the morn

Rises from the slumberous mass.

“Turn away no more;

Why wilt thou turn away?

The starry floor,

The wat’ry shore,

Is giv’n thee till the break of day.”

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VOCABULARY

pipe: jouer (du pipeau)

glee: allégresse, joie

chear=cheer: bonne humeur,

gaieté

wept: pret. de

weep (wept, wept): pleurer

pluck: cueillir

reed: un roseau (bot.), anche

(mus.)

lapsed: qui n’est plus pratiquant

dew: la rosée

starry: étoilé

slumberous: somnolent,

endormi

FOCUS ON

1. Focus on the title of the book. What content might you

expect in each poem? Are your answers in keeping with

what you have read?

2. Read the Introduction to Songs of Innocence aloud.

What does it sound like?

3. What are the lexical fields observed in “Introduction”

to Songs of Innocence? And in “Introduction” to Songs of

Experience? Are the themes you have found in keeping

with the Romantic Age?

4. Which one is easier to understand? Why?

5. Identify the “I” in Songs of Innocence. What differences can

you observe with the narrator of Songs of Experience?

6. Could you draw a parallel between the contrasting

ideas of innocence/experience and the Bible?

BRANCHING OUT

Literature owes a lot to the Bible. Consciously

or not, many English-speaking writers have

been influenced by the texts of the Bible, its

imagery, its characters, its themes or even

its very words (See the influence of gospels

in this very chapter, TEXT 5). Most of these

writers grew up in a Protestant milieu, which

encourages a personal approach to the Bible and

can account for this major influence. The Bible

must not just be considered as a religious text.

Indeed, the Biblical genre enables readers to

classify the parts of the book according to their

literary genre—thus Genesis is considered as an

historical narrative or epic. For readers, the Bible

is a key that can cast a new light on the arts. To

a certain extent it can help you understand a

text more fully. Today, these literary and more

generally artistic works refer to the Authorized

Version, also known as the King James Version

of the Bible, printed in 1611.

1. Find some titles and complete works that

were suggested by the Bible.You will come

across visual works such as paintings or

sketches, writings, movies, music pieces

or songs. Be ready to explain what part

of it was inspired by the Bible.

2. Compare the various works that you

have found: do they belong to the same

form of art or do they have in common

a character or a famous quote?

To become aware of the use of the Bible

in English language literature, see TEXT 19

in chapter 3, The Scarlet Letter (1850) by

Nathaniel Hawthorne and in chapter 6, TEXT

35 Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley and

TEXT 36, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker.

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TASK

POETRY !

Learn a verse or the full poem and choose the best way to tell it. It can be played, chanted

or sung. Music in any form is welcome.

ARTS !

William Blake himself engraved and coloured the illustrations for both collections of

poems (See the example above). You are going to imitate Blake’s engravings. Create a

picture or a collage for a poem you like. Like Blake, you will include words from the poem

into your work.

If y

ou

fee

l lik

e…

Further information to supplement your personal exam file

Watchinghttp://www.biblicalarts.org Museum of Biblical Arts in Dallas, Texas (USA)

http://www.biblical-art.com

ListeningPoems from both books have been set to music by a wide range of composers,

such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Frandsen, Per Drud Nielsen, Sven-David

Sandström and Benjamin Britten… to name but a few.

More recently in 2002 Victoria Poleva composed a chamber cycle on the

verses by W. Blake for soprano, clarinet and accordion.

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TEXT 2

“(The) Daffodils” (1804)

by William Wordsworth

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

Make a list of a minimum of five Romantic* elements according to you. They can be seen,

felt, etc.

What is common to the elements you have chosen?

To understand this extract, you need to take into account the influence of William

Wordsworth on the Romantic* movement in England.

NOW, YOU CAN READ AND ENJOY THE TEXT

“Daffodils” (1804) by William Wordsworth

I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

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William WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was born in the Lake District (Northern

England). In 1785, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets

quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced

Lyrical Ballads (1798), which was to launch the English Romantic* movement. One of

Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “Tintern Abbey”, was published in the work, along

with Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Within the third edition, the Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. Indeed, Wordsworth

unveils the elements of a new type of poetry based on the “real language of men” and which

avoids the poetic diction of 18th-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous definition

of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions”.

VOCABULARY

wander: errer

host: ici, foule

daffodils: jonquilles

beneath: sous

flutter: frémir

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Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch’d in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

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FOCUS ON

VOCABULARY

twinkle: scintiller

margin: bord

glance: un coup d’oeil

toss: agiter

sprightly: alerte

outdo: surpasser

sparkling: étincelant

glee: allégresse

jocund: jovial, enjoué

gaze: contempler

oft: often

inward: intérieur

bliss: béatitude

fill: (se) remplir

Stanzas 1-2-3

1. Draw a simple sketch of the scene keeping

in mind all the elements surrounding the

flowers. What sort of scene is it?

2. Description of the flowers:

a. List the elements associated with the

daffodils (colour, movement, number,

emotion, other natural elements).

b. Describe how the poet links them

(simile, metaphor). What effect does

it create?

3. Compare the description of the daffodils

with the description of the “I” (verses 1-2).

Are they similar?

4. List all the words belonging to the lexical

field of vision. Why is it important?

5. Verses 15-16: describe the impact of the

scene on the poet and explain why he

feels this way.

Stanza 4

6. Find echoes of stanza 1-2 (words, images,

emotions…).

7. In your opinion, what does the “inward

eye” stand for?

Conclude

8. Keeping in mind what you know

about Romanticism*, prove that this

poem is representative of this literary

movement.