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MasteringoEnglish Literature

Second edition

Richard Gill

palgrave

*e Richard Gill 1985. 1995

All rights reserved. No reproduction.copy or transmission ofthis publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced. copied ortransmitted save with written permission or in accordance withthe provisions of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988.or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copyingissued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. 90 Tottenham CourtRoad, London W1P OLP.

Anyperson who does any unauthorised act in relation to thispublication may be liableto criminal prosecution and civilclaims for damages.

The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author ofthis work in accordance with the Copyright. Designs and PatentsAct 1988.

First edition 1985Reprinted6 timesSecond edition 1995

Published byPALGRAVEHoundmills, Basingstoke,Hampshire RG21 6XS and175 FifthAvenue. NewYork, N.Y. 10010Companies and representat ives throughout the world

PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint ofSt. Martin's Press LLC Scholarlyand Reference Division andPalgrave Publishers Ltd(formerly Macmillan Press Ltd).

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling andmade from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

Acatalogue record for this book is availablefrom the British Library.

14 13 1207 06 05

ISBN 978-0-333-62529-3 ISBN 978-1-349-13596-7 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-13596-7

oContents

Preface

Acknowledgements

PART I STUDYING POETRY

1 Reading, thinking and writing1.1 The poem on the page1.2 A poem is made of words1.3 Two ways of talking about poetry1.4 Reading poetry1.5 Thinking about words1.6 What the poem is about1.7 Getting it clear1.8 Puzzlement, interest and pleasure1.9 Tone1.10 EnactmentExercises

2 Words and meaning2.1 Looking at words2.2 How poets use words2.3 Metaphor and simile2.4 Conceit2.5 Personification , pathetic fallacy and mental landscape2.6 Symbol2.7 Images and imagery2.8 Paradox and ambiguity2.9 Advice about technical termsExercises

3 Line and rhythm3.1 Lines: end-stopped and run-on3.2 Caesura3.3 Movement3.4 Listening to rhythms3.5 Why rhythms matter3.6 Beats3.7 Variation3.8 Metres

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3.9 Writing about rhythm3.10 CadenceExercises

4 Sound, rhyme and form4.1 Listening to sounds4.2 Alliteration4.3 Consonance4.4 Assonance4.5 Onomatopoeia4.6 Texture4.7 Writing about sound s4.8 The effects of rhyme4.9 Half-rhyme4.10 Rhymes and rhyme schemes4.11 Stanza forms4.12 Sonnets4.13 Why stanza forms matterExercises

5 The poem as a whole5.1 A poem is not lots of bits5.2 Poems that tell stories5.3 Poems based on arguments5.4 Poems based on observations5.5 Poems based on changes in emotion5.6 Poems as games5.7 Persona5.8 The repetition of words5.9 The use of contrast5.10 Beginnings and ends5.11 Central images5.12 Practical criticism5.13 The whole work of a poetExercises

PART II STUDYING NOVELS

6 Authors6.1 Novels are specially made worlds in words6.2 How authors arrange events6.3 Narration: first person6.4 Narration: third person6.5 Multiple narration6.6 Issues in narration6.7 Authors' attitudes, and ironyExercises

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7 Characters 1277.1 Character and characterisation 1277.2 The creation of character 1277.3 The range of characters 1287.4 Writing about characters 1307.5 Telling and showing 1337.6 Questions about character s 1357.7 How characters speak 1357.8 How characters think 1367.9 The appearance of characters 1387.10 How characters dress 1397.11 The social standing of characters 1417.12 The names of characters 1437.13 The company of characters 1437.14 What character s do 144Exercises 145

8 Setting 1488.1 The importance of settings 1488.2 Setting and the mood of characters 1498.3 Setting and the situation of characters 1518.4 Setting and the personality of characters 1528.5 Setting and theme: the author' s view 1538.6 Setting and theme: distinctive worlds 1548.7 Setting and theme: the central feature 156Exercises 157

9 Plot and story 1609.1 Interest, expectation, surprise and relief 1609.2 Knowledge and events 1639.3 Stories and plots: some distinctions 1649.4 Plot elements 1669.5 Plots and past events 1739.6 Plots and the aims of characters 1749.7 Plots based on journeys 1759.8 Plots based on discoveries 1769.9 Plots based on the workings of society 1779.10 Plots based on mysteries 1789.11 Plots based on problems 1809.12 Short stories 1819.13 Construction and contrast 187Exercises 187

10 Themes 18810.1 The importance of themes 18810.2 The titles of books 18910.3 How authors show their interests 190

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10.4 Common themes10.5 The function of symbols10.6 Important words10.7 Moral words10.8 The construction of plots10.9 Important speeches10.10 Important events10.11 The treatment of ordinary events10.12 Writing about themesExercises

PART III STUDYING DRAMA

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11 The conventions of drama 20311.1 The importance of conventions 20311.2 Conventions of construction: acts and scenes 20411.3 Conventions of construction: the passing of time 20511.4 Conventions of language : verse and prose - 20711.5 Conventions of language : characters talking about

themselves 21011.6 Conventions of language : 'you' and 'thou' 212II.7 Conventions of language: the soliloquy 21211.8 Conventions of language: the aside 21411.9 Conventions of action : the chorus 21611.10 Conventions of action : disguise 21711.11 Conventions of action : dance, music and songs 21811.12 Action within action 220Exercises 220

12 The language of drama 22312.1 Language and dramatic action 22312.2 Language and movement 22312.3 Language and movement: the meaning of plays 22612.4 Language and movement in non-Shakespearian drama 22612.5 Language and mood 22812.6 Language and grouping 230Exercises 233

13 Character and plot 23513.1 Characters and words 23513.2 Characters and speech 23513.3 Characters on themselves 23713.4 Characters speaking about each other 23813.5 Characters contrasted 23913.6 Characters without distinctive personalities 240

13.7 Dramatic plots13.8 How plots begin13.9 Scenes, sub-plots13.10 The pace of plots13.11 Expectation and surprise13.12 Climax13.13 How plots endExercises

14 Tragedy and comedy14.1 The terms14.2 Tragedy, chaos and death14.3 Tragic heroes and heroines14.4 The fall of the hero14.5 The sense of inevitability14.6 Suffering14.7 The sense of waste14.8 Tragedy , ambiguity and ambivalence14.9 Shakespeare and the theatricality of tragedy14.10 The involvement of the audience14.11 How the audience responds to the end of tragedies14.12 Comic plots and conventions14.13 How comedie s begin14.14 Comic devices14.15 Confusion, recognition and closure14.16 Comic characters14.17 Love14.18 LaughterExercises

15 The theatre of the imagination15.1 A performing art15.2 Atmosphere15.3 Staging : the stage itself15.4 Staging : scenery15.5 Staging : costume15.6 Staging : lighting15.7 Actors : age15.8 Actors: size15.9 Actors: voice15.10 Performance: the presence of actors15.11 Performance: the pause15.12 Performance: the contribution of music and dance15.13 Performance: spectacle15.14 Performance: ghosts and fightsExercises

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PART IV AS YOU STU DY

16 Reading, notes, preparation 30716.1 Reading 30716.2 Reading with understanding 30816.3 Making notes 31016.4 Re-reading 31216.5 Preparation 31216.6 Classwork 3 1316.7 Follow-up work 3 14

17 Interpretation 31617.1 The importance of interp retation 3 1617.2 Interpretation through charac ters 31717.3 Interpretation through soc iety 31817.4 Interpretation through ideas 31917.5 Interpretation throug h literary forms 32017.6 Interpretation thro ugh history 32 117.7 Interpretation today 32317.8 Interpretation and the reade r 328Exe rcises 329

18 Effectiveness 33018. 1 The issue of effectiveness 33018.2 Questions abou t the effectivene ss of poetry 33118.3 Questions abou t the effectiveness of novels 33518.4 Questions about the effectiveness of drama 34018.5 Two general questions about effectiveness 344Exer cises 345

19 Questions 34719.1 Answering questions 34719.2 The form of questions 34819.3 Questio ns abo ut poetry 35219.4 Questions abo ut nove ls 35619.5 Questions about drama 36119.6 Coursework 36519.7 Argument and evidence 366Exercises 367

20 Examina tio ns 36820.1 Revision 36820.2 Examination technique 37020.3 In the examination room 37020.4 Some warni ngs 372

PART V GLOSSARY

PART VI SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

General index

Index of authors and works

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oPreface

I hope that this book will help you to enjoy English literature and be successfulin public exams. I don't think those aims are incompatible; I've always foundthat the more I think about a book, the more I see in it and the more I enjoy andvalue it. I hope that this will also be your experience.

This isn't a course-book. The books studied at GCSE, A-level and at univer­sity differ according to syllabus and institution, so I can't rely on a common listof books that everyone will be studying . Moreover, each book is different fromevery other, and therefore it needs to be thought about in its own way. One ofthe themes of this book is that there is not a set of ready-made formulae whichcan be 'applied' to every work. As Kent says to Oswald in King Lear , 'I'll teachyou differences'. That is what we have to learn ; each book is different and musttherefore be thought about in a way distinctive to itself.

In the light of the above, you might want to ask: 'How can a book help?' Myanswer is: 'In three ways ' .

First, it can give you some questions to ask. Often when we are studying, weneed help with our thinking. It is very difficult studying anything unless youhave some idea of what you are 'looking for'. Questions can help you in this.They can open up areas of a book and they might alert us to some important fea­tures . Of course, there is no guarantee that they will. One of the things we learnabout study is what approaches are or are not helpful. In fact, even when anapproach proves to be unhelpful , it might tell us something. Sometimes, we seean important feature of a text when we realise that it doesn 't work in a particularway. For instance, many novels work by showing us how the central characterchanges, but in Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain has produced a central characterwho is effective precisely because he does not.

Secondly, a book can provide you with examples. What I've tried to do isrefer to many of the books that frequently appear on syllabuses. Altogether,there are references to over a hundred authors . You are unlikely to know all ofthem, but I think that many of the examples are intelligible, even if you are unfa­miliar with the book. For readers who are looking for ideas about their setworks, I suggest a glance at the index. I hope that what I say about individualworks will be helpful; I have been partly guided by the kind of things examinersask students to write about.

Thirdly, a book can give you help on how to write about literature . For a lot ofthe time, writing about books requires what we might call a general vocabulary;you might need to write about feelings of love or hope or discuss how a charac­ter is fired by revenge. Such topics don 't require you to use a specialist lan­guage . But there are aspects of literature that do need to be talked about in aspecial way; for instance, how a poem is formed or the way a story is told. WhatI hope to do is to introduce you to some useful terms . I also hope I won't bring

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in too many; writing about literature that is studded with lots of specialist words(some of jaw-cracking difficul ty) is intimid ating to students (if it is that difficult ,why should they bother to study?) and is quite frankl y off-putting (and, after atime, boring) to readers.

The book is organised according to the types of literature you are likely toencounter in public examinations. At A-level, for instance, you are now requ iredto study works of poetry, prose, drama, Shakespeare and at least one workwritten before 1900. I don 't intend this to be ju st of use to A-level students; Ihave tried to cover the range of work required by GCSE and I am confident thatit can also act as an introdu ction to the study of literature at university level.

We start with poetry , largely because that is the area that many students haveproblems with . Also, some of the thing s that are said about poetry, in particul arabout its language, are relevant to both novels and plays. The sections on novelsand drama also introduce ideas that are useful in discu ssing other areas of litera­ture . The final section s are practical; they deal with how to prepare for examina­tions. The glossary may come in useful when you are trying to be clear aboutwhat certain terms mean .

I shall clo se with a repetition of the hope I mentioned at the start. I havetaught literature now for over 25 years and I have had as pupils students fromthe first year of secondary schoo l to the first year at university. I have foundteaching literature immen sely enjoyable. I hope that you will also find a similarenjoyment in studying it.

RICHARD G ILL

oAcknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly givenpermission for the use of copyright material: The Bodley Head Ltd, for an extractfrom Tender is the Night by Scott Fitzgerald; J. M. Dent, for extracts from TheCollected Poems by Dylan Thomas; Andre Deutsch, for an extract from 'NotWaving but Drowning' by Stevie Smith; Gerald Duckworth, for an extract fromComplete Verse by Hilaire Belloc; Faber & Faber, for extracts from CollectedPoems by W. H. Auden, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, The Sense of Movement by Thorn Gunn, 'Snowdrop'from Lupercal by Ted Hughes, The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes, 'Home is soSad' from The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin, The Collected Poems by LouisMacNeice, Collected Poems by Edwin Muir, Collected Poems 1908-56 bySiegfried Sassoon, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are Dead by Tom Stoppard;Granada Publishing Ltd , for extracts from Poetry for Supper by R. S. Thomas andThe Bread of Truth by R. S. Thomas; Greene & Heaton Ltd on behalf of theauthor for extracts from The Crucible, copyright © 1952, 1953 by Arthur Miller;for the extracts from The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, © 1973 The Executors ofthe Estate of the late L. P. Hartley, published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd; HarperCollins Publishers Ltd for R. S. Thomas, 'Evans' ; A. M. Heath & Company Ltdon behalf of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Martin Seeker &Warburg, for excerpts from George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Copyright ©The Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd ;Heinemann Educational Books, for an extract from A Man for All Seasons byRobert Bolt; William Heinemann Ltd , for an extract from To Kill a Mockingbirdby Harp er Lee ; William Heinemann Ltd and The Bodley Head Ltd, for extractsfrom Brighton Rock by Graham Greene and The Power and the Glory by GrahamGreene; David Higham Associates on behalf of the author for an excerpt fromElizabeth Jennings, 'Afternoon in Florence' from Collected Poems, Carcanet; TheHogarth Press , for an extract from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee; the Provostand Fellows of King's College, Cambridge, for an extract from Aspects of theNovel by E. M. Forster; London Management, for an extract from The Royal Huntof the Sun by Peter Shaffer; James MacGibbon for Stevie Smith, 'I Remember'from The Collected Poems ofStevie Smith ; for extracts from 'Church Going' byPhilip Larkin, reprinted from The Less Deceived by permission of The MarvellPre ss, England; Methuen, London, for an extract from The Homecoming byHarold Pinter; John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, for extracts from John Betjeman,' Indoor Games near Newbury' and 'Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden' fromCollected Poems ; The Society of Authors, for an extract from Saint Joan by G. B.Shaw; Dr Jan Van Loewen Ltd, for an extract from The Winslow Boy by TerenceRattigan; and A. P. Watt on behalf of Michael Yeats for W. B. Yeats, 'No SecondTroy' and 'An Irish Airman foresees His Death' .

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xvi Acknowledgements

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any havebeen inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the neces­sary arrangement at the first opportunity.

The following friends have helped me through discussion and advice : JaneClarkson, John Florance, Pat Phillipps , Neil Roberts , John Spanos, MichaelSweeney, Eric Swift, Jan Todd and Joan Ward. This book has no formal dedica­tion, but they and my many pupils over the years are the ones who have mosthelped me as a teacher, so it is to them that I offer my grateful thanks.

RICHARD GILL