12.06.2009 Tutorial with Timo

Before writing my notes taken in the tutorial, I want to put some siginificant points mentioned by theProfessor.

Shakespeare`s successors did not imitate Shakespeare. Ben Johnson was Shakespeare`s contemporary. His style was complteley different from that of Shakespeare.

Ben Johnson is related to Comedy of Humours. Comedy of Humours refers to a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character or range of characters. Many ancient philosphies used a set of classical elements to explain the patterns in nature. These elements are earth,water,fire and air. If one of them is dominant, then your character is designed according to its dominance.


Shakespeare`s festive comedies: They do not laugh with him, they laugh about him, because he is a comical type. The audience do not laugh with the actor, they laugh about the actor.

 

17th century is the age of Stuart kings. Scottish dynasty. It si called Jacobean or Jamesian age.


Prose refers to the style without ryhme and rhythm. Writing that is not poetry.

the author’s clear elegant prose (= style of writing)

Narrative referes to structure.

Rhymless style is prose, if you refer to a story, it is narrative.

Epic verse or epic prose is also a narrative, but not all poems are narrative. Only epic verse is narrative.

 

Online reader page 69

Dr ama apar t fr om Shakespear e
Jonsonian comedy: more conservative, punishes deviation from social norm –
in the early comedies (Every Man In His Humour , Every Man Out Of His Humour [late 1590s]),
ridicule can cure folly;
in later comedies (esp Volpone [16056],
The Alchemist [1610]), folly/vice are strengthened by
criminal intrigue (à bitter social climate of early capitalist Jacobean society)
Citizen comedy – created by Thomas Middleton and Philip Massinger:
places erotic plots within the economic interests of the rising gentry/declining aristocracy
John Webster (1580c
1632): city comedies, esp tragedies, e.g. The White Devil (1612) –
ghosts, nervous horror, torture, gruesome stage deaths à validity of moral values queried
George Chapman (15591634):
tightly and intricately plotted comedies, but esp tragedies –
conflicts between great men and society, with material esp from recent French history,
e.g., Bussy D’Ambois (c 1604) resembling Marlowe’s Tamburlaine
John Ford (1586c
1655): less sensational and quieter than Webster, esp ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore
(romantic incest), Love’s Sacrifice (moral adultery), The Broken Heart (erotic frustration)
Francis Beaumont (15851616)
and J ohn Fletcher (15791625):
Follow Shakespeare as principal writers for King's Men:
romantic tragedies and tragicomedies, which develop into heroic drama in Restoration
Esp Philaster (c 1609) and A King and No King (1611):
highflown
language of courtly compliments; tone of flattery towards audience
Cavalier
gallants as protagonists
chivalric
adventures and love dilemmas of Sidney’s Arcadia transposed into Stuart gallantry
uncertain
treatment of sexual love between idealisation and boisterous laughter
-> decisive change in the social outlook of theatre from the second decade of C17 on:
drama becomes entertainment for Stuart court aristocracy – little remains of the national/historical
consciousness Shakespeare brought to tragedy
English sonnet tradition
Sonnet cycle: major achievement of later Elizabethan period after Wyatt and Surrey,
remains important also during/after C17
Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (c 1582): adheres to the convention of selfdramatising/
ecstatic lover,
while overturning the Petrarcan pattern of submissive lover and cruel fair woman
Among Sidney’s successors: Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser (celebrating married
love), George Chapman (more philosophical subject matters) and esp:
Shakespeare’s sonnets: celebrate the affection of an older man for a noble and wayward youth,
25 sonnets address a mysterious dark lady à endless biographical speculation;
three quatrains of four lines, plus a concluding heroic couplet – rhymed ababcdcdefefgg:

Tutorial

Analysis of Poetry:

If we analyse poetry on the one hand there is form and on the otehr hand there is content.


FORM:

1.Rhyme

2.Metre

3. a) Schemes and b) Tropes    Both of them refer to rhetorical devices of all types

4.Stanzas

5.Visual Shape : How it looks on the page. Like Angel Wings

6.Line Length :Syllables, metrical feet (monometer, diameter,trimeter,tetrameter,pentameter)

7.Argument: Related to rhetorical devices . It has to do with how the texts are designed.

8. Topos : Motif. Something which comes again and again. A traditional subject or idea in literature.

 

a) Schemes: Figures of Speech

Alliteration: Friends  fishing for fun.

Anaphora :click link and see the examples.

Onomatopoeia:

Parallelism : same sentence structure over and over again. It can be on the same and different lines.  such as: verb+adjective+noun   verb+adjective+noun....

Litotes : Negation.


b) Tropes: Rhetorical figures of Speech

Metaphor: She is a fox.

Simile : She is like a fox.

Metonymy:There is a world relation between two things. The White House supports the bill (using The White House instead of the President.

Pars pro toto : taking a part for the whole. It is a kind of synecdoche.

Totum pro parte : It is a kind of synecdoche. Taking the whole for a part.


I drive a Ford,  White House declares-------> Metonymy


Personification : The moon climbs into teh sky. Normally only a human being can climb.

Allegory: Personification of abstract ideas such as Justice as a woman.

Rhetorical Question : There is no answer really. Its aim is to involve the reader.




Shakespeare Online redaer page 70 Sonnet 18


1    a    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?                
2    b    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:             
3    a    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4    b    And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
5    c    Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6    d    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
7    c    And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8    d    By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
9    e    But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10   f    Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
11   e    Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
12   f    When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
13   g    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14   g    So long lives this and this gives life to thee.


There are 3 quatrains and one heroic couplet. It is iambic pentameter. Unstressed and stressed.

Blank verse is also iambic pentameter. You can find it in Shakespearean drama.

This sonnet is 14 lines long. The writer tries to compare a person with summer.

 

In the first line, there is a rhetorical question. It does not ask for a real answer.

Line 4: This is where the speaker starts pointing to how short summer feels. Using personification and metaphor, the speaker suggests that summer has taken out a lease on the weather, which must be returned at the end of the summer. Summer is treated like a home-renter, while the weather is treated like a real-estate property.

In line 5 The eye of heaven is a metaphor to describe the sun.

In line 11: In this line, Shakespeare personifies death, giving it a human characteristic of bragging. He chose to give death the human characteristic of bragging because he knows that death has a right to brag about its power to take away a life. However, Shakespeare states that even though death has the power to take away a life, it does not have the power to end love. The D of death is capital.


From line 2 till line 8 including them is Similie, because it is description.

From line 9 till line 12 including them is Personification.

Lines 13 and 14 : Anaphora-----> So long

Lines 13 and 14 are conclusio. They are climax. Climax is the highest point, the most important point.


It starts out with a rhetorical question , then he really starts to compare the summer day to the lover. Summer passes but you never pass.

evanescence : Lyrical I says: I cannot compare you to summer, because it passes, but you are preserved in art. You are eternal.

vita brevis, art longis : Short life long art.

Art transcends the life : conclusion.  Evanescence.

It is a meta-poetic or poetological poem. It means Poetry on poetry, poetry writes about poetry.

Summer passes but you will be eternal, because you are preserved in this poem. Art preserves you forever, and as long as human beings read this poem, you will be remembered. So the focuse is in fact to the poem.


Reader page 70 : Sonnet 18: poetological selfreflection– art as the realm of timelessness/eternal beauty.   ---> prevailing concept of art up to C20


PAGE 71 ONLINE READER

 Main literary developments fr om C17 to Restoration
C 1600: new literary movements set in, esp through Ben Jonson (satirical comedy) and John Donne;
poetry: from flowing Elizabethan (copious, amplified etc.) rhetoric to a more concise style,
esp epigram/epigrammatic genres à
Metaphysical poets: J ohn Donne (15721631)
Satires, love elegies (short, philosophically charged love poems), divine poems
Donne adopts Sidney’s passionate speaker and Horace’s satirical narrator;
subject matters vary, erotic poems stress colonialist domination of the female body, cf.:
“My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned” (Elegy 19, To his Mistress Going to Bed)
Metaphysical school of poetry (also George Herbert, Henry King, Henry Vaughan):
dramatic voice intellectually acute and quick to involve the listener in intimate thoughts –
entails a rhetorically plain diction;
at the same time: highly compressed meaning organised around one dominating conceit, cf.:


QU 41


THE FLEA.
by John Donne


MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.


O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that selfmurder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.


Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.


It has 3 Stanzas. It is like a little drama. It is a performance of dramatic monologue.

Conceit: Conceit is a far-fetched image. It could be a Metaphor or a Similie.

Conceit is something very intelligent. In this case flea is the conceit.


In this poem, lyrical male I is talking to female for pre-marital sexual intercourse. We are talking about the 17th century. In that century pre-marital sexual intercourse was a great problem for the woman. The male lyrical I uses the flea for his proposal.

Meta-physical poetry was not called meta-physical at that time. T.S. Eliot called it meta-physical, because it was witty. Meta-physical poets always try to be witty. This poem is not eupheuist. The word choice is simple.


PAGE 72 ONLINE READER

Conceit (i.e. farfetched comparison) starts with single image of the flea, which the speaker elaborates:
lovers are already united, their blood mingled in the flea’s stomach –
so why hesitate with premarital intercourse?
--> belittles great offence against the woman’s social status; however: comic quality, exercise in
metaphysical wit
Dramatic monologue: monologue rather than soliloquy, lyrical speaker in the role of cavalier;
stage props (flea) and dramatic action (flea squashed)


In this poem, the lyrical I gives arguments and persuasions to persuade the addressee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONLINE READER PAGE 72


Quotation 42
THE BAIT.
by John Donne


COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.


There will the river whisp'ring run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.


When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.


If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.


Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.


Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks outwrest;
Or curious traitors, sleevesilk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.


For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas ! is wiser far than I



There are 7 Stanzas in this poem.

Rhyme scheme is aa, bb, cc ......

Imagery is important in this poem. There is the imagery of fishing.

Worm, bait is compared to the female addressee. This is teh conceit. ( Worm and bait are the same things)


He is wooing the woman.

First 4 stanzas are alluring and seductive. Look at the word choice of : golden, crystal,silk, silver.

Very positive and sensual imagery is used in the first 4 stanzas.The first 4 stanzas describes fishing in terms of cenceit.


The images of the 5th and the 6th stanzas are cold, ugly. There is a reality of fishing.

cut, treacherously,coarse bold hands, slimy nest

These are completely different imageries from the first stanzas. The first four were alluring and seductive, but suddenly there is a change into a cold and slimy imagery. Imagery switsches.

You can interperete the 5th and 6th stanzas as the reality of fishing because of the imagery used in these stanzas or they can also be the ugly sides of a relation. But interpretations are possible.

From beautiful to ugly imagery and then in the 7th stanza again to the beautiful. Come with me and  everything will be super.

With regard to argument  structure:

thesis

antithesis

senthesis  poem comes conclusion.

He want to have her. So he presents his thesis. He tries to persuade her in the first 4 stanzas. If you be with me, if you marry me then silks,silvers etc he uses alluring imagery to attract and persuade her. Then he presents the antithesis  and introduces the other males trying to catch a fish. 5th and 6th stanzas can be regarded as reality of fishing in this case and also the ugly sides of a relation as I explained above.

 

 




 


Metaphysical poets wrote about women and love and on the other hand about religion.

In this poem, shape underlines the content. There is form and content relationship in two ways.

1) Hourglass

2) Each line corresponds with its length.


Most poore: monometer---->shortest line.

Line length illustrates the contents of the lines. It is a visual poetry. Not only the words but also the visual shape is important.

 

click here