Intro to Literary Studies Midterm

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

• Written in 1813 (Regency Era) as Austen’s second published novel, third person omniscient

• Marriage plot novel - focuses on Elizabeth’s evolving relationship with wealthy aristocrat Mr. Darcy

• Focuses on the role of society:

  • Marriage = security for women or for love?

  • Marriage vs. eloping

  • Social classes & family connections (like the Gardiners work and therefore seen as a low status)

“Likes” by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

• Short story

• Focuses on relationships between parents and child (specifically between Ivy and her dad, Dave)

• Social media is used to show differences in generations

• Reality vs. fake world - is Ivy “real” on social media? Or an idealized version?

• Positives and negatives of social media on tweens/teens?

“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

• Short story

• Relationships between parents and child (specifically Jack and his mother)

• Cultural/ethnic tensions after being bullied in his childhood

• magical realism

Edmund Spencer, Sonnet 64

• Example of a sonnet, written at the end of the 1500s

• A love poem - the speaker uses flower/nature descriptions to describe her beautiful appearance

  • Traditional/classic idea of love poem

  • “All these things of nature are beautiful, but she excels them all”

• However, the poem is centered around her physical appearance

  • Even with all these descriptions, can you pick her out of a crowd?

Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

• Example of a sonnet

• “Opposite” of Spenser’s Sonnet 64

  • Becomes a critique of the classic love poem

• He loves her for who she is personally, not just physically

• What constitutes real, authentic love?

Bernadette Mayer, “Sonnet”

• A response to sonnets - untraditional

  • Challenge or critique

• Regards displeasure in a romantic relationship (a “situationship”)

• The speaker’s love interest seems to be choosing wealth over love

• Tone is conversational, informal (lack of capitalization of certain words like “t.v.”)

• Considers choices (able to “flip” to a page)

Jericho Brown, “The Tradition”

• Example of a sonnet - modern (2015)

• Not about romantic love

• Juxtaposition of flower language with the dark history of Africans who might have been out of this literary tradition

  • critique of traditional subjects of sonnets/poems

• Parallel between flowers and black bodies

Walt Whitman, “When Violets Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

• Example of an elegy

• Whitman mourns Lincoln after his assassination

  • Direct address of him as the “Powerful western star”

• Uses nature to speak on the inevitability of death

• Lilacs as a symbol of life, beauty, and remembrance

• The gray-brown bird = acceptance of death, sings a song about loss

Donald Hall, “Letter With No Address”

• Example of an elegy

• Written for his wife who passed

• Uses nature (often yellow flowers) to signal life and death

  • Daffodils rising and collapsing - time has passed

• Hall details his life now, filling in his wife on things she has missed (grandkids, birthdays, etc - juxtaposing young & old)

  • His “routine” - going through motions of life

Seamus Heaney “Personal Helicon”

• Speaker is mourning his childhood

  • Nostalgia

• As a child, he liked seeing wells

• Symbol of reflections - as a kid, the well was so deep he could see no reflection, but as an adult, he can see one

  • Gaining an ability to reflect on life

  • Change in perspective with age

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Thou Art Indeed Just, O Lord”

• Example of a sonnet

• Speaker is questioning their relationship with God

  • Is he an enemy or friend?

• Speakers feels that “Sinner’s ways prosper” and that he is being punished

• Natural imagery & cylical nature of life

  • Seasons are passing and each year speaker is waiting for a “sign” from God

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

• Example of a sonnet

• Speaker is in awe of God (“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”

• Criticizing the Industrial age and the decline of Christianity

  • Nature is revered for its resilience

• Parallel between nature & God - both powerful and always able to come back

Novel

A fictitious prose narrative that is of book length, typically having characters and some degree of realism

Example: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Prose

Natural grammatical structure, sentence flow, and language to communicate with readers in a conversational tone

• Most common form of writing

• complete sentences

• everyday speech in structure and style

Examples: Pride and Prejudice, The Paper Menagerie, Likes

Sonnet

A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of 14 iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. Themes usually center around love.

Examples: Sonnet 64 (Edmund Spenser), Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare), “The Tradition” (Jericho Brown)

Bildungsroman

A coming-of-age story

• focuses on self-development

• Both a literal and symbolic journey

Example: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• compressed/shortened version

Elegy

A poem about mourning/ a lament for the dead

• Nature is used as comfort/consolation

• Usually can end with a hint of optimism/peace

Example: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” - Walt Whitman, Letter With No Address - Donald Hall

Free Verse

Has no organized, standard metrical form or rhyme scheme

• most free verse have irregular line lengths and either lacks rhyme or uses it sporadically

Example: “Sonnet” by Bernadette Mayer or “Tradition” by Jericho Brown

Iambic Pentameter

A line verse composed of five iambs in a row (iamb = unstressed followed by a stressed syllable)

Example: Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare

Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate the sound of the object or action expressed (ex: “hiss” or “bang”)

Example: The Paper Menagerie (Laohu’s “rawr-sa”)

Couplet

A pair of rhymed lines equal in length

Example: Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare) or Sonnet 64 (Spenser)

Alliteration

Repetition of sounds or syllables, particularly the initial consonants of proximate words

Examples: God’s Grandeur (Hopkins)

Anaphora

Repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses

Examples: Sonnet 64 (Spenser)

Apostrophe

Direct address of a person or thing, usually absent for rhetorical effect

Examples: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (Whitman) - “O Captain, My Captain!”

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which the name of one thing is substituted for something it’s commonly associated with (nice wheels = nice car)

Examples: Shakespeare Sonnet 130 - wires as hair

End-stopped line

When a natural pause in the sentence coincides with the end of a line verse (period, semi colon, comma)

Examples: God’s Grandeur by Hopkins

• “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” (Line 1)

Enjambed Line

When the phrase or sentence spills over from one line of verse to the next

Examples: “God’s Grandeur” by Hopkins

• “The soil / is bare now”

Marriage Plot

A novel centering around navigating romantic relationships that eventually end in marriage

• Often considers societal expectations, tensions in a family, gender, wealth, class, etc.

Example: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Magical Realism

Literary/artistic style that incorporates magical elements seamlessly into the real world

• still grounded in the real world (not a “separate” world like in fantasy genre)

• Things that are magic are normal occurrences - select things

Example: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Free Indirect Discourse

Blends a character’s first-person thoughts with a third person narrator voice

• readers get intimate contact with character’s thoughts without using direct speech

Example: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Omniscient Narrator

All-knowing storyteller that has complete knowledge of the world

• all characters’ inner thoughts, emotions, motivations, backgrounds, etc.

• Not confined to a single perspective

Example: Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

Unreliable narrator

Someone who tells the story but whose perspective cannot be fully trusted

• not always intentional, but can be “caused” by mental instability, bias, etc.

Example: Pride and Prejudice

Stanza

A group of lines in a poem usually separated from other stanzas by a space

• The equivalent if a prose paragraph

Examples: Any poem