midterm study guide

objective portion

tradition and the individual talent, ts eliot

• poets/artists/etc are most unique when they show their influences

• tradition is NOT a blind following of past generations → it requires a sense of the past and present

• “The historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional.”

• every work made affects and is affected by every other work that exists, whether before or after it

• “Whoever has approved of this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.”

• no artist or work exists in a vacuum, everyone/thing is affected by historical context

• the artist is not expressing their own personality/desires/thoughts but is manufacturing them for the work?

  • “it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”

• oxygen + sulfur dioxide + platinum catalyst → sulfurous acid

  • analogy for artist’s mind: the mind is the shred of platinum, unaffected by the gases but able to change them into something new

• the greatness of art is more about the process than the result/effect

• judge the art, not the artist

daedalus and icarus

• review notes about ovid’s metamorphosis

• landscape with the fall of icarus, pieter breugel

  • compare with metamorphosis

• “musee des beaux arts”, wh auden

  • compare with breugel painting

  • review poem for quotes section

the oresteia, aeschylus

• agamemnon → rite of separation

• the libation bearers → rite of transition

• the eumenides → rite of aggregation

• cycle of violence, vengeance seen as justice-

• trilogy represents an arc

  • savage society → enlightenment and civilization

  • tribes → democracy, organized state

  • vengeance → justice

  • darkness → light

• quotes section → athena, cilissa, clytaemnestra, cassandra

  • athena → “Neither anarchy nor tyranny, my people./Worship the Mean, I urge you,/shore it up with reverence and never/banish terror from the gates, not outright”, “And I see some new companions on the land./Not fear, a sense of wonder fills my eyes.”

  • cilissa → “And such care I gave it…/baby can’t think for itself, poor creature…./A jack of two trades, that’s me,/and an old hand at both…”

  • clytaemnestra → “Perhaps, but where’s the glory without a little gall?”,

  • cassandra → “There’s stealth and murder in the cauldron, do you hear?”,

macbeth, shakespeare

• elements of shakespearean tragedy

  • tragic hero

  • good vs evil → evil or moral ambiguity often triumphs

  • hamartia → fatal character flaw, directly leads to hero’s downfall

  • tragic waste → acts that need not have happened at all

    • in macbeth, this would be the murder of banquo, macduff’s family, etc (maybe all of the murders period)

  • conflict (external and internal)

  • catharsis → relief through release of emotion

    • usually pity or fear

  • supernatural elements

    • advance the plot

  • comic relief

• reading quizzes

• quotes section

  • macbeth → “To know my deed ‘twere best not know myself,” “Stars, hide your fires

  • macduff → “But I must also feel it as a man”,

  • lady macbeth → “A little water clears us of this deed”, “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail”, “Unsex me here”, “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed”

  • malcolm → “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell./Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,/Yet grace must still look so”