1 / 2

154

Connotations of being littered like rubbish, without due thought to others’ interpretation . casually, without thought or care of consequence – harm/power. Stir feelings/ interests/ encourage actions. a udience/future generations.

dorie
Download Presentation

154

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Connotations of being littered like rubbish, without due thought to others’ interpretation casually, without thought or care of consequence – harm/power Stir feelings/ interests/ encourage actions audience/future generations Correlation between a word folded in a letter or on a page and a corpse folded in a shroud – words don’t belong to writers, they outlast them. Forever > future reference 154 Reference to death of the author > immortality of words – still read after author’s death Disease, invasion, moral corruption or contamination – ‘ill-considered’ interpretation/ misunderstanding of her workspreads – uncontrolable. ambiguous word choice = rest or untruth Possible critique on the integrity of preceding texts & composers: Religious/literary texts? A word dropped careless on a page May stimulate an eye When folded in perpetual seam The wrinkled maker lie. Infection in the sentence breeds. We may inhale despair At distances of centuries From the malaria. spreads Collective pronoun – inclusive – poet identifies with audience Contagion: communicate an attitude or emotional state to a number of people > breathe despair in– live by it. lingers & is with you for life. Immortality of writing - read centuries later, influencing future generations – belonging to the world of literature, with future interpretations out of the writer’s control. Dickinson concerned her writing may never be understood.Reflection on writing process – distance between artist inspiration and received interpretation of that same imagery. disease meaning ‘bad air’ - the use of words implying sickness suggest that words can be dangerousand once out of the writer’s control may have detrimental consequences despair = loss of hope of being understood/or understood too late to feel due acceptance.

  2. Statements on belonging:-154 ‘A word dropped careless on a page’ • Readers share a sense of belonging with writers through their words – ‘literary belonging’ – the power of the words transcends time > in a way ‘belong’ to the reader – but Dickinson fears misinterpretation of her words and the ‘infection’ this might ‘spread’. • Once a word is written it is there forever and potentially destructive - may have lasting effects on future generations. The poem can be seen as “the bridge to a potential relationship with future audience, and a means of further isolating herself in centuries to come when the verse is misunderstood or ill-received” – as it is open to interpretation without contextual understanding . • “There is a paradoxically intimate, yet splintered connection between the artist … and the reader, at a loss to understand exactly what the coded verse signifies, who nevertheless speculates its meaning in feverish confusion and misapprehension.” • When writer is dead and buried the word lives on and extends influence to future generations. Therefore, writing is a powerful means of communication and needs careful attention and ruthless editing – even if carelessly penned. • Immortality can be gained through published writing – the printed page is where both the ‘word’ and the essence of the writer ‘belong’ and continue to exist. “This melancholic lament ‘the wrinkled maker’ and ‘folded in perpetual seam’ implies that Dickinson the poet will only ever achieve posthumous recognition of her ‘body’ of words, once her flesh is wrinkled and buried deep in the seam of earth and even then her intentions will be wholly misunderstood in an ‘infection’ of feverish, biographical half-truths about her reclusive daily life.” • “The metaphor “folded in perpetual seam” can also be interpreted as an image of acceptance. Only when Dickinson is deceased will her reputation place her in the ‘perpetual seam’ of the great American patchwork quilt of its finest writers. And only at this ‘distance of centuries’ will Dickinson truly belong in a relationship with humanity …”

More Related