1 / 10

Shakespeare’s Dedication to Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare’s Dedication to Venus and Adonis. How to attempt a “Texts in Time” analysis for Unit 5, Section A. This powerpoint is for you to work through. Please do take the time to answer my questions yourself before checking my answers, you will learn more that way. First steps.

oren
Download Presentation

Shakespeare’s Dedication to Venus and Adonis

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. Shakespeare’s Dedication to Venus and Adonis How to attempt a “Texts in Time” analysis for Unit 5, Section A. This powerpoint is for you to work through. Please do take the time to answer my questions yourself before checking my answers, you will learn more that way.

  2. First steps • What is the purpose of this text and who is its audience? • It is written to flatter and please Henrie Wriothesley, and its audience is two-fold: Wriothesley himself, and others reading the published text.

  3. Context • Examine how the text achieves its purpose and reaches its intended audience via the frameworks. How will we do that? • Look for persuasive/flattering techniques and make sure you check how the audience(s) is/are addressed.

  4. Frameworks: Lexis and Semantics • OK, what lexical/semantic features are there which relate to the audience and purpose? • The tone is highly formal, with full titles used to flatter and show awareness of his patron’s rank. • Lots of imagery of unworthiness - strong prop for a weak burden; deformed child of a noble god-father; barren land with a bad harvest.

  5. Frameworks: Grammar • OK, onto grammar now - how does it relate to its context grammatically? • Use of 2nd person formal pronoun “you” [remember “thou” was used in this time for informality/closeness]

  6. Issues of language change • So, what are the most obvious things you can talk about in terms of change? • Orthography - typical of Early Modern English • formality greater than equivalent texts today • address different to modern dedications • syntax • Let’s examine each in more detail...

  7. Orthography • Which features are you going to choose? • W/V/U not yet settled into modern pattern (Vvriothesley, grauer, alvvaies) • I/IE/Y not yet as Modern English (sorie, alvvaies) • extra E on end of many words (mee, proppe, houres, ansvvere) • phonetic and irregular spellings (vnpolisht; Honorable, Honourable) • Be sure you don’t fall into the trap of talking about misspellings or lack of education!

  8. Formality & Address • Compare this text to a modern equivalent: • This prose is highly formal (I know not; for feare it yeeld me; in all dutie) • The writing is very ‘flowery’ and imagery-rich. We’re usually a lot more direct these days. • The recipient of modern dedications is usually referred to only in the 3rd person (I thank my wife Frieda without whose loving support blah blah).

  9. Syntax • Look at the sentence structure - how would you broach clause analysis? • Main body of text consists of only 2 sentences. • Sentences are made up of many clauses of all kinds. • Doesn’t follow modern rules - can’t realistically be classified according to modern convention of simple/compound/complex.

  10. Organising your thoughts • Try to order the points we have made into some kind of plan. Write the full answer if you want the practice (if you email it to me, I will mark it). • You could order by framework, slotting the “change” points in where they fall • You could consider the change points to be part of the context of the text and put them at the beginning.

More Related