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Textual Analysis and Textual Theory

Textual Analysis and Textual Theory. Session Two Søren Hattesen Balle English Department of Culture and Identity. Agenda. Introduction : the summary assignment for today and next time Introduction : today’s session Presentation : the genre of poetry

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Textual Analysis and Textual Theory

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  1. TextualAnalysis and TextualTheory Session Two Søren Hattesen Balle English Department of Culture and Identity

  2. Agenda • Introduction: the summary assignment for today and next time • Introduction: today’s session • Presentation: • the genre of poetry • reading and analyzingpoetry • Classroomdiscussion: • William Wordsworth, ”Lines Composed a Few Miles aboveTintern Abbey” (1798) • Wordsworth’s poem as poetry and the role of the lyric speaker

  3. Poetry: genre specificaspects • J. Culler: poetics, rhetoric, poetry • Poetics: the description of the conventions and reading operations thatmakeliterary (ortextual)effectspossible (representation/imitation) • Rhetoric: the study of the persuasive and expressiveresources of language in discourse(persuasion/eloquence) • Poetry: languagethatmakesabundantuse of figures of speech and otherlinguisticacts (representation + persuasion)

  4. Poetry: genre specificaspects • Poetrycontains images and/or figurative language • What is imagery and figurative language? • ”..all the objects and qualities of sense perception ..” (Abrams) • The vehicles of figurative language, especiallymetaphors and similes • Figurative language: an alteration orswerve from ’ordinary’ usage (order of wordsormeaning) • The distinctionbetween the figurative and the literal • Metaphor as literaryeffect: to seesomethingassomethingelse ( (tenor/vehicle/ground): metaphor/simile • Metaphor as a basicway of knowing: problematizing the literal/figurativedistinction

  5. Poetry: genre specificcharacteristics • Genre as a set of conventions and expectations → generatesparticularreadingprotocols • (sub-)genres or types of poetry: lyric, epic/narrative, dramatic • Relation of speaker to audience: • Lyric: 1st person speaker/speaking to himself orsomeoneelse • Narrative: speaker and charactersspeaking/speaking to a listeningaudience • Dramatic: speaker concealed from audience and characters/charactersspeakingamongthemselves

  6. Poetry: genre specificcharacteristics • Persona, tone, voice: • Persona: the (lyric) speaker of the poem or poet-speaker • Tone: • the expression of a literaryspeaker’s attitude to whomorwhathe/she is addressing • ’Impliedaudience’ • Voice: ’impliedauthor’ • The complexity of voice in literature and poetry

  7. Poetry: genre specificaspects • Imagery, figurative language and poeticvoices/speakers have to beinterpreted to createmeaning • How to read, analyze, and interpretpoetry? • Poetry as structureor event • The poem as a structure of words • The study of the relation betweenmeaning and the non-semantic features of language • Sound and sight in poetry: ’babble’ and ’doodle’/’charm’ and ’riddle’ (N. Frye) • Meaning(?) and sound: alliteration, assonance, metre, rhyme, etc. • Meaning (?) and sight: stanza, lineation, enjambment, figurative language, etc. • Sound and sight in ”Tintern Abbey”: do theycreatemeaning?

  8. Poetry: genre specificaspects • The poem as event • The role of the speakingvoice of poetry • The threevoices of poetry (at least!): • Author, lyric speaker (persona), impliedauthor • Poetry as the imitation of ordinary speech actsorpoetry as poetry as the imitation of poetryitself? As discourseoras (literary) ’text’? • Meaning(?) and poeticvoice: • The paradox of poeticvoice: extravagance/the ’sublime’ vs. the rhetoricalfigure of apostrophe, personification, prosopopoeia, hyperbole • ”Voicecalls in order to becalling” (J. Culler, p. 78): ”Lyrics, wemightsay, strives to be an event” – in language, wemightadd…

  9. Poetry: genre specificaspects • (Lyric ) poetry as ”the foregrounding and making strange of language” (J. Culler) • The signifiers of poetryreconstitutesitssignifieds: form/content • The nature of interpretation in poetry: part and whole – the hermeneuticcircle (cf. Abrams, ”Interpretation and Hermeneutics”) • The limits of hermeneutic interpretation: the role of intertextuality and polyphony in poetry

  10. William Wordsworth, ”Lines Composed a Few Miles aboveTintern Abbey” (1798) • Why has Wordsworth decidedon a veryelaboratetitling of his poem? • What type of poem is Wordsworh’s poem (lyric, epic, dramatic)? • Characterize the speaker of the poem? What is the relation of the speaker to ’nature’ in the poem? Characterize the tone of the speaker? • How is the poem organized and structured? What is the thematic importance of its organization/structure? • Outline the speaker's reasons for entreating his sister to go out alone at night in the wind and rain. • Which role does ‘voice’ play in the poem?

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