Técnicas de estudio y análisis en literatura ingles

Exam 2
Dpto. de Filología Inglesa

I. Anwer the following brief questions

1. 1.1-6. A literary text is a text displaying certain qualities. Enumerate them.
1. They are written acts of communication.
2. They are aesthetically relevant and pleasurable, or they are oriented towards the
aesthetic function of language.
3. They are fictive.
4. They are open to interpretation.
5. They are indeterminate as to the perlocutionary effect intended.
6. They are displaced written acts of communication.
7. They are included in the literary canon of any given society.
2. 1.2. Write down Jakobson’s diagram and circle the element which is involved in
characterization of the literary text and give the name of the corresponding fucntion.
Etc.

CONTEXT
ADDRESSER > MESSAGE > ADDRESSEE
CONTACT
CODE
3. 1.5. Explain on what accounts can texts with little density of stylistic resouces (Pride
and Prejudice, for instance) still be considered literary texts.
Most novels and short stories which do not employ attention-reclaiming microstylistic
devices could frequently not diverge too much from other standard everyday
communication. However, they are usually considered literature on account of their
mastery of macrostylistic feature and on account of another criterion that also affects high
densely stylized texts: fiction
4. 1.4. What author and work was misintepreted by his political comrades being the
former sentenced to prison and the pillory.
Daniel Defoe’s pamphlet The Shortest way with the Dissenters (1702)
5. 1.6. Give a nuanced defintion of literature according to the seven main features stated
on page 6 of Topic 1.
Literature as a discipline can be finally defined as the discipline dealing with texts
which fulfil some (possibly two at least) of the following features (fourth approach):
6. 2.1. Define the concept of literary encyclopedia as part of the literary competence of a
reader.
the part of our literary knowledge resulting from the double-sided activity of compiling,
organizing and classifying the information extracted from literary and non-literary texts in
the course of our contacts with them. Both activities are closely interrelated, and are very
hard to separate. The literary encyclopedia is in fact a branch of what might be called
reading encyclopedia (if we focus on the activity) or textual encyclopedia (if on the
objects from which this experience is drawn), since the notion of what a literary text is
springs from the comparison with non-literary texts
7. 2.2-4 Give the name of the 14 different specialized approaches to literature and its
subdividion in its case, or at least as many approaches as you can remember.
Cambridge School (1920s–1930s):
New Humanism (c. 1910–1933):
Russian Formalism (1915–1929):
 New Criticism (1930s–1960s):
Chicago School (1950s):
Frankfurt School (c. 1923–1970):
Structuralism (1950s–1960s)
Psychoanalytic criticism
Marxist criticism
New Historicism (1980s–present)
Cultural materialism
Feminist criticism (1960s–present):
Post-structuralism (1960s–1970s):
Queer theory (1980s–present):
Post-Colonial theory.
8. 2.3. To which specialized approach to literature or literary theory is Jonathan
Dollimore related? Which is his seminal work in this respect?
Cultural materialism, Radical Tragedy,
9. 3.1. Explain what is modelization of language and what relationhip keeps it with
poetry?
A first parameter for the definition of poetry from a linguistic point of view is based on
the modelization of language. In this respect poetry can be defined as a message that is
worded through an overcoding variety of language. By saying overcoded, we recognize
one of the most self-evident traits of the poetic language: its extreme formalization, which
includes the use of verse and a density of expressive resource (verse, rhyme, schemes,
tropes, and figures of thought) that we do not usually find in other literary kinds.
10. 3.1-2. Explain what is the relationship to poetry of the attitude of the poetic narrator
towards its subject and emotion.
As to the attitude of the poetic narrator towards its subject it is most frequently internal-
intimate, at least in what would be the core of poetry: the lyric. Poetry is about emotions
and though there is a wide range of them (pity, melancholy, sadness, meditation,
reflection, lamentation, joy, exultation, etc.) we can distinguish two basic groups as far as
poetical feeling goes: introvert and extrovert emotions. The former are proper to the lyrical
poetry; the latter to the epic poetry.
11. 3.3. Give the classification of feet according to the weak-strong succession of
syllables.
• There are the following types of feet: for the disyllabic feet: iambic foot or iamb =
weak-strong succession of syllabes ( ̆ '), trochaic foot or trochee = strong-weak ( ' ̆ ),
phyrric or dibrach = weak-weak ( ̆ ̆ ); spondaic foot or spondee = strong-strong ( '
' ); for the trisyllabic feet: anapestic foot or anapest = weak-weak-strong ( ̆ ̆ ') and
dactylic foot or dactyl = strong-weak-weak ( ' ̆ ̆ ).
12. 3.3. What are schemes? What are tropes?
• Schemes have to do with expression. They are abnormal arrangements lending
themselves to the forceful and harmonious presentations of ideas; they foreground
repetition of expression
• Tropes have to do with content. They are devices involving alteration of the normal
meaning of an expression; they foreground irregularities of content.
13. 3.5. Give the names of and define the four main figures of thought likely to be found
in poetry.
• Prosopopoeia. Representing an imaginary or absent person as speaking or acting;
attributing life, speech or inanimate qualities to dumb or inanimate objects.
 •Apostrophe. A diversion of discourse from the topic at hand to addressing some
person or thing, either present or absent
• Pleonasm. The needless repetition of words; a tautology on the level of a phrase.
• Occupatio, praeteritio, or paralipsis. “When the orator feigns and makes as though
he would say nothing in some matter, when, notwithstanding he speaks most of all, or
when he says something: in saying he will not say it”. (Definition from Henry
Peacham’s The Garden of Eloquence, 1593, p. 130).
14. 4.3. Define the figures of implied author and implied reader. In which sense do they
differ from the real author and the real reader.
The implied author is a partly fictional author between the real author and the text; this
the person to whom we ascribe the views expressed through a work, but that not
necessarily have to coincide the author himself, though it may.
The Implied reader is the kind of reader the author has primarily in mind as sharing a
common fund of knowledge and experiences
15. 4.7. Explain the bearing of the diagram below to the text presentation of acts or
speech acts by novelists:

When a novelist reports the occurrence of some act or speech act we are apparently
seeing the event entirely from his perspective. But as we move along the cline of speech
presentation from the more bound to the more free end, his interference seems to become
less and less noticeable, until, in the most extreme version of FDS, he apparently leaves
the characters to talk entirely on their own:
16. 4.8. What are indices? In what sense are they different from catalyzerz?
Nuclei, also called kernels (Chatmann) or constituent events (Abbot), are the
constituent events of a story, i.e., the events that are necessary for the story to be what it is.
They are the turning points, the events that drive the story forward and that lead to other
events.
Catalyzerz, also called satellites (Chatmann) or supplementary events (Abbot), are
the stretches of words not necessary for the story. They do not lead anywhere. They can be
removed and the story will still be recognizable the story it is.
As to indices, Roland Barthes (1977: 95-96) tell us that they can only be saturated (i.e.,
completed) on the level of characters or on the level of narration. They are part of a
parametrical 1 relationship whose second –implicit– term is a continuous, extended over an
episode, a character or the whole work
17. 5.1. What is ontension? In which sense does it characterize drama?
Ostension: the showing of objects and events (and the performance at large) to the
audience, rather than describing, explaining or defining them.
18. 5.4. What elements does the performance text as spectacle include?
• Kinesic components: actors’ body movements, gestures, facial expressions, postures
etc.
• Proxemic components: movement of approach and/or distancing between persons and
objects.

1
meaning a range of variation.
 • Lighting
• Settings
• Costumes
• Props
• Special effects
19. 5.4 What is turn-taking and how could it be relevant in drama?
A cognitive operation that helps us to focus on the interactional activity performed by
the participants when exchange utterance in dialogues. Turn taking is usually divided for
analysis into adjacency pairs. Through turn-taking the spectators focus on the interactional
activity performed by the participants in the conversation. We can also guess the
hierarchical status adopted by each of the participants, insofar as the one that is recognized
as the holder of the superior degree of authority will be the one that takes the initiative in
the conversation, unless other circumstances apply: if the authority is overruled by the
emotional or affective state of some of the participants, or if the conditions of authority
have been momentarily left aside or reverted.
20. 5.5. What is face? What is negative face? What is positive face? How does face bear upon
drama?
 Face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for
himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an
image of self-delineated in terms of approved social attributes (Goffman 1967: 5).
There are two kinds of face:
 Negative face: the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be
unimpeded by others.
 Positive face: the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least
some others.
In the way in which characters negotiate their face and their interlocutors’ face is a very
common way to characterize, make the action advance, and present conflict in drama.

II. Make a comments as requested of three of the following passages below.

1. Give the title and author of this poem. Make a short commentary stating the
subject, and the theme or themes, the most salient literary resources to support the
theme(s):

I returned to a long strand,

the hammered shod of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical

invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,

those lying in Orkney and Dublin
measured against
their long swords rusting,

those in the solid

belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
 in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices

warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship’s swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight—

it said Thor's hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behindbacks

of the althing, lies and women,
exhaustions nominated pea ce,
memory incubating the spilled blood.

lt said, ‘Lie down

in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear

as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known’

2. Give a general interpretation of the following poem from at least three specialized
approaches to literature?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

3. Give the title and the author of the following poem. Provide a general interpretation
and commentary:
 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
4. What can you say about discursive situation of the narrative, discoursal point of
view, point of view according to the grammatical person of the narrator, report
modes of this excerpt? Is it or part of it (which?) a nuclei of the whole narration?
Are there catalyzers, indices and informants in this fragment?
He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was
singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if
she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the
stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he
would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her
hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light
ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.
The hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came down the
hall, still laughing.
"Well, isn't Freddy terrible?" said Mary Jane. "He's really terrible."
Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife was standing.
Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano could be heard more
clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be silent. The song seemed to be in the
old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice.
The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singer's hoarseness, faintly
illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:
O, the rain falls on my heavy locks
And the dew wets my skin,
My babe lies cold...
"O," exclaimed Mary Jane. "It's Bartell D'Arcy singing and he wouldn't sing all the
night. O, I'll get him to sing a song before he goes."
"O, do, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate.
Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before she reached it
the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.
"O, what a pity!" she cried. "Is he coming down, Gretta?"
Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A few steps
behind her were Mr. Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan.
"O, Mr. D'Arcy," cried Mary Jane, "it's downright mean of you to break off like that
when we were all in raptures listening to you."
"I have been at him all the evening," said Miss O'Callaghan, "and Mrs. Conroy, too,
and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldn't sing."
"O, Mr. D'Arcy," said Aunt Kate, "now that was a great fib to tell."
"Can't you see that I'm as hoarse as a crow?" said Mr. D'Arcy roughly.
He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others, taken aback by his
rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate wrinkled her brows and made signs
to the others to drop the subject. Mr. D'Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and
frowning.
"It's the weather," said Aunt Julia, after a pause.
"Yes, everybody has colds," said Aunt Kate readily, "everybody."
"They say," said Mary Jane, "we haven't had snow like it for thirty years; and I read
this morning in the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland."
"I love the look of snow," said Aunt Julia sadly.
"So do I," said Miss O'Callaghan. "I think Christmas is never really Christmas unless
we have the snow on the ground."
"But poor Mr. D'Arcy doesn't like the snow," said Aunt Kate, smiling.
Mr. D'Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a repentant tone
told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him advice and said it was a great
pity and urged him to be very careful of his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his
wife, who did not join in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty
fanlight and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he had seen
her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same attitude and seemed
unaware of the talk about her At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that
there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy
went leaping out of his heart.