Сlass 1.

INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY APPRECIATION

'May God keep us From single vision'

William Blake

Outline of the class:

1. What is literature? Why read and analyse literature?

2. Literary analysis.
3. What is poetry?
4. Figures of speech.
5. Imagery
6. Symbols
7. Sound features
8. Metrical terms and scansion
 1. Introduction
What is literature? Since the dawn of civilisation many men and women have felt
a vital need to communicate their thoughts and feelings beyond their immediate
circle of family, friends and acquaintances to a wider world. Thanks to the
invention of writing and printing they have been able to hand down to successive
generations a priceless treasury of manuscripts and books. Literature is generally
taken to mean those pieces of writing which, despite the passing of the years and
even of the centuries, still inspire admiration, reflection and emotion in readers.
Poems, plays, novels and short stories in a given language that have stood the test
of time collectively make up a national literature. This does not mean, however,
that only older works can be called literature. Today, millions of books are
produced every year but only some of them find their way into literary magazines
or onto the literary pages of newspapers. In these cases it is the critics and not time
that decide what is and what is not to be regarded as literature. Whether their
choices are appropriate or not will be a matter for future generations to decide. It is
impossible to formulate a totally comprehensive and all encompassing definition of
literature because literature is never static. Writers, genres and styles of writing
have fallen in and out of favour throughout history and even today arguments rage
about whether more popular forms of fiction such as detective stories should be
considered literature. These disputes can be left to the critics because, for the
reader, literature is simply beautiful, meaningful writing.

Why read literature?

The most obvious answer to this question is because it is enjoyable. Everybody
loves a good story, and many great works of literature tell memorable stories.
These stories provide an escape from our daily lives by transporting us to
different times and places. We can travel back to the depression era in the United
States with John Steinbeck, or we can journey through the African jungle with
Joseph Conrad, or we can be projected into the future by science fiction writers
like H.G. Wells. Escapism is only one reason for reading literature. Literature can
also be viewed as a source of knowledge and information. If we read one of
Chaucer's tales, a poem by Wilfred Owen and a novel by Chinua Achebe, we learn
about a range of subjects from life in England in the Middle Ages, to conditions at
the battle front in the first World War I, to the unresolved tensions in colonial
Nigeria. Almost every poem, play or novel we read gives us more information
about the world we live in.
Perhaps the most important reason for reading literature is because it breaks down
our personal barriers. Literature invites us to share in a range of human experiences
that we otherwise would be denied. It allows us to leave behind our age, sex,
family background and economic condition so that we can see the world from the
perspective of people who are completely different from us. Great writers make us
understand how other people think and feel. Literature stirs up our emotions. It
amuses, frightens, intrigues, shocks, consoles, frustrates and challenges us. It helps
us to understand ourselves and others. Literature widens our field of vision.
Why analyse literature?
Literary analysis, in its broadest sense, is any attempt to understand a literary text.
Every time we close a book and think about what we have read we are doing some
form of literary analysis. An analytical approach to literature involves careful
observation and drawing conclusions. It is not simply a question of tearing a poem
or story asunder and labelling the parts; it entails discovering patterns of meaning
and becoming aware of the writer's intentions.
Literary analysis is a way of learning more about how literary texts are structured.
The more we learn about the art of writing, the more receptive and responsive we
become as readers. The analytical approach also provides the vocabulary we need
to define and communicate our responses to literary texts. We must know the
definitions of terms such as setting, character, plot and point of view in order to
express and exchange opinions.
What is poetry?
One modern poet, when asked the question 'What is poetry?', replied that poetry,
unlike prose, is a form of writing in which few lines run to the edge of the page!
The American poet Robert Frost contended that 'poetry is the kind of thing poets
write'. While these replies, at first, may not seem serious, they inadvertently reveal
two important aspects of poetry: the first quotation indicates the arrangement of the
words on the page as an important element of poetry, while the second emphasises
that there is a special 'poetic' way of using language. A working definition may,
therefore, be that poetry emerges form the interplay between the meaning of words
and their arrangement on paper; or - as the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
put it - 'poetry is the best words in their best order'. Although poems come in all
shapes and sizes, they share certain characteristics. Imagery, metaphors and
symbols make poetry dense with meaning. Sound features, such as rhyme, rhythm
and repetition, give the language a special musical quality. The standard rules of
grammar and syntax are often ignored, so that the language may be used in a
striking or original way. Poetry, like all literature, is a writer's attempt to
communicate to others his emotional and intellectual response to his own
experiences and to the world that surrounds him. The poet puts words together to
make the reader feel what he has felt and experience what he has experienced.

Figures of speech
A figure of speech is any use of language which deviates from the obvious or
common usage in order to achieve a special meaning or effect. We use figures of
speech in everyday conversation when we say, for example, 'money talks'
(personification) or 'I've got butterflies in my stomach' (metaphor) or 'he's like a
bull in a china shop' (simile). The density and originality of a writer's use of figures
of speech is part of his characteristic style.
There are many different figures of speech.
The most widely used are:
A simile is a figure of speech in which a comparison between two distinctly
different things is indicated by the word 'like' or 'as'. A simile is made up of three
elements:
• the tenor: the subject under discussion;
• the vehicle: what the subject is compared to;
• the ground: what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common.
We can therefore analyse the simile 'life is like a rollercoaster' as follows:
A metaphor is an implied comparison which creates a total identification between
the two things being compared. Words such as 'like' or 'as' are not used. Like a
simile, a metaphor is made up of three elements:
• the tenor: the subject under discussion;
• the vehicle: what the subject is compared to;
• the ground: what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common.
We can analyse the metaphor 'he's a live wire' as follows:

In metonymy (Greek for 'a change of name') the term for one thing-is applied to
another with which it has become closely associated. 'The crown', for example, can
be used to refer to a king.
In synecdoche (Greek for 'taking together') a part of something is used to signify
the whole or vice versa, although the latter form is quite rare. An example of
synecdoche from everyday speech can be found in the proverb 'Many hands make
light work', where the expression 'many hands' means 'the labour of many people'.
An example of the whole representing a part can be found in expressions such as
'I'm reading Dickens', where an attribute of a literary work (i.e. it was written by
Charles Dickens) is substituted for the work itself.
Personification is a form of comparison in which human characteristics, such as
emotions, personality, behaviour and so on, are attributed to an animal, object or
idea: 'The proud lion surveyed his kingdom'.
The primary function of personification is to make abstract ideas clearer to the
reader by comparing them to everyday human experience. Humanising cold and
complex abstractions can bring them to life, render them more interesting and
make them easier to understand.
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN ANALYSING FIGURES OF SPEECH
Are comparisons drawn through metaphors or similes?
What information, attitudes or associations are revealed through these
associations?
Are there any examples of synecdoche or metonymy?
What is the writer's purpose in using these figures of speech?
How do they affect the style and tone of the poem?
Are animals, objects or ideas personified in the poem? How does personification
contribute to our understanding of the poem?

Imagery
Images are words or phrases that appeal to our senses. Consider these lines taken
from Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags we cursed though sludge.
The poet is describing his experience as a soldier during the First World War.
Through his choice of words he creates:
• visual images: bent double, old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed;
• aural images: coughing like hags, cursed;
• a tactile image: sludge.
If we replace the imagistic words that Owen uses with more generic terms:
Physically exhausted, the soldiers marched across the wet terrain cursing their fate.
the impact on our senses is lost.
A writer may use an image to help us:
• re-live a sense experience that we have already had. We may be able to conjure
up the sound of old women coughing or the sensation of walking through mud
from past experience;
• have a new sense experience. This is achieved when our sense memories are
called forth in a pattern that does not correspond to any of our actual experiences.
Exploited in this way, images allow us to see, hear, feel, smell and taste
experiences that are new to us.
We use the term imagery to refer to combinations or clusters of images that are
used to create a dominant impression. Death, corruption and disease imagery, for
example, creates a powerful network in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. Writers
often develop meaningful patterns in their imagery, and a writer's choice and
arrangement of images is often an important clue to the overall meaning of his
work.
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN ANALYSING A WRITERS USE OF IMAGERY
• What does the writer want the reader to see, hear, taste, feel and smell?
• What revealing details bring the place, the people or the situation to life? Does
the writer use details that people would usually overlook?
• Which are the most striking and revealing images? Which images tend to linger
on in our minds? Are they important to the overall meaning of the work?
• Does the work appeal to one sense in particular or to all the senses?
• What emotions or attitudes do the images arouse in the reader?

Symbols
A symbol is an example of what is called the transference of meaning. Writers take
a concrete item – an object, a colour, a person, a place - and attribute a deeper
meaning to it. A symbol may be a detail, an object, a character or an incident. It
exists first as something literal and concrete in the work, but it also has the
capacity to evoke in the mind of the reader a range of invisible and abstract
associations.
By definition symbols are open-ended. A given symbol will evoke different
responses in different readers. There is, however, an acceptable range of possible
readings and any interpretation of a symbol must be confirmed by the rest of the
work.
The identification and understanding of symbols demands awareness and
intelligence of the reader. It involves the reader directly in the creative process,
asking him to add his own intellectual and emotional responses. Through this
collaboration the work is enriched and enlarged.
Many symbolic associations are widely recognised and accepted: the dawn with
hope, the serpent with evil, the colour white with innocence, light with knowledge,
dark with ignorance. Writers often make use of these cultural or shared symbols.
Readers must not, however, automatically apply conventional meanings to these
symbols. Sometimes writers will enlarge or narrow the meaning of a cultural
symbol. The reader must first carefully examine how the symbol is used in the text
before assigning meaning.
Authors also use their own original symbols. Personal or literary symbols do not
have pre-established associations: the meaning that is attached to them emerges
from the context of the work in which they occur. A particular landscape or certain
atmospheric conditions may become associated with a character's emotional state.
A colour or an object may take on a secondary meaning. A recurring gesture or a
character may be given symbolic meaning.
When does an object, character or action cease to be just part of the story and begin
to develop symbolic associations? There is no simple answer to this question.
Ultimately, the reader must develop his own awareness through receptive and
responsive reading. There are, however, some broad guidelines he can follow.
The principal techniques that writers use for creating symbols are:
• repetition: the reader should take note of multiple references to a particular object
or the recurrence of the same gesture;
• emphasis: does the author seem to pay particular attention to some element,
describe it in detail or use poetic or connotative language when referring to it?
• associations automatically made with shared symbols: the reader should try to
understand if the author wishes him to make conventional associations with the
symbol or if he has added his own personal significance.
While there is a risk that a reader may not identify symbols, there is also the
danger that he may see symbolic importance where the writer did not intend it.
'Symbol hunting', i.e. attributing symbolic status to objects, characters or actions
when there is little evidence in the text that they should be viewed as a symbol,
should be avoided.
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN ANALYSING SYMBOLS
Does the writer refer repeatedly to any objects or gestures in his work?
Does he make any concrete items in the story emerge and assume importance?
Does he use poetic or connotative language when describing particular objects or
gestures?
Does he use any shared or cultural symbols?
Does he attribute the conventional meaning to these symbols? How does the use of
symbols help the writer to convey the meaning of his work?
 Sound features
Think of a sound that makes you relax, like the gentle lapping of water against
rocks. Now think of a sound that you cannot stand, perhaps the screeching of chalk
against a blackboard. Different sounds have different effects on us. The sounds of
language also create different responses in us and writers, especially poets, use this
in their work. By choosing words for their sound as well as their meaning, writers
create a musicality in their work that can evoke strong emotional responses and
reinforce the meaning they wish to convey. The most common sound features are
rhyme, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.
The term rhyme refers to the effect that is created when a poet repeats the same
sound at the end of two or more lines.
Rhyme has several important functions:
• it adds a musical quality to the poem;
• it marks the end of each line;
• it makes the poem easier to remember;
• it affects the pace and tone of the poem.
There are several different types of rhyme:
single-syllable or masculine rhyme: the beginning of the syllable varies while the
rest stays the same, for example day/say light/night;
double-syllable or feminine rhyme matches two syllable words or parts of words:
ocean/motion, pretending/bending-,
triple-syllable rhyme matches three-syllable words: beautiful/dutiful, comparison/
garrison;
true or perfect rhyme: the rhymed sounds correspond exactly, for example:
boat/float, double/ trouble;
imperfect rhyme (half rhyme or slant rhyme): the sound of two words is similar,
but it is not as close as is required in true or perfect rhyme. Generally the words
contain identical vowels or identical consonants but not both, for example
loads/lids/lads, road/moan/boat;
end rhymes fall at the end of the lines;
internal rhymes occur within the same line:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary (The Raven,
Edgar Allan Poe)
Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound in a sequence of
nearby words. In Anglo-Saxon times, before the introduction of rhyme, alliteration
gave the language of poetry its musical quality and made the poems, which were
often recited, easier to remember. Alliteration is still popular in modern poetry and
can also be found in songs, headlines and everyday expressions such as 'black and
blue', 'safe and sound' and 'right as rain'.
Assonance is the repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in a sequence of
nearby words containing different consonants. It creates 'vowel rhyme' as in
break/play, hope/spoke. Like alliteration, assonance adds a musical quality to the
language and it also establishes rhythm: • open, broad sounds 'o', 'u', 'a' (flow, burn,
heart, flame) tend to slow the rhythm down; • slender 'i' and 'e' (hill, met) sounds
create a quicker pace.
The use of the sound of words to suggest the sound they denote is called
onomatopoeia. We hear this sound-echoing effect in the 'slamming' of a door, the
'buzzing' of bees, the 'ticking' of a clock. In his poem 'OnaMaTaPia', the poet Spike
Milligan suggests that it more difficult to spell onomatopoeia correctly than to
understand and identify it!

The beating of the heart, breathing, walking, running - rhythm is at the core of
human existence. Rhythm is also an important part of the language of literature.
Writers build on the natural rhythms of language, putting words with the same
stress pattern side by side and creating an underlying beat or rhythm in their work.
METRICAL TERMS AND SCANSION
The regular and rhythmic arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables found in
poetry is called metre. The basic unit of metre is the foot, which consists of one
stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables. The most common feet are:
• iamb (adj.: iambic) - one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable: (a
| way); /ˈaɪ.æm/
• trochee (adj.: trochaic ) - one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed
syllable: (fa | ther); /ˈtrəʊkiː/
• anapest (adj.: anapestic) - two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed
syllable: (in | the | light);
• dactyl (adj.: dactylic ) - one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed
syllables: (o | ver | the)
• monosyllable (adj.: monosyllabic) - one stressed syllable: sky;
• spondee (adj.: spondaic) - two.stressed syllables: (rain | bow). /ˈspɒn.diː/
Analysing metre is called scansion. When we scan a poem we first count the
number of syllables and identify the position of the stresses or accents. We then
divide the line into feet and determine the metrical length of the line:
monometer - one foot pentameter - five feet
dimeter - two feet hexameter - six feet
trimeter - three feet heptameter - seven feet
tetrameter - four feet octameter - eight feet

When we have identified the kind of feet and the line length, we combine the two
to give the metre a name, for example iambic pentameter, trochaic hexameter,
anapestic heptameter. Iambic pentameter is the metrical form that most closely
resembles natural speech and it is the most widely used metre in English poetry.
Metre is not a straitjacket and in most poems there are deviations from the
principal pattern. When scanning a poem it is important to identify the prevailing
metre, but also to notice variations.
The analysis of metre is meaningful only if it contributes to our understanding of a
poem. The rhythm may establish an atmosphere or create a tone, and deviations
from the predominant metrical pattern may highlight key elements.
Other rhythmic devices
When a pause occurs naturally at the end of a line we refer to it as an end-stopped
line:
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
(The Wild Swans at Coole, W.B. Yeats)
Enjambement or run-on line are the terms we use when the sense of the sentence
extends into the next line:
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
(Snow, Louis MacNeice)
If a strong break occurs in the middle of a line it is referred to as caesura /sɪˈzjʊə.rə/:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness
(Endymion, John Keats)
Enjambement and caesura give their own particular rhythm to poetry.