Poetry analysis literary devices and interpretation

What is Literature?

• Literary studies is concerned with interpretation, analysis, and understanding
• Literature is imaginative writing, drawing attention to itself, and differs from normal language use
• It is not easily defined and depends on context and perception
• Language usage and its literary context determine if something is literature

Markers of Literariness (Jonathan Culler)

• Foregrounding of language involves linguistic patterning
• Integration of language refers to the interrelation of form and meaning
• Fictionality is open to interpretation and textualization
• Aesthetic objects are not only about content but also beautiful form, changing the form also can change the meaning
• Intertextuality and self-reflexivity relate to other texts and draw attention to their own nature as a text rather than simply telling a story. It can be a reminder that book or play.

Analysis of Literary Texts

• Elements include narrator, characters, setting, plot, and narrative techniques
• Poetics differs from factual writing and journalism
• Fiction includes invented stories, novels, and short stories as compared to factual representation
• All written discourse is both cognitive and mimetic
• Literary history is not an objective representation but a constructed model
• Literary history is influenced by historical and ideological perspectives
• Metaphor defines literature as a map or representation of past texts
• The Literary Canon is a list of important works
• Literature is the framework for studying literature
• Selections are selective, biased, and conservative ("dead white men")
• This offers insights but limits diversity

Poetic Language Lecture: Saussure's Theory of Language

• Saussure distinguishes between langue (the system of language) and parole (individual speech acts)
• The linguistic sign consists of a signifier (sound or written form) and a signified (concept)
• The relationship between the two is arbitrary
• Language is linear (words follow one another in time)
• The connection between signifier and signified is not natural but conventional
• Includes synchronic vs diachronic perspective (language at spec. moment vs change across time)

Structural Semantics and Isotopy

• Isotopy: repetition of semantic traits that creates a coherent meaning in a text
• A lexeme is a lexical unit (e.g., a word), while a seme is the smallest unit of meaning
• Repetition of semes creates isotopies, which help in interpreting texts

Roman Jakobson's Poetic Function

• There are six functions of language: emotive, referential, poetic, phatic, metalingual, and conative.
• The poetic function focuses on the message itself like poetry
• The poetic function also emphasizes aesthetics and structural qualities rather than just meaning
• Emphasis on form, rhythm, sound patterns, and figurative language create artistic effects
• Devices like metaphor, rhyme, and parallelism enhance expression
• The poetic function draws attention to language itself, making it more impactful and open to multiple interpretations

Russian Formalism and Defamiliarization

• Literary language is distinguished by its use of formal devices that "make strange" everyday language
• This process of defamiliarization forces readers to perceive the world in new ways
• Formalists focus on the form and structure of texts emphasizing the autonomy of literary language

Summarization of Structuralism, dynamic systems, and Application to Literature

• Dynamic systems of interrelated elements, where literary effects arise from the interplay between foregrounding and backgrounding
• This approach incorporates linguistics and semiotics
• Shakespeare uses isotopy when he analyzes the monologue "All the world's a stage" and metaphorically links it to theatrical performance
• Edgar Allan Poe uses repetition, parallelism, and sound patterns, drawing attention to the form of the language
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses semantic oppositions and self-reflexivity to highlight the protagonist's state and constraints

Gender as Analytical Category: Gender Studies and Feminism

• Gender Studies emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s critiquing androcentrism and hierarchical gender structures. Now expanded to include masculinity, transgender issues, and intersectionality
• Feminist criticism examines the gender bias in authorship, canon formation, and the cultural embeddedness of gender in meaning production
• Gender studies reveal how power structures and social norms shape creation and interpretation
• Analyze how gender roles, identities, and relationships are represented, challenged, or reinforced
• Gender studies highlight the marginalization of women and LGBTQ+ voices, offering insights into historical and cultural contexts
• Short story: short, novels from UK available came in for practical reasons
• Unity of impression presents a single experience, a moment of crisis focuses single character in a single episode, and symmetry of design (conflict and solution)

Poetry

• Characterized by brevity, rhythm, rhyme, and stanza structures, repetitions, and suggestive imagery
• It often features a lyrical persona (Lyrical I), suggestive imagery, and aesthetic self-referentiality
• Some modern poetry, such as free verse, deviates from traditional forms

Lyrical Poetry

• The speaker in a poem is not necessarily the author

Poetry vs Narrative

• Narrative poetry tells a story
• Lyrical Poetry focuses on emotions and impressions

Prosody & Versification

• Prosody studies metre, rhythm, rhyme, and stanza structures in poetry
• Versification is the technical practice of composing verse

Rhyme and Rhythm

• Rhyme and Rhythm is a partial identity between sound segments
• Rhyme creates sound patterns (e.g., perfect rhyme, slant rhyme, eye rhyme)
• Rhythm refers to patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Metre

• Traditional patterns of rhythm, such as iambic pentameter
• The number of stressed syllables

Functions of Rhyme

• Euphony enhances the musical quality of a poem
• Elevation marks poetic language as special

Types of Rhyme Schemes

• Couplet, Cross Rhyme, Embracing Rhyme, Chain Rhyme

Forms of Poetry

• Villanelle: A fixed form with repeated refrains

Scansion & Metrical Analysis

• Scansion marks stressed and unstressed syllables to analyze metre
• Different metrical feet include iamb (unstressed-stressed), trochee (stressed-unstressed), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed), and anapaest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed)

Poetry: The Sonnet

• A sonnet has 14 lines and is written in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme scheme
• It originated in Italy and was introduced to England in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Types of Sonnets

• The Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into an octave (8 lines) and sestet (6 lines)
• The volta (turn) occurs at line 9, shifting argument or theme
• Shakespearean Sonnet
• Organized into three quatrains (4 lines each) and a final rhyming couplet
• The volta usually occurs at line 12, followed by a summarizing or epigrammatic conclusion

Spenserian Sonnet

• Includes a variation with a more interwoven rhyme scheme

Figures of Speech in Sonnets

• Metaphor compares two unrelated things assuming an identity between them with key components like tenor and vehicle

Simile and Metonymy

• Simile employs like or as
• Metonymy replaces a word with something closely associated with it

Dramatic Texts

• Drama refers to literature intended for performance
• Theatre is the place for performance

Dramatic Texts: Text vs Performance

• A dramatic text (script) includes primary text or spoken dialogue, and secondary text like stage directions and descriptions
• A performance includes additional non-verbal elements, gestures, facial expressions, costumes, set design, lighting, and sound

Structure of Dramatic Texts

• No narrator (except in ancient Greek Chorus)
• Dialogue-driven: characters interact directly
• Monologue: A character speaks at length and addresses nobody
• Soliloquy: A monologue delivered alone on stage

Dramatic Speech Elements

• Messenger Report describes events that happened offstage
• Teichoscopy displays events happening offstage in real-time
• Stichomythia: Rapid line by line dialogue exchange for dramatic tension

Classical Dramatic Structure

• The story comprises of one central plot, few or no subplots
• Events happen in the span of 24 hours
• It occurs in a single location

Dramactic Arc

1. Exposition: Introduction of characters and setting
2. Rising Action: Conflict develops
3. Climax: The turning point of the story
4. Falling Action: Consequences unfold
5. Dénouement/Catastrophe: Resolution or tragedy

Staging & Theatre

• Theatre is understood as a live, ephemeral event that engages audiences physically, intellectually, and emotionally
• Each performance contributes to dialogue between text and its reception history
• Stage Forms consist of ancient Greek amphitheatres, medieval pageants, Renaissance apron stages, and modern proscenium arch theatres

Characterization in Drama

• Flat characters are often representative of social or psychological types
• Round characters are multi-dimensional and resemble real human beings
• Techniques of characterization include dialogue, actions, physical appearance, and commentary by other characters

Dismantling of Dramatic Structures

• "Waiting for Godot" dismantles traditional dramatic structures by eliminating a clear plot, meaningful action, and resolution
• Minimalistic staging, with a bare stage and few props, emphasizes the emptiness and futility of the characters' existence

Intertextuality

• Intertextuality refers to the ways in which texts reference, borrow from, or respond to other texts
• The text highlights the idea that no text exists in isolation; all texts are part of a larger network of textual relationships

Gérard Genette's Categories

• Intertextuality: Direct references like quotes, allusions, or plagiarism
• Paratextuality: references to titles, prefaces, or other paratextual elements
• Metatextuality: Critical or commentary-based references to other texts
• Hypertextuality: such as adaptations, parodies, or sequels
• Architextuality: References to genre conventions

Julia Kristeva's View

• Vertical (text-pretext) and horizontal (author-reader) dimensions
• Every text is a response to previous texts

Intermediality

• Relationships between different media, such as text and image, or text and sound

Adaptation

• Involves transformation of a text from one medium to another
• A modern retelling of a classic story
• There is no inferior version
• Some adaptations have different endings and characters

Erasure Poetry

• A poet takes an existing text and obscures parts of it to create radical intertextuality
• Tracy K. Smith's “Declaration” erases Declaration parts to highlight themes of oppression and resistance

Narratology

• Structuralist approach to analyzing narratives and how they are constructed and mediated through narratos
• Communication Systems
• External, Internal, Fictional

Franz K. Stanzel's Narrative Situations

• Firt-person that shares the world with the characters
• Authorial with actions of chracters
• Figural perspective through a character that is immediate

Storytelling

• Telling: sums or reports the details
• Showing: presents thoughts, events and speech

Rimmonn Kenan

• Story is events, text/discourse is the verbal represent and narration is the act of telling and writing

Narrative: Narrative Levels and Narrators

• Extradiegetic: The primary narrative level
• Intradiegetic: Secondary narrative levels

Narrative: Types of Narrators

• Heterodiegetic: A narrator who is not a character
• Homodiegetic: A narrator who is a character
• Autodiegetic: A narrator who tells their story

Narrative: Focalization

• Narration refers to who speaks; focalization refers to who sees or perceives the events

Narrative: Types of Focalization

• Internal: filtered through the perspective of only one character
• External: limited to external observations, without access to thoughts or feelings
• Zero : unrestricted knowledge of the story world

Narrative: Time in Narrative

• Story-Time : chronological sequence of events
• Discourse-Time : the length of the text or the time it takes to read

Narrative: Order in Narrative Techniques

• The sequence of events in the narrative can differ
• Analepsis (Flashback) shifts back
• Prolepsis (Flashforward) shifts toward the future
• Duration indicates relationships between event time and narrative time

The Problem of Interpretation – Hermeneutics

• Focuses on the theory of interpretation and the historical meaning texts

Hermeneutic Circle

• Understanding where the whole informs the parts and vice versa meaning can be shaped through preconcieved notions
• Texts contain “gaps” that readers fill in
• Readers make the reading process active and making essential engagment
• Focuses reader role than the authors role

Indeterminacy

• Literary texts possess gaps and reader fill those gaps. This makes reading an active processs

Postcolonial

• Examines effects of colonialism on cultures and critiques Eurocentric perspectives and seeks to decolonize knowledge production
• Postcolinal refers to period after colonialism and intellectual movement to seek colonial ideologies and central to postocolonial study

Postcolonial Writing

• Writing back challenge dominance and reclaiming cultural identities such as adaptation or reinterpets
• rejects autority of colonidal writing and transforms it using original cultural identites

Homi Bhabha

• He challenges ideas using hybrids of mixing of cultures as the same ambivalent relations which colonizer imitate
• He uses fluiditiy of identity and meaning with negotiated transformations

Afropolitanism

• Refers to the global African identity thats transcends national boundaries

Digital Humanities: Close Reading

• Examination with detail is needed on a texts language
• Emphasis is on structure and rejecting emotion and reject focus from authors in New criticsm
• Still has close skills such as fixed meanings with instablity of texts

Digital Humanities: Distant reading

• Large data is used for anaylis instead of reading with computaitional methods thats useful especially with trends of patterns accors vast areas of literal copaie
• Digital humainties are key method in its research with traditional structure combines textual and mining

Digital Humanities: Surface Reading

• shifted focus with symptomatic towards obvious meaning
• symptomatic reading is the desire of descriptions rather then interpretations
• Application with described history using power and documentation not deeper meanings

Explore poetry analysis, literary devices, and interpretation. Understand literary language, poetic function, rhyme, and enjambment. Learn the societal impact of gender studies in literature.