Understanding Literature & Poetry Personas

• The meaning of "literature" changes based on time and space.
• Literature can be the foregrounding of language.
• Literature can be the integration of language
• Literature is fiction.
• Literature is an aesthetic object.
• Literature is intertextual and/or self-reflexive construct.
• All listed characteristics of literature are optional.

Defining Poetry

• James Dowthwaite's article "Persona: Its Meaning and Significance" explores the lyric persona in poetry.

Definition of Persona

• The persona is not just a mask but the "human face" of a poetic text.
• It mediates between the author and the finished work.
• A persona creates a fictional space for poetic expression.

Functions of the Persona

• Personas liberate poetry from being tied to the author's personal identity.
• Personas allow for multiple voices and perspectives.
• Personas allow for formal innovations in poetry.

Theoretical Shift

• Personas shift focus away from traditional subjectivity and the lyrical "I".
• They redefine author, speaker, and text relationships by emphasizing the persona as an aesthetic and cognitive construct.

Applications Across Traditions

• The persona applies to diverse poetic traditions, from Old English poetry like The Seafarer to modern experimental works.
• The persona serves as a laboratory for exploring pronouns, form, and themes in poetry.

Significance

• Dowthwaite's framework provides a fresh perspective on poetic theory.
• It addresses authorship and representation complexities in literary studies.
• The persona focuses on persona rather than subjectivity.

Dramatic Monologue

• Gabriella Hartvig's chapter "The Dramatic Monologue" in An Introduction to Poetic Forms analyzes the form.
• Hartvig focuses on its defining characteristics and distinction from other poetry forms.
• The dramatic monologue is a poetic form where a single speaker addresses a silent listener.
• This reveals the speaker's character, emotions, and circumstances.
• It combines drama and lyric poetry.
• The speaker differs from the poet, creating a fictional persona.
• The monologue includes implied interaction with an audience or listener.
• It explores the speaker's character and promotes engagement with the subtext.
• The form was popularized during the Victorian era by poets like Robert Browning (My Last Duchess).
• These poets used it to explore complex moral and social issues.
• Dramatic monologues uniquely blend narrative, character study, and poetic expression.

Poetic Language Syntax - Consonance

• Consonance is the congruence of consonants short of alliteration
• Consonance is the repetition of two or more consonants with a change in the intervening vowel.

Poetic Language Syntax - Assonance

• Assonance is congruence between vowel sounds.

Poetic Language Syntax - Onomatopoeia

• Onomatopoeia uses words to imitate sounds.

Rhetorical Figures

• They contribute to form and effects in poems, as well as dramatic, narrative, and non-fictional texts.
• Analysis employs terms dating back to Antiquity.
• Categories can be based on the dimension of language.

Morphological Figures

• Phonological figures operate on sound.
• Morphological figures operate on words and word formation.

Syntactic Figures

• Syntactic figures involve sentence structure (syntax).

Semantic Figures

• Semantic forms concern the meanings of words or expressions.

Pragmatic Figures

• Pragmatic figures involve language use.
• Rhetorical figures contribute to a poem's coherence.
• Examples include speech, metric, stanzaic structure, and sound patterns.
• Poems rely on coherence due to their limited characters or plot.
• Repetitions and recurrences occur on phonological and linguistic levels.
• The repetition of morphemes, words, groups of words, sentence components, and sentences are described as morphological figures.

Sonnets - Petrarchan Sonnet

• It is a conventionalized form of courting of a man or woman with higher social standing.
• Love must remain unfulfilled for moral, social reasons.
• The sonnet suppresses passion and focuses on the poet's self-consciousness.
• The sonnet contains a conventionalized speaker and addressee.
• Blazon lists conventionalized beauty (lips=rubies, eyes=stars, hair=gold...).

Sonnets - Italian Sonnet

• The Italian sonnet contains two quatrains (octave) and two tercets (sestett).
• It rhymes abab abab or abba abba and cde cde or cdc dcd.

Sonnets - English Sonnet

• Authors include Thomas Wyatt, Earl of Surrey, and William Shakespeare.
• It contains three quartets and a couplet of (mostly) iambic pentameter.
• It rhymes abab cdcd efef gg or abba cddc effe gg.
• It has a variation of one thesis (or two positions) in three steps (cf. the quartets), then a summary.
• It can also have a surprising turn at the end (cf. the couplet) change of idealizing Petrarchan sonnet.
• It can be poems on bonding, love, and (sexual) desire like in the (English) Renaissance.
• It had a revival in British Romanticism (19th century, William Wordsworth).

Narrative - Voice

• Heterodiegetic voices are outside the story and world of characters.
• Homodiegetic narrators are inside and belong to the story world.
• Autodiegetic narrators tell their own life story

Narrative - Story Within a Story

• Extradiegetic narrators narrate the frame which are often at the beginning and/or end.
• Intradiegetic narrators narrate the embedded narrative.

Narrative - Focalisation

• Zero focalisation is when the narrator knows/sees more than any character ("Übersicht").
• Internal focalisation is when the narrator knows/sees as much as one character ("Mitsicht").
• External focalisation is when the narrator knows/sees less than the character(s) (“Außensicht").
• Fixed focalisation is restricted to one perspective.
• Variable focalisation uses different scenes through different perspectives.
• Multiple focalisation presents one scene from different perspectives.

Drama - Transmission of Information

• This includes internal and external communication.
• It also includes congruent as well as discrepant awareness between characters and audience.
• Dramatic irony's significance is only apparent with context.

Drama - Dramatic Speech

• Teichoscopy describes a synchronous discussion of events.
• Messenger reports provide information.
• Monologues are speeches given by a single person to an audience.
• Asides are when a character on stage quickly addresses the audience.
• Soliloquies are a character's speech to themselves (“Selbstgespräch”).
• Dialogue is speech between dramatic characters.
• Characters present themselves directly to others.
• Characters also characterise other figures.
• Characters characterise themselves indirectly through their reply's content and manner.
• Through dialogue, characters exchange information and negotiate meanings and relationships.
• They plan as well as perform actions
• Stichomythia is a line-by-line exchange which is used for interaction or alienation.

Explore the evolving definition of literature through time and its characteristics. Understand the significance of 'persona' in poetry. Learn how personas mediate, liberate poetic expression, and enable formal innovations, shifting focus from traditional subjectivity.