What is literature?
Name three signs for fictionality in literary works.
What is genre?
“a group of literary works that share significant characteristics in terms of content, form and/or function” (Nünning 31)
What is the basic rhythmic structure of a poem called?
metre
What is the most common metre in English poetry?
iamb
(iambic pentameter)
How do we call this rhetorical device?
"a concrete or abstract element is presented as if it were alive or human"
personification
What are the two main foregrounding techniques? Explain them.
Name three criteria for the classification of texts and give examples.
language, notion, categories of aesthetic evaluation, sociological categories, historical categories, media-related categories, relation to reality, conventionality of mode of representation
Who is the Italian writer after whom the sonnet is named?
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
What is a blank verse?
unrhymed iambic pentameter lines, no stanzas (verse paragraphs), standard form for dramatic poetry in 17th century (e.g., Shakespeare plays)
What is a metaphor? Give an example.
a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable
Complete the sentence: _________ is the expectation of freedom to construct meaning.
Polyvalence convention
How do we call this in literary jargon?
"all those texts that are regarded particularly important or artistically superior"
canon
What is the difference between the speaker and the author in the communication model for poetry?
The poet does not generally express themselves directly in a poem; instead they delegate statements and feelings to the fictive speaker in the text. The term generally applied to this mouthpiece is ´speaker´ which cannot be equated with the historical author. (see Nünning 53)
Generally, how does the metre contribute to the meaning of poems?
it enhances emotion and mood (e.g. iambic pentameter can convey a sense of order/predictability), the rhythm can highlight key ideas (= emphasizes meaning), it reflects natural speech, musicality & sound (= the poem can feel more intimate)
Which rhetorical device can you find in this example?
"Fair stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance"
synecdoche
Define and explain defamiliarization.
high degree of deviation from everyday language
What does it mean to approach texts using the hermeneutic circle?
we must approach the whole via its parts and the parts via the whole (Hans-Georg Gadamer in Nünning 23)
What is the difference between the level of the enounced and the level of enunciation? Why are these terms relevant?
•Level of the enounced = content of the poem (WHAT is said)
•Level of enunciation = form of the poem (HOW it is said)
When analysing literature, we are usually interested in both the content and the form of the text.
Which type of verse is demonstrated in the following example?
"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled."
free verse
Identify the rhetorical device and define it.
"Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, / And in our faults by lies we flattered be."
Paronomasia/pun: a play on words, using two identical or similar sounding words with different and perhaps contradictory meanings
According to Jakobson, of which function of language is this an example? Explain this function.
"through thick and thin"
poetic function: focus on the message itself, the dominant function in poetry
Read the selected part of the following poem and name: author, title, and literary period.
"A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
William Wordsworth: I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud; Romanticism
What is the difference between English and Italian sonnets? What is their structure?
Shakespearean sonnet: three quartets, (volta), rhyming couplet - (abab, cdcd, efef, gg); addresses: beautiful young man & cruel Dark Lady; topics: passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty, mortality
Petrarchan sonnet: octave (problem presentation), volta (turn), sestet (resolution) - (abba, abba, cde, cde); adressee: Laura; topic: beautiful woman with idealised features
Strict Italian sonnets do not end with a couplet.
Identify the verse and metre and interpret these two lines of Romeo and Juliet.
"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their lives,"
(Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
blank verse, iambic pentameter
possible interpretation:
introduction of the rivalry between the two families, "fatal" -> tragic nature of the events that will unfold
"loins" -> parents of the two families in conflict
introduction of the two main characters, their fate is determined by the stars ("star-crossed")
"take their lives" -> foreshadowing of the suicides
iambic pentameter: common English metre, formality -> tragedy
blank verse: serious tone
Name three figures of contiguity and explain them.
- Metonymy: replacement of one term with another to which it is ontologically, logically or casually connected
- Synecdoche: replacement of a part with a whole or vice versa
- Antonomasia: replacement of a generic term with a proper name, or of a proper name with an epithet