INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH

LITERATURE

COBRESLE, KEMEL KARIM - GROUP CD - 2021

 UNIT 1:
LITERARY TEXTS: FIRST ENCOUNTERS

➜ When we first approach a literary text our response is highly intuitive. We may gain pleasure as
well as enlightenment or we may just feel the magic of the text! Contrary to the common view,
however, to scrutinize a text paying attention to HOW texts mean and not just WHAT they mean
allows us to become more aware of meaning. That is, to analyze the linguistic features of a text and
see how they reinforce meaning or how they even create meaning will help us better interpret the
text and become more accomplished readers.

➜ Stylistic analysis involves discussing a text in terms of different interrelated levels of

description. We can speak of:

◉ LEXICAL LEVEL: Lexis includes single words as well as idiomatic word-sequences.

◉ MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL: Morphology studies the internal structure of words.
◉ SYNTACTICAL LEVEL: Syntax refers to sentence-building.
◉ PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL: Phonology deals with the sound system of a given language so
in this area stylistic analysis will refer to sound units, rhythm and intonation.
◉ GRAPHOLOGICAL LEVEL: Graphology is the study of a writing system, so at this level
the stylistician will focus on orthography, typography, spacing, capitalization, punctuation,
and so on.

➜ We may take turns and analyze a text at one level or the other but in fact all the levels are
interrelated, so the analysis of one particular level will not prevent us from considering the
inter-level linguistic relationships in the text. It is a matter of momentarily focusing on one aspect
more than on the other, and sometimes, the analysis of one level makes the relevance of another
more evident. For the stylist, the literary text is solely one object of study, a miniature system.

UNIT 2:
FIGURES OF SPEECH

FIGURES OF SPEECH

➜ ALLEGORY: A story or visual image with a second or distinct meaning partially hidden behind
its literal or visible meaning. The representation of ideas or moral principles by means of symbolic
characters, events, or objects.

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EXAMPLE: The epic poem "Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser is a moral allegory in which each
character represents a virtue or a vice. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible uses the “Salem Witch Trials”
as an allegory for the hunt for Communists in America during the 1950s.

➜ ALLITERATION: The repetition of a CONSONANT SOUND to create rhythm and aid memory in
any sequence of neighbouring words. It is found in INITIAL POSITION or STRESSED SYLLABLES.

EXAMPLE: The falling flakes fluttered to the ground. The swift, silent serpent slithered along.

➜ ALLUSION: A brief REFERENCE to a historical or literary person, place, object, or event, the
nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity
(previous knowledge) with what is thus mentioned.

EXAMPLE: Biblical allusions are frequently used in English Literature; a writer may refer to
Adam, Eve, Serpent or The Garden to tap into associations that already exist for the reader.

➜ ANALOGY: The comparison of TWO SIMILAR THINGS so as to suggest that if they are alike in
some respects, they are probably alike in other ways as well.

EXAMPLE: Learning to walk is a good analogy for learning to ride a bike; you start slowly, you are
a little wobbly at first, but once you have your balance, you are zooming along.

➜ ANAPHORA: The REPETITION of a word or group of words at the BEGINNING of successive

lines, clauses or sentences. It is a rhetorical figure of repetition and it may be used to give a feel of
organization, to suggest inevitable consequences, to emphasize an idea, and so forth.

EXAMPLE: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the
age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything, before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way . . . (Excerpt from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities)

➜ ANTITHESIS: A figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or

sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves to emphasize
opposition of ideas. There has to be a contradiction between two concepts in the SAME
SENTENCE or STATEMENT.

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EXAMPLE: “Speech is silver, but silence is gold”. “Money is the root of all evil; poverty is the fruit
of all goodness.”

➜ APOSTROPHE: A figure of speech where someone (USUALLY ABSENT or DEAD), an object,

some abstract quality, or a nonexistent person is directly addressed as though PRESENT and
REAL. The effect of apostrophe can be to produce an elevated style, a moving or emotional tone, or
even an ironic one.

EXAMPLE: O strong-ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
(William Carlos Williams, excerpt from “Smell!”). “Oh! my lonely--lonely--lonely--Pillow! Where is
my lover? where is my lover?” (Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly)

➜ CATALOG (ENUMERATION): An extended LIST of anything, an ACCUMULATION of words or

phrases. Writers such as Walt Whitman made extensive use of catalog so as to achieve the effect of
including an entire cosmos in language. Catalog may be used for other effects, though, such as
boredom, totality or detail.

EXAMPLE:

“I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,

I see all the prisoners in the prisons,
I see the defective human bodies of the earth,
The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,
The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,
The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.”

➜ CHARACTERIZATION: The creation of IMAGINARY PERSONS so that they seem lifelike. The
six elements used to create a character are:

◉ PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
◉ SPEECH
◉ THOUGHTS/FEELINGS
◉ ACTIONS/REACTIONS
◉ WHAT OTHER CHARACTERS SAY ABOUT THEM
◉ POSSIBLE DIRECT COMMENTS FROM NARRATOR

➜ CLICHÉ: A word or phrase that is so overused that it is no longer effective in most writing
situations.

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EXAMPLE: “Never judge a book by its cover.” “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.”
AVOID chicles “like the plague.” (irony intended)

➜ CONNOTATION: The emotions or feelings that surround a word; they may be NEGATIVE,
NEUTRAL or POSITIVE, depending on the context.

EXAMPLE: When people want to "soften" the word "died," they may use the phrases: "passed
away," "at rest," or "at peace," so that the connotation is not as harsh.

➜ EUPHEMISM: When a word or phrase is replaced for another in order to avoid being offensive.

EXAMPLE: Corporate “restructuring” or “downsizing” are euphemisms for “laying off” or “firing”
workers.

➜ HEROIC COUPLET: Two consecutive lines of rhymed verse written in iambic pentameter.

EXAMPLE:

"But when to mischief mortals bend their will,

How soon they find fit instruments of ill."

➜ HYPERBATON: A figure of syntactic deviation in which the normal word order of a sentence is
significantly altered. It may be used to emphasize an idea or to achieve a humorous effect, as in the
first example.

EXAMPLE: El señor Pithon Baer de su oficina salió. Al garaje fue. Dio propina una al cuidador. Su
auto sacó. Transitó la rambla por, hasta a chalé su llegar ...

➜ HYPERBOLE: An exaggeration for the sake of emphasis which is NOT MEANT LITERALLY.

EXAMPLE: “I have been waiting for ages!!” “I am trying to solve a million issues these days.”

➜ IMAGERY: A rather broad term to refer to a set of images that represent objects, actions,
feelings, thoughts, ideas, states of mind and any sensory or extra-sensory experience. On the one
hand, we can refer exclusively to sensory images, that is to say, images that appeal to the senses.

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 ◉ Visual imagery
◉ Auditory imagery
◉ Olfactory imagery
◉ Tactile imagery
◉ Gustatory imagery
◉ Kinetic imagery.

On the other hand, imagery can be literal (without figurative language) or conceptual (when we can
have an idea of it) and be associated with semantic fields.

◉ Nature imagery
◉ Animal imagery
◉ Death imagery
◉ War imagery
and so forth.

EXAMPLE: Stinking hot today. Ha had a room in a little stucco house bristling with TV antennas.
It was not far from the stone house on Northwest Seventh Street where Castro had lived when he
was in Miami, raising money, finding men for the revolution. Raymo stroked the animal’s head,
muttered into the silky ear. Then he put on the leash and followed the dog down the stairs.

➜ IRONY:

◉ DRAMATIC: When the audience knows more than the characters, which creates tension.
“Horror films use it to create suspense: the audience knows that the ax murderer is in the
closet, but the unsuspecting victim is totally unaware until it is too late!

◉ SITUATIONAL: A situation or event that is the opposite of what is or might be expected.

“It would be ironic if a lifeguard had to be saved from drowning.”

◉ VERBAL: The expression of an attitude or intention that is the opposite of what is actually
meant. “When a late-comer is told sarcastically, “Thanks for joining us.”

➜ LITOTES: A figure of speech by which an affirmation is made indirectly by denying its opposite,
usually with an effect of understatement. In everyday speech litotes are also often used. Such is the
case when someone is described as not averse to a drink, meaning that they drink rather heavily.

EXAMPLE: William Wordsworth in his autobiographical poem The Prelude, uses the phrase "not
seldom" to mean "fairly often." "Your comments on politics are not useless" to mean they are
"useful.” “Not too bad” for “very good.”

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➜ METAPHOR: The most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or
action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as
to suggest some common quality shared by the two.

◉ DIRECT METAPHOR: When the writer directly states both of the things being compared.
“Life is a long road with many twists and turns.”

◉ INDIRECT METAPHOR: When the writer states one of the things and the reader must
infer the other. “You have come to a fork in the road and cannot go back.”

➜ METONYMY: ("change of name") Using one OBJECT (or CONCEPT) to stand for another one to
which it is closely or customarily related; the relationship is not one of similarity, as in metaphor,
but of common association. The figure permeates everyday speech: "blood" for self-sacrifice,
"sweat" for hard work, "heart" for strong feeling.

EXAMPLE: The bottle for alcoholic drink; Hands for workers.

➜ ONOMATOPOEIA: A type of figurative language in which words sound like the things they
name.

EXAMPLE: Bang, buzz, crackle, sizzle, hiss, murmur, and roar.

➜ OXYMORON: Figure of speech that combines logically incongruent terms in a compressed

paradox. It was popular in the late 16th c. and during the 17th.

EXAMPLE: The word “bittersweet,” or the phrase “living dead.” “Se had a dry way of delivering
friendly insults directly into people’s chests” (Don Delillo, Libra)

➜ PARADOX: A statement that at first seems contradictory, but in fact, reveals a truth. It demands
that the reader look for another sense or context in which it could make sense and resolve the
contradiction.

EXAMPLE: “The child is the father of man.” (William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps up”). “The
truest poetry is the most feigning.” (William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”)

➜ PERSONIFICATION: The impersonation or embodiment of some quality or abstraction; the

attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.

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EXAMPLE: The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset.

➜ PUN (PARONOMASIA): A word or phrase which has a "DOUBLE MEANING" as intended by the
writer; often these words sound the same (or nearly the same) but have different meanings.

EXAMPLE: When Hamlet says, “I am too much in the sun,” he is making a play on the words “sun”
and “son.”

➜ REPETITION: Repeating a word or group of words for EMPHASIS or EFFECT.

EXAMPLE: There in the sudden blackness, the black pall of nothing, nothing, nothing – nothing
at all.

➜ RHETORICAL QUESTION: A question asked only for effect or to make a statement, but not to
get an answer.

EXAMPLE: How much longer will we put up with this injustice? / Isn’t it time that we took action?

➜ SIMILE: A comparison between two entities or actions. It differs from metaphor in that the
similarity is made EXPLICIT—there is no pretence of absolute identity. A comparison is made
using "LIKE," "AS," "THUS," or "SO."

EXAMPLE: “Pity like a naked newborn babe.” “The house was large as a castle.”

➜ SYNAESTHESIA: A BLENDING or CONFUSION of different kinds of SENSE IMPRESSION, in

which one type of sensation is referred to in terms more appropriate to another. This feature was
present in Romantic poets and cultivated by the French Symbolists.

EXAMPLE: A loud colour; a sweet melody. / And taste the music of that vision pale.

➜ SYNECDOCHE: When a part represents the whole or the whole represents the part.

EXAMPLE: All hands on deck for duty! / The law came to his door to issue a warrant for his arrest.

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 UNIT 3:
LITERARY MOVEMENTS - “ROMANTICISM, REALISM &
NATURALISM”

ROMANTICISM

➜ Romanticism was a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that developed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and it marked a reaction against the Enlightenment and
Neoclassicism with their emphasis on ORDER, BALANCE, RATIONALITY, RESTRAINT, and
DECORUM.

➜ Romanticism gave importance to the INDIVIDUAL, the IRRATIONAL, the IMAGINATIVE, the
EMOTIONAL, and the SPONTANEOUS. It placed the individual at the center of art, and literature
became a valuable way of expressing unique feelings and particular attitudes. The artist freed
himself from the restraints and rules of the classicists and looked for more personal forms of
expression.

➜ Romanticism marks the birth of a new set of ideas, constituting a mindset and a form of feeling.
Artists, poets and philosophers gave shape to the movement that started in Western Europe in the
mid 1700s (although it arrived in England some 50 years later).

➜ Romanticism was all-pervading, affecting the social outlook on nature, children, love, sex,
money, and work all over Europe, and later throughout the world.

➜ Romantics sought to transcend the immediate to find the ideal

➜ Romanticism reacted to the birth of the modern world represented by:

◉ Industrialization ◉ Secularization
◉ Urbanization ◉ Consumerism

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 MILESTONE CONTRIBUTION ROMANTIC SYNTHESIS

1765: Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Emile,” or “On

Education”

It contains diatribes against the oppressive

world of adults, and praises the natural
goodness, spontaneity and wisdom of little
children.
“The child is the father of the man”
Philosophical revolution in education.
(Wordsworth)
Rousseau emphasizes the child, the
original rebel, the representative of
everything that is pure, unschooled and
outside of adult discipline.

Freedom from tradition and the natural,

innocence and the sweetness of the child.

1770: Paul Thomas Chatterton’s suicide

He becomes an emblem of the idea of the

sensitive, doomed person often an artist
Commitment to the life of imagination, the Sensitivity over reason
rejected by a cruel, vulgar world.
tragic hero’s death by materialistic society. Dramatic overflow of feeling
Romanticism borrows from Christianity.
The romantic hero is a secularized Christ
like figure.

1774: Goethe, Love triumphs over materialism.

“The Sorrows of Young Werther” Dramatic overflow of feeling over
For a romantic, it's always right and Noble to more traditional rational concerns
He is one of the founding fathers of follow one’s heart for class lineage and money
Romanticism.

1798: Goya,
“The Sleep of Reason Brings out Monsters”
The limits of reason, rationality, logic and
The power of the irrational
The limits of reason and the science.
power of the irrational over humans fragile
minds.

1799: Wordsworth moves to the Lake

District

To be a romantic is to take the side of

nature against industry.
Celebration of the natural world Nature as Love of NATURE against
dignified and impressive over puny humans. industrialization
He speaks up for
the natural and a simple life.

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1829: Thomas Cole, painter of the grandeur
of nature

Romantics don't believe in God but they go

in search of the emotions one might once
have had around religion and locate them
in the big wide-open spaces of nature.

To be a romantic is to find relief from the Pantheism; seeking in Nature the

pressures of competitive city life in the sort emotion once granted by religion
of natural grandeur that transcends all A building that harks back to pre-industrial Medievalism
human achievements and concerns. times. Mysticism

1847: Augustus Pugin, romantic architect

He designed the new British Parliament

after it was destroyed with fire.

Oddly even though the building is new, it is

made to look very old, medieval in fact. It is
full of suits of armor and seated angels.

Portrayal of primitive women looking relaxed

and natural without anything on. They are in
1891: Paul Gauguin and the Tahiti paintings Exoticism and primitivism
his eyes evidence that civilization is what has
made a sick, core romantic belief.

➜ The Romantic movement has permanently changed our sensibilities as the world has grown
ever more technological and rational romanticism has come to stick up for the irrational, the
untrained, the exotic, the childlike and the naive.

➜ There is naturally something a bit adolescent and immature within Romanticism. But then
again it can be something rather heartless, cold, dogmatic and arrogant in many aspects of
modernity.

FURTHER HISTORICAL CONTEXT

➜ French Revolution
1789 – 1815 ➜ Napoleon in power
➜ Robespierre’s reign of terror

1798 ➜Publication of the Lyrical Ballads

1811 – 1920 ➜ Regency Period (George III’s son in the throne)

1820 ➜Accession of George IV

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➜ The repression of traditional liberties both in Britain and France, and the witch hunts in
England and America produced a reaction for FREEDOM, FRATERNITY and EQUALITY, the ideals
of the French Revolution hailed by the Romantics.

Romanticism was born amidst turmoil of ideas

◉ French Revolution
◉ Industrial Revolution
◉ American Revolution
◉ Philosophical Revolution
◉ Technological Revolution

➜ In the past, literature was “a mirror held up to nature” for the artistic pleasure of the reader.

➜ Now, as Wordsworth pointed out, it was “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The
source of poetry was in the poet, not in the world. In his/her mind, imagination, and emotions.

Essential role of instinct, intuition and the feelings of the heart.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ ROMANTIC POETRY ➜ Nature Poetry

➜ PANTHEISM ➜ The doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is GOD and, conversely,
that there is no God but the combined SUBSTANCE, FORCES, and LAWS that are manifested in the
existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a
part though not the whole of his being.

➜ Incidents and situations of COMMON LIFE

➜ Language really SPOKEN BY MEN

➜ Source of the poem: “HUMBLE, RUSTIC LIFE”

➜ Materials from ANCIENT FOLKLORE, SUPERSTITION and DEMONOLOGY

➜ Interest in the MIDDLE AGES and the FAR EAST

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➜ HYPNOSIS, DISTORTED PERCEPTIONS using opium, pleasure in PAIN and the
DESTRUCTIVENESS OF LOVE, EROTIC QUALITY of the longing for death

➜ The abandonment of the heroic couplet in favor of BLANK VERSE ➜ Blank verse is a literary
device defined as UN-RHYMING VERSE written in iambic pentameter. It has a consistent meter
with 10 syllables in each line (pentameter); where unstressed syllables are followed by stressed
ones, five of which are stressed but do not rhyme. It is also known as “unrhymed iambic
pentameter.”

➜ Dropping of the neoclassical poetic diction in favor of a FRESHER and MORE NATURAL
LANGUAGE

➜ EMOTIONALISM

➜ The LOVE LYRIC

➜ The BALLAD

➜ UNRESTRAINED imagination

PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS

- William Wordsworth -

➜ The publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 marks the birth not only of Romanticism but also of
"MODERN POETRY" as the book became a MANIFESTO to break free from the confines that had
kept poetry entrapped in an obsession with form and certain themes for hundreds of years, and
which had had until that moment a very specific readership, i.e. the cultured, learned aristocracy
and intellectual and social elites.

➜ Published initially ANONYMOUSLY (for fear of retaliation by the critics) by William

Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the book instantly became a best-seller and was taken as
a beacon for many poets of their generation and other years to come. The second edition already
sported the authors' names on the cover.

1. CONTENT

➜ The times leading up to the publication of Lyrical Ballads may be defined by a context of
revolution in different realms of society.

➜ Romanticism spells with the R of "REVOLUTION" all over it.

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➜ "The principal object in these Poems was describing COMMON LIFE in a language really used
by ORDINARY MEN.” Wordsworth breaks away from a poetic tradition of centuries.

➜ Settings are generally COMMON, RURAL, in the country.

➜ This concept was a revolutionary one at the time, as they proposed to write poems (situations
and incidents) from common life, not the lofty incidents of the life of royalty or the elites. It
implied writing to commoners about commoners, in a sense taking up the French Revolution
ideals of EQUALITY and FRATERNITY.

➜ Wordsworth and Coleridge desired to fit "to metrical arrangement a selection of the real
language of men in a state of vivid sensation."

2. STYLE

➜ This style of the poetry aimed at taking that common, ordinary language, and make
something EXTRAORDINARY out of it. Wordsworth thus takes his back on the fancy, ornate poetic
diction of 18th century poetry (compare with the Essay on Man).

➜ Nonetheless, much though this is an admirable principle, not all Romantic poetry uses this
diction, and it is important to exercise caution when stating that all Romantic poetry uses "the
very language of men."

➜ The Preface recapitulates the revolutionary subject matter and style that the authors propose,
"LOW and RUSTIC LIFE was generally chosen because in that situation the essential passions of
the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and
speak a plainer and more emphatic language," thus showing the intention of leaving behind the
previous NEOCLASSICAL STYLE.

3. PHILOSOPHY

➜ The concepts poured in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads point in the direction of HAILING
PRIMITIVISM, i.e. people away from the corrupting influence of cities: those who "speak a plainer
and more emphatic language" are more moral, overall better people (a concept even present today
in expressions such as "good country people").

➜ Wordsworth defines that "all good poetry is the SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW OF POWERFUL
FEELINGS;" and believes that poetry is for everyone, and that all men and women (not just the
gentry) are capable of feeling deeply and responding to the world around them.

➜ Poetry "takes its origin from EMOTION RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILITY." This means that,
like Nature poetry, Romantic poets would go out into the (generally rural) world and soak up the
beauty of the world around them. This "emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the

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tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, similar to that which was before the subject of
contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

➜ There are THREE STAGES in the composition of a poem:

◉ Apprehension through the SENSES

◉ MEDITATION ➜ Recollection in tranquility (recollection of emotions)

◉ Reproduction of KINDRED EMOTIONS ➜ A similar emotion is reproduced in the mind of

the poet and that is how composition begins.

This ENJOYMENT OF THE NATURAL WORLD is what Romantics wanted to express in their
poems. Unlike other movements that imitated other writers, the Romantics wanted to pour out
what they felt inside, leading to an EXPRESSIVE POETICS, a concept that essentially still remains
today.

4. THE CONCEPTION OF THE POET

➜ According to Wordsworth, a poet is:

◉ A MAN SPEAKING TO MEN: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more
enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more
comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.

◉ A man delighting to contemplate similar VOLITIONS and PASSIONS as manifested in the

goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

◉ A man who has acquired a greater READINESS and POWER in expressing what he thinks and
feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of
his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.

◉ A man whose wish will be to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he
describes, nay, for short spaces of time perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even
confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the language which is thus
suggested to him, by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of GIVING
PLEASURE.

◉ A man considered a TRANSLATOR, who deems himself justified when he substitutes excellences
of another kind for those which are unattainable by him.

◉ A man who writes under one restriction only, namely, that of the NECESSITY OF GIVING
IMMEDIATE PLEASURE to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected

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from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer or a natural philosopher, but as a
Man.

➜ NECESSITY OF GIVING IMMEDIATE PLEASURE: It is an acknowledgment of the

BEAUTY of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but
indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love:
further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary
principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves.

◉ A man who considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each
other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of PAIN and PLEASURE; he considers man in his own
NATURE and in his ORDINARY LIFE as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate
knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions which by habit become of the
nature of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations,
and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the
necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.

◉ A man who considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man
as naturally the MIRROR OF THE FAIREST and MOST INTERESTING QUALITIES OF NATURE.
And thus the Poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure which accompanies him through the whole
course of his studies, converses with general nature.

◉ A man who binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of HUMAN SOCIETY, as it
is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere;
though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever
he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings.

5. POETIC DICTION

➜ Wordsworth has the following opinion about the poetic diction:

◉ The earliest Poets of all nations generally wrote from PASSION excited by real events;
they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling POWERFULLY as they did, their language was
daring and figurative. A language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from
the real language of men in any situation.

◉ It was the language of EXTRAORDINARY OCCASIONS; but it was really spoken by men,
language which the Poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the events
which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him.

➜ Internet research:

◉ Poetic diction refers to the operating language of poetry, language employed in a manner
that sets poetry apart from other kinds of speech or writing. It involves the vocabulary, the

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 phrasing, and the grammar considered appropriate and inappropriate to poetry at different
times.

◉ Wordsworth argued that poetry should employ “THE REAL LANGUAGE OF MEN in any
situation.” Wordsworth revolutionized the idea of poetic diction by connecting it to speech.
Poetry is linked to speech, to the way that people actually talk at any given time, but it is
also framed and marked differently.

GOTHIC LITERATURE

➜ It is a subgenre of Romantic Literature (Romanticism) very popular from the 1760’s onwards. Its
content was associated with the Middle Ages and with WILD, BLOODY and BARBAROUS things.

➜ It can be defined as writing that employs dark and picturesque scenery, startling and
melodramatic narrative devices, and an overall atmosphere of EXOTICISM, MYSTERY, FEAR, and
DREAD.

➜ Often, a Gothic novel or story will revolve around a large, ancient house that conceals a terrible
secret or serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ Strong elements of the SUPERNATURAL

➜ Touches of ROMANCE

➜ Well-known HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

➜ TRAVEL and ADVENTURE narrative

➜ Exploration of PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA, the EVILS of man, and MENTAL ILLNESS

16
➜ APPARITIONS and CURSES.

➜ Atmosphere of GLOOM and DOOM (setting) ➜ Set in WILD, DESOLATE landscapes, DARK
forests, RUINED abbeys and MEDIEVAL passages. Also, GLOOMY and DECAYING settings; usually
haunted houses or castles with secret passages.

➜ GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE ➜ There are important, though not always consistent, connections
between Gothic literature and Gothic architect. GOTHIC STRUCTURES, with their abundant
carvings, crevices, and shadows, can conjure an aura of mystery and darkness and often served as
appropriate SETTINGS in Gothic literature for the mood conjured upthere.

REALISM

➜ It arose in the XIXth century, partly as a reaction to Romanticism.

➜ It supported a MIMETIC THEORY OF ART ➜ Something that reflects or mirrors REALITY /

THE REAL WORLD.

➜ Realism was better expressed through NOVELS.

➜ Realists will try to reflect or to document somehow the real world (they thought the real could
somehow be captured)

➜ Realists dealt with social problems of real persons in real places.

➜ Realists describe situations as they are through novels or stories, and put emphasis on the
CHARACTERS and the SUBJECT MATTER (NO GENERAL IDEAS).

➜ An effort to approach the NORM OF EXPERIENCE, a reliance upon the REPRESENTATIVE

rather than the exceptional in plot, setting and character.

➜ Objective view of human nature and experience.

17
➜ Realists focused on the IMMEDIATE, the HERE and NOW, the specific action, what they could
actually see or hear.

➜ Different types of Realism:

◉ Realism of SOCIAL and MORAL ANALYSIS

◉ Realism of POLITICAL INDIGNATION
◉ Realism of LOCAL COLOUR
◉ Realism of the STREETS and the GHETTO

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ Plenty of details about the CHARACTERS and the SETTING

➜ Use of the 3rd person OMNISCIENT NARRATOR (OBJECTIVITY) ➜ If the person is inside the
different characters (1st Person narration), we start doubting if that person is objective enough.

➜ The characters and settings are ORDINARY ➜ Focused mainly on the reality of the Middle
Classes.

➜ High value on the INDIVIDUAL ➜ Characterization was at the center of the novel (really big
books due to the amount of details portrayed in the stories)

➜ The plight of the individual facing HARDSHIP or MORAL DILEMMAS

➜ REGIONALISM and LOCAL COLOUR ➜ Described places, events, manners and even the speech
of specific REGIONS and LOCALES.

LOCAL COLOUR WRITING

➜ Local colour writing is a style of writing that flourished in the United States in the second half
of the nineteenth century after the Civil War.

➜ Is it concerned with the depiction of CHARACTERS, their DIALECTS, BELIEFS, TRADITIONS

and FOLKLORE, dress and landscape that characterizes the different regions and districts.

➜ This literature grew from the most direct influences of travel writing, dialect humour and the
frontier tall tale.

➜ There were many things that encouraged this regional spirit in writing:

18
 ◉ The emergence of MASS PERIODICALS as a market for short fiction.

◉ Post-war CURIOSITY about different sections of the country.

◉ A growing NOSTALGIA for simple times and tales of a more strange pause.

➜ It didn't only portray an often sentimentalized American past, but it also gave voice to the
unvoiced, such as immigrants, blacks and women, paving the way to social criticism.

➜ What is important about regionalism is that it opened up new parts of the nation's life and
geography for literature, and it also introduced new languages for the rendering of the American
experience.

➜ Among the main representatives of local colour writing we can mention:

◉ Mark Twain ◉ Sarah Orne Jewett

◉ Harriet Beecher Stowe ◉ Bret Harte

◉Kate Chopin

➜ The Oxford Companion to American Literature states that in local colour literature one finds its
dual influence of Romanticism and Realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary
life or distant lands, strange customs or exhotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense
of fidelity and accuracy of description.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

➜ EMPHASIS: The emphasis is frequently put on NATURE and the LIMITATIONS it imposes.

➜ SETTING: The setting is very often INTEGRAL to the story and may sometimes become a
character in itself. They are frequently REMOTE and INACCESSIBLE.

➜ CHARACTERS: Local colour stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or
region, rather than with the individual. Characters may become CHARACTER-TIED and
sometimes they represent STEREOTYPES. The characters are characterized by the adherence to
the old ways, by dialect, by particular personality traits central to the region. In women's local
colour fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women or young girls.

➜ NARRATION: The narrator is typically an EDUCATED OBSERVER from the world beyond who
learns something from the characters while preserving a sometimes SYMPATHETIC, and

19
sometimes IRONIC distance from them. The narrator serves as a MEDIATOR between the rural
folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.

➜ PLOT: It has been said that NOTHING HAPPENS in local colour stories by women authors, and
often very little does happen. Stories may include lots of STORYTELLING and revolve around the
community and its rituals.

➜ THEMES: Many local colour stories share an ANTIPATHY TO CHANGE and a certain degree of
NOSTALGIA for a past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of
adversity characterizes women's local colour fiction. Thematic tension or conflict between urban
ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an OUTSIDER who
seeks something from the community.

WRITING TECHNIQUES

➜ Dialect is used to establish CREDIBILITY and AUTHENTICITY of regional characters.

➜ There is DETAILED DESCRIPTION ➜ Specifically small, seemingless, insignificant details

central to the understanding of the region.

➜ The frequent use of a FRAME STORY in which the narrator hears some tales of the region.

NATURALISM

➜ It grew out of the pervasive materialism of industrial Capitalism.

➜ Works were based on an OBJECTIVE EMPIRICAL presentation of HUMAN BEINGS.

➜ Naturalism aims at accurate reproduction of the SPEECH, MANNERS and LANDSCAPE of its
world.

20
➜ Writers regarded human behaviour as controlled by INSTINCT, EMOTION, or SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

➜ Authors rejected FREE WILL ➜ They favoured the BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM of Charles
Darwin and the ECONOMIC DETERMINISM of Carl Marx.

➜ Man was seen as SUBJECTED TO THE LAW OF NATURE.

➜ Works where characterized by BOLD portrayals of life and RIGID social and political attitudes.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ Dealing with themes such as POVERTY, VIOLENCE and DEPRIVATION, HUMAN EXISTENCE,
SURVIVAL

➜ The structure of events is arranged in accordance with a NARROW PRECONCEIVED IDEA

➜ Lots of IMAGES which stress typical NATURALISTIC IDEAS such as the idea of
DETERMINISM, the ANIMAL AND MECHANICAL NATURE OF MAN, the STRUGGLE FOR
SURVIVAL, or the INDIFFERENCE (from the human point of view, MALIGNANCY OF NATURE).

➜ CHARACTERIZATION:

◉ It presents lower middle class or lower class characters in their DULL DAILY EXISTENCE.

◉ It is clearly shaped in accordance with SCIENTIFIC ASSUMPTIONS about the NATURE

OF MAN.

◉ The characters are described as conditioned and controlled by ENVIRONMENT,

HEREDITY, INSTINCT, or CHANCE.

➜ THEMES:

◉ The forces of HEREDITARY and ENVIRONMENT as they affect (and afflict) individual
lives. ➜ So, SUICIDE, ALCOHOLISM, PROSTITUTION, and INSANITY are all to be
explained as the result of heredity or environment.

◉ Indifferent, deterministic God and universe (Deism). The FUTILE attempts of human
beings to exercise FREE WILL. ➜ The characters are not capable of moral decisions; since
they lack free will they are AMORAL. They are not responsible for their actions.

21
 ➜ UNIVERSAL THEMES:

◉ MAN VS MAN: One character creates a direct problem for another.

◉ MAN VS SOCIETY: One character is in conflict with a group or the values of a group.

◉ MAN VS NATURE: One character is in conflict with a natural force or part of nature.

◉ MAN VS HIMSELF: A character is struggling with a personal decision, value or moral.

◉ MAN VS MACHINE: A character is struggling with the power of machines or technology.

DIFFERENCES

ROMANTICISM REALISM

Expressed through POETRY. Expressed through NOVELS.

Romantics meant to transcend the real/material world in order Realists will try to reflect or document somehow the real world
to find the ideal. (they thought the real could be somehow captured).

Romantics were concerned with their subjective responses Realists were concerned with the tangible (material) world
(their reaction to the world). outside their psyches.

Romantics dealt with absolute ideals of the past. Realists dealt with social problems of real persons in real places.

DIFFERENCES

REALISM NATURALISM

AIM: It was devoted to express the accurate representation and AIM: The study and understanding of the laws behind the forces
an exploration of American lives in various contexts. that govern human lives.

CHARACTERS: Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or

lower-class characters whose lives are governed by the forces of
heredity, instinct and passion.
CHARACTERS: The character is more important than action and
plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.
Their attempts at exercising free will or choice are hamstrung
by forces beyond their control. Social Darwinism and other
theories help to explain their fates to the reader.

CLASS: Middle class. Plausible events. CLASS: Working/Low class

STYLE: Realistic novels avoid the sensational

dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and
romances. Diction is natural vernacular, not
--------------------------------------------------------------
heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or
matter-of-fact.

22
 SETTING/SITUATIONS: Frequently an urban setting.

Techniques and plots: "clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life" drama

that is often a "chronicle of despair."
SETTING/SITUATIONS: Contains little action.
Focuses on decisions that the protagonist must take. Portrays the world as cruel

Often occurs in an urban setting

Focuses on human suffering.

SUBJECT/SUBJECT MATTER: It takes facts from the world,

SUBJECT/SUBJECT MATTER: It takes its subject matter from
from the actuality.
the common, of what is familiar.
Rearranges facts or modifies them according to the
Treats the subject with faithfulness
deterministic hypothesis of science.

Imposes a NARROW and RIGID scientific hypothesis -distortion

There is EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION
of observed data reality.

OPTIMISTIC: through the application of reason to the world of

SOMBRE vision of the state of man.
fact, man may improve his existence.

UNIT 4:
MODERNISM - LITERARY & TRANSITIONAL MOVEMENTS

MODERNISM

➜ It was a literary movement (or a TENDENCY) which started in the closing years of the
nineteenth century and flourished in the early decades of the twentieth century.

➜ We should make the distinction between MODERNITY and MODERNISM:

23
 ◉ MODERNITY: An epochal term that refers to a HISTORICAL PERIOD. (1492 «Discovery of
America» - 1950 or 60’s)

◉ MODERNISM: It refers to a CULTURAL CONSTRUCT, just one of the aesthetic, cultural

manifestations of modernity. It points to a MOMENT OF CRISIS. (Around 1919 or 1922)

➜ This term embraces all the CREATIVE ARTS: poetry, fiction, drama, painting, and architecture.

➜ One of the most important characteristics of this movement is EXTREME DIVERSITY. There is
no single school which can be said to typify the age. However, this diversity is only one aspect of the
general diversity in social development in the XX th Century.

➜ It is a sort of UMBRELLA TERM for many “isms” or small movements that followed one after the
other.

SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND

➜ As regards the socio-political background, this time is characterized as the AGE OF DESPAIR,
the AGE OF ANXIETY, and the AGE OF UNCERTAINTY. This is so because that was a period were
many wars took place.

1914 - 1918 World War I

1917 Russian Revolution

1922 - 1923 Irish Civil War

1936 - 1939 Spanish Civil War

1939 - 1945 World War II

CULTURAL SOURCES

◉ EINSTEIN: His theory of relativity, which expresses that time and space are not as constant as
everyday life may suggest, had an impact on those artists who wanted to move away from Realism.

◉ MARX: He depicted history as a series of class struggles and he challenged Capitalism because he
believed that workers were no longer willing to accept his subordinate role. This is very well
reflected in the productions of many artists. MARXISTS believed that literature was not a matter of
personal taste, but should relate to the social and political conditions of the time.

24
◉ NIETZSCHE: In the field of psychology, he argued that the Enlightenment has eliminated the idea
of God; so, God is dead. For him, Europe no longer needed God as a source for all MORALITY,
VALUES or ORDER in the universe. Instead, philosophy and science were capable of doing that for
them.

◉ BERGSON: He emphasized the importance of INSTINCT over REASON.

◉ FREUD: He studied the power and significance of the unconscious, of the workings of the mind at
speech level and the suppressed sexual element in human behaviour.

As scientific explanations were more subtle and harder to understand, the modernist
writer was faced with a very complex REALITY and needed to put ORDER into the case
that surrounded him.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS & STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ A feverish pursuit of MEANINGS and VALUES ➜ There was a need to organize human
response to the chaotic conditions of life.

➜ A need to adjust human CONSCIOUSNESS to a rapidly changing, disconcerting, disturbing

world. ➜ The sense of LOCAL COMMUNITY was being lost as it was a greater anonymity of the
individual in the urban context. Society became much more fragmented and individuals’ identities
were much more fluid.

➜ A decay of FAITH, SPIRITUAL EMPTINESS and the loss of MORAL CERTAINTY.

➜ A tendency towards ABSTRACTION ➜ It started in the realm of painting. In poetry, for

example, the metaphor evolved to finally become an image. The image became an AUTONOMOUS
ENTITY and sometimes the link between the two objects of the metaphor were so weak that the
ANCHORAGE TO REALITY was lost.

➜ An emphasis on the SELF-SUFFICIENCY and the ALIENATION of the artist.

◉ The work of art had meaning IN ITSELF, independently of the author’s or the reader’s
intention.

◉ The more ADVANCED the poet became, the more ALIENATED he was from the mass
population.

◉ His works were very OBSCURE for the average reader and they demanded a greater
effort to appreciate the more complex form of expression.

25
➜ A sense of INNOVATION, BREAKING FROM TRADITIONS, RUPTURE and NOVELTY. ➜
Modernist artists believed that the previous traditional forms of art were EXHAUSTED so they
went for ART FOR THE ART’S SAKE and no concessions were made to the reader.

➜ TECHNICAL EXPERIMENTATION ➜ The feeling that traditional forms were exhausted, so they
were willing to make use of the contributions of SCIENCE and PHILOSOPHY. Some of these
techniques are:

◉ INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: One of the techniques of the stream-of-consciousness style,

whose aim was to reproduce in writing the way the human mind worked.
◉ POETIC PROSE: The combination of POETRY and PROSE.
◉ ESOTERIC SYMBOLISM
◉ FREE VERSE: Neither rhyme nor rhythm.
◉ EXPERIMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE
◉ NOVEL SYSTEMS OF PROSODY

➜ A DISLOCATION OF SYNTAX ➜ This brought about FRAGMENTATION not only in FORM, but
also in CONTEXT.

➜ The inclusion of FOREIGN LANGUAGES.

➜ INTERTEXTUALITY ➜ To compress meaning or to BROADEN semantic repercussions.

➜ The use of PARADOX, AMBIGUITY and IRONY.

➜ ELITIST / IRONIC DETACHMENT of the artist ➜ The artist is not writing to be understood, but
he was making art for the art’s sake. The same story tends to be told from different perspectives, so
there tends to be several POETIC VOICES or NARRATORS in the same text. This detachment is
also portrayed by the use of an IMPERSONAL POETIC VOICE.

➜ OBSCURITY in the expression of ideas ➜ The artists aimed that their texts were read by an
ELITE. Very often, modernist artists could get together and they could read to one another their
texts.

THEMES

➜ CRITICISM of the futility and sterility of society ➜ It was a time of great CONSUMPTION and
MATERIALISM.

➜ ISOLATION, DESPAIR, DECADENCE, and LONELINESS of human beings.

26
➜ The IMPOSSIBILITY to find the MEANING and SIGNIFICANCE of life.

➜ The expression of DISILLUSIONMENT and DISGUST.

➜ The awareness of SOCIAL EVILS and MORAL SUFFERING.

IMPRESSIONISM

IMPRESSIONISM & PAINTING

➜ Impressionism is considered a TRANSITIONAL MOVEMENT between the XIX and XX

Centuries, and it started in the realm of PAINTING.

➜ The Impressionists were a school of painters from the middle XIX Century who were interested
in the TRANSITORY EFFECTS OF LIGHT. They were not interested in depicting reality in a
faithful way; instead, they were interested in portraying the IMPRESSIONS that an object provoked
on the artist, that is to say, to depict a fleeting impression from a subjective point of view.

➜ They moved their studios outdoors to be able to capture the transient colours of objects as they
appear in nature at different TIMES OF THE DAY and under different ATMOSPHERIC
CONDITIONS, DISTANCE, and other OBJECTS around them. That is why , they very often painted
the same object, building or landscape at different times of the day or in different seasons.

➜ They painted with BRUSHSTROKES OF COLOUR as they were more interested in depicting the
ATMOSPHERE than in perspective or outline.

➜ The impressionists suggested the main features of an object with a few strokes; they were more
interested in ATMOSPHERE than in perspective or outline.

27
 IMPRESSIONISM & LITERATURE

➜ In Literature, writers borrowed the techniques used by the French Impressionist painters to
depict CHARACTER, SETTING and ACTION.

➜ Writers were interested in conveying the FLEETING IMPRESSION of a moment rather than a
photographic representation of a cold fact (reality).

➜ The Impressionist writers used COLOURS, WORDS and IMAGES as if they were "brushstrokes"
of sense-data to suggest impressions at the same time that they tried to create a mood.

➜ The term "Impressionism" is also used to describe the novelist's technique of some writers who
concentrated on the INNER LIFE of characters rather than on the external reality.

IMPRESSIONIST PAINTERS IMPRESSIONIST WRITERS

They were interested in: They were interested in:

➜ The way the LIGHT fell on the object.

➜ The way the LIGHT fell on the object.
➜ Writing their poems using “brushstrokes” with
SENSE-DATA (imagery).
➜ The way an object, a building or a human being looked at ➜ Writing stories that WOULD NOT follow the traditional plot
different TIMES OF THE DAY (sunset, sunrise, day, night) (introduction - rising point - climax - resolution).

➜ Attempting to create a single MOOD or ATMOSPHERE. All

the elements included must contribute to the UNITY of the
composition.

SYMBOLISM

➜ Symbolism is considered a TRANSITIONAL MOVEMENT between the XIXth and XXth Centuries.

28
➜ It started during the closing years of the XIXth Century in France when a group of French poets
rebelled against Realist and Naturalist tendencies, and in particular, against DESCRIPTIVE and
OBJECTIVE POETRY.

➜ The symbolists prioritized SUGGESTION and EVOCATION over direct description and explicit
analogy; thus, symbols were used to convey a MOOD or to evoke the subtle connections between
the OUTER WORLD and the private world of the poet.

➜ Poets did not resort to the creation of new words; instead, they explored the latent potentialities
of language in the use of SYMBOLS.

A symbol is “an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or ‘stands’ for

something else”.
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

The symbol can be either public or private, local or universal. For example, scales
symbolize justice or a dove symbolizes peace.
↓
A literary symbol combines an IMAGE with a CONCEPT.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

➜ “The art of evoking an object little by little so as to reveal a MOOD.” (Stéphane Mallarmé)

➜ “The art of choosing an object and extracting from it a «STATE OF SOUL».”

➜ Interest in the MUSICAL PROPERTY of language to convey meaning.

➜ FREE VERSE

➜ PROSE poem forms

29
 CUBISM

➜ It developed first in the visual arts and then migrated to other artistic expressions, being
extremely influential in PAINTINGS.

➜ The experimentalism entailed in Cubism accounts for the fact that artists were DISSATISFIED
with traditional forms for representing reality. Mimicry, or the realistic mode, could not account
for how reality presents itself to the mind.

➜ Cubism presents natural objects as COLLECTIONS OF GEOMETRIC SHAPES and FIGURES.

CUBISM IN PAINTING

➜ Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space; instead they
presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically FRAGMENTED OBJECTS,

➜ Their painting was abstract or “NON-FIGURATIVE,” since forms were completely separated
from the association with recognizable objects.

➜ It began as the practice of imitating TEXTURES such as those of marble or wood.

➜ Cubism showed that a wide field of exploration was to be found in FORM and COLOUR freed
from the limitations of the single viewpoint, fixed perspective, and imitative Realism.

30
 CUBISM IN LITERATURE

➜ Cubist poets attempted to do in VERSE what the cubist painters had done on canvas; that is,
take the elements of an experience, fragment them, and then so REARRANGE them that a
meaningful new synthesis is made.

➜ Another device was the SIMULTANEOUS evocation of several POINTS OF VIEW toward the
material.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

➜ The challenge of TRADITIONAL FORMS of representation and TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUES

of perspective in painting.

➜ The exploration of new arrangements of form on TWO-DIMENSIONAL SURFACES.

➜ The use of SIMPLE GEOMETRICAL SHAPES

➜ No illusion of 3D.

➜ The belief that the REAL ESSENCE of an object could only be captured by showing it from
MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES, whose several sides are seen SIMULTANEOUSLY.

➜ The COMPLEX INTERLOCKING SHAPES that create feelings of ANXIETY and TENSION.

➜ The creation of ABSTRACT SHAPES but anchored to reality.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ Experimentation with TYPOGRAPHY, SYNTAX, PUNCTUATION, and DICTION.

➜ Destruction of GRAMMAR.

➜ STRANGE of ABSENT punctuation.

➜ FREE VERSE

➜ Depiction of an object from a MULTITUDE OF VIEWPOINTS.

31
➜ FRAGMENTATION of elements that are arranged from a NEW WHOLE.

THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE

➜ It is a narrative style that tries to capture a character’s

THOUGHT PROCESS in a realistic way.

➜ Because it’s mimicking the non-linear way our brains work,

stream-of-consciousness narration includes the following aspects
that help us to better understand a character’s PSYCHOLOGICAL
STATE and worldview:

◉ A lot of FREE ASSOCIATION ➜ The reporting of the FIRST THOUGHT that comes to
mind in response to a given STIMULUS (such as a word)
◉ LOOPING REPETITIONS
◉ SENSORY OBSERVATIONS
◉ STRANGE (or even nonexistent) punctuation and syntax.

➜ Authors who use this technique aim for EMOTIONAL and PSYCHOLOGICAL TRUTH: they want
to show a snapshot of how the brain actually moves from one place to the next. They state that
thought isn’t linear; we don’t really think in LOGICAL, WELL-ORGANIZED, or even COMPLETE
sentences.

⚠ CAREFUL ⚠
Stream-of-consciousness isn’t limited to a particular time period or literary movement. It’s
unusual, but it has been used by different authors in the 1960s and in the last decade.

➜ There are 4 techniques that show the workings of the mind:

◉ DIRECT INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: Exactly how the mind works without any intervention
of the narrator.

There are NO punctuation marks, NO grammatical sentences, and NO capitalization, just

a STREAM OF WORDS.

32
 ◉ INDIRECT INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: How the mind works but with a certain
intervention of the narrator.

There are punctuation marks, grammatical sentences or order applied to what the
character THINKS, but it is mediated by the narrator.

◉ SOLILOQUY: It is a form of speech or monologue common in theatrical plays or dramas.

The purpose of a soliloquy is for the character to express their inner thoughts and feelings
that are NOT intended to be heard or known by other characters in the play or the audience
members.

◉ GRAMMATICAL MONOLOGUE: A form of speech by which the character expresses his or

her collection of thoughts and idea ALOUD, directly to the audience or to another character.

REALISTIC, STREAM-LIKE, ASSOCIATIVE THOUGHT PROCESS - STREAM OF

CONSCIOUSNESS

“cold / bright / wish I had my sunglasses / walk faster / late again / always late / did I send my

script? / should I have practiced more? / oh hi Dylan / which class was he in? / shoe’s untied /

ooh colours trees red orange bright / faster / late late late / so bright”

EXAMPLES OF AUTHOR’S USE OF STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

33
 TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- T. S. ELIOT (1919) -

➜ It is a SEMINAL ESSAY.

➜ It is considered a turning point in literary criticism.

➜ It takes issue with many of the ASSUMPTIONS about the writing of

poetry.

➜ It is divided into three parts.

PART I: TRADITION

➜ In English, we seldom speak of TRADITION. We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “ a

tradition”; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that some author’s poetry is “TRADITIONAL”
or even “TOO TRADITIONAL.”

➜ Without some knowledge of what literature has been and has accomplished, the writer
CANNOT WRITE.

34
➜ This part begins with HOMER, and takes the modern poet poet through DANTE and writers of
other literatures. ➜ AESTHETIC REASON

➜ There should exist a conscious relation of the modern writer to the LITERARY PAST.

➜ It means a PURSUIT OF THE EXCELLENT by means of submission to all that has been excellent.

Tradition does not mean a BLIND or TIMID adherence to successors.

↕
“Tradition cannot be inherited… it must be obtained by great labour”

➜ It involves a HISTORICAL SENSE ➜ A perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its
presence.

“No poet, no artist, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.”

➜ The poet can neither take the past as a LUMP, an INDISCRIMINATE BOLUS, nor can he form
himself wholly on one or two PRIVATE ADMIRATIONS, nor can he form himself wholly upon one
PREFERRED PERIOD.

➜ The poet must be very conscious of the MAIN CURRENT, which does not at all flow invariably
through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that ART
NEVER IMPROVES, but that the material of art is never quite the same.

35
 PART II: THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

➜ There should be in such a work an interplay of PASSION and FEELING.

➜ The mind of the MATURE poet differs from that of the IMMATURE one by being a more finely
perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at LIBERTY to enter into NEW
COMBINATIONS.

THE IMPERSONAL THEORY OF POETRY

(The relation of the poem to its author)

“THE ANALOGY OF CATALYST”

↓
When two gases (oxygen and sulphur dioxide) are mixed in the presence of a filament of
platinum, they form sulphurous acid. The newly formed acid does not have a trace of platinum
and the platinum is apparently unaffected.

◉ “The MIND OF THE POET is the shred of platinum. It may partly operate upon the experience
of man himself, but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the
man who suffers and the mind who creates, the more perfectly will the mind digest and
transmute the passions which are its material”

◉ FEELINGS and EMOTIONS are the two gases. The effect of a work of art upon the person who
enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of
one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inherent for the writer in
particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases,
images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are
present together.

THE METAPHYSICAL THEORY OF THE SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF THE SOUL

The poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium
and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and
unexpected ways.

IMPRESSIONS and EXPERIENCES which are important for the man may take no place in the
poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the
man, the personality.

36
➜ It is not in his PERSONAL EMOTIONS, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life,
that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. The emotion in his poetry will be a very
complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or
unusual emotions in life.

➜ “Emotions recollected in tranquility” is an INEXACT FORMULA. For it is neither emotion, nor

recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a CONCENTRATION, and a new
thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the
practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all.

◉ The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ORDINARY ones and in
working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are NOT IN ACTUAL EMOTIONS at all.

◉ Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an ESCAPE FROM EMOTION; it is not the
expression of personality but an ESCAPE FROM PERSONALITY.

◉ There is a great deal in poetry which must be CONSCIOUS and DELIBERATE.

PART III: CONCLUSION

➜ There are many people who appreciate the expression of SINCERE EMOTION in verse, and
there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE.

➜ The emotion of art is IMPERSONAL. ➜ The poet cannot reach this impersonality without
surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done

➜ The poet must live the PRESENT MOMENT OF THE PAST in order to know what is to be done
when writing a poem.

37
 SURREALISM

➜ Surrealism developed in the 1924 in Paris in the 1930s almost simultaneously in PAINTING,
SCULPTURE, THEATER, LITERATURE, FILM and PHOTOGRAPHY.

➜ The Surrealists sought to channel the UNCONSCIOUS as a means to unlock the power of the
imagination. They believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighing it
down with taboos.

➜ Surrealists were dissatisfied with traditional forms of representation but they did not object to
realistic techniques. Instead they exploited unusual ASSOCIATIONS OF OBJECTS, or how objects
can have MULTIPLE REFERENTS.

Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition of
ROMANTICISM, but unlike Romantics, Surrealists believed that revelations could be found on
the STREET and in EVERYDAY LIFE.

➜ By employing FANTASY and DREAM IMAGERY, artists generated creative works in a variety of
media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and
treating them analytically through visual means.

CONCEPTS, STYLES & TRENDS

➜ SURREALIST PAINTINGS:

◉ HYPER-REALISTIC STYLE:
Objects were depicted in crisp detail and with the illusion of
THREE-DIMENSIONALITY, emphasizing their dream-like quality. The colour in these
works was often either SATURATED or MONOCHROMATIC, both choices conveying a
DREAM STATE.

38
 ◉ AUTOMATISM or AUTOMATIC WRITING:
It allowed artists to forgo conscious thought and to tap into the UNCONSCIOUS
MIND. Surrealist artists used various techniques to create unlikely and often
OUTLANDISH IMAGERY including collage, doodling, frottage, decalcomania, and grattage.

Hyperrealism and automatism were not mutually exclusive. Some artists often used
both methods in one work.

➜ SURREALIST OBJECTS & SCULPTURES:

The goal was the displacement of the object, removing it from its expected context,
"DEFAMILIARIZING" it. Once the object was removed from its normal circumstances, it could be
seen without the mask of its cultural context. These incongruous combinations of objects were also
thought to reveal the fraught SEXUAL and PSYCHOLOGICAL forces hidden beneath the surface of
reality.

◉ BIOMORPHISM:
It lent itself perfectly to the Surrealist impetus to portray the INTERNAL
UNCONSCIOUS through automatic, stream-of-consciousness art. By means of abstracted
shapes and forms created through ORGANIC, EMOTIONAL ASSOCIATION, the artist
brought forth a connection between the viewer and his or her own inner spirit - an artistic
bridge between the HUMAN SUBCONSCIOUS and REALITY.

◉ OBJET TROUVÉ:
It was based on compositions of RANDOM ITEMS chosen intuitively without
strategy or predetermination.

➜ SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY:

Photography, because of the ease with which it allowed artists to produce uncanny imagery,
occupied a central role in Surrealism. Many of these photographers focused on presenting images
grounded in reality but which challenged PERCEPTION, or tricked the eye of the viewer into seeing
what lay beneath, forcing a sense of DISTORTED REALITY. These pictures, upon first glance might
be deemed familiar, but would instantly require a double take.

◉ PHOTOMONTAGE:
It allowed for artists to experiment with the idea of "AUTOMATIC" (or chance) free
association. Besides, it was used to explore the potential for creating INCREDULOUS and
UNCANNY relations.

◉ COLLAGE:
Because images can take on new meanings in new contexts, collage can SUBVERT
TRADITIONAL MEANINGS and at the same time multiply meanings, creating works that
don't easily settle into single, fixed analyses.

39
➜ SURREALIST FILM:

Surrealism revolutionized the art of cinema with new techniques and approaches that freed it from
traditional story-telling, transforming the medium into one that could explore, reveal, and possibly
even replicate the INNER-WORKINGS of the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. The movie screen becomes a
portal through which the viewer can journey where the traditional common constructs can no
longer be reliable guides.

◉ A VARIETY OF IMAGERY:
Surrealist films do not merely retell dreams or stories but replicate their very
processes through illogical, irrational DISRUPTIONS and DISTURBING IMAGERY,
uncensored by normal wakeful consciousness or morality. These films often use
SHOCKING imagery that jolts the viewer, which challenges the notion of cinema as mere
entertainment; the viewer can no longer be passive or complaisant.

◉ DREAM STATE:
Surrealist filmmakers found new techniques to convey the atmosphere and
INCONGRUOUS states of dreams. As in actual dreams, characters in Surrealist films
display a lack of will, even a certain impotence. There is a forfeiting of control and a
complete submission to the DREAM STATE.

◉ “INSANE LOVE”:
Many surrealist films are driven by strong feelings of LONGING, LOVE, and
SEXUAL DESIRE. This love or desire, while appearing self-destructive or illogical to the
rational world, leads characters in surrealist films - and viewers in real life - to realizations
they may not have otherwise had.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

➜ JUXTAPOSITION of concrete objects, which are not compatible, but which are potentially
SYMBOLIC.

➜ Confrontation of UNRELATED objects or ideas.

➜ Themes based on DREAMS or DREAMLIKE experiences.

➜ Experimenting with different ways of releasing the UNCONSCIOUS (HIGHER REALITY)

STYLISTIC FEATURES IN LITERATURE

➜ AUTOMATIC WRITING

➜ EXQUISITE CORPSE ➜ A method by which a collection of words or images is COLLECTIVELY

ASSEMBLED. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by
being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.

40
➜ ECHO-POEM ➜ A surrealist literary technique in which a poem is constructed by alternately
writing a STANZA and then "MIRRORING" it in some fashion to create the following stanza.

➜ Presence of DISSONANT COLLOCATIONS

➜ Clash of REGISTERS

➜ A high volume of VISUAL, CONCRETE, SENSUAL and TACTILE evocations.

➜ SCENIC MOTION ➜ Stream of images

➜ CONFUSION or MULTIPLICATION of meanings through incremental loadings of

PERCEPTUAL activity.

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

➜ After World War I, many blacks migrated away from the odious South (characterized by its bitter
legacy of segregation and slavery) to New York City. As a natural response to this new social and
economic status, African-Americans assumed a new confidence in themselves and their abilities.
This was extensively reflected in magazines, newspapers, on the stage, in nightclubs and in
literature and music. Yet, amidst this affluence, greater freedom and joy, blacks were still
“BORDER” artists “secured by a border patrol”. Opposed to this border patrol’s silencing and
archetyping forces, a New Generation of black artists emerged to find their voice, their place and
their own selves, giving birth to the literary and cultural phenomenon popularly known as the
HARLEM RENAISSANCE.

➜ The ramifications of the Harlem Renaissance extend well beyond the limits of Harlem, as many
of the best-known writers of the period, including Zora Neale Hurston, were established in other
geographical areas. The influence of the moment also extended to Europe and was taken up by
Modernist artists such as Picasso, Matisse or Braque, who rediscovered African art, which also
meant a co-optation by white western culture in the form of PRIMITIVISM.

41
 THE “NEW NEGRO” MOVEMENT

➜ “The New Negro” was an anthology written by Alain Locke and published in 1925.

➜ The New Negro craved to become a mainstream artist so as to have access (in Marxist terms) to
the American means of production. However different the skin colour and material may be, Locke
adds, the Negro culture is an integral part of the age and cultural setting.

➜ It involved a revolt against the only type of poetry that black artists were “allowed to produce”:
The NEGRO DIALECT POETRY.

➜ It also rose against the typical stereotypes of blacks: the MAMMY, the PICKANINNY, the
JEZEBEL, the HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and the THIEF, among others.

➜ It finally opposed SENTIMENTAL and SUPPLICATORY MOODS.

➜ The group also revolted against “RACE PROBLEM” POETRY. Although the New Negro group did
not succeed in dismissing the race subject matter altogether, many of them did find a new subtler
approach to it, which shows in the ultimate effectiveness of their poetry.

EXPRESSIONISM

➜ “Expressionism” is a term borrowed from painting.

➜ Expressionism as a movement originated in Germany in the pre-war years of the century. It can
be described as the form of art which conveys something of the PERSONAL MOOD of the artist—a
SPIRITUAL EXCITEMENT, a DISTURBANCE or AGITATION of the mind—and may be recognized
in the DISTORTION OF FORM or VIOLENCE OF COLOUR which results from this state of tension.

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS

➜ VIOLENT BRUSHSTROKES and WARM COLOURS.

➜ The expression of DISTURBING EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES.

42
➜ Wassily Kandinsky stated that “FORM and COLOUR in themselves constitute the elements of a
language adequate to express emotions.”

➜ Expressionists wanted to project the INNER SELF, mainly their VIOLENT EMOTIONS, onto the
external reality.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ DISTORTION of the setting

➜ The CARICATURE and the GROTESQUE.

➜ ABSTRACTIONS

➜ An UNREALISTIC ATMOSPHERE.

➜ In theatre, they used MASKS and TYPES rather than individuals.

LINGUISTIC STYLISTIC DEVICES:

➜ DISJOINTED language structures.

➜ TELEGRAPHIC DIALOGUE

➜ SYNTACTICAL COMPRESSION

➜ Condensation of JUXTAPOSED IMAGES

➜ SYMBOLS, ALLUSIONS, and AUTONOMOUS METAPHORS

EXPRESSIONISM IN THE THEATER

➜ As an organized literary movement Expressionism was stronger in the theater in the 1920 ‘s and
its entry into other forms was probably through the stage.

➜ Expressionist writers show an urgency to convey:

◉ A PATHOS

◉ Extreme PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES

◉ The DEPTHS of the human mind and its WORKINGS.

43
➜ The leading character in an Expressionist play often delivers long MONOLOGUES in
concentrated, elliptical, almost TELEGRAPHIC LANGUAGE.

➜ The New York stage of the early twenties was aware of German Expressionism as a theatrical
force and emulated many of its characteristics:

◉ Short scenes

◉ STACCATO dialogue

◉ SYMBOLIC characters

◉ The use of lighting to create an atmosphere of UNREALITY

◉ GROUP CHANTING

➜ Actors were encouraged to create MECHANICAL SHAPES with their bodies and to use
exaggerated gestures and DECLAMATORY modes of speaking or screaming.

➜ Expressionism also helped continue a revolution in set design that favored abstraction and
Symbolism over Realism. This revolution started earlier with the works of Adolphe Appia and
Gordon Craig:

◉ ADOLPHE APPIA: He was a lightning designer who thought that lights, scenery,
costumes, and the actor's bodies should be merged into a seamless whole, the
"MISE-EN-SCENE" (puesta en escena). His sets were simple, and sometimes sinister
assemblages of wide, shallow steps and narrow columns. The sets were uncluttered to
better emphasize the bodies of the actors and shifts in lightning.

◉ GORDON CRAIG: He pioneered the use of mobile screens as a design element. He wasn't a
fan of actors; instead, he preferred designs in which the actors were strictly
SUBORDINATE. His sets often had an emotive quality and he actually got mad when he
thought that the actors were tainting them with their emotions. Besides, he hung the lights
above the state for the first time.

➜ Another leading expressionist designer was Robert Edmond Jones:

◉ ROBERT EDMOND JONES: He adopted Craig's idea of a continuous mise-en-scéne,

creating bold and simple stage spaces for playwrights. Jones thought that since movies
have a lock on Realism, theater should strive for something stranger, more abstract and
more beautiful.

44
 20TH CENTURY DRAMA

19TH CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA

➜ The drama of this century was a bit overdramatic.

➜ Shows at this time were solely to entertain the audience and widely THEATRICAL.

➜ There were two common genres:

◉ MELODRAMA: A play in which a sensational plot appeals to the emotions of the audience.
This plot is more important than the character development, so the characters are
generally over-the-top stereotypes.

◉ FARCE: A type of comedic play filled with exaggerated over-the-top situations. The only
goal of this type of play is to make the audience laugh.

Perhaps because these were the principal genres, no significant drama pieces were produced in
America during that time. Attending a play is a public act; therefore, everyone sees each other's
emotional responses to the play. Besides, attending a play with content that society finds
questionable implies that every assistant accepts that content. In a time when social morals were
strict and consequences could be severe, it would have been a great social risk.

THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE ON AMERICAN DRAMA

➜ This influence is responsible for American dramas’ shift from the RIDICULOUS to the
REALISTIC.

➜ There were three European playwrights in particular who profoundly impacted American
drama:

◉ HENRIK IBSEN (Norwegian): His plays addressed topics considered scandalous at the
time, specifically GUILT, SEXUALITY and MENTAL ILLNESS. He is considered the father of
Realism.

45
 ◉ AUGUST STRINDBERG (Swedish): He was known for his PSYCHOLOGICALLY COMPLEX
characters, focusing on the development of CHARACTERS over plot.

◉ ANTON CHEKHOV (Russian): He was known for his focus on INTERNAL ACTIONS and
EMOTIONS. As a result, the dialogue in his plays was filled with SUBTEXTS, so what the
actors were saying was different from what they were actually thinking. This made it very
difficult for the actors to portray and for the audience to understand. However, each
character was so well developed that they appeared to be real people.

➜ These three playwrights developed the SLICE OF LIFE DRAMA TECHNIQUE (focus on real life).
Instead of the stereotyped, overdramatic characters of the melodrama and the farce, this technique
favored well-developed characters that the audience could relate to.

➜ Instead of the ridiculous situations designed to make the audience laugh, the situations in this
type of drama were REALISTIC and RELATABLE.

20TH CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA

➜ REALISM was the dominant mode of American drama in the 20th century since playwrights
started to experiment with it in their own ways by portraying situations directly from ordinary life
to which the audience could relate. Since at that time there were many shocking and devastating
events such as World War I, the Great Depression, or the Vietnam War, the use of realism to
portray these events in a play made people relate to them even more.

➜ As Americans began to question the direction of the world, American drama began to address
social issues like CIVIL RIGHTS, POVERTY, and WAR.

EUGENE O'NEILL
↓
He was the first significant figure of American drama to experiment with Realism in ONE-ACT PLAYS
(A play that has only ONE ACT and so are much shorter). His characters came from the fringes of
society and spoke in VERNACULAR (the common dialect of ordinary people of a particular area).
These characters have high hopes for their lives, but ultimately slip into DISILLUSIONMENT and
PESSIMISM, often with TRAGIC results.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
↓
He was one of the three main playwrights that represented the American movement of Realism. He
was known as the "playwright of our souls". He was also known for incorporating a few
IMAGINATIVE TOUCHES into his Realism like imaginative set pieces or orchestral music. He was
also known for having COMPLEX characters, particularly FEMALES.

➜ American drama provides in-depth exploration of the INNER LIVES of characters.

46
➜ It shifts gradually from more realistic to more EXPERIMENTAL productions by the end of the
century.

EXPRESSIONIST DRAMA

➜ There is a belief that survival depends on a willingness to accept life as FORMLESS or

MEANINGLESS, which is a pretty dark outlook.

➜ This is based on a similar european movement that stresses FRAGMENTATION OF PLOT,

IMPRESSION, and STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

↓
THEATER OF THE ABSURD
The focus is on the revelation of character's INNER CONSCIOUSNESS without references to logical
sequence of surface actions.

UNIT 5:
POSTMODERNISM & POST-POSTMODERNISM

POSTMODERNISM

➜ We should make the distinction between POSTMODERNITY and POSTMODERNISM:

◉ POSTMODERNITY: An epochal term that refers to a HISTORICAL PERIOD. (60’s and 70’s)

◉ POSTMODERNISM: It refers to a CULTURAL CONSTRUCT, just one of the aesthetic, cultural

manifestations of postmodernity. (60’s and 70’s)

47
➜ Postmodernism almost defies definition because it celebrates DIVERSITY, ECLECTICISM and
PARODY in all forms of art.

➜ The meaning of “post” varies depending on the perspective of what thinker or philosopher we
are referring to when dealing with this term. There are different variables to consider so as to what
exactly is its meaning:

◉ A result of Modernism?
◉ The aftermath of Modernism?
◉ The afterbirth of Modernism?
◉ The development of Modernism?
◉ The denial of Modernism?
◉ The rejection of Modernism?

➜ Taking into account the different components that make up the word Postmodernism, we can
say that this movement may be the RESULT or the REJECTION of Modernism:

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

➜ After the different wars that people suffered from in the times when Modernism emerged, in the
60’s and 70’s, after people had gone beyond the effects of those wars, there were rapid
MODERNIZATION PROCESSES, which brought about changes in THOUGHT or LIFESTYLES that
resulted in a state of ANXIETY on human beings.

France, May 1968 Students’ Strike

➜ Among the many writers that set the ground for this movement, the ones that stand out the
most are Lyotard, Kristeva, Barthes, Deleuza, Foucault, and Derrida. What they all had in common is
their insistence upon the INSTABILITY OF LANGUAGE to represent reality and, consequently,
their INSTABILITY OF MEANING.

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 POSTMODERN THINKERS

◉ BRIAN MCHALE: He states that Postmodernism is “a poetics (aesthetic) which is the successor of
(historically and logically) or a reaction against the poetics of the twentieth century Modernism.” He also
states that the main difference between Modernism and Postmodernism is given by a SHIFT OF
DOMINANT.

MODERNIST FICTION POSTMODERNIST FICTION

Epistemological dominant Ontological dominant

↓ ↓
THE PROBLEMS OF KNOWING THE NATURE OF BEING

◉ JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD: He was a French philosopher and literary theorist who, in “The
Postmodern Condition” (1979), talks about the fall of the GRAND or META-NARRATIVES, which are
large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the emancipation through reason and
freedom, Christianity, patriarchy, Capitalism, the progress of history, the knowability of everything
by science, among others. What he posed was that in Postmodernism, those meta-narratives were
not valid anymore. Instead, there were PETIT (small) or MICRO NARRATIVES that started to gain
validity in postmodern times.

◉ JEAN BAUDRILLARD: He studied the effects of the media on man, and the erasure of the line
between SIMULATION and REALITY. Besides, he stated that a man’s apparent obsession with
IMAGES has altered his world.

SIMULATION
↓
“The generation of models of a real without ORIGIN or REALITY.”

He then stated that images must be doubted because representation is no longer determined by an
essential connection to the things they are supposed to represent. The problem is that the distinction
between reality and simulation has collapsed.

49
◉ JACQUES DERRIDA: He was a French philosopher known as the father of DECONSTRUCTION.
He concentrates on the PLURALITY and INSTABILITY of meaning of texts, about what he states
that meaning in Literature is created by the READER.

“Truths are never absolute; they are relative.”

DECONSTRUCTION
↓
In postmodernism, there was a tendency for many texts to deconstruct different ideas. This
means that postmodern writers broke, in some sort of way, different stories to highlight or
expose a different meaning.

He borrowed and transformed Saussure’s structuralist idea that we conceptualize our experience
based on binary oppositions. He observes that one half of the pair is always PRIVILEGED as the
pure one, while the other is viewed as the LOWER / MARGINALIZED. In literature, this means that
there is not a FIXED MEANING resting in the text, on the contrary, meaning is created by the
READER in the act of reading.

◉ MICHEL FOUCAULT: He is considered the father of POST-STRUCTURALISM. He wrote about

madness, sexuality, the nature of power and discourse, literature and transgression. What’s more,
he has influenced cultural studies, feminism, political theory, and queer theory.

◉ LINDA HUTCHEON: She states that Postmodernism is characterized by HISTORIOGRAPHIC

METAFICTION.

HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION

↓
It shows FICTION to be historically conditioned and HISTORY to be discursively
structured.

METAFICTION
↓
Patricia Waugh stated that metafiction is a “fictional writing which self-consciously and
systemically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to:

50
 ◉ Pose questions about the relationship between FICTION and REALITY.
◉ Explore the possible FICTIONALITY of the world outside the literary fictional text.”

POSTMODERNISM AND MINORITIES IN LITERATURE

➜ INTERTEXTUALITY: This term describes the idea that meanings are not transferred directly
from writer to reader but they are mediated through CODES given to the writer by OTHER TEXTS.
There are two types of relationships:

◉ One that connects the AUTHOR and the READER of a text.

◉ One that connects a TEXT with OTHER TEXTS.

A literary work, then, is not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other
texts and to the structures of language itself. Another way of explaining it is that any text exists in
relation to a number of other texts; a text only gathers meaning because it is woven entirely with
CITATIONS, REFERENCES, ECHOES, and CULTURAL LANGUAGE.

➜ HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION: Expanding on what was mentioned before, Linda

Hutcheon says that “historiographic metafiction refutes the natural or common-sense methods of
distinguishing between HISTORICAL FACT and FICTION. She asserts that“history and fiction are
DISCOURSES, HUMAN CONSTRUCTS, SIGNIFYING SYSTEMS, and both derive their major claim
to TRUTH from that identity.” Linda also explains that historiographic metafiction has the
following characteristics:

◉ Mode of narration from MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW.

◉ Mode of narration from an OVERTLY CONTROLLING NARRATOR.
◉ It challenges the separation of the LITERARY and the HISTORICAL.
◉ It claims that the opposition between FICTION and HISTORY is no longer relevant, and
it also BLURS the line between them.
◉ It states that both fiction and history are CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS.
◉ It is FICTION that displays self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs in
order to rethink and rework the forms and the contents of the present.

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➜ METAFICTION: This term is given to a fictional writing which self-consciously and
systematically draws attention to its status as an ARTIFACT in order to pose questions about the
relationship between FICTION and REALITY. Other characteristics of metafiction include:

◉ MULTIPLE ENDINGS.
◉ FRAMED STRUCTURE.
◉ CRITICAL DISCUSSION of the story-within-the-story.
◉ DRAMATIZATION of the reader.
◉ CONSTRUCTION and DECONSTRUCTIONS of worlds.
◉ TEMPORAL DISLOCATION.

Although all these characteristics belong to metafictional texts at large, specific genres may have
particular characteristics or may present some (rarely all) of them in various ways.

➜ POSTMODERNISM AND MINORITIES: For centuries, only certain authors of certain

backgrounds were considered worth reading, and the rest were left aside as SUBVERSIVE,
RADICAL, PORNOGRAPHIC, or simply “MINOR.” The rules as to what was proper and meritorious
to read received the name of “Western Cannon” and vastly restricted the reader’s choices. In the
Postmodern era, the cannon is visited and revisited, revised and reviewed, enhanced and extended
to allow a MULTIPLICITY OF VOICES (women, blacks, Asians, Hispanics) to be all of a sudden
heard. Thus, new literatures are starting to be read and appreciated for their philosophical, literary,
and cultural value.

➜ FEMINISM: It comprises a number of social, cultural, and political movements, theories, and
moral philosophies concerned with GENDER INEQUALITIES and DISCRIMINATION against
women. In the 60’s, women started to reject the narrow representations of women’s ROLES and
women’s CONSCIOUSNESS in society. Feminism explores subjects such as:

◉ PATRIARCHY.
◉ STEREOTYPING.
◉ SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION.
◉ GENDER OPPRESSION.
◉ The ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforced or undermined
the ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, and PSYCHOLOGICAL OPPRESSION of women.
◉ Politics of women’s AUTHORSHIP and the representation of women’s CONDITIONS
within literature.

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➜ BLACK: Black’s literature is, generally, the body of literature produced in America by writers of
American descent. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are:

◉ The ROLE of African Americans within the larger American society.

◉ African American’s CULTURE, RACISM, SLAVERY, and EQUALITY.

Its style is IMPROVISATORY, which affirms individual freedom in a group setting. It is also a lyrical
response to life’s random aliveness and vicissitudes, a response that links artist and audience and
present moment through communication. Improvisation is not simply RELAXED or EASYGOING
but a consciously ALERT, FLEXIBLE, and CREATIVE responsiveness to unpredictable
developments. Narrative structures or plots are twofold:

◉ The one that derives from EUROPEAN TRADITION: They are PSYCHOLOGICAL
narratives (associatives or surreal structures that mirror the movement of the conscious
and unconscious mind) or EPISODIC structures, usually adventures of rogues.

◉ The one that derives from BLACK TRADITION: They make use of traditional BLACK
MUSIC and ORAL STORYTELLING. They use jazz-like structures instead of symmetrical or
linear structures.

➜ POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: Regarding the use of English in what once were the British
colonies, the different authors of countries are DIVERSE as South Africa, Jamaica and India believe
that the LANGUAGE OF THE OPPRESSORS cannot be used to show them that their deeds are
amoral because their personal beliefs or interests impair the understanding of an absolute concept
of “WRONGFULNESS.” However, the authors address the English readership directly using English
to blame them for the state of the country, and this is an instance of using the language of the
oppressor AGAINST the oppressor.
Generally, postcolonial authors attempt to preserve or revitalize their NATIVE CULTURE
making references to the oral tradition and ancient customs. However, they generally wrote from
the former empire (the UK, the USA, France, and the like) and are torn between the facilities that
these countries offer and a feeling of EXPATRIATION or DISPOSSESSION. Nonetheless, these
authors recreate reality to serve their ultimate goals, making the world know that what the
different empires broke, these empires have to tolerate now.

➜ CHICANO LITERATURE: It began as a critical and creative response to discrimination and

prejudice that affected Mexicans who immigrated into the United States after the 1900s, as well as
those naturalized citizens who became Mexican Americans with roots in the American conquest of
the Southwest after 1848. Chicano literature is therefore written by a group of people who identify

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with the political, cultural, and social Chicano movement, and who use expository writing,
autobiography, fiction, poetry, drama, and film to document the history of Chicano consciousness in
the United States.
From this early Chicano movement emerged a literature giving voice to the
DISENFRANCHISED, the WORKING-CLASS, the MIGRANT WORKER, and the FIELD HAND, both
male and female alike, as they fought for the right to tell their story in the growing body of
American literature

➜ GAY LITERATURE: Gay criticism has aimed at shedding new light into GAY SENSIBILITIES,
and at producing an alternative way of reading gay literature, mainstream literature and canonical
literature from a gay perspective. It has aimed at revising the canon, and at presenting an
alternative gay canon in order to gain recognition of gay productions and raise awareness in main
stream society.

“The situation of gay literature is far more secure than that of the literatures of other subcultural groupings
(except those in obvious positions of dominance ...). While it is true that post-gay liberationist readers and
critics have had to rediscover lost texts and reassess texts undervalued by straight critics, our task has greatly
been helped by the fact that, unlike the work of women writers or non-white writers, texts which can loosely be
categorized as ‘gay literature’ are extremely widely and securely represented in the mainstream Western canon.
(11)”
Gregory Woods

Many critics agree that the most important contribution of gay literature, and eventually the cause
that will make it old-fashioned, is its PREDICTABILITY. While poetry tends to be mostly elegiac,
prose and drama tend to be DIDACTIC.

➜ ECOLOGY AND LITERATURE: Ecology has had a tremendous impact on the social field, and
literature has been no exception. Many writers have adopted a militant ecological position, and
they make a plea for the environment and denounce abuse and misuse of the natural resources.
Also a new trend in literary criticism has appeared: ECOCRITICISM, which analyzes literary works
and discusses issues such as how nature is presented in the literary text and if the literary text
promotes ecological activism or not.

➜ THE ANTHROPOCENE AND THE CLI-FI: Many geologists argue that the Holocene is over and
that we are living a new ecological era, called the ERA OF THE ANTHROPOCENE characterized by
the impact of the human activity on the environment. In this context, writers are faced with the
challenge of representing the environmental crisis.

According to Trexler (2011), “the novels composed in the Anthropocene challenge received literary
functions, such as character, setting, milieu, class, time and representation” (16) and “provide new
models of collective organization to address global emissions and local impacts” (25).

54
 “Literature - dealing specifically with anthropogenic climate change- gives insight into the ethical and
social ramifications of this unparalleled environmental crisis, reflects on current political conditions
that impede action on climate change, explores how risk materializes and affects society, and finally
plays an active part in shaping our conception of climate change. It thus serves as a cultural-political
attempt and innovative alternative of communicating climate change. (4)”
Antonia Menhert (2016)

THEMES DEALT WITH IN POSTMODERNISM

➜ The presence of the PAST.

➜ The fall of the META-NARRATIVES.

➜ A critique of the HUMAN SUBJECT.

➜ A critique of the NOTION OF HISTORY.

➜ A celebration of CHAOS, UNCERTAINTY, and FRAGMENTATION.

STYLISTIC FEATURES

➜ A breakdown of SPATIAL and TEMPORAL organization of the narrative.

➜ The use of PARODY ➜ They are IMITATIONS but not used in the sense of producing laughter;
instead, they are used to paying homage to a text or an author that belongs to the past.

➜ RE-WRITING of history and stories ➜ In the case of rewritten stories, the one author imitates
the story of another author, but from a DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE. In the case of rewritten
history, the same historical event is told from different perspectives.

➜ Narrative SELF-ERASURE.

➜ Temporal DISLOCATION ➜ Bringing characters or people from the PAST to the PRESENT,
and make them part of the text.

➜ Playfulness ➜ The reader is invited to read the text in DIFFERENT WAYS or DIFFERENT
ORDER, and to PLAY to get to the meaning of the text.

➜ Multiple endings.

➜ INTERTEXTUALITY.

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➜ CATALOGUES and RAMBLING sentences.

➜ CHINESE BOX structures. ➜ It refers to a FRAME NARRATIVE, a novel or drama that is told in
the form of a narrative inside a narrative (and so on), giving views from different perspectives.

➜ Questions posed about the relationship between FICTION and REALITY.

➜ CRITICAL DISCUSSIONS of the story within the story

➜ Visibly INVENTING narrator

➜ Explicit DRAMATIZATION of the reader ➜ This happens when the narrator ADDRESSES the
reader directly.

➜ CONSTRUCTION and DECONSTRUCTION of worlds.

THE ANTHROPOCENE AND THE CLI-FI

➜ Nowadays, we are living in a new GEOLOGICAL ERA (after the Holocene) called the year of the
ANTHROPOCENE. The term was first used by Nobel Prize winners Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F.
Stoermer in 2000 to name a time characterized by the IMPACT of human activity on the
environment of the planet. They believed that humans had become such a potent ECOLOGICAL
FORCE that has altered the biophysical world, the landscapes, it has changed water cycles, it has
increased the temperature of the planet, it has eroded the soil, among many other things.

➜ Philosopher Bruno Latour states that the Anthropocene has become the most important concept
since Modernity, because biological agents have become GEOLOGICAL AGENTS, and the scale, the
scope, and the magnitude of the human impact on the biophysical world can be seen in droughts,
forest fires, melting glaciers, heat waves, erosion, ocean acidification, loss of diversity, among many
other consequences. The emission of greenhouse gases has increased the atmospheric levels of

56
carbon dioxide and methane in such a way that has caused changes in global temperature and
climate.

➜ A term always associated with the Anthropocene is CLIMATE CHANGE or GLOBAL WARMING.
However, it is important to make a distinction between these two terms as regards the degree of
responsibility we assume in the state of the planet:

◉ CLIMATE CHANGE ➜ It helps to neutralize, minimize or eliminate the human responsibility

and the consequences of the ANTHROPOGENIC ACTION in the atmosphere and climate.
↓
It is culturally as well as scientifically complex because it possesses an immensity of scale, both
SPATIALLY, because it is a global event, and TEMPORARILY, because it is an unprecedented
crisis in human history, but it is also met by public confusion, controversy, skepticism.

◉ GLOBAL WARMING ➜ The emphasis or focus is on the HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY.

➜ The Anthropocene poses a challenge to scholars of all disciplines, even writers, because it forces
them to radically rethink the scope of human agency.

ANTHROPOCENE AND ITS CONNECTION TO ITS LITERARY REPRESENTATION

◉ ROBERT MACFARLANE (2006): As regards the connection between the Anthropocene

and the literary representation, he complained about the SCARCITY of creative response to climate
change. He encouraged other artists to address climate change in their productions by asking a
simple question: “Where are the novels, the plays, the poems, the songs, the libretti, of this massive
contemporary anxiety?” After this, writers had taken the challenge and started to address climate
change in their novels and poems.

◉ DAN BLOOM (2008): After writers started addressing climate change in their literary
productions, he coined the term CLI-FI to refer to this new type of fiction. However, other
denominations have also been used such as POST-NATURAL WRITING, CONTEMPORARY
ECO-FICTION, SPECULATIVE FICTION, and CLIMATE FICTION.

◉ FREDERICK BUELL (2014): He claims that these novels constitute a new genre, which he
names SPECULATIVE FICTION. He called it that way because it presents possible scenarios which
depart from social and environmental risks in the present time.

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 ➜ Most of the characters live in a state of permanent RISK and have to face an
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS.

➜ The environmental crisis constitutes the SETTING of the stories, and it is also
presented as a NON-HUMAN AGENT with which the characters have to interact.

Because of the neologism “Science-Fiction,” Buell goes one step further, and tries to differentiate
them from apocalyptic texts, because he believes that these novels do not depict the end of the
word, but they present an ECOLOGICAL DISASTER with an open ending or, sometimes, an
ambiguous ending, which gives place to some sort of HOPE. What’s more, even when these authors
use apocalyptic images to describe the places and the characters, they are perceived as POSSIBLE
of becoming real.

➜ It is important to make a distinction between the terms SCIENCE-FICTION (Sci-Fi) and

CLIMATE-FICTION (Cli-Fi):

◉ SCIENCE-FICTION (Sci-Fi) ➜ It specializes mainly in the construction of other worlds, which

are very often depicted as being subjected to extreme environmental changes.

◉ CLIMATE-FICTION (Cli-Fi) ➜ Even if Cli-Fi novels borrowed from Sci-Fi these imaginary
scenarios, Cli-Fi texts are extremely Realists in terms of NARRATIVE STRATEGIES and
SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTATION, because they aim at describing faithfully scenarios of real
environmental catastrophes.

◉ ANTONIA MEHNERT (2011): She differentiates Speculative-Fiction from Climate-Fiction.

In her text Climate Change Fictions. Representations of Global Warming in American Literature (2011),
she says that these texts “deal specifically with anthropogenic climate change;” and the focus is on
the ways humans can ADAPT TO and SURVIVE an environmental crisis, because for her, the
anthropogenic climate change is the central topic of these texts and focus is placed on how it
affects the lives of the characters and the decisions they have to make. Besides, she states that
Climate-fiction involves ETHICAL questions, and at the same time it involves questions of
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. Finally, Cli-Fi also serves as a cultural-political activity and
innovative alternative of communicating climate change.

◉ ADAM TREXLER (2015): He agrees with Antonia Mehnert about the term Climate-Fiction
novels, and states that “the novels composed in the Anthropocene challenge received literary
functions, such as CHARACTER, SETTING, MILIEU, CLASS, TIME, and REPRESENTATION” (16).
He also states that these novels “provide new models of collective organization (communities in
which solidarity is extremely important) to address global emissions and local impacts” (25).

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 ◉ BILL MCKIBBEN (2011): Also tries to describe Climate-Fiction and states that it
“increasingly take on the relationship between people and everything else.” He also says that on the
unstable planets authors create when writing their productions, the BACKGROUND, which is
characterized by the environmental catastrophes, becomes the highest drama.

Regardless of the term we use to call these texts, all critics agree on the fact that all these literary
productions share some characteristics:

➜ They all raise critical awareness through fictional narratives about climate change.
➜ They all present stories that deal with the consequences of global warming.
➜ They all depict the scenarios as possible in a not so far future, which challenge the ways in
which human beings interact with the environment.
➜ They all foster critical thinking about ethical and political decisions that must be taken to
fight global warming

CHARACTERISTICS OF CLIMATE-FICTION TEXTS

➜ They deal with ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE ➜ Climate change is the result of the
action of human beings on the planet.

➜ The METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENON do not just provide the background setting against
which the story unfolds, but it is this climate change or environmental crisis that significantly
ALTERS the characters and the plot.

➜ They focus on how humans ADAPT TO and SURVIVE the climate change crisis.

➜ They convey a sense of URGENCY while exploring ways of ADAPTATION and MITIGATION.

➜ They deal with ETHICAL QUESTIONS about humankind's responsibility in the environmental
crisis. ➜ This has great importance because very often, the people who suffer the consequences
of the environmental crisis the most are people who contribute the LEAST to increasing the
planet's temperature, and are the ones that are worse equipped to face a catastrophe.

➜ They have OPEN ENDINGS, which suggests that different futures are possible.

➜ The NONHUMAN ENVIRONMENT is present, but not merely as a FRAME, but rather as a
NONHUMAN AGENT which characters have to interact with.

➜ Despite using DYSTOPIAN IMAGES, Cli-Fi doesn't present the end of the world; but it engages
the reader with WORLDS AT RISK, rather than worlds destined to end.

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➜ They reflect on current POLITICAL CONDITIONS that impede action on climate change. ➜
Very often, Cli-Fi texts are criticisms against governmental policies that hinder any action to face
the crisis.

QUEER DRAMA

➜ Jill Dolan is a scholar who theorizes on the audience's response to witnessing displays of
sexuality on stage and explores the formation of queer sex, desire and love in theater.

➜ The author starts by challenging mainstream expectations when seeing a play by questioning
the position that many people have of understanding heterosexuality as normal.

CHARACTERISTICS OF QUEER DRAMA

➜ It has a POLITICAL AGENDA ➜ It shapes its PLOT or its STAGING, which in turn would imply
mindful decisions on the part of everyone involved in the dramatic event (the playwright, the
director, the actors, and the crew).

➜ It is a COLLABORATIVE EFFORT ➜ That synergy makes the staging a collaborative effort in

tune with other cooperative participations or the inclusive nature of other gay rights
enterprises.

➜ It is TRANSGRESSIVE ➜ Queer drama is always supposed to be transgressive in FORM, in its

CONTENT, in its CHARACTERS, and in its REPRESENTATIONS. Abandoning transgression
would mark the death of the political intent of queer drama.

➜ It should SPEAK TO YOU (the reader / audience) ➜ It should speak to you, regardless of your
sexual orientation, because it is a theater of ENGAGEMENT.

➜ It challenges HETERONORMATIVE MORES ➜ The views that make people believe that
HETEROSEXUALITY is or should be the norm.

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 STYLISTIC & WRITING TECHNIQUES

➜ Alternative types of PRESENTATIONS ➜ It may be participatory or it may engage the

audiences.

➜ May break the FOURTH WALL to engage the audience.

➜ Settings tend to be NON-TRADITIONAL, MINIMAL, and STRIPPED to the essentials.

➜ Plot DISDAIN mainstream lifestyles.

➜ Characters are generally COLORFUL and CONFUSING ➜ They may be ANDROGYNOUS or

their gender may be UNSTABLE. One may find GENDER BENDING, CROSS-DRESSING or
TRANSVESTISM, which usually help us produce a sense of ILLUSION.

➜ Performances break the boundaries of the POSSIBLE and offer NON-CONFORMITY to

mainstream values as well as TRADITIONAL FORMS of dramatic discourse.

➜ Plays embody a resolute DESPAIR due to a feeling of EXCLUSION from mainstream society, and
a PARADOXICAL DESIRE to stay out of it.

POST-POSTMODERNISM

➜ By the end of the XXth Century, there was a need to define a new cultural logic, which appeared
as a result of SOCIAL, CULTURAL, and AESTHETIC changes. Since the late 1980s a renewal and
revitalization of the Realist mode has been taken up by a new generation of fiction writers. They
respond to a desire to reconnect language to the social sphere; in other words, they aspire to
represent and critique the social world, to re-energize literature ́s social mission, its ability to
intervene in the social world, to have an impact on actual people and the actual social institutions
in which they live.

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➜ There are different theories that pose questions about what is and the origins of
Post-postmodernism. Some of the questions are:

◉ Is it what comes after the death of Postmodernism?

◉ Is it a second Modernity?
◉ Is it a Postmodernity that works on the logics of MODERNISM?
◉ Does it go beyond Modernism and Postmodernism?

➜ The return to SOCIAL REALISM is believed to herald the beginning of the end of American
literary Postmodernism. It means a reaction against the Postmodernist solipsistic, self-referential
experimentation, that is, the preoccupation with non-referential uses of language and its
dissociation from social reality.

➜ The Post-postmodernists are less interested in self-conscious wordplay and the violation of
narrative conventions, and more concerned with representing the world we share. Yet in
presenting that world, this new fiction nevertheless has to show that it is a world that we know
through language, even when the emphasis is not so much on innovative forms but transparent
representation of reality, linear plots, and style informed by the conventions of Realism.

➜ Post-postmodernism implies not the return of Realism but rather its continuing RELEVANCE;
at the same time, contemporary Realist writers have absorbed postmodernism ́s most lasting
contributions and gone on to forge a new Realism that is more or less traditional in its handling of
character, reportorial in its depiction of milieu and time, but is at the same time self-conscious
about language.

THEORIES & THINKERS OF POST-POSTMODERNITY

➜ The following thinkers give this new period different names. However, regardless of the name
they give to the period, they all agree on the fact that Postmodernity has come to an end.

◉ GILLES LIPOVETSKY ➜ HYPERMODERNITY: He was a French philosopher and

sociologist, and he speaks of a second Modernity, which is characterized by three main
elements:

➜ The MARKET
➜ TECHNOCRATIC EFFICIENCY
➜ The INDIVIDUAL

For him, the present takes the form of GLOBALIZED LIBERALISM and the quasi-general
COMMERCIALIZATION OF LIFESTYLE. He characterizes the period by excess in every domain,

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and refers to HYPER-CONCEPTION, HYPER-SURVEILLANCE, HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM, and
HYPER-CAPITALISM.

◉ ROBERT SAMUELS ➜ AUTOMODERNITY: He’s a political reporter and a cultural

theorist. He defines Automodernity as a reaction against the influence of Postmodernity in
the SOCIAL and CULTURAL realm. For him, this period is characterized by the recovered
HUMAN AGENCY through technology that promotes a globalized politics over social
intervention.

◉ RAOUL ESHELMAN ➜ PERFORMATISM: He departs from an aesthetic perspective. For

him, Performatism borrows from Postmodernism at the same time that it breaks sharply
with it. He believes that this period is a new age in which the relationship between the
SUBJECT, the SIGN, and the THING is the basis of all social interaction and
communication, and that the act of “performing” gives the subject the capacity to transcend
the given conditions through aesthetic means.

◉ NICHOLAS BOURRIAUD ➜ ALTERMODERNITY: He also departs from an aesthetic

perspective. He believes that Altermodernity is a new Modernity which shapes itself in the
context of globalization. In the Trienal of Tate Gallery in 2009, he published the
“Altermodern” Manifesto, which aims at exploring contemporary art to see how artists are
responding to the present GLOBALIZED CULTURE with a new spirit and energy. Besides,
he believes that this globalization compels us to new types of representation, in which the
artist is seen as a TRAVELER, as a TRANSLATOR of cultural values, which he attempts to
connect in the global network.

◉ ALAN KIRBY ➜ DIGIMODERNISM: As a cultural critic and philosopher, he talks about

the DEATH of Postmodernism, and calls this new period Post-postmodernism or
Pseudo-modernism, and Digimodernism. For him, the role of new technologies, and the
birth of a new type of literature, characterizes this new era. This hypertextual literature is
characterized by its EPHEMERALITY, LIQUIDITY, ANONYMITY, and HYBRID
AUTHORSHIP. He also refers to the role the digital cinema, the visual arts, television, mass
media, and social media play in this new period.

◉ TIMOTHEUS VERMEULEN & ROBIN VAN DEN AKKER ➜ METAMODERNITY

CHARACTERISTICS OF POST-POSTMODERNISM

➜ Nicoline Timmer summarizes the characteristics of Post-postmodern literature in four items:

◉ A return to REAL ➜ She believes in this return to real because there are new shared
FRAMEWORKS OF REALITY that are being constructed.

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 ◉ A turn to the HUMAN ➜ She also speaks of what it means to be human nowadays.

◉ STYLISTIC CONTINUITY ➜ She believes that the new aesthetics continues using
Postmodern techniques, but the reconnection to the real doesn’t imply a return to Realist
stylistics. On the contrary, she believes that Postmodern techniques are in the
Post-postmodern novel, but with a different function from that of the Postmodern novel:
they have come to function as REALISTIC DEVICES for this generation of authors.

◉ Communicative BONDING ➜ She believes that in this period, sharing is important as a

way to identify ourselves with others, and the fears in the Post-postmodern novel seem to
long for some sort of containment, and it aims at creating EMPATHY.

➜ It can be observed that Post-postmodern literature also has the following characteristics:

◉ A renewed faith in POTENTIALITIES of literature to represent reality.

◉ A reaction against the Postmodern SELF-REFERENTIAL EXPERIMENTATION, and the

preoccupation with NON-REFERENTIAL USES OF LANGUAGE.

◉ The need to reconnect language to the SOCIAL SPHERE.

◉ The RECOVERY of the social mission of literature to impact on the life ORDINARY
PEOPLE and in REAL institutions.

STYLISTIC AND WRITING TECHNIQUES

➜ LINEAR PLOT and repertorial depiction of MILIEU and TIME.

➜ More or less TRADITIONAL handling of CHARACTERS.

➜ POSTMODERN STRATEGIES are still used, but with a different aim. ➜ They aim at creating a
new REALISM that represents the world that we more or less know.

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 ANNEX
SOME ANALYSES OF LITERARY TEXTS & PLAYS

TO THE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME

1. Who is addressed in the poem?

➜ The speaker addresses the ROSE (the object).

2. Why does the voice want to be near the Rose?

➜ Because he prides himself on being IRISH and because the island will tell him about the
ANCIENT PAST.

3. What does the rose symbolize?

➜ The Rose symbolizes IRELAND / BEAUTY OF IRELAND.

4. What tension does the title of the poem reveal?

➜ It reveals the crossing of the ancient (irish) culture with the present (Anglo-saxon / European)
culture. It also reveals the tension between the IMMORTALITY or the beauty of the rose and the
MORTALITY of the rose itself (as an object, it will eventually die).

5. What contradictions does the speaker present?

➜ We can find the first contradiction in “Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!” (1), because,
although the speaker describes the rose with positive words such as “red” and “proud,” he also says
that it is “sad,” which is a negative word.

➜ The second contradiction we can find is “Come near, come near, come near—Ah, leave me still” / “A
little space for the rose-breath to fill!” (13-14) because even though the speaker asks the rose to come
near him, in the following line he asks it to leave him some space, to remain some distance from
him.

6. Find references to Irish mythology. What do these references imply?

CUCHULAIN ➜ He’s one of the greatest hero of Irish myth who accidentally killed his son and
suffered as a consequence of that for all his life.

DRUIDS ➜ Magical priests living in the forest who were considered the Healers of Ancient Ireland.
They symbolize the “educated professionals” in Ireland.

FERGUS ➜ He made a deal with his sister-in-law to let her son rule for a complete year, but was
then betrayed by them. He symbolizes “Courage” and “Strength.”

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7. What do “the weak worm,” “the field-mouse,” and “the heavy mortal hopes” stand for?
➜ They all stand for COMMON / ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS.

8. What kind of Eternal Beauty is the lyrical voice looking for?

➜ He wanted to recover that ancient beauty, he wanted for it to be “REBORN.” The author is one of
the main representatives of the Irish Renaissance.

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM

1. What is the poem about?

➜ The poem is about a man in his lunch hour walking through the city of Manhattan and what
happens in his mind, the portrayal of his INNER THOUGHTS.

As a SURREALIST piece of writing, this poem goes beyond the tangible reality and it portrays what
goes on in the MIND of the speaker.

2. How is the city evoked in the poem? Through actions or imagery?

➜ The city is evoked through a lot of SENSORY IMAGERY and a DETAILED DESCRIPTION of what
the man is seeing while walking. This is portrayed by words and phrases such as “dirty glistening
torsos,” “yellow helmets,” or “hum-colored cabs.”

3. How important are the names O’Hara drops in the poem?

➜ The names mentioned by O’Hara throughout the poem, such as “Times Square,” “Coca-Cola,”
“Edwin Denby,” “Giulietta Masina,” “Federico Fellini,” “Bunny,” “John Latouche,” “Jackson Pollock” or
“Manhattan Storage Warehouse,” are important because, although there is a tendency to
abstraction, there is a certain ANCHORAGE TO REALITY that is portrayed by all these names of
places, objects, or people that really exist in reality.

4. Pay attention to the rhythm of the poem? What is gained by that?

➜ What may be gained by the rhythm of the poem is the portrayal of the rhythm of a typical BIG
CITY like Manhattan, where there is always a lot of movement either of people walking, running, or
working, or cars in traffic jams.

5. What is the effect of the lack of punctuation?

➜ The lack of punctuation throughout the poem may seem to portray the idea that the man in his
lunch hour is CONSTANTLY MOVING, he is constantly walking through the city seeing a lot of
different things.

➜ Throughout the poem, there are several instances of the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
TECHNIQUE and the FREE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. For example:

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 ◉ JULIET’S CORNER: When the speaker reaches this place in the city, it triggers one
thought that he associates with Giulietta Masina, an Italian actress, and her husband,
Federico Fellini, a film director.

◉ Puerto Ricans: The speaker associates the idea of Puerto RIcans with the warm weather
and the beaches particular that country.

◉ Chocolate malted: This triggers another thought in the speaker’s mind, which brings the
image of a woman in foxes with a poodle. We infer that this is not really happening because
at the beginning he says it was a hot day; therefore, there is no way that a woman would be
wearing foxes.

O SWEET SPONTANEOUS

1. What is the poem about? & 2. How is the earth described?

➜ There are two different interpretations we can give so as to what the poem is about:

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

The poem is about the Earth and how KIND it The poem is a DENOUNCEMENT about how
is to humankind. human beings destroy the Earth.

Either way, the Earth is described as SWEET, SPONTANEOUS and reacting to humankind with
SPRING.

3. Who is responsible for the destruction of nature and its beauty? & 4. How are philosophers,
scientists and religious people described? In what ways have they affected the earth?
➜ Following what is said in the poem, we can infer that the responsibles for the destruction of
nature and its beauty are PHILOSOPHERS, SCIENTISTS, and RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. This is clearly
illustrated in phrases such as “the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee,” “the
naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty,” and “how often have religions taken thee upon their
scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee.”

4. What is nature ́s reaction to human interference?

➜ The Earth is so kind that it react to human interference with SPRING. This is clearly illustrated
in the phrase “but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only
with spring.”

5. “O” is the only capital letter in the poem. What is its significance in the context of the poem?
➜ The “O” being the only capital letter in the poem may portray the voice’s AMAZEMENT or
SURPRISE about the terrible actions that philosophers, scientists and religious people have taken
upon the Earth.

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 LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, THE WEREWOLF & RIDING THE RED

1) How do “The Werewolf” and “Riding the Red” deviate from the traditional versions of “Little
Red Riding Hood” in terms of characters and characterization?

➜ In “Riding the Red” the characters are: the GRANDMOTHER, the MOTHER, the CHILD, the wolf
WOLFIE, and the LUMBERJACK. Therefore, the characters are the same but the
CHARACTERIZATION of them is different. It deviates from the traditional versions of the story in
the sense that it is deconstructed to illustrate or represent different topics like GENDER ROLES,
the domain of PATRIARCHY over young women and the role of women in the house,
REPRODUCTION and the CYCLE OF LIFE, among others.

➜ In “The Werewolf,” we don’t have the same characters. We have the child and the mother, but the
grandmother and the wolf are the same entity or being. What’s more, the lumberjack doesn’t exist
in this story. Also, the way they are characterized is different. In this case, Little Red Riding Hood is
portrayed as a STRONG and FEARLESS woman that fights the wolf when she encounters him in
the woods. In the story, the grandmother is portrayed as being sick and delirious, and, surprisingly,
it is revealed that she is a WEREWOLF, which means that the young woman fought her grandma in
the woods. As a result, the grandmother is stoned to death by her neighbours.

2) Who is the antagonist in "The Werewolf" and in “Riding the Red”?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” the antagonist is the WOLF, who represents NATURE, and is, at the same
time, the GRANDMOTHER.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” the antagonist can be the MOTHER, who refuses to tell her child the truth
about how things really happened and to follow the grandmother’s advice.

3) How do “The Werewolf” and “Riding the Red” deviate from the traditional versions of “Little
Red Riding Hood” in setting?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” we have the traditional woods that are supposed to be threatening to the
child. However, in this case, it is not an ideal and quiet place; instead, it is a darker, extremely cold
place with the presence of beasts and the feeling that the DEVIL lives there. But, contrary to the
traditional folk tale, the child is a STRONG young woman who dominates NATURE and does not
fear the beasts living there.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” we have a more traditional representation of the woods, which show how
there were flowers, food, and natural resources in PLENTY. This concept of plenty, at the same
time, represents the idea of VITAL ENERGY.

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4) How do “The Werewolf” and “Riding the Red” deviate from the traditional versions of “Little
Red Riding Hood” in theme?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” the story revolves around themes such as the RULES OF PATRIARCHY,
DOMAIN OVER NATURE, a DICHOTOMY between MEN and WOMEN, and WOMEN’S
EMPOWERMENT.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” the story revolves around themes such as FEMALE DESIRE, a preoccupation
with GENDER ROLES, the CYCLE OF LIFE and LIFE FORCE, etc.

5) How do “The Werewolf” and “Riding the Red” deviate from the traditional versions of “Little
Red Riding Hood” in terms of gender roles?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” there is an INVERSION OF THE TRADITIONAL ROLES, because the woman
is empowered enough to fight the wolf by owning the PATRIARCHAL POWER (symbolized by the
knife) and she kills him, gaining domain over nature.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” there is a preoccupation with gender roles, as the story questions the
FEMALE STAGES in life represented by the mother, the grandmother and the child and the
FEMALE DESIRE embodied by the wolf.

6) How has the audience for each of the versions changed throughout the centuries? How has the
change in audience and aim determined the effect of the tale?

➜ At first, the traditional version was aimed at a Buyoise readership in the 17th Century. It was
supposed to reinforce MORALITY. In the 19th Century, the story was aimed at representing an
abstract sense of NATIONALITY or COMMUNITY, which was an important concept for the Grimm
brothers at that time. Finally, in postmodern times, the stories came out as a way of reviewing
them from NEW PERSPECTIVES.

8) Discuss the role of the woods in Carter’s story. What do the woods symbolize? How are they
different symbolically from villages, towns, or cities? For what purpose does Carter’s heroine
visit the woods?

➜ In Carter’s story, the woods represent the MEN’S DOMAIN, the PATRIARCHY that has to be
conquered by women. As opposed to the villages, towns, and cities, which represent the WOMEN’S
DOMAIN, the woods mark the boundaries between both realms, in a way, the one of NATURE and
the one of CIVILIZATION.

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STYLE / WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1) Whose voices do the stories present? What is the effect of that?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” there is a THIRD PERSON narrator, similar to the traditional version.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” there is a FIRST PERSON narrator, which is the grandmother.

2) Which images prevail in “The Werewolf” and which ones in “Riding the Red”?

➜ In “The Werewolf,” prevail the images of WITCHES, several BEASTS and VAMPIRES, the figure
of the DEVIL, the DARKNESS of the woods, among others.

➜ In “Riding the Red,” prevail images pertaining to the HUMAN REALM, which consists of HOUSE
CHORES, CLEANING, doing BROIDERY, RAISING KIDS, COOKING, MILKING, among others.
Besides, the story presents many uses of SENSORY IMAGES, for example in “... the smell of my own
young blood flowing through my veins” or “... wolfie’s nostrils flare as he scented it.”

3) How is the atmosphere created in the contemporary versions?

➜ All the set of images mentioned before contribute to create a GLOOMY or SINISTER
atmosphere in “The Werewolf” and more LIVELY and HOMELY.

4) What do the titles “The Werewolf” and “Riding the Red” tell us about the stories?

➜ “The werewolf” is called that way because it represents the antagonist of this story, which
represents the DECEIT of this character. Somehow, the title anticipates what the story is going to
be about.

➜ “Riding the Red” seems to represent the FEMALE STAGES of life. In this case, the “red”
represents the first PERIOD of a child, which means that she has become a woman.

5) How do these contemporary stories embody the ideals of Postmodernism?

➜ These stories embody the ideals of Postmodernism in the sense that they question the concept
of TRADITION. In terms of discursive strategies, the stories make use of INTERTEXTUALITY to
RETELL or REARRANGE a traditional story from a different perspective. Also, in the case of
“Riding the Red,” a silent narrator is given a VOICE. In “Riding the Red,” for example, the
grandmother speaks a JAMAICAN variety of English, which shows how the author makes use of
LOCAL COLOR WRITING to give voice to a MARGINAL CULTURE.

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THEMES:

➜ In traditional western epistemology, the female principle has been associated with these
notions:

WOMEN - NATURE - A THREAT TO ORDER - IRRATIONALITY - PASSIVITY

RIDING THE RED

AUTHOR:

The author voices other (NON-HEGEMONIC - NON-TRADITIONAL) interests.

◉ She is a CARIBBEAN author ➜ The geographical and linguistic concerns are portrayed
in her writing.
◉ She is a FEMALE and QUEER writer.
◉ She writes SPECULATIVE FICTION.

FORM:

➜ Character-Narrator (first person narrator) ➜ The GRANDMOTHER

➜ The speech used by the main character is halfway between INTERIOR and EXTERIOR
MONOLOGUE -> There are moments in the story in which the free association of thoughts is
portrayed (INTERIOR). However, this association of thoughts, in some other moments, seem to
not just reflect the mind of the narrator, but to address a reader (EXTERIOR).

➜ There are marks of JAMAICAN variety of English throughout the story.

➜ The fact that the setting of the story is the CARIBBEAN enhances the characters’ ARCHETYPAL
DIMENSION (both a local and universal experience) ➜ This specific geographical setting makes it
very LOCAL, but, at the same time, it enhances the idea that, because it is a fairy tale, there is a
UNIVERSAL dimension to this rewriting of the story.

CONTENT:

The woodman / lumberjack embodies CONVENTION.

The wolf embodies FEMALE DESIRE / a LIFE FORCE that keeps the cycle of life going.
The grandmother, the mother, and the child embody FEMALE STAGES in life.

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➜ Preoccupation with GENDER ROLES:

◉ The grandmother voices SUBORDINATE DESIRE. ➜ Women’s desire, a desire that has to
be disciplined (traditional version) or is celebrated in a different way (new version).

◉ Riding the red makes the metaphor of the “red hood” explicit ➜ RED = BLOOD = PERIOD =
LIFE FORCE/LIBIDO = REPRODUCTION. ➜ Embodied by the GRANDMOTHER, the
MOTHER, and the CHILD.

◉ An appropriation of FEMALE DESIRE as a LIFE FORCE ➜ Embodied by the WOLF.

◉ The reproductive role of women is NOT depoliticized ➜ Homemaking and care are
important, they are not to be dismissed, but they are to be carried out fully aware that
there are other dimensions to life as well.

◉ Cyclical time of a WOMAN’S LIFESPAN.

THE WEREWOLF

➜ There is an INVERSION OF THE TRADITIONAL ROLES ➜ WOMEN > MEN and not MEN >
WOMEN

➜ Nature is an ANTAGONIST ➜ It is represented by the wolf, the forest, the constitutive

exterior.

➜ There is an INITIATION JOURNEY ➜ It has to do with the age of the girl (in her pubescent
stage). In order to become successful, there are a series of tests she has to overcome, and she
DOES.

➜ Although there are several beasts mentioned in the story, the wolf is the WORST because it
seems to be the most threatening, destabilizing beast because it crosses borders/boundaries ➜ It
can move between a HUMAN shape and an ANIMAL shape, i.e. between CIVILIZATION and
NATURE ➜ It is capable of DECEIVING the girl, who believes she’s attacked by a wolf, when, in
fact, it is her grandmother.

➜ The girl moves away from the position of being an OBJECT OF DESIRE and becomes a
DESIRING SUBJECT, which gains domain over beasts after receiving her father’s knife.

➜ Carter’s girls play by the RULES OF PATRIARCHY.

➜ The DICHOTOMY is maintained ➜ There is a hierarchy, but it is SUBVERTED. Although she

gained domain over nature, she played by the rules of patriarchy.

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➜ Domain over nature ➜ There is TENSION between the girl and her fight with nature. She
finally succeeds in the fight, she kills the wolf (her grandmother), and prospers.

TECHNOLOGIES OF GENDER:

➜ They are practices, discourses and knowledge disseminated throughout culture (cinema, theater,
literature, painting, medical or legal disciplines, etc.) ➜ GENDERED SUBJECTIVITIES

➜ Gender is a provisional product constituted through these technologies (individual and social)

➜ FAIRY TALES ➜ Powerful technologies of gender:

◉ They traffic in REPRESENTATIONS (of gender and nature).

◉ They are legitimated by their origin (oral transmission invests them with "WISDOM").

◉ They function as CAUTIONARY TALES (a warning to subjects that are bein form).

IN THE STORY:

➜ An appropriation of symbols of PATRIARCHAL POWER ➜ The phallic symbol of the KNIFE.

➜ A concern with INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF PATRIARCHAL VALUES ➜

Perpetuation of the SEX-GENDER SYSTEM.

➜ Reevaluation of the INTERIOR / EXTERIOR DICHOTOMY ➜ How women or feminized subjects

inhabit the PUBLIC SPACE (which was traditionally thought of as an exclusively MALE space).
How the empowered young woman goes outside of the DOMESTIC REALM and conquers the
threatening exteriority.

HOW TO TELL A TRUE WAR STORY

1) When and where is the narrator at the moment of speaking?

➜ The narrator tells the story from the United States 20 years after the Vietnam War happened.

2) What are the episodes he remembers? Which of these did he actually witness?
➜ The death of Rat’s friend Lemon.
➜The story of hearing ghosts.

3) What are, according to O’Brien, the characteristics of storytelling?

➜ According to O’Brien, stories shouldn’t have a moral; they shouldn’t leave people feeling uplifted.
It is difficult to separate what happened from what it seems to have happened.

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STYLE / WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1) What is postmodern about this story?

➜ FRAMED NARRATIVE: The story has a CHINESE BOX structure, because there are stories told
inside other stories. ➜ “How to Tell a True War Story” (the title) marks the frame within which
the fictional stories, events, or anecdotes will be framed/told by the narrator.

➜ METAFICTION: The narrator poses the question about the relationship between FICTION and
REALITY. Throughout the story, this blurred line between what is real and what is fictional is
realized by means of critical comments on the part of the narrator.

➜ HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION: There is a blurred line between historical facts (the

Vietnam War, in this case) and the way in which the narrator experienced that event. Therefore,
there will be instances of mismatch between what truly happened and what the narrator tells that
seems to have happened.

➜ REWRITING OF HISTORY: The narrator tells the story of a factual event (the Vietnam War)
from multiple perspectives by telling different versions of the same event/anecdote. The narrator is
challenging History by re-writing it with his small stories, from the point of view of a survivor of
the War, instead of the one of a big historian.

2) What does the story call into question? For which purpose?

➜ The story calls into question the way in which a true war story should be told. It questions the
meaning of a single universal TRUTH. It separates truth from HAPPENINGNESS: the fact that
something didn’t happen doesn’t make it any less important/relevant/true. For example, the
narrator says: “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.”

➜ The story questions the limits between HISTORIOGRAPHY and FICTION. It exposes how these
two discourses are, in fact, narratives. Therefore, they share these strategies or steps in writing, or
these choices that have to be made as to how or from which perspective to tell the same event.

3) How is the reader constructed in the story? What is required from them?
Since the narrator addresses the reader in multiple sections of the story, the reader is constructed
as an ACTIVE PARTICIPANT of the story. The story challenges the readers and demands them to
have certain skills to understand the story that a traditional short story would not demand from
them. The readers are required to question the VERACITY of what they are reading.

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4) Explain the following quote from the story based on the definition of metafiction provided in
this handout.

In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to
happen. ➜ There is a blur in the line between FACT and PERCEPTION. What seems to happen
becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. ➜ A critical comment about how one should
tell a true war story. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes
and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Lemon, you look away and then look back for a
moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. ➜ One doesn't
apprehend all the fact that happened in an event. Perception is highly subjective, and the raw
event that happened cannot be perceived in a very comprehensive way. We see the importance of
one's experiences, but that experience is limited to one's perception. And then afterward, when you
go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but
which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. ➜ Again, the experience of an event
and how it is told is limited to that person's perspective.

5) Refer to how the narrator is constructed and state what is gained by that.
➜ The narrator is a FICTIONALIZED Tim O’Brien. He acknowledges that he doesn’t know how to
go about telling the story in a definitive way. He goes about telling the story in different ways
several times throughout the story itself. He is a SUBJECTIVE narrator affected by trauma, which
makes him an unreliable storyteller.

THEMES:

The elusiveness of truth

➜ The truth is separated from what happened in the past. Since the truth is relative and
depends on every person’s perspective, it is highly SUBJECTIVE. One cannot apprehend all
the FACTS that happened in an event; therefore, that even that happened cannot be
perceived in a comprehensive way. This elusiveness can be realized through metafictional
strategies

The impossibility of accessing the past

➜ Since the story is told by a survivor of the Vietnam War, many of the events or anecdotes
that he narrates are blurred pictures of his memories of that time. What this impossibility
of access implies is that it is difficult for the narrator to remember clearly what happened
because, as he says: “the angles of vision are skewed” and “the pictures get jumbled,” which are
phrases that make reference to how TRAUMATIZED he ended from experiencing the war
at first hand.

Reality and fiction

➜ Fiction resorts to discursive strategies and discloses them. Besides, fiction shows how
reality is a CONSTRUCTION shaped like that for a purpose and not transparently accessed

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 by the language. Also, the fact that the story is retold 20 years later and that it is the story
of a traumatic event makes it more difficult to apprehend the facts of what actually
happened and becomes a construction of what the narrator PERCEIVES that happened,
making a thick blurry line between reality and what is being told.

The nature of war

➜ There are a lot of critical comments on the part of O’Brien criticizing how a true war
story should be told. He states that a war story should not have a moral, and should not
leave people feeling uplifted. It’s not like any war story as they are depicted in historical
discourse. In fact, the story is told from the SUBJECTIVE perspective of a traumatized
narrator, which was an actual soldier fighting in the war.

MACHINAL

1) Who is the main character of the play? Does she have a name? Why (not)?
➜ The main character is a woman who works as a stenographer for an important businessman.
She doesn’t have a name throughout the play, she represents the TYPE of a “Young Woman,” which
was highly experimental in Expressionist plays.

2) The play is loosely based on the 1927 murder trial of Ruth Snyder. How does this affect your
reading of the text?
➜ The fact that the play is based on the 1927 muerder trial of Ruth Snyder makes us empathize
with the main character and makes us understand the reasons why Helen had to do what she did in
order to achieve her freedom.

3) How is the play divided? What are the different parts? What is the significance of this division?
➜ The play is divided into 9 EPISODES, each of which is centered on the basic happenings in this
young woman’s life, on the different phases of life that the woman comes in contact with, and in
none of which she finds any place, any peace. What’s more, most of the things take place OFF
STAGE because it is left to the audience’s imagination so that they can imagine the scenes and
those stages that the young woman undergoes. In other words, what is important is not those
events that are left unsaid, but the FEELINGS and EMOTIONS the character had during those
events. ➜ What is STAGED is the projection of the characters’ INNER FEELINGS, and not so much
on what triggers those feelings, which is a typical characteristic of an Expressionist play.

4) There is plenty of repetition in different speeches in the text. How do they affect the general
aesthetics of the play?
➜ These repetitions, especially at the beginning of the play, in EPISODE 1, represents the WHITE
NOISE (RUIDO DE FONDO). They represent how the mechanization of society is always at the back
of the young woman’s mind. In a way, she feels so numbed by what surrounds her that it doesn’t let
her think that much. In Buteler’s opinion, these repetitions in the first episode represent the
mechanization of society, and how people are economically dependent on work and everything they

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do. For example, in the lines “Hello – Hello – George H. Jones Company good morning – hello hello –
George H. Jones Company good morning –hello” by the Telephone girl, we see how she is at work,
repeating the same phrases that she does every time she goes to work, it’s like a neverending routine.

5) Reflect upon the repetition of platitudes and clichés.

➜ The mere repetition of the same phrases or words gives the impression that everything they say
or do is MECHANICAL, almost like automatic or a preestablished behavior, like being ROBOTS.

6) Katherine Weiss claims that “The history of ‘hysteria’ and electricity can shed light on this
unusual play” (Weiss, p. 8). How?
➜ HYSTERIA: It is associated with WOMEN. In the XX Century, it was common to diagnose
women who refused to conform to the expected gender roles with depression or hysteria, which
was treated with ELECTROSHOCK.

➜ ELECTRICITY: It is associated with the ELECTRIC CHAIR to which the main character is
sentenced to die by.

7) Find imagery in Machinal pertaining the following concepts:

➜ DOMESTICITY: There are certain images that represent the role of a good housewife, like tactile
imagery “YOUNG WOMAN crosses to behind screen. Takes a pair of rubber gloves and begins to
put them on,” the role of a mother, like auditory imagery “Offstage sound of baby crying. MOTHER
rises, clatters dishes,” Besides, there are images of different furniture and house rooms such as a
“sitting room,” a “divan,” a “telephone,” or a “window,” that makes us think of a house.

➜ MECHANICALNESS: In Episode 1, there are a lot of auditory imagery pertaining to OFFICE

MACHINES such as “typewriters,” “adding machine,” “manifold,” “telephone bells,” and “buzzers.”

➜ BREATHING: We sensory imagery in the lines “You don’t breathe deep enough – breathe now –
look at me. (He breathes.) Breath is life. Life is breath” by the young woman’s husband. This is an
exteriorization of how she feels suffocated in her life.

STYLE / WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1) Analyze the different Expressionist techniques that you can find in Machinal.

➜ The projection of the individual’s INNER THOUGHTS or MIND: As mentioned before, what is
shown on stage are projections of how the main character feels, her inner thoughts, and not so
much on what triggers those thoughts. ➜ EMOTIONS in this play are much more important than
the plot itself.

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➜ ARCHETYPAL CHARACTERS that stand for a TYPE: The young woman, for example, stands for
ANY young woman at that time. In the case of the role of the husband, it stands for ANY men at
that time, who usually thought that women were supposed to follow their orders and be
submissive. The characters in the office stand for ANY working-class person economically
dependent on their works.

➜ EPISODIC STRUCTURE: This play is Expressionist because it is divided into short episodes
instead of Acts, which is highly experimental and characteristic of this movement.

➜ REPETITIVE DIALOGUE: There are many cases of mere repetition of words, phrases or
sentences which do not lead to any type of real communication but rather to just an exchange of
words with no sense at all.

➜ The use of LIGHTING and SOUND: The use of lighting and sound effects contribute to
conveying or projecting the characters’ inner thoughts and how they feel. As regards the sound in
the first episode, for example, the sound of machines and murmuring voices, help to convey the feeling of
numbness and suffocation that she feels in her work and in her life. As regards light, at the end of every
episode the light goes out, representing the end of that stage in the woman’s life, and then at the
beginning of the following episode the light goes on again, representing the starting point of that new
stage in her life.

➜ DISTORTION OF REALITY: There is a distortion of reality every time the young woman hears
VOICES that are not actually present on stage and they may not be even real. In the text, it is
illustrated by lines such as “VOICES. Free – free – free –,” “VOICE OF A HUCKSTER. Stones for sale –
stones – stones – small stones – precious stones –,” or “THE VOICE OF HER LOVER. They were a bunch
of bandidos – bandits you know – holding me there – what was I to do – I had to get free – didn’t I? I had
to get free –.”

➜ FRAGMENTATION in terms of VOICES and NARRATIVE: As regards the narrative of the play,
we get a fragmented one since there are certain events of the play that are STAGED and many
others that happen OFF STAGE. For example, we get to know off stage that the young woman had a
baby, which is illustrated in Episode 4 by the lines “Characters seen but not heard,” or “Such a sweet
baby you have, too. (No response.) Aren’t you glad it’s a girl? (YOUNG WOMAN makes sign with her
head ‘No’.) You’re not! Oh, my! That’s no way to talk!”

➜ The use of SYMBOLS: ANSWERED IN QUESTION No. 4.

2) Although rarely used in drama, machinal utilizes the stream-of-consciousness technique in

certain scenes. Why? To what effect?
➜ The stream-of-consciousness style is used in Episode 1 when the young woman is thinking her
thoughts aloud to the subdued accompaniment of the office sounds and voices.

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In this case, we see how the character freely associates the marriage proposal with a stream-like
associative thought process or sequence of isolated words. The purpose of the usage of this style is
that the AUDIENCE could feel how overwhelmed and suffocated she was, so that the audience
could empathize with her and understand her feelings. Besides, the use of the
stream-of-consciousness style contributes to the aim of the Expressionist play of depicting the
inner feelings and the workings of the mind of the characters.

4) Analyze the following symbols in the play:

➜ THE TELEPHONE: It stands for a lack of communication between the SPOUSES. They do not
communicate their feelings to each other. Also, the fact that the words, phrases or sentences
uttered on the phone are mere repetitions represents the MACHINERY put to use at work. They
don't convey real communication but a rather automatic and robotic sequence.

➜ THE ELECTRIC CHAIR: It symbolizes DEATH because it’s through the electric chair that the
young woman dies. Besides, it is the only machine she cannot escape from, which symbolizes how
human beings cannot escape from death because it is our destiny to die someday.

THEMES:

➜ CLAUSTROPHOBIA: She feels claustrophobic in her marriage as she feels uncomfortable and, in
a way, invaded by her husband. The fact that she is in a marriage with a man that she doesn't even
love and from which she cannot escape makes it even worse.

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➜ ENTRAPMENT: She feels trapped in a marriage that she’s not happy with, and the only way she
can experience freedom is by having an illicit affair with another man. Besides, she feels lonely as
she doesn’t have any friends and she lives with her mother. She feels PHYSICALLY and
SPIRITUALLY confined.

➜ GENDER INEQUALITY: We see that women are dependent on MEN and that it is men that make
all the decisions. Besides, we see that women are forced to follow their expected gender role of
being a good woman, getting married, getting pregnant, and being a good mother to her kids and a
good housewife to her husband.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

1) How significant is Tom’s double role in the play?

This double role is highly EXPERIMENTAL for a Realist play. By playing the role of the narrator,
Tom tells the story retrospectively; i. e. he tells a MEMORY, which he knows he doesn’t narrate
OBJECTIVELY, because he chooses what to remember and what to forget.

1. This double role is very significant because it emphasizes the fact that it is a MEMORY
PLAY.

2. It is also significant because he, as the narrator, chooses what to tell and what not to tell
to the audience.

2) Williams’ production notes and stage directions emphasize his innovative theatrical vision. He
felt that realism, which aimed to present life as it was without idealizing it, had outlived its
usefulness. It offered, as Tom puts it, “illusion that has the appearance of truth.” Williams sought
the opposite in The Glass Menagerie: truth disguised as illusion. To accomplish this reversal of
realism, the play employs elaborate visual and audio effects and expressionistic sets that
emphasize symbolic meaning at the expense of realism. Can you identify some Expressionist
traces in the play?

➜ FRAGMENTED NARRATIVE ➜ There will be constant changes between hearing/reading Tom

as the NARRATOR and then as the character of Tom himself on stage. There will be different
perspectives on the story of the play.

➜ EXPERIMENTING WITH LIGHTNING ➜ There is a constant change of lightning to establish

certain boundaries between the characters or to mark the double-role of Tom. For example: when
Laura and Jim are dancing in the living room, Amanda and Tom are in the kitchen, which is marked by a
translucent screen made of light that separates both rooms. Whereas Laura and Jim are in the light
during their scene, Amanda and Tom are behind in the dark off the scene, which establishes the
importance of what is happening on stage.

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➜ EXPERIMENTING WITH PROJECTIONS ON SCREEN ➜ The director plays with projections
when projecting different legends (20 in total throughout the play) or images on the screen, which
summarize or enhance, in a way or another, the meaning of what is going on in every scene on
stage. This is illustrated with legends such as LEGEND ON SCREEN: 'Où SONT LES NEIGES' or
[IMAGE: AMANDA AS A GIRL ON A PORCH GREETING CALLERS.]

➜ EXPERIMENTING WITH MUSIC ➜ Every time Laura appears on stage, the music of “Glass
Menagerie (A kind of circus music) is played, which symbolizes INNOCENCE or a world of
ILLUSION. This is illustrated by the legend [LEGEND ON SCREEN: 'LAURA.' MUSIC: ' THE GLASS
MENAGERIE']. When Tom falls out with his mother and then apologizes to her, the music of the
“Ave María” is played, which symbolizes the CHURCH, the place where people go to ask for
FORGIVENESS, just as Tom is asking for to his mother. This is illustrated by the legend “MUSIC
UNDER: 'AVE MARIA'”. When Tom presented the context of the story, dance music was played,
which symbolizes or represents the CONTEXT and with the kind of music that was listened to at
that time. This is illustrated by the legend [DANCE MUSIC: 'ALL THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE
SUNRISE !']. When Jim asks Laura to dance, Waltz music is played. This is illustrated by the legend
[WALTZ MUSIC 'LA GOLONDRINA'.].

➜ EXPERIMENTING WITH THE PLOT ➜ Since the story is told retrospectively by Tom, there are
many instances of FLASHBACKS in the storytelling. Besides, the play is divided into separate
EPISODES (SCENES) much shorter than Acts, which makes it an Expressionist play.

3) Which aspects of The Glass Menagerie are Realist? Which aspects are the most unrealistic?
What function do the non-realistic elements serve?

➜ ACTION OR PLOT ➜ If we look at the times when Tom is playing the role of the narrator, there
is UNITY OF TIME, since he tells the events in chronological order, which is a characteristic of a
Realist play.

➜ INDIVIDUALIZED CHARACTERS ➜ The characters are highly individualized, which reflects

their environment.

➜ SETTING ➜ The setting serves to characterize the environment. Besides, it is an INTERIOR

SETTING presented in the play.

➜ GESTURES AND FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ➜ What the characters say on stage is accompanied
by BODY LANGUAGE.

4) Refer to the use of music.

ALREADY ANSWERED IN QUESTION No. 2.

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5) Use of projections and its significance. What is the effect of the images and phrases that appear
on the screen throughout the play? Do they enhance or detract from the mood of what is
occurring onstage?
ALREADY ANSWERED IN QUESTION No. 2.

6) Discuss the symbol of the glass menagerie. What does it represent? Does it represent the same
things throughout the play, or does its meaning change?
➜ The glass menagerie symbolizes Laura’s FRAGILITY. Since it is a collection of glass animals that
can break very easily, it represents Laura’s fragility, since she can be broken mentally.

◉ At the very beginning of the play, the glass menagerie is intact. From all the glass
animals, there is a UNICORN, which stands for the world of FANTASY or ILLUSION that
Laura experiments, as she hasn’t faced her reality.

◉ At the end of the play, the unicorn breaks and there is left only a HORSE, which stands
for the breaking of the ILLUSION, the turning point in which Laura has finally seen
REALITY as it really is.

THEMES:

➜ ESCAPISM / FANTASY / REALITY: Throughout the story, it is portrayed the characters’

intention or willingness to escape from the reality they are living in.

◉ Tom, for example, being frustrated with the role he has to fulfill of the breadwinner of the
house, escapes to the cinema or to concerts to forget about that sad reality and to enjoy a
moment of illusion. He also usually escaped to the fire-escape to get away from Amanda
nugging him all the time.

◉ Then we got Amanda, who escapes from reality by clinging to the past, to that time when she
was popular and wealthy.

◉ Finally, Laura escapes from reality, in which she feels diminished or ashamed by her physical
defect, by playing all the time with her glass menagerie and by wandering around the town or
going to the zoo in order to avoid attending classes at school.

MAIN SYMBOLS:
DISCUSSED THROUGHOUT THE QUESTIONS ABOVEMENTIONED

The glass menagerie - The glass unicorn - The fire escape

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SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF THE PLAY:

➜ The story took place in the 30s, a period in which there was a revolution in Spain and
disturbances of labour in cities like Chicago, Cleveland, or Saint Louis.

PLOT:

➜ It tells the story of a family of 3 people who have some economic problems.

CHARACTERS:

➜ They are all REALIST characters in the play since they are highly INDIVIDUALIZED.

➜ AMANDA ➜ The mother

◉ She tries to be a good mother, but sometimes tends to be overwhelming and

overprotected with her children.

◉ Her husband left, so she clings to the past, remembering him all the time and not being
fully committed to the present.

◉ When she was very young there tended to be a lot of men wanting to be her husband or
boyfriend, and she was also wealthy.

◉ She married a lower-class man, which she regrets doing because now she lives in an
apartment, in a working-class neighbourhood of New Orleans and has economic
problems.

◉ She works trying to sell subscriptions sof a magazine, but has no success in doing it.

➜ TOM ➜ The son and the NARRATOR

◉ He was the breadwinner of the home, but he wasn't happy with that role he had to fulfill.

◉ He wanted to be a sailor and was a poet at heart, but he couldn’t do either of the things
because he had to support his family.

◉ He always goes to the cinema and attends different shows because he wants to escape
from his reality.

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➜ LAURA ➜ Tom's sister

◉ She suffered an attack of pleurosis when she was young, which left her sort of crippled.

◉ She doesn't feel confident, she feels diminished and ashamed because of her walking
defect.

◉ She is very fragile and self-conscious. ➜ This is closely connected with the title of the
play "The Glass Menagerie", which is a collection of little glass animals like the ones that
Laura takes care of, which are fragile like her.

◉ She doesn't trust herself.

END OF THE PLAY:

➜ Tom ends up leaving the house and travelling around different places. However, he still thinks of
her sister because he is so protective of and attached to her.

➜ He feels guilty for having left her sister behind when he left the house. ➜ "Then all at once my
sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes … / Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you
behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be !" ➜ EXAMPLE OF HIS GUILT.

FOREVER OVERHEAD

1. State the plotline briefly. How long may the boy’s experience last? How is time stretched in the
story and what is the effect of doing so?

➜ At a SURFACE LEVEL, the story is about a boy celebrating his thirteenth birthday in a public
swimming pool. After seeing the diving board and the people that plunged into the water, he
decides that he would do the same. However, once he reaches the top of the diving board, he is
afraid of jumping into the water. However, he doesn’t seem to have any other choice, as the ladder is
full beneath him, and there is a man hurrying him up to jump because he is taking so long to do it.
The story may seem to have an OPEN ENDING, but we can infer or think that the boy finally dives
into the water.

➜ At a DEEP LEVEL, the story is about a boy transitioning from CHILDHOOD to PUBERTY /
ADOLESCENCE / ADULTHOOD. He starts to experience changes in his body, in his behavior, and in
his desires. He also gets confused and feels self-conscious as he doesn’t understand what’s
happening to him with all these changes.

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2. Who is the “you” in the story?
➜ It can be said that the narrator, as being a second-person one, is talking to the MAIN
PROTAGONIST of the story by means of the pronoun “you.” However, it can also be said that the
narrator is directly addressing the READER by means of the same pronoun, and talking to him/her
about his/her experience of life, the coming of age, the new direction his/her life could take, among
other topics.

3. How is “that awkward age” constructed in the text?

➜ It is constructed by a lot of SENSORY IMAGERY and a DETAILED DESCRIPTION of all the
changes the teenage boy suffers as he enters adolescence / adulthood. For example, there is a lot of
hair growing, the voice changes, the boy’s mentality changes and he starts to have wet dreams as there
is a sort of sexual awakening, which are portrayed in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.

4. Explain the significance of the title.

➜ The title is significant as, if we take the word “overhead” as a metaphor of “adulthood,” it
symbolizes the boy’s fear of jumping to the water and entering adulthood, from which he would not
be able to escape anymore as one cannot go back in time and live the previous stages of life again.
In fact, we could interpret the word “forever” as a symbol for the boy’s wish of staying as a child for
the rest of his life.

➜ It can also represent the time the boy spends at the top of the diving board, as once he reaches
the top, it feels like time freezes for him as he thinks which path of life he should take, whether he
jumps or stays at the top of the board.

5. The pool is constructed in the text as a machine. How is it characterized? How does this
construction advance the plot?
➜ The pool is constructed as a SWOOPING MACHINE. The boy sees it as an assembly line in a
factory, where there is an automatic process: people get in line, climb the ladder, reach the top, and
finally dive into the water, and then the cycle is repeated. This construction of the pool as a machine
advances the plot as it is by means of this machine that the boy challenges himself to dive into this
new stage in his life, to dive into ADULTHOOD. It also contributes to the plot as it marks the fear of
the boy of entering adulthood, which he will eventually have to accept as there is no way of
escaping the cycle of life.

STYLE & WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1. What is the effect of incorporating a second person narrator?

➜ The effect of incorporating a second person narrator is that there is like an illusion or we
suppose that the narrator could be addressing the main character directly or could be addressing
the reader as well by means of the pronoun “you.” By means of this SECOND-PERSON NARRATOR
and the DRAMATIZATION OF THE READER, the author is using Postmodern strategies but with a
different aim, which is to create a new Realism that represents a world that we all more or less know. In

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this case, as the coming of age or transition between childhood to adulthood and experiencing all
the changes in the body is UNIVERSAL to all the people in the world, the author tries to reconnect
himself with the protagonist and all the readers engaged in reading the story.

2. Read out loud the following fragment from the story:

There is a rhythm to it. Like breathing. Like a machine. The line for the board curves back
from the tower’s ladder. The line moves in its curve, straightens as it nears the ladder. One
by one, people reach the ladder and climb. One by one, spaced by the beat of hearts, they
reach the tongue of the board at the top. And once on the board, they pause, each exactly
the same tiny heartbeat pause. And their legs take them to the end, where they all give the
same sort of stomping hop, arms curving out as if to describe something circular, total;
they come down heavy on the edge of the board and make it throw them up and out.

Refer to the rhythm in the fragment and how it is achieved through repetition and line length.
➜The rhythm achieved through repetition and line length conveys the slow process of the boy
getting on the line to the diving board, the way in which people move forward one by one, climb the
ladder, reach the top, and dive into the water. In a way, it represents the FUNCTIONING OF THE
MACHINE, the ASSEMBLY LINE like in a factory, and how it is like an automatic process. Also, as
the narrator makes reference to heartbeats and pauses, he may be representing the boy’s
heartbeats as the closer he gets to the top of the ladder, the more afraid he gets of jumping, as the
narrator says, “and once on the board, they [the heartbeats] pause.”

3. What type of images prevail in the story? Find examples and explain their effect in the building
of the experience represented.
➜ There prevails the use of SENSORY IMAGERY (mainly VISUAL and OLFACTORY) as there is a
detailed description of the surroundings: the ladder that takes him up, the view the boy has at the
top of the diving board, the color of the water, and also a description of the changes the boy
experiences in his body and in his mind. This was one of the techniques used by Realist writers, as
they aimed at portraying reality as a photographic representation. For example, when describing the
changes of the body, the narrator mentions words and phrases such as “brittle black hair,” “hard curled
hair,” “warmth,” “black bedroom ceiling,” “moist,” among many others.

THEMES:

➜ The importance of RITES OF PASSAGE (refer to the significance of water in performing rituals)
➜ Water is associated with PURIFICATION, REBIRTH or CLEANSING. In this case, by diving into
the water, the protagonist is REBORN into a fearless adult.

➜ COURAGE and MASCULINITY / MANHOOD

➜ Feelings of CONFUSION and ANXIETY experienced when entering adulthood.

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➜ SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS in puberty.

➜ SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS / STEREOTYPING / GENDER ROLES ➜ Men are supposed to be

BOLD, FEARLESS, COURAGEOUS, otherwise they are not man enough.

4. What is Post-postmodern about this short story?

➜ RECONNECTION WITH THE WORLD WE ALL KNOW

➜ OPEN ENDING ➜ Debatable: It may be interpreted as the last “Hello” is uttered by the
narrator welcoming the boy into adulthood. It can also be interpreted as the boy telling himself
that he needs to jump, that he needs to come out of that fear and anxiety he is feeling.

➜ DRAMATIZATION OF THE READER

➜ LINEAR PLOT

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

1. When and where is the story set?

➜ The story is set in Chicago in 1927. The play develops in Red Rhythm Recordings, a studio where
Ma Rainey’s band is recording their NEW ALBUM.

2. What does the title refer to?

➜ The title refers to Ma Rainey, who is considered the MOTHER OF THE BLUES, and to the name
of her newest SINGLE, which she named “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

3. Why does Ma Rainey arrive late?

➜ Apparently, she had a CAR ACCIDENT, and when she wanted to take a cab, the driver refused to
take them because they were black people. What’s more, she is ACCUSED OF ASSAULTING the cab
driver. Irvin tries to solve the problem and they finally arrive late to the studio. However, they don’t
start recording right away because Ma Rainey demands a can of coke before starting the recording.
Irvin tells her that after the recording he would buy some cans of Coke, but she insisted that she
wanted it before recording. But even before that, she doesn’t want to start because she wants a
microphone for Sylvester, her nephew, to introduce the new song. Sylvester is a STUTTERER, so he
takes so long to properly say the words without stuttering. Once he says the words, they “record”
the song. Unfortunately, Sturdyvant realizes that the recording HAS NEVER STARTED, so they
have to start all over again. Of course, Ma Rainey gets really angry and the band complains because
they have spent a lot of time recording the song, so they want to leave the studio, they do not want
to do it all over again. After this, Irvin intervenes and asks them to wait for 15 minutes so that he
can get a new microphone for Sylvester, which seems to have caused the problem. When they
finally record the song for the second time, Sturdyvant decides to pay Sylvester taking part of Ma

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Rainey’s payment, for which she complains and says that if she had wanted to pay her nephew
herself, she would’ve done it from the very beginning.

4. Who is Levee? What does he want to do?

➜ Levee is a young Black TRUMPET PLAYER in Ma Rainey’s band. He wants to be successful and
respected not only by White people, but also by his band mates. Besides, to a certain extent, he
wants to be like Ma Rainey because he ADMIRES her and feels like she makes herself respected by
the White people. However, he’s UNSATISFIED with his role as an accompanying musician, so he
tries the band to new heights by playing a more modern, “fresh” style, which creates tension with
Ma and with Cutler, and eventually, causes Ma to fire him. Levee just has to play what he’s told, but
he doesn’t like being told what to do. He spends time writing HIS OWN SONGS because Sturdyvant
promises him that if he writes some songs for him, he would give him the chance to record one of
them. Eventually, Sturdyvant tells him that his songs are unlikely to become popular in the music
industry, that he won’t give him a chance to record the songs and that he would pay him $5 each
piece. All these events lead Levee to get really ANGRY, which causes the tragic ending in which he
stabs Toledo in the back.

➜ He became the man he is today because when he was younger, a group of 10/11 WHITE MEN
broke into his house and raped his mother. These men stopped raping his mother because Levee
took a knife and when he was fighting with the men he hurt himself. Therefore, the men were
afraid that he would bleed to death, so they stopped, took him to a VET, not even to a doctor
because they wouldn’t treat a Black person, and escaped. Then, he started to question God and
didn’t believe in him any longer. After these events, his father sold his lands to one of these rapist
white men. Eventually, he tried to find him and kill him.

5. Each member of the band has a story to tell that embodies something representative of the
black experience. Discuss.
➜ Each member has a different story to tell that emodies the discrimination, racism, killings in
their families and injustices, among other things, that they have suffered not only in the present
(the 20’s), but also in the past.

LEVEE: He represents the CHANGE. He wants what he has been promised. Besides, as an
African-American man and an American citizen, he wants the rights that every American citizen
has and that are stated in the Constitution. As he is smart and talented, he wants to be
acknowledged as such.

MA RAINEY: She represents the AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE. As being considered the

Mother of the Blues, she is the one in charge of passing the story of the Black community.

TOLEDO: He is the only LITERATE person in the band. He is the only one who can read and write
properly. Besides, we get to know that Toledo was married, but he hasn’t seen his wife in a while.

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6. How significant is Ma Rainey’s insistence on having Sylvester do the introduction to “Ma
Rainey’s Black Bottom”?
➜ It may seem to be a question of POWER. On the one hand, we may think of it in terms of the
promise Ma Rainey has made to Sylvester’s mother. This shows that she is loyal to her people, to the
Black community. On the other hand, we may think of it in terms of just the exercise of power. She
insists that Sylvester do the introduction because she wants to be respected and to impose her own
rules in her own way.

7. What does the lack of resolution at the end of the play signify?
➜ It signifies that regardless of the fact that she makes the Whithe men suffer, and that she tries to
delay the recording by making her demands, in the end these men’s WHITE SUPREMACY
overpowers her and they get what they wanted, they get the RIGHTS OF THE SONG. Besides, it
represents that, in the end, Black artists do not have power over White people and over their own
productions, they are always dominated and exploited by White people.

THEMES:

RACE / RACISM ➜ We see the SEGREGATION of Black people, for instance, when the taxi driver
refuses to take Ma Rainey to the studio because she is Black. Besides, due to the color of her skin,
she is accused of assaulting the taxi driver and arrested for that.

EXPLOITATION OF BLACK ARTISTRY ➜ We have Ma Rainey’s and Levee’s cases, in which both
are exploited by a White man. The difference lies in the fact that Ma Rainey knows from the very
beginning that she is interesting to Sturdyvant only for her voice, and not for her qualities as a
human being, whereas Levee believes until the very end of the play that he will be given a chance to
record his own songs, to be successful and to be respected, even though that never happens and all
ends in a tragic event.

BLACK EXPERIENCE AT THE BEGINNINGS OF THE 20TH CENTURY ➜ We not only get to know
about how Black people feel living in a White community, but also about the tension within the
same Black community, between Black people.

POWER ➜ We see the rivalry between the Black community and White Supremacy, and how White
people exercise more power and have more authority over Black people, artists and their
productions.

STYLE:

1. Structure of the play

➜ The play is divided into TWO ACTS. In terms of structure and the narrative, they are more
TRADITIONAL and the events happen CHRONOLOGICALLY as the story develops. What makes
this play Postmodern has to do mainly with the topics it deals with, as it gives voice to a silenced

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community (Black) and it is also written by a Black author. However, it doesn't employ any of the
typical Postmodern strategies.

2. Can you identify any elements of the Modern tragedy?

➜ It is an IMITATION OF A SERIOUS ACTION ➜ The play is about a serious problem, which is the
segregation, discrimination and racism against the Black community.

➜ The aim of arousing PITY and FEAR is present in the play.

➜ A MODERN HERO ➜ Levee ends up making an error of judgement driven by his anger and fury
after believing in White men and being disappointed by them. Also, Toledo’s stepping into Levee’s
new shoes is the event that triggers all that anger that has been festering, which ends up in the
death of Toledo.

3. Refer to the use of vernacular language

➜ By Wilson’s using the vernacular language of BLACK ENGLISH, he is taking a political stance
and stating that this variety of English is as valid and as important as any other variety of English,
including White English.

STELLA

➜ The play gives voice to a MINORITY: the Queer community.

1) Who is the main character of the play? Does the fact that the play is based on actual people
affect your reading of the text?
➜ The main character is STELLA CLINTON. The play is based on Ernest Boulton, a real man born
in London who, after failing as a bank clerk, started performing and developing a new identity as a
transvestite or drag queen called Stella Clinton.

2) What are the coexisting / colliding / merging times of the play? How are they presented? How
are they distinguished?
➜ There are two parallel times coexisting in the play:

◉ The first part, which develops the events that character ONE (Stella at 56 years old -
PRESENT TIME) experiences. ➜ Older version of Stella. She is drug induced and keeps
taking the drug (morphine) throughout the play as she is trying to make sense of the life
she lived both as a woman and as a man.

◉ The second part, which develops the events that character TWO (Stella at 21 years old -
PAST TIME) experiences. ➜ Younger version of Stella. She is not wondering about her life;
she is just making herself beautiful to meet her lover, to perform and to live her life as
Stella.

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3) Playwright Neil Bartlett has said that “Gender is a journey not a destination. Thirty years ago, I
put on a frock, crossed Leicester Square and received a death threat. That night led me to create
Stella, my show about an extraordinary Victorian gender experimenter” (Bartlett, The Guardian,
2016). How does the play embody many of the concerns of queer drama at present while
recreating Victorian times?
➜ ANSWERED IN QUESTION No. 4

3) Stella may be seen as a metafictional, thus Postmodern, play. What features of metafiction can
you identify after reading it?

METAFICTION:

➜ BREAKING OF THE FOURTH WALL ➜ The actors on stage address or talk directly to the
audience, that’s the whole point of the play so that people sympathize with the issue and with what
Stella/Ernest had to live back in the day.

➜ RECUPERATION OF A HISTORICAL CHARACTER / REWRITING OF HIS/HER STORY ➜ The

story is based on the life of Ernest Boulton and his journey as Stella. Bartlett rewrites his story so as
to raise awareness of the important issue Queer people dealt and deal nowadays on a daily basis.

➜ USE OF PANTOMIME

➜ BLURRING OF THE LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION

➜ TIME DISLOCATION ➜ The play is divided into two different times; one is the past, in the 19th
Century and the other is the present 20th century.

POSTMODERN:

➜ TOPIC OF THE PLAY ➜ Sexuality, gender fluidity and Queer community.

➜ GIVING VOICE TO A MINORITY GROUP ➜ The Queer community.

➜ THE STORY TOLD FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A QUEER AUTHOR ➜ Neil Bartlett tells the
story from the point of view not only of Stella but also of his own experiences as a Queer.

4) Queer theory has been defined as lacking a uniform identity, constantly resisting
heteronormative mechanisms of control, understanding the body as a tool of resistance against
normativity, disputing concepts of gender, sex, sexuality and identity, challenging mainstream
discourse and other historiographies. In this context, what makes Stella a queer play?

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➜ POLITICAL AGENDA: Neil Bartlett wants to address and make visible all the problems that
Queer people have to go through on a daily basis, and how they are discriminated against.

➜ TRANSGRESSION: The play is transgressive in CONTENT, in FORM, and in TECHNIQUES. In

content because it takes a political stance and makes visible the problems Queer people face on a
daily basis. In form because it is highly experimental as there are two men on stage but they are
speaking as women: one plays as the younger version of Stella and the other plays as the older
version of Stella. Finally, in techniques, since the fourth wall is BROKEN as the actors on stage are
speaking directly to the audience.

➜ COLLABORATIVE EFFORT: The playwright, the actors, the director, and even the audience
contribute to the construction of meaning.

➜ SPEAKS TO THE AUDIENCE: The actors performing on stage refer directly to the audience as
they want to ENGAGE the audience and want members of the audience to SYMPATHIZE with what
is being shown on stage and to become aware of the problem they are addressing.

➜ NON-TRADITIONAL SETTING: The setting consist on an empty stage with only two men
sitting in two chairs talking to the audience.

➜ ANDROGYNOUS CHARACTERS: This is portrayed by the two actors that perform the role of
both versions of Stella, which means that two men play the role of two women.

➜ CHALLENGES HETERONORMATIVE MORES: Throughout the story, it is talked about GENDER

FLUIDITY, because Stella is not always a man, a transvestite, a drag queen or a lady of the high
society throughout the play, but she is constantly changing identities as she needs.

STYLE & WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1) Based on your reading of the play and of the two newspaper articles in the “works cited”
section, what are the themes of the play?

➜ MULTIPLE AND UNSTABLE SEXUALITY ➜ As mentioned before, Stella is not always the same
person or does not always hold the same identity; instead, she is constantly changing as she needs.

➜ GENDER FLUIDITY ➜ “Gender is a journey, not a destination.”

➜ CONCEALMENT AND SHOW ➜ Stella decides to whom she should show or conceal her
multiple identities. Her mother, for example, knows about her life as a transvestite and as a lady of
high society and accepts it.

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 THE TAMARISK HUNTER

➜ The story is about a man called Lolo who lives in California, near the Colorado River. The region
is going through a DROUGHT, so there is not enough water for all the people. As a consequence of
this, the government starts to give MONEY BOUNTIES (around $2,88 a day) and WATER
BOUNTIES (a certain amount of water from the headgates at his place) to all the people who ripped
Tamarisk trees, as they consume a lot of water. Lolo starts to rip these trees and gets the money for
them. However, as he doesn’t want his business to end, every time he rips a tree, he plants more so
that they never end and he can continue ripping them and claiming the bounties.

➜ Another measure taken by the government was the covering of the Colorado River not only to
prevent water evaporation, but also to prevent WATER THEFT, since in that way nobody could
have access to the river. So, apart from the temperature getting hotter and the weather getting
dustier and windier, people living near the Colorado River were taken away from their access to the
water. The government was EXPROPRIATING the river and deviated its course to California. In
that way, they would offer money to the people for their lands so that they could move to other
regions with access to water. Unfortunately, people knew that if they moved to California or to
another country, they would not be accepted as they would be CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEE,
because they would be leaving their country not for a war or for any conflict, but for climate
change.

1. When and where is the story set?

➜ The story is set in California, near the Colorado River and in a near future (most probably in the
year 2030).

2. What does “Big Daddy Drought” refer to?

➜ It refers to the drought people near the Colorado River are experiencing, since it is stated that it
is the BIGGEST DROUGHT the region has ever experienced. It is called “Big Daddy” because
everything is influenced or affected by this drought, as if it was the highest authority in the region,
it has been ruling the lives of everybody in the area of the river.

3. Who has the water rights over the Colorado River?

➜ The CALIFORNIAN GOVERNMENT possesses the rights over the Colorado River, and as the
owner of those rights, they can do whatever they feel like doing.

4. What is the straw?

➜ It is the COVERAGE of the river made up of a sort of carbon fiber to prevent water evaporation
and water theft.

5. Who is Lolo? What does he do for a living?

➜ He is the main character of the story, and he works as a TAMARISK HUNTER in order to make a
living and to get water supplies. It can be said that what he is doing is ILLEGAL as he is stealing

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water from the government by planting Tamarisk trees for his own benefit, which is affecting all
the people of the region who cannot get water.

6. What are the effects of global warming presented in the story?

➜ The INCREASE of temperatures.

➜ The LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY.

➜ Extreme DROUGHT

➜ HOT WINDS

➜ CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEES

7. What do you make of the ending of the story?

➜ The ending may point to Lolo’s HOPELESSNESS, as he had to nothing to do but to accept the
check and move to the North of the country. It may also point to Lolo’s CONVICTION that there’s
nothing that can be done. What the author may have wanted to portray with that ending is a sort of
WARNING or aims at RAISE AWARENESS that it may not be too late for us to make any change
and to take action to combat Global Warming, and that in 10 years in the future it may be too late
for us to try to stop the environmental crisis.

CENTRAL THEMES:

GLOBAL WARMING AND ANTHROPOGENIC ACTIONS

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE / INJUSTICE ➜ It has to do with the fact that the countries or the
communities that contribute the least to the environmental crisis are the most affected by it. The
most poorer or powerless communities can do little to solve any problem or consequences that may
arise from natural disasters caused by Global Warming, whereas those communities that have
more possibilities and are better equipped can solve the problems in a very short period of time. On
the contrary, those communities or people who have the most possibilities and are the ones that
contribute the most to the crisis are the least affected, which means that there are environmental
injustices.

CLIMATE CHANGE IMMIGRANTS / EXILES / REFUGEES

STYLE & WRITING TECHNIQUES:

1. What images are used to depict the setting of the story?

➜ There are a lot of VISUAL IMAGES that evoke a very dry land and the lack of biodiversity. For
example, phrases like “the skeleton sprawl of emptied towns,” “other people have dried out and blown

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away,” “eviscerated town,” dead-stick trees,” and “dust-hill landscaping” contribute to the construction
of the setting. Also, the fact that a “camel” is mentioned in the story gives the readers the idea of a
DESERT or the lack of water.

2. What is the function of the opening line of the short story “A big tamarisk can suck 73,000
gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bount, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long”
(171)?
➜ It is giving SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION to the reader about what a Tamarisk tree is. The
function of this sentence is to let the reader know that the information provided in the story is
actually a FACT, that it is an issue developing in the real world and that it concerns everybody, it is
not a simple fiction story.

3. What makes this short story an example of cli-fi?

➜ The story deals with ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE ➜ Throughout the story, the main
character and the people deal with the most extreme drought the region has ever experience,
which is a consequence of Global Warming and people’s actions against the environment.

➜ The story deals with ETHICAL ISSUES ➜ There are several ethical questions posed throughout
the story.

◉ The ethical question of whether what Lolo does when getting more and more water from
the water and, consequently, stealing money from the people who couldn’t get it is GOOD or
BAD, or whether it is ILLEGAL.

◉ The ethical question of whether the Californian government’s measures of covering the
river with the straw and deviating the water to the State of California are for the BENEFIT
or for the DETRIMENT of the people. Also if these measures are GOOD because they aim at
preventing water evaporation or BAD since they would prevent people living near the
Colorado River from having access to water supplies.

◉ The ethical question of why Californian people are filling their swimming pools if they
know that there are many regions suffering from the drought and that there are people
struggling with getting access to water supplies. The question of why there are people so
SELF-CENTERED and thinking of their own ENJOYMENT that they do not care or cannot
see that their actions have really bad consequences on the poorer or powerless people of
other regions.

➜ The story has an OPEN ENDING ➜ We don’t know whether Lolo will accept the check, cash it,
and move to the North of the country, or whether he will find another way of living; we only get to
know that Lolo clutches the check. This open ending suggests that a different future is possible for
Lolo and for the people living near the Colorado River. What this open ending suggests is Lolo’s

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HOPELESSNESS. However, he’s still alive, and as long as he is still alive, he can take action to tackle
the crisis and to ensure a better future not only for him, but for the people of the region.

➜ WORLD AT RISK ➜ The story doesn't present the end of the world; but it engages the reader
with the world at risk. The world has not ended, but if people remain doing nothing to change the
situation, the world MAY end in the near future.

➜ The METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENON do not just provide the background setting against
which the story unfolds, but it is this climate change or environmental crisis that significantly
ALTERS the characters and the plot of the story.

GUIDELINES ON LITERARY ESSAY WRITING

🙋🏻‍♂️ Read the poem several times in a loud voice so as to grasp its meaning and message.

🙋🏻 Decide what we want to develop in connection with the poem: the idea, the concept,
the argument, etc..

🙋🏻‍♂️ Check what we want to discuss in the essay. What is the point we want to address?

🙋🏻 IDENTIFY (just that) the figures of speech that will help develop our argument.

🙋🏻‍♂️ Elaborate a thesis statement that is CLEAR and CONCISE. We should be very
specific.

🙋🏻 QUOTATION: Place the example between inverted commas (“”) and place the line
number of the POEM between parenthesis [( )] in which the example appears. Also,
separate each verse or line (whenever there are more than one) with a slash (/), for
example: “I may load and unload / again and again / Till I fill the whole shed / And what have
I then?” (13-16)

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🙋🏻‍♂️ Always go back to the thesis statement and make sure that we are JUSTIFYING
what we have stated in the beginning.

🙋🏻 Do use PRESENT TENSES when writing a literary essay.

🙋🏻‍♂️ Focus on the WHAT (content) and the HOW (style).

🙋🏻 CONCLUSION: finish by explaining the conclusion you have reached and/or briefly
summing up the most important points you have made.

🙅🏻‍♂️ Do not analyse all the figures of speech. We should focus on just TWO or THREE (no
more than that).

🙅🏻 We should NOT have a BROAD thesis statement. For example, “the poet describes
the night sky”. That's TOO GENERAL.

🙅🏻‍♂️ Avoid saying "the author" 🡲 We should use "the SPEAKER", “the LYRICAL VOICE, or
“the PERSONA”.

🙅🏻 If we use “imagery” in the Thesis Statement, we SHOULD NOT just write “imagery”.
We should specify what type it is (“visual”, “gustatory”, “tactile”, etc.)

🙅🏻‍♂️ Avoid overusing the FIRST PERSON in your responses.

🙅🏻 Avoid using SLANG expressions, or COLLOQUIAL language.

🙅🏻‍♂️ It is better not to use ABBREVIATED FORMS in formal writing.

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🙅🏻 Avoid ending the essay by introducing another topic or detail.

FORMAT

👀 Formalities are ESSENTIAL, make sure to comply with them.

👀 File name (Name the file after your LAST NAME, GROUP (Comisión) and ASSIGNMENT
NUMBER)

👀 Header according to MLA style ONLY ON THE FIRST PAGE

👀 Indentation
👀 Double line-spacing
VOCABULARY

👀 LINE (instead of stanza) + LINE NUMBER. For example: “... in the line “Even the cold wind is
seeking a new mistress” (9)”.

👀 Agreement, elementary language mistakes (UNACCEPTABLE IN FOURTH YEAR).

👀 Relative clauses (when to use which pronoun, and whether to use commas or not).
👀 Anticipatory “it”.
👀 Lack of vocabulary to describe NATURAL SETTINGS and PHENOMENA. (use the
dictionary).

STRUCTURE

👀 Include a CONCLUDING SENTENCE at the end of EACH paragraph.

👀 Capitalize CONTENT WORDS in the title.
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STYLE

👀 Use the author’s FULL NAME or LAST NAME, not the author’s first name.
👀 Avoid referring to the READER or the READER’S MENTAL PROCESS or INTENTIONS
(there's no proof of what they were thinking or feeling).

👀 DO NOT refer to how the SPEAKER FELT or FEELS because we don't get to know how
they're feeling. If the poem produces those feelings in us, that’s ok, but we shouldn’t include

👀
it in an academic essay.
DO NOT make GENERALIZATIONS. For example: “Spring time is the season when you fall
in love”). If we are referring to nature, that statement sort of makes sense, but not all people
go out to find lovers at a certain time.

👀 DO NOT drop a quotation in the MIDDLE OF THE ESSAY (a fragment), it needs to have a
semantic and grammatical meaning within a sentence.

👀 Separate lines with a [ / ]. For example: “O listen! for the Vale profound / Is overflowing
with the sound” (7-8).

👀 Avoid NON-INFORMATIVE ASSERTIONS such as: “the author chooses words to describe
the night sky” or “this is a case of auditory image because it appeals to the sense of
hearing” → this is not necessary to define as the term defines itself.

👀 Watch out for LOGICAL FALLACIES ➜ “The author uses imagery to describe an image”.
👀 TAUTOLOGY: Saying the same thing with different words.
👀 CIRCULAR REASONING: Making a statement and then using the same statement (with a
different word) to justify what you first stated. For example: “The Bible is the Word of God
because God tells us it is in the Bible.”
(https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Circular-Reasoning).

👀 If you refer to KINETIC ELEMENTS, you should group them CHARACTERIZING these
movements instead of giving a list and its effects (are they slow movements, are they
violent, are they soft?). If we focus on VISUAL IMAGE, what colours prevail? Warm colours,
cold colours, etc. Do you see a contrast in colour?

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 GRAMMAR

👀 Be careful with DANGLING MODIFIERS at the end of a sentence when the reference is not
very clear.

👀 Serious problems with COLLOCATIONS. Use dictionaries!

👀 Punctuation rules.
👀 TENSES: Overuse of CONTINUOUS FORMS even with verbs of experience. In academic
writing, FAVOR SIMPLE PRESENT.

INTRODUCTION

👍 We start the introduction by stating the name of the text and its author.
👍 Then, we mention what the speaker/essay seeks to describe or characterize in the
composition.

👍 Lastly, we describe what figures of speech or what characteristics/stylistic devices are used
or portrayed in the text to describe either the message conveyed in the text or the
characteristics of a certain literary movement.

➜ Introductory phrases:

👍 “To begin with, …”

👍 “The poem “XXXX” written by “XXXX” …”
👍 ““XXXX” is a poem written by “XXXX” that describes …..”
👍 ““XXXX” is a poem/short story by “XXXX” who belongs to the movement of XXXX.”

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 WRITING ABOUT POETRY

➜ These are the key elements you should be aware of when writing about poetry:

● CONTENT: What is the poem about?

● FORM: How does the poet convey his message? Does the poem’s form (its overall
structure) follow an established pattern?

● SPEAKER: Who is the speaker of the poem? (The speaker is not necessarily the poet).
What can you infer about him? What role does the speaker have in the poem?

● TONE: How does the speaker communicate his message?

SAMPLE PARAGRAPHS:

The speaker believes the fruits are magical, and that belief that the fruits are magical and
this is reinforced by the use of strong visual imagery and enumeration. The speaker expresses her
bedazzlement by describing with clear visual images the fruits on the ceiling. For example, she
describes the grapes as “purply and sweet” (11). There is also use of enumeration to describe the
magical properties of the fruit, such as in “makes you hear things, or go/Forever invisible; but it’s
no use” (20- 21).

The poem “Gathering Leaves” was written by the American poet Robert Frost. The speaker
expresses the futility of gathering leaves in autumn due to the constant falling of leaves by the wind
and the fatigue he feels by repeating this monotonous routine every day. The speaker portrays
these ideas by using figures of speech such as auditory and kinetic imagery, and simile.

The poem “Gathering Leaves” was written by Robert Frost. He describes the monotonous
activity of gathering leaves in the harvest, which is an almost weightless task, as one that is heavy.
In the poem, the activity of gathering leaves is seen as a repetitive, pointless and unsatisfying one
that has no end. Through the use of hyperbole and rhetorical questions, the speaker shows his
exhaustion and his discontent towards this never-ending cycle.

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