English Extension I Notes PDF

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English Extension I Study Notes

Literary Worlds + Worlds of Upheaval

Common Module – Literary Worlds In this module students explore, investigate, experiment with and evaluate the ways texts represent and illuminate the complexity of individual and collective lives in literary worlds. Students evaluate how ideas and ways of thinking are shaped by personal, social, historical and cultural contexts. They extend their understanding of the ways that texts contribute to their awareness of the diversity of ideas, attitudes and perspectives evident in texts. Students explore, analyse and critically evaluate textual representations of the experiences of others, including notions of identity, voice and points of view; and how values are presented and reflected in texts. They deepen their understanding of how texts construct private, public and imaginary worlds that can explore new horizons and offer new insights. Students consider how personal, social, historical and cultural context influence how texts are valued and how context influences their responses to these diverse literary worlds. They appraise their own values, assumptions and dispositions as they develop further understanding of how texts make meaning. In their study of literary worlds students experiment with critical and creative compositions that explore how language features and forms are crafted to express complex ideas and emotions, motivations, attitudes, experiences and values. These compositions may be realised in various forms, modes and media. Each elective in this module involves the study of three texts from the prescribed list, with at least two being print texts. Students explore, analyse and critically evaluate a range of other texts that construct private, public and imaginary worlds.

Thesis Development Literature is both derivative and manifest of the ethos which defines a period. Aesthetic engagement with the moral and ideological facets of anthropic patterns help to provide new definitions of man and the truths of such existence. Mimetic quality of art – reflecting the subjective truths of its conception. Idealism promotes self-expression and psychological understanding

Theory Kant’s Negative Capability

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Aesthetic preoccupations – beauty is subjective and deciphered by the artist, informing the search for meaning

Classical mimeses Aesthetic judgement as purely individual. Transcendental idealism Unattainable ideals Deficit between reason and emotion Social constraints and dispositions provide an impetus for individuals to invigorate an idealist mode of thought.

Expansion - When a man is capable of being in uncertainties without any irritable reaching after fact/reason. - Aims to displace the poet’s protean self into another existence – fascination with an object. - Explains that anything seizing the human mind is equivalent to being truthful. - Mutability

Literary Worlds Hayot – On Literary Worlds  ‘world’ in a literary sense functions as an adjective, referring not to the world but to the quality of worldedness, the self-constituting and inner-directed force of a given system. (this quality is reflected in the concept of voice as underpinning and subsequently influencing its wider resonance due to the biases they represent.)  Conflict between the expansive and restrictive worlds as established by intradiegetic and extradiegetic focalisation.  Authorial world refers to a set of historical conditions whose outlines determine the possibilities of literary interpretation. (voice as deriving from context, and also, its reception as influenced by a differing context)  A literary world denotes the diegetic totality constituted by the sum of all aspects of a single text, constellated into a structure or system. This world is focalised and interpreted through the voice it adopts.  Aesthetic worlds always establish a relationship to the theories of the lived world. (unconscious, re-articulations, active refusals) (the perception of the world is instructive and this, the ability to authentically emulate a voice is limited)  Aesthetic worldedness is the form of the relation that a work establishes between the world inside and the world outside. (the resonance of a text upon the responder, instituted by voice.)(aesthetic distance: the deficit between authorial intent and the response by the audience)(framing: the presentation of knowledge to insight audience position)  The world noir which is contained in, yet rarely intersects with the whole. (perspective and focalisation as deriving from voice to establish a noir world, therefore shaping audience interpretation and assumption) “nothing happens between them but more of the same” -Raymond Chandler    

Capacity of form to establish a world Post-structuralist critique in that a text creates a world based on the principal of subjective signification. Worlds as deriving from both setting and structure/form. Often times, speech does not serve to manifest or externalise thoughts – on the contrary, it serves to indicate thoughts which remain unexpressed.

“seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history.”   

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The relative spread of narrative attention shows the extent to which an author presents ideas through their voice. (positioning and authorial intent) Attention equally spread among all parts of the diegesis produces a strong sense of total foregroundedness. (voice inhibits this to subjectively denote meaning) Voice functions to minimise the deficit/distinction between the foreground and background to minimise potential for ambiguity – therefore denoting a prescribed or biased significance. (functions to create more of a world) All literary worlds are semantically incomplete due to the fluidity of language and are thus unable to correspond a reality. Yet texts can assume completeness through the voice they adopt by not recognising the incompleteness. (symbolic signification trumps realistic necessity) Observations are focalised through the text’s narratorial position, functioning to insist otherwise useless details to the text’s hyperrealistic temporal command

Frankenstein  

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The monster expresses the anxiety of the future. His antagonist is representative of the present, a distillation of complacent 19th century mediocrity. An ambivalent dialectical relationship exists between Frankenstein and the monster. (Frankenstein is driven to complete the project, yet it immediately enthralled by fear at its conception.) Frankenstein’s monster is denied individuality, he is a collective and artificial creature. (manifestation of collective social anxieties) From a psychoanalytical interpretation, the monster represents a part of Frankenstein’s fractured psyche. The ego is the individual’s image of themselves as conscious beings. The ego finds a balance between the primitive desires and reality. Tabula rasa (all reason and knowledge comes into our minds from experience) Victor rejects his creature as it represents all that Victor denies – his own fragmented, alienated, and monstrous self. Victor’s denial and repression

Quote “Often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work to a near conclusion.”

Explanation

“How much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow…” (Walton) “So much has been done…more, far more will I achieve.” (Frankenstein) “To have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.”

(Aligns with the Romantic trope of the child – tabula rasa)

“Before for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”

(does not hold the fear of God or the restraints of socially imposed belief.)

(enlarged ego is unable to balance with the id.) (driven by the power of the ego)

“what falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?” “The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.” "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!” “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance.” “exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimen of poetry.”

(nothing evoked emotion and could therefore not be aligned with one’s personal truth.)

(monster of the soul and of the body)

“I shall kill no albatross” “blues cloudless…face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness.” “the world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.” “struggle with a child’s blindness” “exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.” “pour torrent of light into our dark world.” “a human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and neer to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb tranquillity.” “I became as cheerful as before I were attacked by fatal passion.” “I could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind.” “I am alone and miserable” “I’ve have always described myself with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.”

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Amour de soi

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Amour de soi

Romanticism - The beautiful is defined by qualities of smallness, smoothness and delicacy – produces feelings of love. - The sublime is defined by vastness, obscurity and infinity – produces feelings of astonishment and terror. - Astonishment is the state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended. The mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence, reason on that object which employs it. - principle of disintegration – breakdown of the subject - Romantic disillusionment as the conflict between the mind and the world. - Justification of life - Irrationality of the heart corresponds to paradoxical desires – between self-sufficiency and the need for the other. (direct involvement in the realm of materiality.) - Caelum, the antithesis to the material world - Endon (within) problematises the division between the self and the other. - Triumph of the aesthetic, does not assert a system of value, accepting that state of Romantic disillusionment. - Unable to remain in the world within or to return to the world which they have denied, Werther is confronted with reality which has fallen under the shadow of nullity – a reality whose relation to the void no longer masquerades as one of value. - Mutability (keats’ negative capability) – the elegiac interest in the inevitability of time and change, relationship to the melancholic being, compared to the distinct constants between time and change. - Negative capability – when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, aims to displace the poet’s protean self into another existence

Doubles: - The notion of the double was originally formulated in gothic literature as a representation of the supernatural other – however, through the influence of Romanticism, this concept was subverted to deconstruct the image of the individual and expose the dualities of human nature. - Romantic irony - Enables Shelley to sanction the responder into achieving their own subjective interpretation of meaning from the text rather than a discarnate outlook. - Shelley aims to explicitly explore, through contrast, the character of the creature as being far more reflective, conceptual and logical rather than the erratic and self-loathing behaviour of the victim. - Shelley essentially binds the use of doubles as an exploration into Romantic irony and ultimately, the exploration of the psychological self. Romantic Irony: -

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Frankenstein introduces the general theme of modern optimism and pessimism about humanity. Frankenstein as an idealist and monster.

Metropolis       

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Lang refutes the efficacy of Industrial Capitalism by revealing the moral and ethical ambiguities of ideological excess. Exploits profilmic space for social and political commentary. Explores the deficit between the Neue Sachlichkeit and Expressionist view of technology. Represents a critical dystopia which assesses the role of the individual, technology and religion in the increasingly plutocratic society. Lang’s depiction of the vertical organisation of Metropolis – workers become mechanical, replaceable Uniformity and monotony reflect the repression of individuals in the ouroboric framework of political orthodoxy and perceived ‘progression’. Parallels the volatility of ‘the upper-class’, utilising surrealist aesthetics in the ‘Yoshiwara’ scene to illustrate, just as the workers are reduced to hands, the wealthy are reduced to eyes, able only to consume and desire. Dada and surrealism attempted to re-create the free play of the mind in its perceptions. The implacable movement of the workers testifies to a complete erasure of individual will, challenging the capitalistic overture of Weimar Germany. Spatially and ideologically opposed constructions of Maria, a feminine artifice, presented as a product of technological modernity. Portrayal of segregation fragments the human identity. (fragmented social body) Flamboyant costuming and stylised make-up, used to differentiate class, reflects the volatility of identity and class within twentieth-century society. (ephemerality of social being is expressed through the films expressionistic tenour) Illusionary nature of free will within modern society The Moloch scene heightens the moral ambiguities of hierarchical class systems. The title ‘Metropolis’ is Lang’s overture to the upheavals of present society. The enlarged scale of the film (city, workforce) communicates the spread of technology and its potential for to affect all aspects of life. Expressive of Western society’s faith in progress, a kind of cross-cultural secular religion of technology, unrestrained capitalism, and aesthetic design. Music accompanies – La Macseillaise – the film plays a distorted version of the French National Anthem during the workers’ uprising, composed during the French Revolution. The song urged people to rise and fight up against tyranny. Lang uses music to critique the goals and nature of revolution, instead of being glorious and liberating, it is distorted and jarring. The distortion accompanies a tri-tone, traditionally thought to be the devil’s sound. Lang implies the revolution is misguided. (false truths) The New Tower of Babel stands as a critique that commercialisation has become the driving force that will lead to destruction/division. The uniformity and lack of individuality regards the futility of action and the inability to construct or find a meaningful significance. The mythical and religious allusions embedded within the Moloch scene – presented in the Hebrew bible as a foreign deity who was at times illegitimately given place in worship – expresses the demise of religion in the face of social progression and the decay of modern society which derives as a result. Film noir – marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism and menace. Decadence and folly The film suggests that problems arise when society no longer understands itself as a whole. (organic whole)

Construction of visual macrostructures permits visual language to offer a complete synthesis of ideas.  Fusion of technology and vitalistic Nietzschean ‘Lebensphilosophie’ (value/purpose to life)  German Expressionist films present the physical world not in terms of its objective existence, but rather, as a projection of the subjective world. These films are dominated by: Exaggerated settings Compositions of unnatural spaces Use of oblique angles/lines Unnatural costumes/makeup/hair 

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Kunstwollen: the artistic expression of some fundamental spirit of an age. (“a will to art”)

Waiting for Godot

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Posits the idea that we assume aspects of the reality we exist in to construct an understanding of ourselves or the world surrounding. The play disrupts traditional dramatic structure by challenging classical unities surrounding action, place, and time which parallels the fragmentation, alienation and uncertainty of the modernist era and also explores the futility of man in the modern world. The almost bare stage magnifies the theatricality of the play to assert the futility of expectation Nihilistic post-war zeitgeist Explored the idea that language, as well as intellect, does not function to progress, rather, to reshape or reform, embodied in the laconic and elliptical exchanges which echo and reshape what has already been said. (phatic conversation) Asserting and withdrawing meaning to emulate stichomythic verse of Greek drama, utilising repetition and antithesis to develop a sense of inconclusiveness The emotions expressed are far in excess of any evidence available to account for them and there is no separation between the mundane and the lofty, reflecting to the disillusion of modern man. Pursued by their own memory and trapped by their lack of memory. Playing with memory allows Beckett to implement his characteristic style of reduction, fragmentation and repetition. Theatricality, necessary responder interpretation. (theatrical artifice) – interpreting the play using traditional conventions offers false interpretations. The scarce scene highlights the inability to contribute to a holistic image of reality. (objects add up to nothing more than themselves) Aristotelian notion of the ‘tragic flaw’ defined by social and ideological narrative exists but is not resolved. They lead on no larger realisation and are constrained to this condition. Exchange about the thieves serves to question the certainty of gospel truth and shows the relativity of significance. Waiting becomes a metaphor for the existential human condition itself. Role of theatre was to produce a distance, not an unreflexively and emotional involvement in the plot. (view of Bertolt Brecht) This distance or alienation was necessary to see behind the scenes of the socio-political and economic system (manifests in the plays theatricality)

Jean-Paul Sartre – “Existence precedes essence” (a personality is not built over a previously designed model or purpose, because it is the human being who chooses to engage in such enterprise.) Albert Camus’ assessment that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose.

Quote “all the dead voices” Estragon: a kind of prayer. Vladimir: precisely. Estragon: a vague supplication. Vladimir: what you seek you hear Estragon: You do Vladimir: That prevents you from finding Estragon: it does

Explanation

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Ephemeral/futile nature of meaning in the modern world.

Vladimir: that prevents you from thinking “To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.” “this is becoming really insignificant” “Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?” “all mankind is us” A country road. A tree. Evening

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Poignance

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Fragmented memory

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Generalising effect Transcends place and time

Signals an ultimate breakdown of social and political tradition. Absurdity of solace

Sorrows of Young Werther        

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Romantic agony is an inversion of Romantic idealism Storm und Drang style demonstrates the author’s preoccupation with intense emotions, the irrational, the unconscious and the spiritual. Reaction against the neoclassical view that art and literature should be conceived in accordance with strictly codifie...