English Literature I: Prose and Drama (samenvatting) 2020-2021 PDF

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Alexander Houthoofd 13 -12-English Literature: Prose andDramaINHOUDSOPGAVE Thinking about (prose) literature What is PROSE? What makes a text literary? Basic structure of a literary text How have literary text been studied in the past? Historical overview of prose fiction Theorectical Concepts Theme...

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English Literature: Prose and Drama

Alexander Houthoofd 13-12-2020

IN INHO HO HOUDS UDS UDSOP OP OPGAV GAV GAVE E 1.

Thinking about (prose) literature .................................................................................................... 2 1.1.

What is PROSE? ....................................................................................................................... 2

1.2.

What makes a text literary? .................................................................................................... 2

1.3.

Basic structure of a literary text .............................................................................................. 3

1.4.

How have literary text been studied in the past? ................................................................... 4

2.

Historical overview of prose fiction................................................................................................. 5

3.

Theorectical Concepts ..................................................................................................................... 5

4.

3.1.

Theme ...................................................................................................................................... 5

3.2.

Motif ........................................................................................................................................ 5

3.3.

Narration ................................................................................................................................. 6

3.4.

Focalization.............................................................................................................................. 7

3.5.

Characterization ...................................................................................................................... 8

3.6.

Setting: Space and Time ....................................................................................................... 10

3.6.1.

Space ............................................................................................................................. 10

3.6.2.

Time ............................................................................................................................... 10

3.7.

Style: Period/Author/Work ................................................................................................... 10

3.8.

Genre ..................................................................................................................................... 11

Drama: theory and Terminology ................................................................................................... 12 4.1.

Drama and Theatre................................................................................................................ 12

4.2.

The Three Unities .................................................................................................................. 12

4.3.

The Nature of Tragedy........................................................................................................... 12

4.4.

The Text ................................................................................................................................. 13

4.5.

Some dramatic conventions .................................................................................................. 13

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1. TH THIN IN INKIN KIN KING G ABO ABOUT UT ((PRO PRO PROSE SE SE)) LLIT IT ITER ER ERAT AT ATURE URE 1.1. What is PROSE? Prose is a VERBAL NARRATIVE, either written or spoken. Prose can make use of visual traits. (e.g. illustrations in novels, gestures and facial expressions in the oral narration of a story), but its verbal component is always predominant. The kind of prose we will be concerned with in this course is literary prose as opposed to non-literary prose such as news reports and scientific articles. The term ‘literary’ has been the subject of much debate.

1.2. What makes a text literary? It’s very hard to pinpoint because what makes text literary depends in part on the historical period. Various answers have been given on the question ‘What constitutes literariness?’. It has been called a SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED CONVENTION. Recent theories even claim that ‘literariness’ simply DOES NOT EXIST, that there are no special characteristics which distinguish literary texts from other texts. There’s not much of a consensus, thus, in this course, we will assume that a text is literary if a community of reader considers it a verbal work of art. What is the difference between PROSE and other LITERARY GENRES? 1) Unlike poetry, a. prose is not restricted by RHYME OR METRE. b. Prose is less disruptive of the rules of SYNTAX and the conventions of PUNCTUATION c. Prose tends to use LANGUAGE which is LESS ORNATE, which more closely resembles everyday language use. 2) Unlike drama, a. In prose events are described by a narrator, whereas in drama they are shown, acted out by actors. b. In prose the performance aspect is also less important.

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Literary prose can be further divided into FICTIONAL AND NON-FICTIONAL prose. Prose forms belonging to the FICTIONAL category are: 1) Novel a. BILDUNGSROMAN ▪ Development of the protagonist’s mind and character. ▪ E.g. Charles Dickens – David Copperfield b. HISTORICAL NOVEL ▪ Develops the historical aspect ▪ E.g. Walter Scott – Waverly; Victor Hugo – Notre-Dame de Paris c. REGIONAL NOVEL ▪ Emphasizes the setting, speech, and customs of a particular locality ▪ E.g. Tom Hardy – Tess of the Durbervilles d. GOTHIC NOVEL ▪ Explores the dark, mysterious and irrational side of nature and human nature, using mysterious and super-natural element, often violent of grotesque actions and sinister settings ▪ E.g. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein; Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart 2) Novella = a short novel, that is, a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than that of most novels, but longer than most short stories. (Wikipedia) 3) Short story Examples of literary NON-FICTION are AUTOBIOGRAPHY and BIOGRAPHY. 1) AUOBIOGRAPHY = 2) BIOGRAPHY =

an account of a man or woman’s life written by him-or herself an account of someone’s life written by someone else

The dividing line between fictional and non-fictional prose is hazy. Many forms of fiction (E.g. autobiographical fiction, historical novels or sociological novels) contain a clear non-fictional basis too.

1.3. Basic structure of a liter literary ary text We can distinguish a basic structure of many literary texts, starting off with: 1) Quest = a search for an object: ▪ Object often turns out not to be the main point of the quest ▪ Quest is about SELF-DISCOVERY, a coming to grips with the quester’s own sense of identity. 2) PROTAGONIST = obtains that better understanding of who they really are in interaction with others 3) ACT OF (FAILED) COMMUNION ▪ E.g. sharing of a meal ▪ It may also be a failed act of communion – a meal that does not bind people together 4) GENERAL THEMES are: social identity, identity as a group etc. ▪ Crucial way in which such a social identity has been given shape in literary texts is through the creation of MYTHS.

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1.4. How have literar literaryy text been st studied udied in the past? Although literature is probably as old as humankind itself, at least in an oral form its study is a recent phenomenon. Initially, it was the classics (works of poetry and drama in Latin and Greek) that formed the object of academic study. The STUDY OF LITERATURES in languages such as English only came into being in the course of the 19th century. Through history, literature has been studied from different points of view/approaches, with each a different focus of study: 1) PHILOLOGY = the study of language in oral & written historical sources: it’s the intersection of textual & literary criticism, history & linguistics. ▪ Born in the Renaissance ▪ MAIN GOAL: establishing the original version of a written document + examining the language (+ later also determining the authors original intentions) ▪ Recent questions: i. Can the authors intentions ever be unambiguously determined? ii. Does the authors intention coincides with the meaning of the text? It is not possible for a twenty-first-century reader to respond to Shakespeare’s plays in completely the same way that an audience did around the 1600, when those works were first staged. What is more, the meaning of a text may to some extent change over time, in this sense that when readers respond to elements in a text, they do so from within their own socio-historical context. 2) LIBERAL HUMANISM ▪ High-minded evaluations of an authors sensibility were preferred over critical analysis ▪ Literature has a exemplary value → discovery readers identity ▪ Great literature is timeless → contains eternal truths ▪ Literature asks questions → readers need to think about the world and themselves ▪ Personal autonomy and free will 3) SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT ▪ Literary texts anchored in a time-frame ▪ Theory: what we find striking = what we ourselves are preoccupied with 4) STRUCTURALISM ▪ = a way of looking to the world as a network of relations → nothing is meaningful on its own ▪ Forms the basis of NARRATOLOGY ▪ Importance of conventions, rules, and assumptions as the true shaping forces of human life → Human subject (e.g. the author) is dethroned form its central position to mere intersection of forces ▪ >< Liberal Humanism (personal autonomy and free will)

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2. HI HIST ST STORI ORI ORICA CA CALL O OVE VE VERV RV RVIEW IEW O OFF PRO PROSE SE FI FICT CT CTIO IO ION N In comparison with poetry and drama, prose fiction is a recent phenomenon. It became a fully-fledged literary genre as late as the 18th century, the period marked by the rise of the novel. Before that, fictional narratives (e.g. myths, sagas, epics and even drama) were almost invariably cast in poetic forms.

3. TH THEO EO EOREC REC RECTI TI TICAL CAL C CON ON ONCE CE CEPT PT PTSS 3.1. Theme THEME =

the central idea or ideas examined by a writer in the course of a work. This is not the same as the SUBJECT of a story. Characteristics of theme are:

1) Theme is usually not expressed directly: ▪ Reader needs to interpret various story components (characters, events, settings etc.) in order to extract or reconstruct the theme. 2) Narrative also plays an important role when examining the theme.

3.2. Motif MOTIFS =

meaningful elements (objects, concepts, structures etc.) that are repeated in the narrative. Motifs are important clues for the reconstruction of the narrative’s theme. Motifs can be symbols if they are shared across many works, are generally accepted throughout a culture. We can distinguish two kinds of motifs: 1) BOUND MOTIFS = 2) FREE MOTIFS =

logically essential to the narrative action and its causal-chronological coherence logically inessential to the narrative

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3.3. Narration AUTHOR =

the one who wrote or has written a novel or a short story

NARRATOR =

the one who tells the story

Types of narrator: 1) FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR =

2) THIRD-PERSON NARRATOR =

the speaker who refers to him- or herself in the first person and describes other people, using he, she, they. Also called an AUTODIEGETIC NARRATOR (cf. HOMODIEGETIC NARRATOR) a (hidden) narrator who refers to all characters using the third person. Both first- and third-person narrators are considered confusing and imprecise. A thirdperson narrator often coincides with an IMPLIED AUTHOR (= a hidden first-person narrator).

“[I want to tell you about the main character in my story:] Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed [to me] to unite some of the best blessings of existence (…) She was the youngest of the two daughters (…)” (Jane Austen – Emma) 3) HOMODIEGETIC NARRATOR (Character-narrator, Protagonist-narrator) ▪ = narrator inside the story’s action ▪ Not every homodiegetic narrator is the protagonist of the story he/she is telling (E.g. Dr. Watson is the homodiegetic narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories. While his is a character in them, the protagonist clearly is Holmes.) ▪ Analysis of the narrator: (see syllabus p.18) 4) HETERODIEGETIC NARRATOR (External narrator, Observer-narrator) ▪ = narrator who is not a character in the situations and events her or she recounts. A narrator outside the “diegesis” (the world s/he narrates) ▪ The narrator interrupts the narrative with comments, often cynical. ▪ Narrator is often speaking from a higher narrative level than that of the story, breaking the illusion that we are hearing a story directly. ▪ Often referred to as ‘omniscient narrator’ 5) UNRELIABLE NARRATOR ▪ = tell a story that seems to convince themselves, although the text overall is constructed in such way that we gather they are not telling the truth, or that they are deluded in their understanding of what is truth. (E.g. Edgar Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart) ▪ = DRAMATIZED NARRATOR = The narrator who speaks in first person, giving himself a conscious identity as the person who will mediate the events to the reader. Often (but not always), dramatized narrators are agents of the action in the story and become characters.

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3.4. Focalization FOCALIZATION =

when the narrator focuses our attention on the events through the eyes of one character. This character may be called the FOCALIZER. To identify the focalizer of a story, we need to decide who is perceiving the events in the story. In other words, to find out who is focalising, we need to ask ourselves: WHO IS SEEING, THINKING, HEARING, SMELLING, FEELING?

1) INTERNAL FOCALIZATION (character focalization) ▪ = when the consciousness of a character is used as a filter 2) EXTERNAL FOCALIZATION (zero focalization/non-focalization) ▪ = when an anonymous consciousness located within the narrative (which you may think of as the narrator) acts as a filter that only communicates such facts as would be observable to any participant in the events (what characters do, or say), but does not allow any internal information (such as thoughts, feelings) to seep through. The stability of the focalizer in a story: 1) FIXED internal focalization = 2) VARIABLE internal focalization = 3) MULTIPLE internal focalization =

the events are perceived by one single character switches between various characters in turn to present different situations the same sequence of events is perceived by various characters, alternating each other (e.g. Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway)

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3.5. Characterizat Characterization ion Our primary interest is in how/why characters function within a narrative, how they are constructed, what literary strategies have been used to give them ‘life’ on the page. Context is a very important factor. The choices that authors make in this regard have a lot to do with the context in which they write. E.g. the characterization of the criminal is arguably the product of how crime is perceived in the author’s day and age. CONTEXT DETERMINES CHARACTERIZATION. The six fundamental roles to be distinguished in all narratives: 1) SUBJECT = 2) OBJECT = 3) SENDER = 4) HELPER = 5) OPPONENT = 6) RECEIVER =

protagonist is engaged in a quest for the object what the subject is searching for. the subject is stimulated to go in search of this object by a sender, who often also imparts a moral value-system to the subject. the ones who assist the subject the ones who places obstacles in the subject’s way the ones who benefits form the successful completion of the quest. This is not always one person. It can be an entity or community.

Characterization deals with how characters are given shape in the discourse; this can be done directly or indirectly. 1) DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION = 2) INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION =

personality-traits of a character are explicitly and reliably stated by the narrator readers are expected to deduce personality-traits from several elements in the narrative: habits, actions, speech and thoughts

The degree of ‘fullness’ of characters: 1) FLAT CHARACTERS =

2) ROUND CHARACTERS =

characters which are constructed around a single idea or quality and which are static: they do not develop in the course of the story characters which are constructed around more than one quality and which are dynamic: they develop in the course of the story.

From the moment you feel that characters are emotionally complex and inner developed: a penetration in the ‘inner’ life → ROUND CHARACTERS 3) ALLEGORICAL FIGURES = 4) CARICATURES = 5) TYPES =

figures built up around one single trait which is expressed in the character’s proper name) figures composed around one single trait which is exaggerated figures whose main characteristics are representative of a whole group

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The characters’ dialogue/thought/discourse 1) FREE DIRECT DISCOURSE (FDD) = The direct expression of a character’s speech or thought. Often, but not always, enclosed in quotation marks; and often, but not always, introduced by statements like “she thought” or “he said.” (231) 2) FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE (FID)= The speech or thinking of a character rendered in the narrator’s own words. While it is not as common as directly reported speech, in most novels this is the commonest way of rendering a character’s thoughts.

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3.6. Setting:

Space and TTime ime

3.6.1. Space Settings may be no more than a descriptive back ground to the story, but they can also be charged with meaning. They can, for example: ▪

▪ ▪

Reinforce characters/subjects explored in the narrative o The gap between rich and poor can be highlighted by a detailed description of respective surroundings o The difference between countryside people and city people Underpin the atmosphere surrounding a certain action or situation o Cold, rainy weather during a funeral Be indicative of a character’s mood or offer a sharp contrast to a character’s inner mood o a character’s suffering from a lack of intellectual and emotional freedom is accentuated by picturing that character in small rooms with low ceilings, no fresh air… o Warm, sunny weather during a funeral

3.6.2. Time We can analyse the use of time in a work of fiction according to 3 concepts: order, duration, frequency. 1) ORDER = a. Order in which the events APPEAR IN THE STORY (= chronologically) b. Order in which the events THEY ARE NARRATED Forms of ORDER:

flashback/flash-forward

Note: memories, fears, hopes etc. are NOT flashback or flash-forwards 2) DURATION = a. the duration of the events IN THE STORY b. the AMOUNT OF NARRATIVE used to describe those events (number of sentences, pages etc.) Forms of DURATION = acceleration, deceleration, ellipsis (= an event is not narrated), pause 3) FREQUENCY = a. the number of times an event takes place in the story b. the number of times it is narrated Forms of FREQUENCY =

3.7. Style:

Singulative narration (= narrator narrates once what happened once), repetitive narration (= one event is narrated several times), iterative narration (= something which happened several times is narrated only once (e.g. habits)

Period/Author/Work

PERIOD =

Style is related to period, because it is related to language use, and language use varies over time.

AUTHOR =