Litterature anglaise 1 PDF

Preview

Summary

Litterature cours...

Description

LITTERATURE 1 Week 1: This class is about Poems of Elizabeth Bishop. She remains implacable. Both in time space and body of American poetry. There are a couple of paradoxes about her life and work: *She is usually being organized as ‘’a poet’s poet’’, Ashbury said he can see all of the complexity of her work. Yet, she is intellectual poet. She is compared to Robert Frost. *She published small body of poetry, and yet there have been extensive publications of her work afterwards, she was a slow writer. She liked to enjoy life, as much as writing. *She published between the 1930s and the 1970s, and yet neither a modernist, nor confessional. *She is also very impersonal, but with personal voice in her work- ‘’impersonal personal’’. *Some wanted to put her in post-modern vain. This may be discussed. Travisano is a famous critic of her work. *She is a woman interested in lyrical poems. She was a lesbian, had many affairs with women. Adrienne Rich, a writer who was gay as well, didn’t like her at first. * She is geographically difficult to situate. In North and South, you can see there are many places in her work. America, Brazil, Canada and travelling of Europe and Africa are the places connected to her.  Her biography: She was unhappy in her childhood. She was born in 1911., in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her mother’s name was Bulmer. Her father came from a wealthy contractor’s family; she could travel with her money. But her father died early. Her mother suffered from mental breakdowns, she was sent to mental institutions forever in 1916. This decided the rest of her life. She was in asylum in Nova Scotia, and Elizabeth moved there with her family. She had a good childhood after, with landscapes and singing, humbleness. In 1917., she was taken in Boston to her father’s family, because of better educations. But, she got bronchitis, asthma etc., and these illnesses were very frequent. And she was sent to her aunt on her mother’s side, again. She started going to school, and the second half of the 1920s she started writing. She published poems and short stories in school magazines, and then in her university in the magazine of her college- ‘’Vassar’’ (1932-1934). There she had many interests, like music. She also thinking of majoring in the art, and visual arts, she used water colors. She was thinking of a medical school. She kept writing, though. She was interested in metaphysical poets to Charles Bolder to the modernists. She traveled a lot. In the second half of the 1930s in Europe, North Africa, Ireland etc. She went to Florida, where she bought a house with her then lover. And, she became estranged to the American literature scene. In 1945., ‘’North and South’’ was published, and won a literally prize. In 1947., her encounter with Robert Lowell was a key moment in her life. He is considered as leading figures of the confessional poetry. They became friends. After that, she became a consultant of the Library of Congress, an official position. She suffered from alcoholism, anxiety and depression. In 1951., she took a ‘crazy trip’, she planned to navigate through South America, and she stayed in Brazil, a female doctor saved her life from a very dangerous allergy. They were together for 15 years. She became socially aware, of the poor etc. In 1955., she published ‘’Poems’’. 1967., she published ‘’Selected Poems’’. ‘’The Pangolin’’ Description of the animal. It is funny, precise and like an animal becoming a machine of sorts, that the writing is descriptive and factual. There is no sharing a feeling whatsoever. Sample of the modernist writing.

‘’Skunk Hour’’ It was published in Life Studies, which is about a confessions, studying a one’s life. It was published in 1959., and dedicated to Bishop. The description in this poem is different than in The Pangolin. This is less funny, it is structured, there are the same syllable count in every stanza. The language is more natural, expression of feeling. ‘’The Armadillo’’  This is for Robert Lowell. Religious, more abstract. The scene is about fire balloons; it is not naïve. It is about spiritual levitations. Week 2: Bishop had mixed origin, partly Canadian, partly American. She was a little bit in Nova Scotia, but then had to move to her relatives on her father’s side, where she discovered painful life… She tried to distance herself from what the other authors wrote. She started with North and South in 1946., it was her first collection. The title is meaningful. She spent good part of her life abroad. The travels are found in her second collection in Poems (1955). Poems were made of her previous collection, with the new addition Cold spring. Next is Questions of Travel from 1965., she doesn’t write fast. Next is The Complete Poems (1969). Her mentor published also the complete ones, which weren’t complete at all. And then, she wrote Geography III (1976.), the cover is very intriguing. *In her final years, she didn’t live much longer. After her short trip in Nova Scotia, and in Boston, she died of aneurism in 1979. But for editorial activity, other additions followed after her death. Her texts brought many levels of creation. In 1983., new Complete Poems (1927-1979) were published, followed by The Collected Prose (1984). She was also a prolific letter writer, in addition to poetry and prose writing. Letter writing is an art for itself for her, and when she was a teacher in Harvard, she taught a class about letters, because she defended that that was a part of literature. Her letters were collected in One Art: Letters (1994). There were also more, like Poems, Prose and Letters (2008). Finally, in 2006., Collection of Essays was published along with unpublished work of hers was published. *A few critics have different ways classified her work in different periods. For example, the critic Travisano said that there were 3 phases: Prison (exploration of sealed, imaginary world), Travel (exploration of actual places and people), History (challenge of public and private history). *Another rival classification proposed by Robert Parker, in which he said that there are: Poems of Wish, of Where, and Retrospect.

***QUESTION OF TRADITION: The question on the paper is a part of a poem of Bishop in her first collection on page 25, calling upon an attention. We don’t really know what is supposed to mean. It is linked to tradition. Literally monuments are present. Her use of tradition, it all depends on the poem, and the range of the possibility. She was ambiguous, she could or not use the tradition, according to the necessity of the poem she was writing. These variations are accounted for a few statements she gave. We can find a few elements, from example, she was a slow writer from her correspondence. Some poems could be written really quickly, it depended. More importantly, the accuracy and the form and the natural language use was important in her work. *Complex relationship she had with tradition and the literature at that time was important. We need to place her in a movement.

I Bishop as a mid-century writer? Writer of her own time. She writes between 1930s and 1970s, and in this period is also difficult to put in history. Some say they were Mid-Century writers. This generation is sometimes invisible. Travisano said that he likes to say like

midcentury, and not middle generation. And it suggests something meaningless. *He chose Midcentury quartet phrase because of Modernism. MODERNISM: The term started after the age. It has two components: The ism of modernism is from 1910s to 1950s. Ism is important because it had an ideological set of values. Many published essays that had principles of creations that they thought needed to be defended. Some others are imagism, futurism etc. And the other part is Modern. Revolutionary ideal to make it new. To break free from stale, traditions of prior literature, associated to the Golden Age or Victorian Age. Relied much from conventional forms before. * Important features of Modernism: One way to break free is to return to primitive way (middle ages, troubadours, ancient, Latin texts, exotic cultures etc.). They praised new forms and languages, in all spheres of art, like painting (1913.-Show and massive exhibition- Armory Show was a presentation of all the new things in Europe and paintings and artists), sculpture, photography that was a neat language, science (intellectual field- the history of literature should evolve like history of science), cinema (montage). It was an international movement, dialogue between America and Britain. Some settled permanently in the one or the other country. There was a question of European legacy in the USA. The idea that the USA had to find a language of its own, and some tried to find deeply personal language. *Modes of production- It was defined like Golden Age of small magazines, literally magazines, short life span, small circulation, but were very important, but literature was very experimental, because of these magazines, it was possible. *However, next to these magazines, there were some publications of books: The Waste Land (Elliot), The Counters (Pound), Ulysses (Joyce). *Formal features of Modernism Influence of WWI, the Lost Generation, fragmentation was a big influence on Modernism, in terms of form, as well. Another feature is accuracy of language. There authors criticized stale literatures. There is an influence of materiality of language. Instead of being a pure medium, language was a material to be modeled, as such. Like with Picasso. There are also experiences with prosody, which is a rhythm. They make small pieces, so there are sometimes words all over the page, or rhythm of prose  FREE VERSE. *Bishop didn’t want to be Modernist. Even though she came one generation later, she belonged more to modernism, than to her own generation, though. She comes from late late post-war generation.

*First poem on the paper ‘’At the Fish houses’’ and ‘’The Steeple-Jack’’: It is from A Cold Spring, and the other one is from Complete Poems. These two texts are similar. There is a thematic between two landscapes, description of landscapes that are geographically close, in a way. Moore had a specific way or presenting her lines, how she has the same syllable count in every line, since words are cut, and elements of landscape are isolated, in consequence. There are observations on particular details. With Bishop, there is a detail in every line, also with cutting things up, as with observing an animal. Isolation is a big element, pigment etc. Week 3: Today, we talk about Modernism and it was being created from the 1910s to 1950s. *Visit to St. Elizabeth: Bedlam is asylum, associated with madness and chaos. In the poem there is the increased stanza after stanza. It has a nursery rhyme, but contrast between the context/story. Choices of adjectives Reproduce the ambiguous of the portrait. **MODERNISM** *There were new cities on modernists/ism It is not about the focus on self, and the historical context is not important. The focus is on writing, on the inside. After the modernism, there is POST MODERNISM (By Jarrel in poetry). It is the second part of the two generations. It is still on distance between self from other writers. It is more about a confessional poetry,

and not drown by feminist writing, nor the political activity. *Post Modernism is about historical contextquestion of what is coming next? Also, it is about artistic legacy- reflexive way of writing, to see how literature is written and how to place the self. *12 O’clock news There is an image of an office, which is the writer’s office. In the poem there is a vocabulary of the anthropologists, and a fragmentation of another type. *We have a hard time finding a meaning- type write part, and uncertainty in the 1st stanza. Week 4: Today, after seeing her position in her own time, belonging to a mid-generation, between modernism and post-modernism, I had come to a way she applied more traditional forms to her poetry and writing. * II- Tradition and the individual talent: a. Literally worships- she had some traditional references, she had a deep respect for tradition and literally diets. She read extensively, this was linked to her education from childhood. She read a lot of Romantic and Victorian writers. In college, she discovered poets from the renaissance, such as Sydney. Also, she discovered metaphysical poetry (baroque). They were loose and informal group of writers, such as Andy Marvell. She tried to capture their poetry, not as a thought, but presenting the process of thinking itself. *She read the Romantic writers as a college student, as well. For here, there were 2 generations of romanticism, she defined herself as a minor female word’s worth, and she is also un-romantic poet of HER generation. She wasn’t lyrical. There is no idea of sentimental expression in her poetry. Closer to her is probably the American romanticism, like to Emerson. *In Victorian writers, she was interested in Hopkins, devotional poetry. ALL OF THESE FORM GROUP OF PANTHEON THAT INFLUENCED HER A LOT. But, after sketching out this literally diet, of course, this didn’t prevent her from bending the rules (subversion, playing with the rules). b. Playing with the rules- Whatever her literally diet, it wasn’t faithful. She was keen on rewriting traditional pieces. She used famous characters, and wrote in more gender-respectful way, like ‘’The lady of Shylocks’’, lady weaving her tapestry, boarding on the boat and dying on the boat. She put ‘’gentleman of the Shylocks’’, and put it in another gender. Another famous rewriting as well is changing perspective, of Robinson Crusoe, and manipulating it, using personal perspective and twisting it. Also, she changed ‘’Casa Bianca’’, short and intriguing. It is the title of the sea captain, of the ship ‘Fire’, that was destroyed, and most of his crew died, and among was his son, who decided to stay at the boat despite the Fire, because he didn’t get the order to leave the ship from his captain, so that’s how he died. This original poem brings obedience, tradition, memorizing forms, reciting poems that went through many generations. Bishop uses this and makes something else out of it. She describes this as learning her lesion, she talks about love and various images of boy that stood on the burning deck. She is trying to learn a lesson, and when you love you try to stick to who you love. Things are getting bad when you love. Again, the way you sticking to tradition, and ‘love is a burning boy’, the idea of memory, and using tradition, that you will never learn from experience, and you will still hurt when you love the next time. *This is bending the rules, like not learning the lesion correctly. Military to love. *She is taking super famous poems, and is making something else with it. c. Set form- In poetry, we have patterns, that have been transmitted through generations, until they became the set forms. You have to write in something that is recognizable. She used larger set form on the whole poems, not just a parts of it, like in her ‘’Sestina’’; it is a set form, of sestinas, and every time the final word comes back in changing positions. *Villanelle, which was a dance. She wrote a poem with it. It is about the art of losing.

*’’One art’’- It is about remembering and losing material things, but also a memory of things. It is written as a villanelle, like a repetition of the chorus. It is as if the poem is trying to run counter. Repeating the lines, as a counter point to the action of time and loss. It is about the art of losing. *The last we have the sonnet, very famous. It has 14 lines. These 14 lines may be arranged in many ways. The two most famous ways are two quartets two tercets, or three quartets (Petrarchan) and one final couplet (Shakespearean). *Astrophil and Stella- The speaker is talking to the moon and asking what is she busy doing. Interestingly, the speaker is addressing the moon, and can see from the moon that she is suffering from love. *Bishop has a different pattern here for the stanzas (A B B A- enclosed; A B A B- alternate; and the couplet). This is a rather traditional poem, that plays on the reflection and symmetry. Is the world different on the moon? Are loves different there? Symmetry and difference being together and separated. *Insomnia- We still find images on inversion and reflection here, as well. It is more thematic resemblance to the previous one. *Anaphora- It is not easy to get on the first reading. Try and think about the form and is it a sonnet? Theme, title and how they work together and how she subverts the tradition of the sonnets to explain this scene in the poem. *The title is not helpful to understand what is going on in the poem. He rises-the sun. The morning is described, the rhythm is rising, as well. The poem inverts the movement as soon as the last lines of the first stanza, and how the sun rising is followed by this sense of the fall, physical, loss of energy and spiritual fall, of sorts. And this poem can be referenced to ‘’Paradise Lost’’ of Milton. It’s when the poem becomes religious, in a way. *Anaphora- repetition of a word at the beginning of the sentence. Here, we have a few of those. In the second stanza, we have sinks that is repeated, for example. *FORM- Here, it is like a double sonnet. It’s hard to figure out. Maybe the form of reinvention, or repetitive movement. As soon as the end of the first sonnet, there is already a fall, before the second stanza even started. Exhaustion is the right motive, if we look at the poem in the negative way. *Sonnet- It was published after her death. We see continuity in the images she describes. The spirit level, bubble to indicate if the surface is smooth. And this bubble is caught in the spirit level. And then the compass needle wobbling and wavering, undecided. Freed the thermometer’s Mercury. *Opening word of each sentence are caught and freed. It is binary structure. Emphasized by the stress. *SEARCH FOR IT. The main idea is entrapment, with all the instruments of measurements, between them and set form, and the image of bubble, balls of Mercury. But, she is breaking free from the set form, she is dimeters, trimeters etc. Last word is gay; She is not closeted homosexual, but she didn’t share this publically, so maybe the entrapment is in gender role. Week 5: The Map by Elisabeth Bishop: Between North and South: Elizabeth Bishop’s Geographies Geography: treacherous sign of power. Bishop’s is blurrier and more elusive. Lesson VI and Lesson X: we cannot know where anything is because we don’t see the map? The last questions (what is in…?) are more an invitation to travel. A lot of poems are place’s name: Quai d’Orléans, Florida, the Bay… The Map: The map: tool of orientation, stable. And in the poem, some physical places and people are mentioned. Present tense with static verbs. Apparent balance in rhythm. First line iambic pentameter. The poem is quite descriptive, many visual terms, she is defining things. But at the same time, there are questions and repetitions, as though she is not sure or making the poem as she goes. The impression of stability and transparency is not true. Strange image: “We can stroke these lovely bays under a glass as if

they were expected to blossom.” Despite that image, lot of movement, 2nd stanza words of movement. In the 3rd stanza: layers are blurring, between sea and land and between the world and the map, ex: can the countries pick their colors?  colors of the map. Feminine ending: no stressed syllables at the end of line Masculine ending: stressed syllables at the end of line Decentered perspective from the dominant perspective: The North Pole and its surroundings. North and South: geography or hesitation, movement between two ends of the world. Question of perspective: approaching the world 1- Distant Gazes Bishop traveled a lot: Europe, New York and Brazil. Distance is almost central to the experiences she describes. Can be a memorial distance (landscape she described are inner, memory so distortion) or a geographical distance. Questions of mastery: shaping the world? Question of travel. Week 6: Introduction and approaching the world were the last week’s themes. It can be called as well, the questions of perspective. *The first point was about distance and gazes in ...