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New Version

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. During the 1990's a new group of cognitive psychologists, lead by Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom), updated the taxonomy to reflect relevance to 21st century work. The two graphics show the revised and original Taxonomy. Note the change from nouns to verbs associated with each level.

Note that the top two levels are essentially exchanged from the traditional to the new version.

Old Version

Remembering: can the student recall or remember the information?

define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts?

classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase

Applying: can the student use the information in a new way?

choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

Analyzing: can the student distinguish between the different parts?

appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision?

appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate

Creating: can the student create new product or point of view?

assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write.

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Following are a handful of techniques you can use to perform a close reading on a poem. Using one or a combination will jumpstart your thinking when preparing to write an essay. Not all of these skills will work for you on every poem you read, but if you memorize these, one or more of them should assist you in figuring out just about any poem put in front of you.!

SOAPS!!!

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SOAPS is handy as a general introduction to a poem. If you are having a tough time getting any meaning at all from a poem, SOAPS will lead you to at least a basic understanding.!

Subject—the general topic, content, and ideas in the poem.

Occasion—the time and place of the poem. Try to understand the context that encouraged the poem to be written.

Audience—To whom is the poem written?

Purpose—What is the reason behind the writing of the poem?

Speaker—What can you say about the voice speaking the poem?

After reading the poem through once, take a moment to write a few complete thoughts regarding each of the above subjects.

DIDLS!!!

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Consider the tone of the poem. Use DIDLS to establish how the author creates tone.!

Diction—the connotation of the word choice

Consider the following when discussing diction

· monosyllabic/polysyllabic

· colloquial/informal/formal

· denotative/connotative

· euphonious/cacophonous

Images—vivid appeals to understanding through the senses

Details—facts that are included or omitted

Language—the overall use of language—formal, colloquial, clinical, jargon, etc...

Sentence Structure—how structure affects the reader’s attitude

After reading the poem, consider each carefully. As with SOAPS, spend some time writing down your thoughts.

TP-CASTT Analysis!!!

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This is possibly the most effective of the techniques listed here. While rather general compared to DIDLS, analyzing a poem in this way will give you something to say. !

Title—Ponder the title before reading the poem.

Paraphrase—Translate the poem into your own words

Connotation—Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal.

Attitude—Observe both the speaker’s and the poet’s attitude (tone).

Shifts—Note shifts in speakers and attitudes.

How to discover shift

· Key words (but, yet, however, although)

· Punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis)

· Stanza divisions

· Changes in line or stanza length, or both

· Irony (sometimes irony masks a shift)

· Structure

· Changes in sound or rhythm

· Changes in diction (ex. slang to formal language)

Title—Examine the title again, this time on an interpretive level.

Theme—Determine what the poet is saying.

Terms Page 1 of 10

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alazon a braggart who pretends to be more than he or she is allegory the expression of truths about human nature through symbolism alliteration the repetition of initial consonant sounds in stressed syllables allusion an indirect reference to a well-known person, event, statement, or theme found in literature, the other arts, history, myths, religion, or popular culture amphimacer a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable

and one stressed syllable anapest a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable anaphora the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses,

clauses, or paragraphs

antagonist the character pitted against the protagonist—the main character—of a work. An evil or cruel antagonist is a villain; however, the antagonist is not necessarily a villain

antithesis the use of strongly contrasting words, images, or ideas amphibrach a metrical foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable aphorism a short, concise statement expressing a wise or clever observation or general truth apostrophe a figure of speech in which the speaker directly and often emotionally addresses a person who

is dead or otherwise not physically present, an imaginary person or entity, something inhuman, or a place or concept (usually an abstract idea or ideal). The speaker addresses the object of the apostrophe as if this object were present and capable of understanding and responding.

aside a convention in drama whereby a character onstage addresses the audience to reveal some inner thought or feeling that is presumed inaudible to any other characters onstage who might be in earshot. It is as if a character delivering an aside has momentarily stepped outside of the world of the play and into the world of the audience in order to provide it with illuminating information. assonance the repetition of vowel sounds in unrhymed, stressed syllables (e.g., “batter these ramparts”) blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter

caesura a rhythmic break in the middle of lines where the reciter could pause for breath carpe diem Latin for “seize the day,” a phrase referring to the age-old literary theme that we should

enjoy the moment before it is gone, before youth passes away. catalog long list characterization the various means by which an author describes and develops characters in a literary

work

chiasmus a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases (e.g., “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”).

climax the point of greatest tension or emotional intensity in a plot; point at which central conflict reaches its greatest height and the crisis, or turning point in the action, occurs

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colloquialism the everyday language we use in conversation. It is sometimes ungrammatical, and it may contain slang words and phrases. It varies from place to place and among ethnic groups.

conceit an extended metaphor that links objects or ideas not commonly associated, often mixing abstract ideas and emotional matters

consonance the repetition of similar final consonant sounds in stressed syllables with dissimilar

vowel sounds (e.g., “a frightful fiend / Doth close behind . . .”)

couplet a pair of lines, in succession, that rhyme dactyl a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables dead metaphor a phrase that—although a metaphor—is no longer recognized as such because it has

become so familiar. “Getting the hang of things” is a common phrase that few people think of as a metaphor today.

dialect the form of language spoken by people in a particular region or group. Each one differs from all others in the details of its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

diction word choice direct characterization the use of direct statements about a character’s personality as opposed to indirect characterization. See also characterization. direct discourse a style of narration that relates the thoughts and utterances of individuals and literary characters to the reader unfiltered by a narrator speaking from a third- person point-of-view. (“Take me home this instant!” she insisted.) double rhyme See feminine rhyme. dramatic irony a form of situational irony in which there is a discrepancy between a character’s

perception and what the reader or audience knows to be true eiron one who is more than he or she pretends to be elegiac of or relating to a category of poetry that laments the deaths of loved ones and the loss of the past. end-rhyme rhyme that occurs at the end of lines in verse. In end-rhyme, the most common type of

rhyme, the last word of a line rhymes with the last word of another line. End rhyme is distinguished from internal rhyme, which occurs within a line of verse.

end-stopped line a line of poetry in which a grammatical pause (as indicated by some form of

punctuation) and the physical end of the line coincide. The meaning or sense of the line is also complete in itself. End-stopped lines are distinguished from lines exhibiting enjambement (run-on lines).

English (or Shakespearean) sonnet sonnet form consisting of three quatrains followed by a couplet. The typical rhyme scheme is abab/cdcd/efef/gg. Usually the couplet comments epigrammatically on the problem/situation presented in the three quatrains.

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enjambement French for “striding over,” a poetic (see poetry) expression that spans more than one line. Lines exhibiting enjambement (or enjambment) do not end with grammatical breaks, and their sense is not complete without the following line(s). Such lines are also commonly referred to as run-on lines and are distinguished from end-stopped lines. (e.g., “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, / The holy time is quiet as a Nun / Breathless with adoration; the broad sun / Is sinking down in its tranquility.”)

epic a long, heroic poem (see poetry). A distinction is generally made between traditional (or folk or

primary) epics and literary (or art or secondary) epics. Traditional epics are derived from oral tradition and are not the invention of those who first commit them to writing, whereas literary epics are the work of a single poet, written in conscious imitation of the traditional style

epistolary of, relating to, or suitable to a letter !epigram from the Greek “inscription,” a short poem in which the writer strives for brevity, clarity,

and permanence. Epigrams may include short lines with bouncy rhythms, paradoxical twists, and parallel phrases or clauses.

estates satire a work that satirizes (see satire) the three traditional estates—clergy, nobility,

commons! ethos an appeal that is linked to the audience’s perception of the trustworthiness and moral character

of the speaker or writer

extended metaphor a sustained comparison that consists of a series of related metaphors external conflict the external problem that is standing in the way of the character and his or her goals eye-rhyme words that appear to rhyme due to their spelling but that do not rhyme when actually

pronounced (e.g., laughter and slaughter, bough, cough, and dough, demon and lemon) feminine ending (light ending) a line ending that is characterized by an extra, unstressed syllable. This

extrametrical syllable, which usually concludes an iambic or anapestic line, often provides rhythmical variety and movement. (e.g., Why, there’s scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties . . .”)

feminine rhyme rhyme in which rhyming stressed syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables. A feminine rhyme that extends over two syllables is called double rhyme, and one extending over three syllables is called triple rhyme. Slaughter and daughter constitute a double rhyme. Bantering and cantering constitute a triple rhyme. The American poet Trumbull Stickney typically alternates feminine and masculine rhyme. In the first stanza of “The Violin” (1902), he alternates double feminine rhyme with an eye-rhyme that is masculine (how and bow): “You came to teach me how the hardened fingers / Must drop and nail the music down, and how / The sound then drags and nettled cries, then lingers / After the dying bow.”

foil a character that, by contrast with the main character, serves to accentuate that character’s distinctive qualities or characteristics folk ballad a narrative poem, intended to be sung and without a known author. Ballads include some or all of the following characteristics: four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines rhyme, repeated key phrases or a regularly repeated section, called a refrain, dialogue, and humor. foot the unit of rhythm in a line of poetry

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foreshadowing the technique of introducing into a narrative material that prepares the reader or audience for future events, actions, or revelations

frame story a story that contains another story or stories. This creates the narrative structure of a story- within-a-story. Usually, the frame story explains why the interior story or stories are being told.

free indirect discourse a style of third person narration which combines some of the characteristics of third person with first person. The combination includes shifts that change without signal. It is often unclear as to whether the thoughts of the narrator or the thoughts of a character are being conveyed, allowing a flexible and sometimes ironic interaction of internal and external perspectives. Even though the speaker is not named, it is often possible to infer his or her identity by examining the statements and using clues of characterization.

free verse the style of poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular (and sometimes very short) line lengths gothic a style that emphasizes horror, suspense, doom, mystery, passion, and the grotesque and

supernatural half-rhyme (or slant-rhyme or off-rhyme) a rhyme that is close, but not perfect

heroic couplet a pair of rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to compose verse using heroic couplets, but their use did not become widespread until the seventeenth century. heroic ideal term used to refer to the bravery, loyalty, and generosity Anglo-Saxon warriors owed to their king or lord. These retainers are obliged to fight for their lord to the death, and if he is slain, to avenge him or die in the attempt. Everlasting shame awaits those who fail to live up to this sacred duty. heroic (poetry) of or relating to a category of poetry in the form of narrative verse that is elevated in mood and uses a dignified, dramatic, and formal style to describe the deeds of aristocratic warriors and rulers humours a physiological theory subscribed to during ancient times, the Medieval Period, and the

Renaissance that held that the relative amounts of or balance between the four main fluids (humours) of the body—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—determined an individual’s state of health and even general personality. The four humours were also associated with the four elements: blood with air (hot and moist), phlegm with water (cold and moist), yellow bile with fire (hot and dry), and black bile with earth (cold and dry). The term humour comes from the Latin humor, meaning “moisture.”

Adherents of this popular theory believed that the humours emitted vapors that rose to the brain, thus affecting both behavior and health. As long as the humours were in balance, the individual supposedly exhibited a perfect temperament and no illness, but an imbalance affected behavior in a very specific way. That is, an excess of blood produced a sanguine (happy) personality, phlegm a phlegmatic (cowardly, passive) personality, yellow bile a choleric (argumentative, stubborn) personality, and black bile a bilious (melancholy) one. Just as an imbalance produced a distinct behavioral effect, so would it produce illness and disease.

This theory was so commonly accepted that it made its way into popular culture and literature. Individuals (or literary characters) came to be classified according to their humour, and the word humour itself came to signify a variety of things from disposition or mood to peculiarity or affectation, particularly in Elizabethan times. Many works of literature even relied on this theory or characterization and to provide convincing motivation for the characters’ actions.

hyperbole (or overstatement) exaggeration for effect

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iamb a metrical foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The iamb is the most common metrical foot in English.

iambic pentameter the metrical pattern (see meter) which has the iamb as the dominant foot and lines with more or less five of them.

idiolect an individual system of speech patterns and pronunciation imagery a term used to refer to: (1) the actual language that a writer uses to create or represent any

sensory experience and (2) the use of figures of speech, often to express abstract ideas in a vivid and innovative way

indirect characterization the use of actions, thoughts, and dialogue to reveal a character’s personality,

as opposed to direct characterization. See also characterization.

indirect discourse a style of narration that relates the thoughts and utterances of individuals and

literary characters to the reader without directly quoting the speaker or including quotation marks. (She told him to take her home immediately.) See direct discourse and free indirect discourse.

in medias res Latin for “in the middle of things,” the technique of beginning a narrative in the

middle of the action. Crucial events that occurred before the point at which the narrative actually begins are related at some appropriate later time, generally through one or more flashbacks.

interior monologue a type of monologue in which the inner thoughts and workings of a character’s

mind are revealed or represented

internal conflict conflict involving the inner divisions or turmoil of a single character. Conflicts of this sort may result from the character’s attempt to decide between multiple alternatives for action or between opposing attitudes or beliefs.

internal rhyme rhyme within a line of poetry (e.g., With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, . . .”)

irony a contradiction or incongruity between appearance or expectation and reality. See dramatic, situational, and verbal irony.

Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet a sonnet consisting of an octave followed by a sestet. The octave is

almost always rhymed abbaabba; the sestet’s rhyme scheme is either cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce. Often the octave states a problem, and the sestet resolves it.

kenning a compound renaming of people, places, and things in Old English and Old Norse poetry (e.g.,

whale’s home for ocean).

litotes from the Greek for “simple” or “meager,” a form of understatement (meiosis) that involves

making an affirmative point by denying its opposite (e.g., “not a bad idea” and “not many”).

logos an appeal that builds a well-reasoned argument based on evidence such as facts or statistics lyric of or relating to a category of poetry that expresses subjective thoughts and feelings, often in a

songlike style or form

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metaphor a figure of speech that associates two distinct things. See extended metaphor and dead metaphor. The image (or activity or concept) used to represent or “figure” something else is the vehicle of the figure of speech; the thing represented is called the tenor. For instance, in the sentence, “That child is a mouse,” the child is the tenor, whereas the mouse is the vehicle. The image of a mouse is being used to represent the child, perhaps to emphasize his or her timidity.

metaphysics (metaphysical – adj.) - In modern philosophical terminology, metaphysics refers to the studies of what cannot be reached through objective studies of material reality. As such, it is concerned with explaining the features of reality that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses. Metaphysics might include the study of the nature of the human mind, the definition and meaning of existence, or the nature of space, time, and/or causality. metaphysical poetry a term that can be applied to any poetry that deals with philosophical or

spiritual matters and but that is generally limited to works written by a specific group of seventeenth-century poets who wrote in the manner of the poet John Donne. This poetry is characterized by a high degree of intellectualism.

meter the typical rhythmic pattern of a poem. By scanning (see scansion) the lines of a poem, one

arrives at its meter. The meter of a poem whose dominant foot is the iamb, and whose lines typically have five feet, is iambic pentameter. Names of lengths of poetic lines are monometer (1 foot), dimeter (2 feet), and trimester, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, and octameter, respectively. A line of two trochees would be trochaic dimeter, six dactyls, dactylic hexameter, and so on.

metonymy a figure of speech in which one thing is used to refer to something with which it is commonly associated; for example, “bottle” is a metonym for “liquor.”

mood the emotions that a piece of literature creates in a reader monologue an extended narrative, oral or written, delivered uninterrupted and exclusively by one person (although it may be heard or witnessed by others) motif a unifying element in an artistic work, especially any recurrent image, symbol, theme, character

type, subject, or narrative detail

octave a group of eight lines linked by their end-rhymes, subject matter, or both ode a relatively long, serious, and usually meditative lyric poem that treats a noble or otherwise elevated subject in a dignified and calm manner oral tradition! the passing of songs, stories, and poems from generation to generation by word of

mouth

parable a simple, usually brief, story that teaches a moral lesson!

paradox an image or description that appears self-contradictory but that reveals a deeper truth

parallelism (or parallel structure) the repetition of a grammatical structure pathos an appeal that attempts to arouse the audience’s emotions personification a figure of speech that attributes human qualities to something that is not human picaresque novel a novel recounting the adventures of a roguish hero that is usually episodic

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plot the events that make up a story poetry generally said to be one of the three or four major literary genres, a term defined and described in so

many different ways that one might easily argue that there are as many ways to characterize it as there are people. However, there is general agreement about what poetry is not.

First, poetry is frequently distinguished from verse—broadly speaking, any rhythmical or metrical composition. Poetry is a subset of verse, from which it is distinguished (and to which it is considered superior) by virtue of its imaginative quality, intricate structure, serious or lofty subject matter, or noble purpose.

Second, poetry is often contrasted with fiction. This distinction, however, has proved more problematic because some poetry and literary historians have characterized poetry as fiction (or even as the “supreme fiction”), as that which is not essentially tied to fact, to history. Seen from this angle, any imaginative artistic work might be called poetic.

Third, poetry has frequently been contrasted with prose. Aside from the obvious difference in form, many critics argue that, although it is possible to restate the meaning of a prose passage, the meaning of a poetic passage cannot be so easily paraphrased. While poetry can be approached intellectually, it is equally an emotional experience; one might even say that poetry is meant to be experienced rather than simply read. Poetry is rich with a suggestiveness born from the interplay of words and sounds. The connotations of words and the relationships among words, phrases, and ideas all add to the purely denotative meanings of the poet’s language, giving it a richness greater than that found in most prose. Furthermore, auditory elements—the sounds and rhythms of letters, words, phrases, and lines—are key aspects of the poem and play a large role in how that poem is read and understood.

Although rhythm is an essential, in fact an indispensable, element of poetry, rhyme is not. Prose, too, may have rhythm, but without the marked regularity and integral importance found in poetry. A poem typically contains some basic rhythmic pattern; variations on the pattern create auditory interest but also may introduce a new or different idea or viewpoint. Rhyme is often used, perhaps because it is a chief contributor to establishing rhythm. When used unskillfully, however, rhyme can detract from poetry since it can easily sound singsongy or contrived. Although rhyme was often used in Romance- and English-language poetry in the last several centuries, much twentieth-century poetry dispensed with rhyme. Modern poets have similarly dispensed with poetic diction, the special “poetic” vocabulary used heavily in the past (for example, thou as a form of address, even to an old Grecian urn, or the use of ere for before), and instead write poems in the language and cadences of everyday speech.

The care with which poets choose their words also distinguishes poetry from prose. This is not to say that authors writing in prose choose their words carelessly; rather, prose authors can afford to be more discursive than poets since prose works are typically much longer than poems. Since poets must be more economical, each word in a poem tends to be packed with meaning. The brevity of poetry, in contrast to prose, affords it a particular intensity.

Finally, poetry tends to be more concrete, replete with specific and detailed images. The suggestive essence of poetry means that poets commonly make use of figurative language and symbolism. Tropes, such as metaphor, metonymy, personification, simile, and synecdoche, as well as other figures of speech, such as allegory and conceit, enhance both the imagery and the sensory impact of the poem.

There are also differing schools of thought regarding the aim of poetry, though everyone agrees that poetry has a special meaning or significance for humanity. Some see a didactic purpose, an aim to instruct. Others argue that poetry provides a special, even unique, insight not possible in prose. In many ways, these differing conceptions of what poetry is and what purpose it serves reflect differing views of what poetry should be.

Poetry appears to have originated as a collective endeavor, or at least for a collective purpose. Many of the earliest literary (and often religious) works are poems. Notably, poetry played a major role in religious and other ceremonial events and helped to preserve a tribe’s or a group’s history and its traditions, which were often passed down orally from generation to generation—a process that continues in some groups even today.

Over time, however, the collective use of poetry diminished. Poetry became the vehicle for drama and then specifically for individual expression. Today, poetry is seen as a highly individualistic endeavor; perhaps no other form of expression is deemed so intensely personal, and therefore unique. No subject is off-limits to the poet. To call poetry a discipline seems limiting in itself, but poetry is surely the one literary area in which anything goes, as long as the poet’s emotions have been aroused.

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prose from the Latin for “straightforward,” ordinary written or spoken expression; as applied specifically to literature, nonpoetic expression, that is, expression that exhibits purposeful grammatical (including syntactic) design but that is not characterized by deliberate or regular rhythmic or metrical patterns.

The development of prose has generally followed that of verse. Poets tend to innovate; prose writers, by contrast, tend to imitate, making belated use of those poetic innovations that can be adapted to the prose environment. The more “artful” or “literary” the work of prose, the more it tends to employ poetic devices, such as rhythm, imagery, and sonority (achieved through alliteration, assonance, consonance, etc.). Nonfiction prose writers such as Walter Pater and fiction writers such as D. H. Lawrence and, more recently, Toni Morrison and Graham Swift have written poetic prose. Some creative prose writers adopt traditional poetic devices to such a great extent that the line between prose and poetry becomes blurred, hence the designation prose poem.

protagonist the most important or leading character in a work; the protagonist is in primary conflict

with the antagonist pun a play on words that capitalizes on a similarity of spelling and/or pronunciation between words that have different meanings or one word that has multiple meanings pyrrhic a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables quatrain a group of four lines linked by their end-rhymes, subject matter, or both

repetition the restatement of an idea using the same words

restatement the expression of the same idea in different words rhetorical question a question asked without the expectation of an answer

rhyme scheme the pattern of end-rhymes in a poem or stanza romantic realism a term applied to literature that draws on both romanticism and realism. Romantic realists presented their subject matter accurately but wrote only about subject matter that was pleasant or positive. run-on line See enjambement.

sarcasm an intentional, cutting remark generally directed at another person and intended to hurt or insult.

It involves stating the opposite of what is meant to achieve the intended effect. Sarcasm can also be used to draw attention to something being mocked or made humorous and is not always blatant. For example, when a lazy, annoying co-worker says, “Well, I better get to work,” you respond, “Okay. Don’t work too hard.”

satire a work that pokes fun at society or human behavior with the aim of improving it.

scansion the division of verse into feet to determine the meter scop an Old English bard or poet sestet a group of six lines linked by their end-rhymes, subject matter, or both

setting where and when a story takes place simile a figure of speech that associates two distinct things using the words like or as, as opposed to

metaphor, which associates two distinct things, but without the use of a connective word. To say, “That child is like a cyclone” is to use a simile, whereas to say, “That child is a cyclone” is to use a metaphor.

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situational irony a discrepancy between expectation and reality soliloquy in a play, a monologue delivered by a character while alone onstage that reveals inner thoughts, emotions, or some other information that the audience needs to know sonnet a fourteen-line, lyric poem with a single theme written in iambic pentameter. The sonnet was invented by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. Sonnets follow definite forms. The form is determined by the type of sonnet. sonnet sequence a group of sonnets linked by theme or person addressed Spenserian sonnet sonnet form invented by English poet Edmund Spenser. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab/bcbc/cdcd/ee. spondee a metrical foot consisting of two stressed syllables stanza a group of lines set off by themselves in a poem. Properly speaking, all stanzas in a poem have the same number of lines; if they don’t, they should be called irregular stanzas, sections, or even verse paragraphs. stream of consciousness a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Stream-of-consciousness not only presents reality from the minds of characters, but it presents how they arrive from thought to thought. It presents thoughts as they occur and can give greater insight into how a character arrives at conclusions and makes decisions. This technique, from both topical and structural standpoints, provides authentic representations of psychological reality. style a writer’s characteristic way of writing substitution using a foot which is different from the one typically used in a certain line or stanza. A

trochee, for example, used in an iambic pentameter line, would be a substitution.

symbolism term applied when a person, place, or thing stands for itself and something else synecdoche a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to refer to the whole, as in saying, “Nice wheels,” in reference to a car. The term can also refer to occasional situations in which the whole is used to represent the part. theme a broad idea in a story, or a message conveyed by a work. This message is usually about life,

society, or human nature. Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Themes are usually implied rather than explicitly stated.

theocracy a government ruled by or subject to religious authority theocrat 1. a ruler of a theocracy 2. a believer in theocracy tone the writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the audience or subject tragedy a serious and often somber drama, written in prose or verse, that typically ends in disaster and that focuses on a character that undergoes unexpected personal reversals tragic flaw a character trait in a tragic hero or heroine that brings about his or her downfall

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triple rhyme See feminine rhyme.

trochee a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable

turn a change in tone in a poem Uncle Charles Principle style of narration similar to free indirect discourse except that the narrator’s

words are “contaminated” by the characteristics of a character, instead of the work completely shifting to a character’s thoughts. This technique was named after a character in a work by James Joyce. Such characters are so distinctive in the way they act, the words they use, and the terms they use that they are easy to detect. Because of a lack of consensus on a clear distinction, free direct discourse and Uncle Charles Principle can be used interchangeably.

understatement (or meiosis, from the Greek for “lessening”) a figure of speech that consists of

saying less than what is really meant or saying something with less force than is appropriate. See also litotes.

verbal irony the most common type of irony, characterized by a discrepancy between what a

speaker or writer says and what he or she believes to be true vernacular a language or dialect native to a region or country rather than a literary, cultured, or foreign language wyrd Old English for “fate”—term that embodies the concept of inevitability in Old English poetry

Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossory of Critical and Literary Terms. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2003. Print.

Mr. Harris, H English IV

• “The most important fact in British history may well be that Britain is an island, and the most important date the

moment—about 6000 B.C.E.—when the North Sea flooded over the lands that joined Britain to the Continent.” • The earliest documented evidence of humans in Britain dates back to around 200,000 B.C.E. (a species in

between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens). They probably first came to the island during a warm phase during the second glaciation of the Great Ice Age. In archaeological time, this is the Paleolithic Era (Old Stone Age).

• Around 8300 B.C.E., A change in climate gave way to the Mesolithic Era (Middle Stone Age). These people built the first dwelling in Britain—a pit eight feet wide and four feet deep, roofed over with boughs or sod.

• About 3800 B.C.E., peoples from the Mediterranean and Spain brought the practices of the Neolithic (New Stone Age) Revolution to Britain. No other event until the Industrial Revolution produced such a change in human life, as people had learned the principles of agriculture and animal domestication. This economy could support a population ten or more times greater than that of the hunting economy.

• Around 2000 B.C.E., people had begun to manufacture weapons and tools in bronze, giving rise to the Early Bronze Age. By 1400 B.C.E., bronze had replaced items made from stone, which were mostly flint.

• Around 3000 B.C.E., a nomadic people from the Rhine Valley invaded. Historians call them the Beaker Folk because of the beaker-shaped pot they used, probably to drink a fermented beverage. They mixed with the Neolithic lifestyle, were skillful potters, wore linen and woolen clothes held together by buttons, and buried their dead singly with a dagger, a bow and arrow, some ornaments, and a beaker, and piled earth over the grave in a mound.

• Between 2000 and 1100 B.C.E. (Late Bronze Age), the Neolithic population of Britain absorbed the Beaker Folk and the Wessex chieftains, creating the Food Vessel culture (named as such from the vases they buried with their dead) north of the Thames and the Urn culture south of it (named for the urns in which they buried their dead after cremating them). The years of these cultures were calm, and society remained pastoral.

• About 1400 B.C.E., the Deverel-Rimbury culture emerged, as the people of England moved from the uplands to the lowlands, which could sustain a longer period of use. They planted crops and established a mixed farming way of life that replaced pastoralism, creating a steady supply of food that in turn supported a population that may have approached a million by the end of the Bronze Age.

• In the early seventh century B.C.E., Celtic-speaking people from Central Europe invaded Britain with skills in the

use of iron. Later invaders built two-wheeled chariots with wheels cased in iron, and the Belgae, who invaded in the first century, could fell timber with their iron axes. In addition to bringing iron, the Celtic-speaking people who continued to arrive until the first century B.C.E. introduced the use of money, founded kingdoms, established the priesthood, and created a new art. All of these are the marks of modern civilization.

o These people, called Britons (or Brythons or British), spoke a Celtic language known as British. o They were farmers and hunters and looked to priests known as Druids to settle their disputes.

• The other group, known as Gaels, settled on the second largest island, known to us as Ireland.

• In 55 B.C.E., the Romans, led by Julius Caesar, made hasty invasions. • The true conquest took place nearly 100 years later. • The Romans established towns and built roads, fortifications, and aqueducts, defended Britain against alien

invasions, and established the use of Latin. • Defending the northern frontier proved difficult. Julius Agricola, governor of Britain in 78 C.E., planned to protect

the south by conquering the whole of the British Isles. However, conquering Scotland in that manner would not have been financially feasible.

o The Roman Emperor Hadrian proposed the building of Hadrian’s Wall, built of stone in the east and turf in the west, 73 miles long, 15 feet high, 10 feet wide at the base, 7 feet wide at the top, and designed as a fortified base to launch attacks on the enemy. Although the most impressive barrier of its kind in the Roman Empire, the wall also represented the limitations of Roman power. Legionaries had abandoned it by the end of the fourth century.

• Because of increased pressure to defend Rome against northern European tribes and the expulsion of the Roman army by British landowners, the Romans returned to their homeland. Roman rule ended around 409 C.E.

• Two-thirds of Britons lived neither in Roman towns nor villages, and Latin civilization hardly touched them at all. All Roman rule meant to them was taxation. Once the Romans left, towns began to decay. It was a Celtic Britain that the Anglo-Saxon invaders confronted.

Mr. Harris, H English IV

• The history of English civilization begins with the Anglo-Saxons. They, as far as it can be done, wiped the historical slate clean. The boundaries of shires, the diocesan organization of the church, the names of villages, the institution of the monarchy, and the beginnings of the English language, not to mention the name of “Englaland” itself, can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons.

o Around 499, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, Germanic peoples from the Danish Peninsula and the lower Elbe, invaded Britain.

o It is very likely that the conquest began when Saxon mercenaries quarreled with the ruler of southeastern Britain, who had invited them to the island to help defend Britain against the Picts and the Scots. They established a kingdom in Kent as a result of the first revolt. Evidence shows this probably happened in other areas of Britain.

o Gradually, the Saxons invited their German people to join, with gradual conquests and battles establishing Anglo-Saxon rule.

o Unlike Roman Britain, which was merely a military occupation, the Anglo-Saxon conquest was deep-rooted, slow, and widespread. This style allowed for a long-lasting culture that would serve as the foundation of modern England.

o They brought with them a Germanic tongue, which became Old English. o The Anglo-Saxons appear to have been deep-sea fishermen and/or farmers who sought soil richer

than the soil of their homeland. o Historians believe that the native British were exterminated in large numbers. Others died from

starvation or disease. Those that remained were largely reduced to conditions of servitude. It is no coincidence that the Anglo-Saxon word for “a Briton” came to denote a slave. Only 14 British words found their way into English.

• The Romans had introduced Christianity to the Celts during the fourth century. • In the late sixth century, a soldier and abbot named Columba, along with monks, gained converts and

established monasteries in the north. • In 597 the Roman cleric Saint Augustine (not the early Christian Church father) arrived in southeast England

and converted King Ethelbert of Kent to Christianity and set up a monastery in Canterbury. o The church provided counsel to quarreling rulers in efforts to unify the English people. At this time,

the British Isles were not unified and included separate kingdoms with separate rulers. They fought continuously over the fertile, green land.

• In the ninth century, the Norse of Norway invaded Northumbria (Anglo-Saxon kingdom in northern and central England), Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

• The Danes of Denmark targeted eastern and southern England. o Alfred, King of Wessex (Kingdom in southern England) from 871-899, left his mark on history:

In 886, Alfred the Great resisted further Danish encroachment. The Saxons acknowledged Danish rule in the east and north, and the Danes agreed to respect Saxon rule in the south. Because of this accomplishment, he became the only ruler in England’s history to earn the epithet “the Great.”

o However, toward the end of the tenth century, more Danes wanted to widen the Danelaw, the area they occupied. They succeeded and forced the Saxons to select Danish kings.

o In 1042, the line of succession returned to a descendent of Alfred the Great, and Edward the Confessor became king. He ruled until his death in 1066.

Mr. Harris, H English IV

• Anglo Saxon literature began not with books, but with spoken verse and incantations. The reciting of poems

often occurred on ceremonial occasions, such as the celebration of military victories. o Recitations of Old English poetry were accompanied by a harplike instrument, called a hearpe in Old

English.

• Anglo-Saxon poetry falls mainly into two categories—heroic and elegiac. o Beowulf is the most famous example of heroic poetry. o “The Wanderer” is a famous elegiac poem.

Beowulf • This epic, or long heroic poem, is the story of a great legendary warrior renowned for his courage,

strength, and dignity. • Because it is the first work known to have been composed in the English language, it is considered the

national epic of England. • Like most Anglo-Saxon poets, the author of Beowulf is unknown. • Beowulf was composed around 700. • The action in Beowulf takes place in the sixth century. • Beowulf was first written down in 1000. • Beowulf mixes pagan and Christian beliefs.

• Before the reign of Alfred the Great, all important prose written on the British Isles was composed in

Latin because the monks who transcribed the works regarded the vernacular, the language of the common people, as a “vulgar tongue.”

• Bede (673-735), the greatest of England’s Latin scholars, wrote History of the English Church and People, which gives an account of England from the Roman invasion to his own time.

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a group of historical journals (written in Old English) compiled in monasteries.

Prentice Hall Literature: The British Tradition- unit 1 Beowulf: An Updated Verse Translation –Translated by Frederick Rebsamen, Introduction Roberts, Clayton, David Roberts, and Douglas R. Bisson. A History of England. 4th ed. Vol. 1. Upper Saddle, NJ:

Pearson, 2002. 2 vols.

Mr. Harris, H English IV

!"#$%#&'#()*$+#,'-&!1066-1485

The Norman Conquest

The Normans, or “north men,” were descendents of Vikings who had invaded the coast of France in the ninth century. When Edward the Confessor died in 1066, the Saxon council of elders chose Edward’s brother-in-law, Harold, to be king. However, Edward’s first cousin once removed, William, Duke of Normandy, claimed that Edward had promised the throne to him, and he crossed the English Channel to assert his claim by force. At the Battle of Hastings, near the seaside village in southern England, Harold was killed, and William emerged victorious, becoming William I of England.

• The Normans gradually remade England along feudal lines. • Feudalism had taken root on the European continent at a time when no central government was

strong enough to keep control. o It involved the exchange of property for personal service. o In theory, all the land belonged to the king.

! The king parceled out land among his powerful supporters. He gave them noble titles—usually baron—and special privileges.

! Each baron paid certain fees, or taxes, and supplied a specified number of knights—professional soldiers—should the king require them.

• Knights received smaller parcels of land, called manors. • Serfs were peasants who worked the land.

The House of Plantagenet

• Norman rule ended in 1154 when Henry Plantagenet came to the throne as Henry II. !• Henry II had conflict with Rome and wanted to reduce its influence.!

o Henry II appointed Thomas Becket to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury when the seat became vacant because he felt Becket would support him.!

o However, Becket appealed to the Pope, and the Pope sided with Becket.!o Exasperated, Henry hastily and publicly conveyed his desire to be rid of the contentious Archbishop.

Four ambitious knights took the king at his word and murdered Becket in his own cathedral on December 29, 1170.

o Henry condemned the knights’ actions and tried to atone by making a holy journey, or pilgrimage, to Becket’s tomb.!

o Thereafter, a pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury became a common means for English Catholics to show religious devotion.

The Magna Carta

• The 2nd Plantagenet king, Richard I, raised the national debt by staging military expeditions overseas. His successor, King John, inherited the debts and tried to pay them by raising the barons’ taxes. The barons resisted this and brought England to the brink of civil war. To prevent more conflict, King John sealed the Magna Carta, promising not to raise taxes without first meeting with the barons. The document is thought to be the beginning of restrictions of royal power and the beginning of constitutional government in England.

The Houses of Lancaster, York, and Tudor Wars of the Roses

• The House of Lancaster replaced the Plantagenets on the throne in 1399. • In the fifteenth century, the House of York contested Lancastrian rule. These conflicts from 1455-1485 are

known as the Wars of the Roses. • Henry Tudor, a distant cousin and supporter of the Lancastrian kings, defeated the unpopular Yorkist king,

Richard III, and killed him in battle. Henry married Richard’s niece, uniting the two houses and becoming Henry VII, the first king of the House of Tudor.

Mr. Harris, H English IV

The Black Death • In 1348 and 1349, the great plague swept across England. It created a labor shortage, which raised the

value of serfs’ work. This is argued to have contributed to the decline and end of the feudal system, which locked people into one position in society. With their work more valued, serfs were able to demand more, and they eventually became a free peasantry. While this did not end all social unrest, it was an important start.

Middle English

• Unlike Old English, Middle English is recognizable as the English we read and speak today. • When William I (also known as William the Conqueror) invaded England, he and the Normans brought

French into the language. Middle English emerged from this infusion of French words into the language that already existed in England.

!"#$"%&'()$*"+&*,+"(During this period, the first true dramas emerged, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer (who wrote in Middle English)

created a vivid picture of medieval life, romances portrayed the deeds of knights, and anonymous balladeers sang of love and deeds of outlaws.!

Medieval Drama

• The church sponsored miracle plays, or mystery plays, that retold stories from the Bible or dealt with aspects of the lives of saints. In time, these plays moved from the church building to the churchyard and then to the marketplace.

• The morality play arose during the turbulent fifteenth century. Morality plays depicted the lives of ordinary people and taught moral lessons.

England’s Identity

• 1454 – Johann Gutenberg perfected his movable-type printing press. • 1476 – William Caxton set up the first movable-type press in England.

o One of Caxton’s first projects was to print the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. o The works of Chaucer marked the beginning of England’s establishing its national identity. After

centuries of conquerors and languages, England finally settled on an identity of its own. Geoffrey Chaucer

• Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the “father of English poetry.” • He is known for his keen powers of observation, which he displays in The Canterbury Tales.

o In The Canterbury Tales, he brings together pilgrims who each have distinct personalities. o The pilgrims are traveling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury. o With this unlikely but entertaining combination of pilgrims, he provides a cross section of medieval

society. o His observation, humor, and lively realism created new themes in medieval literature.

Medieval Romances and Ballads

• Medieval Romances, tales describing the adventures of knights, were popular. o The most popular romances were told about King Arthur, who was a great British hero from the

Anglo-Saxon period who may or may not have actually existed. o The Celtic-speaking people told these stories, and the Normans became interested in them when

they came to England. o Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is the authoritative collection of Arthurian legends.

• Folk ballads—folk songs that tell stories—also represent medieval literature. o Experts find most surviving ballads impossible to date. o One concerns Robin Hood, an outlaw who may have existed around the turn of the thirteenth century.

He lived in the woods, stole from the rich, and helped the poor. Prentice Hall Literature: The British Tradition - Unit 1 Britannia.com-British Monarchs - Kings and Queens of England, Scotland, and Wales

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Harris, H English IV

The English Renaissance 1485-1625 (part one)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The English Renaissance, one of the most exciting periods in history, was both a worldly and a religious age. The Renaissance became known as a “rebirth” of learning and the arts. It first blossomed in Italy (1350-1550), where commerce and a wealthy middle class supported learning and the arts. EXPLORATION

• The thirst for knowledge, the development of the compass, and advances in astronomy aided explorers in their voyages around the world by sea.

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION • Along with the Renaissance spirit, a growing sense of nationalism led many Europeans to question the

authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Some felt that Church officials were corrupt; others questioned Church teachings and hierarchy.

• John Wyclif (ca. 1330-84)

• Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466-1536); Sir Thomas More (1478-1535 – imprisoned for opposing Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, executed for opposing the Act of Supremacy of 1534)

• Martin Luther (1483-1546)

THE TUDORS • The ending of the Wars of the Roses and the founding of the Tudor dynasty in 1485 opened a new era

in English life. Monarchs assured stability by increasing their own power and undercutting the strength of the nobles. At the same time, they dramatically changed England’s religious practices and helped transform the country from a small island into one of the world’s great powers. Know House of Tudor in order.

Henry VII’s political moves to establish alliances Henry VII arranged for his daughter Margaret to marry James IV of Scotland in hopes of destroying the alliance between Scotland and France. This didn’t happen, but it did eventually unite the crowns of Scotland and England. Henry VII arranged for his eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, to marry Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain and aunt of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Arthur married Catherine in 1501, but died in 1502 at age 15. Henry VII died in 1509, and his second son became king as Henry VIII. To retain the alliance with Spain, Henry married Catherine of Aragon two months later after receiving permission from the Pope. Henry VII had initiated this effort. Henry VIII’s break with Rome

• Henry VIII’s six wives

Harris, H English IV

• William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury 1503-1532), Thomas Cranmer (first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury 1532-1555, liturgical reform, compiled Book of Common Prayer – convicted of treason and heresy and burned at the stake under Mary I in 1556)

• Act of Supremacy (1534); Thomas Cromwell (ca. 1485-1540); dissolution of the monasteries; execution

of Sir Thomas More; King Henry remains a Catholic; Act of Six Articles (1539)

• By 1553, England was well on its way to becoming a Protestant nation; Edward VI (born 12 October 1537; reigned 28 January 1547- 6 July 1553); Lady Jane Grey, “Nine Day Queen”

• Mary I (born 18 Feb 1516; reigned 6 July 1553- 17 November 1558)

• When Mary I died after a five-year reign, her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth, came to the throne. Strong and clever, Elizabeth was probably England’s ablest monarch since William the Conqueror. She had received a Renaissance education and had read widely in the Greek and Latin classics. Becoming a great patron of the arts, she gathered around her the best writers of her day.

• Elizabeth I (born 7 September 1533 at 3PM; reigned 17 November 1558- 24 March 1603)

• Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I’s first cousin once removed (born December 1542- 8 February 1587 – executed for assassination attempts on Elizabeth I)

The House of Stuart

• James I of England; son of Mary, Queen of Scots; Elizabeth I’s first cousin twice removed; Elizabeth I named him as her successor; was also James VI of Scotland (born 19 June 1566; reigned 24 March 1603- 27 March 1625)

LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD

• took a backseat to during the Renaissance.

• Lyric poetry reigns over the narrative poetry popular during the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods. Elizabethan poets perfect the sonnet form.

Harris, H English IV

!"#$ !%&'

See daily homework assignments to learn when readings are due.

The Schools of Jonson and Donne 427-428

John Donne 434 “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” 438 “Meditation 17” 443

“Holy Sonnet 10” 441 Ben Jonson 448 “On My First Son” 451 “Still to Be Neat” 453 “Song: To Celia” 454 “On My First Daughter” handout “To John Donne handout Andrew Marvell 458

“To His Coy Mistress” 461

Robert Herrick 458 “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” 463 Terms to Know metaphysics metaphysical poetry conceit paradox epigram parallel structure (parallelism) anaphora carpe diem theme Review: lyric poetry, imagery, Italian or Petrarchan sonnet

The English Renaissance Part II (1625-1660)

Harris, English IV H

Charles I • 1625- James I dies. Charles I crowned. • Charles I frequently clashed with Parliament, who refused to fund wars for which Charles wanted

financial support. When they refused, the king extorted taxes from his wealthy subjects and pressed the poor into service as soldiers and sailors. Parliament tried to prevent such abuses of power, so Charles eventually dissolved Parliament and would not call it into session for eleven years.

• Puritans—Calvinists who wished to Purify the Church of its Catholic traditions—were enraged by Charles I’s demands that clergymen “conform,” or observe all of the ceremonies of the Anglican Church.

The Civil War

• Charles’s problems grew worse after he was forced to fight Scottish rebels outraged by his insistence on religious conformity. Desperate for money, he summoned a hostile Parliament, which passed wave upon wave of reforms. Angered when the King tried to outmaneuver them, Parliament condemned him as a tyrant in 1642. Civil War broke out. In 1645, Parliament’s forces, led by Oliver Cromwell, defeated the royalist army, and in 1647, took Charles as a prisoner. Radical Puritans, who by then dominated Parliament, tried the king and convicted him of treason. Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649.

Cavalier: supporter of Charles I Royalist: supporter of Charles I Roundhead: Puritan supporter of Parliament

English Interregnum

• Oliver Cromwell led the new government, called the English Commonwealth. Under a commonwealth, the supreme power is vested in the people.

• Facing discontent at home and abroad, Cromwell dissolved Parliament in 1653 and named himself Lord Protector. Until his death in 1658, he ruled as a virtual dictator.

Civil War had not led to the free society that many who had fought against the king expected. Their hopes, coupled with economic hardships, brought unrest. The Commonwealth also fueled discontent by outlawing

gambling, horse racing, newspapers, fancy clothes, public dancing, and the theater.

• Puritans showed their lack of interest in fashionable whimsy by deliberately choosing to dress in unfashionable, plain clothes. Men and women alike wore dark colors, plain collars and cuffs, and none of the fancy trimmings that distinguished the trendy folk. Because some Puritan men wore their hair cut short, they were called “Roundheads,” which distinguished them from the Cavaliers, who wore elaborate curls.

The Restoration After chaotic years of disorder, Parliament offered the crown to the exiled son of Charles I, who became Charles II in 1660. The monarchy was restored. In sharp contrast to drab Puritan leaders, Charles II and his court copied plush fashions of Paris. An avid patron of the arts, Charles reopened the theaters and invited Italian composers and Dutch painters to live and work in London. A few important writers of the time: John Milton (1608-1674) - biography in Paradise Lost packet. More on pp. 429 and 472. John Bunyan (1628-1688) - p. 429-430 Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) - biography on p.490 Amelia Lanier (1569-1645) - biography on p. 490 We will study the following works: “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars” Richard Lovelace 490; 494 from “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” Amelia Lanier 490; 492 “When I consider how my light is spent” John Milton 477 from Paradise Lost John Milton 479 and packet Prentice Hall Literature: The British Tradition- unit III

Harris, H English IV Prentice Hall Literature—Unit 3 The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors—Seventh Edition

The$Restoration$and$Eighteenth$Century 1660-1798

• Restoration: 1660-1700 • 1660: Charles II becomes King and reopens the theatres! • Restoration Theatre

o Unlike Elizabethan theatres, Restoration theatres had a proscenium arch (“frame”) separating the audience from the stage, real changes of scenery, and female actors.

o Restoration theatre is best known for its comedic plays.

Religion$and$Politics$• With the return of the monarchy, the established church also returned. While Charles II was willing to

pardon or ignore many former enemies (such as John Milton), church officials were not as tolerant. o Parliament forced Charles II to establish the Test Act in 1673, which required that all holders of

civil and military offices take the sacrament in an Anglican Church and that they deny belief in transubstantiation.

o Protestant dissenters and Roman Catholics were largely excluded from public office. They could not attend university, own land, or vote.

• In 1678, the report of the Popish Plot, in which Catholics would rise and murder their Protestant foes, terrified London. Even though the charge turned out to be a fraud, the House of Commons exploited the fear by trying to force Charles II to exclude his Catholic brother, James, duke of York, from succession to the throne.

o Charles II was able to defeat the Exclusion Bill by dissolving Parliament. o This crisis resulted in a division of the country between two new political parties:

! Tories, who supported the king, were landed gentry and country clergy, represented

conservative values, strongly supported the Crown and the Anglican church, and felt that the Crown and church provided social and political stability.

! Whigs, the king’s opponents, were a more progressive and diverse group, consisting of powerful nobles who were jealous of the powers of the Crown, merchants and financers of London, bishops, low-church clergymen, and dissenters. They believed in tolerance and commerce.

• 1688-1689 - The Glorious Revolution o Religious differences resurfaced when James, Duke of York, the Catholic brother of Charles II,

became King. After coming to the throne in 1685 as James II, he claimed the right to make his own laws, suspended the Test Act, and began to fill the army and government with fellow Catholics. The nation became frightened of a Catholic dynasty when he had a son in 1688.

o In 1688, after secret negotiations, the Dutchman William of Orange, husband of Mary Stuart, the Protestant daughter of James II, marched from southwestern England to London with a small army.

o Instead of fighting, James II fled to France, hence the names “glorious” and “bloodless.” o William III and Mary II ruled jointly until Mary’s death in 1694. William ruled alone until his death

in 1702. o In 1689, William and Mary agreed to respect a Bill of Rights passed by Parliament. The bill

guaranteed the following: ! Parliament has the right to approve all taxes. ! The monarch is forbidden to suspend the law.

o England thus attained a limited, or constitutional, monarchy. o Ask about Jacobites and the Act of Settlement in 1701.

• 1707: Act of Union joined Scotland to England and Wales, creating Great Britain. • By the time George I became the first Hanover king in 1714, the government was securely in the hands

of the Whigs. o The ministerial government also continued to develop. The first prime minister of the nation was

Robert Walpole, who entered office in 1721 during the reign of George I.

Harris, H English IV Prentice Hall Literature—Unit 3 The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors—Seventh Edition

The$Nation$Changes$

• An Agricultural Revolution o By the late 1600s, new farm tools made it possible for farms to produce much more food. With

more food available, the population surged upward. Because fewer farmhands were needed, many people left the countryside.

o In the growing towns, people became the factory hands who ran the machines of the early Industrial Revolution.

• The Industrial Age o British inventions after 1750 made the spinning and weaving of cloth more efficient.

! The steam engine was perfected and adapted to run a power loom. ! Factories were built to produce vast quantities of cotton cloth. ! Merchants sold the goods all over the world, adding gold to the nation’s capital.

o By the late 1790s, the majority of British people still earned their livings as farmers. Yet, the economic revolution of the 1700s increased Britain’s wealth tremendously.

• World Power o In 1763 The Treaty of Paris and Treaty of Hubertusburg, which ended the French and Indian

War and Seven Years’ War, established Great Britain as a world power. It consolidated British rule over Canada and India, and not even the loss of the American colonies could interrupt the rise of the empire. The nation was no longer an isolated island, but a nation with interests and responsibilities around the world.

The$Englightenment$• The scientific revolution that made industry possible stemmed from a larger development in thought

known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in all fields believed that, through reason and observation of nature, human beings could discover the order underlying all things.

o In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published one of the touchstone works of the Enlightenment— a monumental study of gravity.

o Skepticism and freethinking flourished during the late seventeenth century. ! If a king could be executed, what authority was safe? ! The skeptic argued that all knowledge derives from our senses, but because our

senses do not report the world accurately, reliable knowledge is impossible to achieve. The safest course is to remember that most beliefs rest on opinion and not to hunger for some ultimate, inaccessible truth.

! The main line of philosophy—which runs from Bacon and Hobbes through John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume—can be characterized broadly as empiricism, the doctrine that regards all knowledge as derived from experience.

• Eighteenth-century philosophers typically shun metaphysics—the search for essential or ultimate principals of reality, transcending the physical—in favor of more practical concerns. Accepting the limits of human intelligence and power, they settle for the possible.

• By 1750, Britain was rapidly industrializing, and the social theories of the Enlightenment were eclipsed. Mills and factories belched smoke into the country air. Men, women, and children toiled at machines for twelve to fourteen hours a day. Poor people crowded into the towns and cities, unable to find regular work and barely able to survive. By the late 1700s, “progress” seemed to mean misery for millions. Writers and intellectuals began to lose faith in the ability of human reason to solve every problem.

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Literature$of$the$Period$Neoclassicism

• Reacting against the difficulty and occasional extravagance of late Renaissance literature, writers and critics called for a new restraint, clarity, regularity, and good sense.

o These writers are called neoclassical because the styles they used and admired were the styles used by the writers of ancient Greece and Rome, such as Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. This literature is often called “Augustan,” as those ancient writers flourished during the reign of Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor.

o Donne’s “metaphysics and Milton’s bold storming of heaven,” for instance, seemed overdone to some Restoration readers.

o Perhaps writers and readers yearned for peace and order after the violent extremism of the civil wars.

o Neoclassical writers aimed not only to be classical, but new, using the ancient writers’ styles and methods, but also making their work their own.

o Neoclassical writers wanted to formulate “correctness” and rules of good writing. Even Shakespeare had sometimes been careless; while the writers could not expect to surpass his genius, they might hope to avoid his faults.

• Neoclassicism favors generalities rather than the viewpoint of the individual and displays fondness for satires that poke fun at society’s follies.

o Writers often expressed their thoughts in aphorisms—short, quotable sentences—such as, “The proper study of mankind is man” (Alexander Pope).

• Which author brought neoclassical tendencies into focus during the Renaissance Period? The Age of Prose

• Until the 1740s, poetry tended to set the standards of literature; however, the growth of new kinds of prose took away that initiative.

• Poets of the time were afraid that the spirit of poetry might be dying, driven out by the spirit of prose, uninspiring truth, and the end of superstitions that had once peopled the land with poetic fairies and demons. In an age barren of magic, they ask, where has poetry gone?

• The melancholy poet withdrew into himself and yearned to be living in some other time and place.

The Expansion of the reading public • During the eighteenth century, the literate population expanded greatly. The expansion included upper-

class women and the prosperous men and women of the growing middle class. More people also turned to writing. The distinction between “high” and “low” art became an issue as ordinary people began to write about ordinary topics not found in “high” literature.

The Beginnings of the Novel

• The novel began to emerge during this period. This form of narrative would explode in popularity in the nineteenth century and become the favorite reading matter of the growing middle class.

• Middle-class writers—e.g., Daniel Defoe, a member of the middle class himself—, did not seek upper- class readers (though Robinson Crusoe appealed to all classes). Instead he aimed at shopkeepers, apprentices, and servants.

• For the first time in British history, a critical mass of female readers and writers carried weight with publishers. Jane Baker and Mary Davys, along with many others, brought women’s work and daily lives as well as love affairs to fiction.

• Identifying with characters in novels, readers might find themselves, thus adding to the novel’s popularity.

• By the end of the eighteenth century, most of the leading British novelists were women.

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Important Authors of the Period

• John Dryden (1631-1700) o dominated literature during the Restoration o named poet laureate by Charles II o wrote plays, satirical poems, and celebratory poems that hailed the achievements of humanity o His essays about drama and his other prose compositions represent the first modern prose.

• Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

o His poetry, written in the early 1700s, is a shining example of the neoclassical style, exhibiting wit, elegance, and moderation.

o His most famous work, The Rape of the Lock, is a satire on the war between the sexes. o He had enormous influence as a critic.

• Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

o was a scornful critic of England’s rising merchant class, whom he viewed as shameless money-grubbers.

o In his great satires, Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal, he presents human nature as deeply flawed, suggesting that moral progress must begin with a recognition of our intellectual and moral limitations.

• Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) o wrote Moll Flanders (1722) o wrote Robinson Crusoe (1719) o Moll Flanders is considered the first English novel; however, others bestow this distinction on

Robinson Crusoe.

• Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729) o wrote England’s first literary periodicals, The Tatler and The Spectator, which were one-page,

crisply-written reflective essays and news addressed to the middle class.

• Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) o His advice helped nurture the careers of many younger talents. o His most important work, The Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1755. It was

the first dictionary to be considered a standard and authoritative reference work in English. o The time period of his influence is known as “The Age of Johnson.”

$The$Eclipse$of$the$Enlightenment$

• By the late 1700s, “progress” that had once been celebrated by Enlightenment thinkers seemed to be causing millions to suffer. As they lost faith in the power of human reason, writers turned away from the standards of neoclassicism. Writing in the language of everyday life, writers such as Thomas Gray charged their poems with fresh, new emotion. The Age of Reason was coming to an end. Emerging voices would make the 1800s a new literary age . . .

1798 -1832

Historical Background Politics

• The faith in reason had eroded. • The French Revolution began on July 14, 1789.

o The people placed limits on the powers of Louis XVI, established a new government, and approved a document called the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen, which affirmed the principles of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”

o France became a constitutional monarchy. o Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793. o The English ruling class felt threatened by these events. o At first, most British authors and intellectuals supported the revolution and the democratic ideas on

which it was based. The Reign of Terror

o The revolutionaries, called the Jacobins, executed about 17,000 royalists, moderates, and even radicals, using the guillotine.

o The new army began to make war across Europe in the name of liberty. o In 1793, France declared war on Britain.

Britons who supported the French Revolution then turned against it. Conservative Britons wanted to restrain reformers, who they denounced as Jacobins.

Society • The horrors of industrialism that emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries increased. • Throughout the long wars with France, Britain’s government ignored the problems caused by the Industrial

Revolution. o Overcrowded factory towns sprang up. o Workers faced unpleasant and unsafe working conditions along with long hours and low pay.

• Conflicts of interest created a class struggle between the working class who wanted reform and the ruling class who fiercely resisted them.

o Important Dates 1824- law passed permitting Britain’s first labor unions to organize 1829- Catholic Emancipation restored economic and religious freedoms to Roman

Catholics. 1832- voting rights extended to the small but important middle class (males only).

• This threatened the traditional dominance of landowning aristocrats in Parliament. 1833- Parliament passed the first law governing factory safety. 1833- Slavery is abolished in most of the British Empire.

British romantic writers responded to the climate of their times. Their new interest in the trials and dreams of the

common people and their desire for radical change developed out of the democratic idealism that characterized the early part of the French Revolution. Their deep attachment to nature and to a pure, simple past was a response to the misery and ugliness of industrialization. For the romantics, the faith in science and reason, so characteristic of eighteenth century thought and literature, no longer applied in a world of tyranny and factories.

Inspiration Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• The Swiss-born writer/philosopher saw society as a force that deformed and imprisoned human nature. • He argues that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains,” an idea that influenced both American

and French revolutionaries. German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), who Rousseau also inspired.

Characteristics • Unlike reason, the imagination is

o a creative force comparable to that of nature. o the fundamental source of truth and morality, enabling people to sympathize with others and to

picture the world. • Romantic literature

o emphasizes attention to emotions. o expresses an ideal of self-fulfillment and growth through experience. o views nature as a wild, free force that can inspire spiritual understanding, whereas eighteenth

century poetry saw nature as a force to be tamed and analyzed scientifically.

Poetry • Poetry was the dominant form during the romantic period. • Romantic poetry places the emphasis on emotions. • William Wordsworth, in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published Lyrical Ballads (1798), the

work that inaugurated romanticism. In the preface, Wordsworth defines Romantic poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

o In the preface, Wordsworth also states that ordinary situations will be dealt with with a “certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way.”

o Wordsworth commented about incorporating human passions “with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.”

• Both Wordsworth and Coleridge, influenced by the French Revolution, started out as more liberal, but became more and more conservative and their literary ideas less radical.

• Romantic poetry compares the beauty of art with the realities of human suffering, as in the poetry of John Keats.

• While Wordsworth and Coleridge initiated romantic literature with their poetry, George Gordon, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats are known as the “second generation” romantic poets. All three lived short, tragic, yet dramatic lives imbued with their remarkable creative spirits.

Prose

• Romantic prose presents faith in the powers of nature and the imagination. • The gothic novel rose to prominence during the romantic period, emphasizing horror, suspense, doom,

mystery, passion, and the grotesque and supernatural. o Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains one of the most famous gothic novels.

• The novel of manners emerged during this period. Novels of manners recreate a social world, conveying with finely detailed observation the customs, values, and habits of a highly developed and complex society. The conventions of the society dominate the story, and characters are differentiated by the degree to which they measure up to or fall below the uniform standard of behavior.

o Novels of manners satirize British customs. o Jane Austen is the most highly regarded author of novels of manners. Her novels include Sense

and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816), and Persuasion (1818). • During the period, writers such as Charles Lamb wrote essays that were more personal and introspective

than ever before. • Writers like Sir Walter Scott brought attention to the historical novel—novels that focus on historical events

and settings, with attention to local flavor and regional speech.

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World Power

• During the Victorian Period, England was at its highest point of development as a world power.

o London replaced Paris as the pivotal city of Western Civilization. • The period is named after Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837-1901. • The period was a time of scores of developments—e.g., steam power

(more fully exploited for fast railways, iron ships, looms, printing presses, farmers’ combines), the telegraph, the intercontinental cable, photography, anesthetics, universal compulsory education

• The most important development of the age was the shift from a way of life based on the ownership of land to a modern, urban economy based on trade and manufacturing.

• England expanded its influence all over the world. Cotton and other manufactured products were exported in English ships, a merchant fleet whose size was without parallel in other countries.

o England gained particular profits from the development of its own colonies, which, by 1890, comprised more than a quarter of all the territory on the surface of the earth. One in four people was a subject of Queen Victoria. By the end of the century, England was the world’s foremost imperial power.

• Because of its status around the world, there was optimism and pride in being English. Writers celebrated that the English people were “the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw.”

o However, prosperity came with a price. Other writers exposed not-so-pleasant realities: brutal factory conditions stinking slums “[a] sense of something lost . . . displaced persons in a world made alien by technological

changes that had been exploited too quickly for the adaptive powers of the human psyche”

Reform and EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND • Two key issues—trade policy and electoral reform—dominated domestic politics during the Early Victorian

Period. • Manufacturing interests, who refused to tolerate their exclusion from the political process any longer, led

working men in agitating for reform. Fearing the kind of revolution it had seen on the continent, Parliament passed a Reform Bill that transformed England’s class structure.

o The First Reform Bill of 1832 extended the right to vote to all males owning property worth £10 or more in annual rent. This included the lower middle classes but not the working classes.

o The Second Reform Bill of 1867 further extended the vote and redistributed parliamentary

representation, breaking up the monopoly that conservative landholders had so long enjoyed.

o Corn Laws Repealed (1846) - The Corn Laws placed high tariffs (taxes on imports) on wheat and other grain in order to discourage food imports and help English landlords and farmers keep prices high.

Reform came when Parliament, confronting crop failures in England and a massive potato famine in Ireland (1845-1849), sought to improve dire conditions.

With the repeal, free trade ensued, and imports could be imported with the payment of only minimal tariff duties.

Although free trade did not eradicate the slums of Manchester, it worked well for many years and helped relieve the major crisis of the Victorian economy.

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MID-VICTORIAN ENGLAND (1848-70) Economic Prosperity, The Growth of the Empire, and Religious Controversy

• Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham and James Mill) - All humans seek to maximize pleasure and minimize

pain. The criterion by which we should judge a morally correct action, therefore, is the extent to which it provides the greatest pleasure to the greatest number.

o Measuring religion by this moral arithmetic, Benthamites concluded that it was an outdated superstition; it did not meet the rationalist test of value.

o Utilitarianism was influential in providing a philosophical basis for political reform, but aroused considerable opposition on the part of those who felt it failed to recognize people’s spiritual needs.

o John Stuart Mill, philosopher and son of James Mill, wrote that his upbringing in Utilitarianism had left him no power to feel.

• Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) explores how a process called “natural selection” explains how different forms of life evolved from previous forms.

o Darwin’s account is quite different from the creation story from the Bible; controversy resulted. Some Victorian thinkers took Darwin’s theory as a direct challenge to biblical truth and traditional religious faith. Others accepted Darwin and religion, striving to reconcile scientific and religious insights.

• Motives for an Empire o Britain’s motives in creating its empire were many. The nation sought wealth, markets for

manufactured goods, sources for raw materials, and world power and influence. o “White Man’s Burden” - Many English people also saw the expansion of the empire as a moral

responsibility—what Victorian writer Rudyard Kipling termed the “White Man’s Burden.” Queen Victoria herself stated that the imperial mission was “to protect the poor natives and

advance civilization.” Missionary societies flourished, spreading Christianity in India, Asia, and Africa.

LATE-VICTORIAN ENGLAND (1870-1901) - Decay of Victorian Values

• This period marked the apex of British Imperialism, and the costs of the empire (rebellions, massacres,

bungled wars—Indian Mutiny in 1857, Jamaica Rebellion in 1865, massacre of General Gordon in 1885, The Boer War) showed.

• “Irish Question” - Home rule for Ireland becomes a topic of heated debate. • Germany threatens England’s naval and military position, and the recovery of the United States after its

Civil War provided new and serious competition in industry and agriculture. • Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (1847) challenged the middle-class economic and political system. • Walter Pater - Answers to problems cannot be solved, so we should enjoy the fleeting moments of beauty.

The Queen and the Victorian Temper

• “Victorian” (adj.): earnest; morally responsible; characterized by domestic propriety; also, prudish; old-fashioned (See page 862).

• Queen Victoria represented the domestic fidelities her citizens embraced.

• When she died, Henry James wrote, “I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl.”

• She is the first British monarch of whom we have photographs.

o These pictures facilitated her representing her country’s sense of itself during her reign.

• Queen Victoria reigned 63 years—longer than any other British monarch.

Break from the romantics

• The popular novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) wrote, “When Byron passed away, we awoke from the morbid, the dreaming, ‘the moonlight and dimness of the mind,’ and by a natural reaction addressed ourselves to the active and daily objects which lay before us.”

• The sense of historical self-consciousness, of strenuous social enterprise, and of growing national achievement led writers as early as the 1850s and 1860s to define their age as Victorian.

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The Novel

• The novel was the dominant form in Victorian Literature. o Novels were initially, for the most part, published in serial form (told in contiguous—typically

chronological—installments in sequential issues of a single periodical publication), and were later published in three-volume editions, or “three-deckers.”

• Victorian novelists most frequently depict a set of social relationships in the middle-class society developing around them.

o Most focus on a protagonist whose effort to define his or her place in society is the main concern of the plot.

o The novel constructs a tension between surrounding social conditions and the aspiration of the hero or heroine, whether it be for love, social position, or a life adequate to his or her imagination. This tension makes the novel the natural form to use in portraying women’s struggles for self-realization in the context of the constraints imposed upon them.

• Female writers were, for the first time, not figures on the margins, but major authors. o Jane Austen (Romantic Period), Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George

Eliot all helped define the genre. • For Victorians, the novel was both a principal form of entertainment and a spur to social reform. • Joseph Conrad defined the novel in a way that could speak for the Victorians: “What is a novel if not a

conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”

• Famous Victorian novels and novelists o Jane Eyre, Villette (Charlotte Brontë) o Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) o Bleak House, Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) o Middlemarch (George Elliot) o Mary Barton (Elizabeth Gaskell) o Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy) o Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray) o The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

“The Woman Question”

• 1918 - English women over the age of 30 who owned property or were married to a property holder gained the vote.

• Married Women’s Property Acts (1870-1908) - Until the passage of these Acts, married women could not own or handle their own property.

• Arguments for women’s rights were based on the libertarian principles that had formed the basis of extended rights for men.

• 1848 - The first women’s college opens in London. o By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve universities or university

colleges and could study, although not earn a degree, at Oxford and Cambridge. • The Industrial Revolution brought hundreds of thousands of lower-class women into factory jobs.

o Bad working conditions and underemployment drove thousands of women into prostitution. • The only occupation at which an unmarried, middle-class woman could earn a living and maintain some

claim to gentility was that of a governess, but a governess could expect no security of employment, only minimal wages, and an ambiguous status—somewhere between a servant and family member—that isolated her within the household.

o The governess novel, of which the most famous examples are Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, became a popular genre through which to explore women’s roles in society.

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Literary Movements

• Realism focuses on ordinary people facing the day-to-day problems of life, an emphasis that reflects the trend toward democracy and the growing middle-class audience for literature.

o Realism grew out of Romanticism as rapid technological and social changes occurred.

• Naturalism is a movement that involved cramming works with gritty details—the sour smells of poverty, the harsh sounds of factory life—often with the aim of promoting social reform.

o Naturalism directly contradicts the Romantic idea that nature mirrors human feelings and instead portrays nature as harsh and indifferent to human suffering.

Poetry • As the novel emerged as the dominant form of literature, poets sought new ways of telling stories in verse. • Some poets like Matthew Arnold and Alfred, Lord Tennyson held that poets should use the heroic materials

of the past. Others like Elizabeth Barrett Browning felt that poets should represent “their age, not Charlemagne’s.”

• Victorian poets experimented with character and perspective. • Although Victorian poets developed out of and show the strong influence of the Romantics, they were not

able to sustain the confidence that the Romantics had in the power of the imagination. • The dramatic monologue became a popular form of poetry. • Also popular was the use of visual detail and sound (beautiful cadences, alliteration, vowel sounds,

roughness).

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The Modern Period 1914-1945

World War I (1914-1918) World War II (1939-1945)

• Modernist writers rejected romanticism and realism in order to create work that demonstrated, in their opinion, a genuine reaction to the turbulent events of the world. o Modernist writers acknowledged the destruction happening right

in front of them and wanted somehow to make sense of it. o They experimented with form, syntax, and structure, and

challenged conventional ways of life as well as conventional ways of writing. They no longer felt the traditional ways were sufficient to reflect the drastically altered state of the world.

• Their efforts to reflect the world resulted in works that are non-liner in plotline and non-traditional in discourse, narration, and overall structure. o Modernist literature focuses on psychological realism, which

explores the inner workings of characters’ minds to tell stories, instead of the realism popular during the Victorian Period, which focuses on external descriptions.

o Psychological realism includes free indirect discourse and stream of consciousness.

• Famous British modernist writers o Poets: William Butler Yeats, T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (American-born;

became a British subject in 1927), Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney o Novelists: Joseph Conrad, D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence, James

Joyce, Virginia Woolf o Dramatists: Noel Coward and Samuel Beckett

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Psychological Realism

Types of Discourse Direct discourse (DD)

• Speaker is directly quoted • Quotation marks • It is clear who the speaker is. • Martine thought, “Fran will throw a tantrum if I borrow her toys.”

Indirect discourse (ID) • Speaker is identified, but not directly quoted • No quotation marks • It is clear who the speaker is. • Martine thought that Fran would throw a tantrum if she borrowed her toys.

Free indirect discourse (FID)

• Speaker is not directly quoted or identified • No quotation marks • It is not clear who the speaker is. • Fran would throw a tantrum if she borrowed her toys. • a style of third person narration which combines some of the characteristics of third person

with first person. The combination includes shifts that change without signal. It is often unclear as to whether the thoughts of the narrator or the thoughts of a character are being conveyed, allowing a flexible and sometimes ironic interaction of internal and external perspectives. Even though the speaker or thinker is not named, it is often possible to infer his or her identity by examining the statements and using clues of characterization.

• The most famous nineteenth-century example of free indirect discourse is Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) are two famous British modernist examples.

• Modernist novels such as the American William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

sometime deliberately create confusion as to the identity of the thinker, and modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot (in The Waste Land) produce instability by shifting between multiple, unidentified speakers.

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“The Uncle Charles Principle” (UCP) and free indirect discourse

“The Uncle Charles Principle” is very similar to free indirect discourse except that the

narrator’s words are “contaminated” by the characteristics of a character, instead of the work completely shifting to a character’s thoughts. This technique was named after a character in a work by James Joyce. Such characters are so distinctive in the way they act, the words they use, and the terms they use that they are easy to detect. If you know anything about the characters or if there are characters from certain backgrounds or with specific characteristics, it is then easy to identify them when they speak. Here is an example from James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916):

• “Every morning, therefore, Uncle Charles repaired to his outhouse . . .”

o Literary critic Hugh Kenner felt that the word “repaired” was not a word Joyce, as the third person narrator, would use. Instead, it is more likely that it would be used by a 19th century middle-aged Dubliner trying to make himself seem smarter than he is—someone like Uncle Charles from the book. This “contamination” of the supposedly objective narrative voice by the subjectivity of the characters collapses the distance between narrator and narrated, leaving no stable position from which to evaluate the characters. Instead, the world begins to take on the subjective qualities of the characters, and the distinction between subject and object breaks down. This technique, like free indirect discourse, breaks down the distance between the narrator and the characters, which creates a deeper intimacy between the reader, characters, and work as a whole.

Critics themselves can’t come to a definite agreement about the differences between UCP and FID, so the terms can be used interchangeably.

• Example from “The Dead”:

“Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet.” The narrator uses the word “literally” to flag a figure of speech (“run off her feet”); this error is typical in the speech of the uneducated, such as Lily, which the narrator takes on as his own at this moment and then shifts out of when bourgeois characters arrive.

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Stream of Consciousness

Stream-of-consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement.

• A few of the most famous works that employ the technique are James Joyce's Ulysses

(in particular, Molly Bloom's soliloquy), Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and American Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The technique has also been parodied, notably by David Lodge in the final chapter of The British Museum Is Falling Down. Stream-of-consciousness writing is characterized by associative leaps that can make the prose difficult to follow. Typically, writers employ very long sentences, which move from one thought to another. Sometimes, writers avoid punctuation altogether in order to prevent artificial breaks in the "stream."

• Stream-of-consciousness not only presents reality from the minds of characters, but it presents how they arrive from thought to thought. It presents thoughts as they occur and can give greater insight into how a character arrives at conclusions and makes decisions. This technique, from both topical and structural standpoints, provides authentic representations of psychological reality.