Lesson Seven

Literary Texts

Remember…

• Literary texts ‘declare their distance’

• No intertextuality

• Creative, expressive

How?

Novels, plays, etc. are mostly standard discourse, especially for example detective novels BUT important literary works can:

explore characteruse unusual languageuse language devices eg. alliteration, metaphor, plays on words, etc.

Who?

• The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

• I can resist anything except temptation.

• There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Who?

• If music be the food of love, play on.

• Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain tops.

• To be or not to be, that is the question.

more Romeo and Juliet

J: Come, gentle night; come, loving, black browed night,

Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun

… in Italian

J: Vieni, dolce notte, amica dalla buia fronte,

Vieni, e dammi il mio Romeo;

Poi te lo lascerò, quando morirò

E potrai tagliarlo in tante stelline,

E il firmamento con lui sarà così chiaro

Che tutto il mondo sarà invaghito della notte

E non baderà più allo scalzante sole

Who?

• In a few minutes the train was running through the disgrace of outspread London.

Who?

• In the fishing-boat bobbing sea

• Farmyards away

• Do not go gentle into that good night.

Who?

• And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

• The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

• … with the lunch-bucket filled every season

Blowing in the Wind

• How many roads must a man walk down• before you can call him a man.• How many seas must a white dove sail• before she sleeps in the sand• And how many times must the cannon balls fly• before they are forever banned• The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.• The answer is blowing in the wind.

Blowing in the Wind

• repetition of aspirate H, before, the answer

• rhyme

• rhythm in syllable length

• repetition of chorus

• semantic equivalence– roads, seas, etc.– times, years, etc.

Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’

I’m going back out before the rain starts a falling

I’ll walk to the depth of the deepest dark forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

And the executioner’s face is always well hidden

Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’ (2)

Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten

Where black is the colour, where none is the number

And I’ll tell it and speak it, and think it and breathe it

And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking, but I’ll know my song well before I start singing

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s …. gonna fall.

Who?

• Eleanor Rigby ..wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.

• The highway’s filled with broken heroes on a last chance power drive…

Protest song• I’ve been waiting for something to happen• For a week or a month or a year• With the blood in the ink of the headlines• And the sound of the crowd in my ear• You might ask what it takes to remember• When you know that you’ve seen it before• Where a government lies to a people• And a country is drifting to war• And there’s a shadow on the faces• Of the men who send the guns• To the wars that are fought in places• Where their business interest runs

Translation

Guardavano fuori dalla porta, si guardavanol’un l’altro, sbadigliavano. Sospiravano.(C. Cassola ‘Il taglio del bosco’)

They would look out of the door, they would look at each other, they would yawn, they would sigh.

Translation

Ma neanche con lei dicevo una parola, anche con lei chinavo il capo.

(E. Vittorini, ‘Conversazione in Sicilia)

Not even with her did I say a word, even with her my head hung heavily.

The Wind in the Willows

TOAD; … I could eat a horse

ALBERT (a horse) Oh, could you? Well, I wouldn’t say no to some toad-in-the hole.

translation

TOAD: Potrei mangiarmi un cavallo.

ALBERT (un cavallo): Ah si? Beh, io non rifiuterei di certo un po’ di coda di rospo.

James Joyce

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was there was moo-cow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…

The Vances lived in number seven.

translation

Nel tempo dei tempi, ed erano bei tempi davvero, c’era una muuucca che veniva giù per la strada e questa muuucca che veniva giù per la strada incontrò un ragazzino carino detto grembialino.

I Vances abitavano al numero sette.

Margaret Attwood

On the thirteenth of November, day of unluck, month of the dead, Kat went into the Toronto General Hospital for an operation.