Yeats’s “The Stolen Child”
The song we listened to in class was Loreena McKennitt’s interpretation of “Stolen Child”, as it appeared on her album Elemental. It provides a good sense of the poem’s mood as well as the (slight) changes in tone.
Some of you asked questions about changelings that I was unable to answer. The folklore of changelings varies greatly and, though predominant in Europe, countries have very different explanations for them. Wikipedia provides an overview that will give you some idea.
Some more information can be found here.
I also came across an essay analysing the poem in quite some detail. It is a bit long, but very much worth reading (and it makes me think that it is really too bad that “The Stolen Child” exceeds the IOC-appropriate length).
The images I’m embedding here are “pressed fairies”. (Another book with interesting fairy drawings is this one. Click on the “Look in side this book” option on Amazon, as it allows you to see some images. I happen to have this book in Austria, and it has some fantastic drawings of both naughty & nice supernatural creatures, as well as information about their ‘mythological background’.)
Literary Morsels: Gogol / Dead Souls
I am presently reading Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a 19th century Russian writer. I discovered Gogol in a sort roundabout way, first reading a novel called The Namesake, by the contemporary Indian writer Jhumpa Lahiri, in which one of the characters is named after Gogol (hence the ‘namesake’).* Intrigued, I got hold of a short story mentioned in The Namesake and then came across Dead Souls in our school library.
Dead Souls is a book of its time – wordy, with the author inserting himself into the pages (and not in Auster’s postmodern manner), dealing with class issues and infused with an overall dark and dreary mood. And yet, it is spellbinding in its own way. Besides, what understanding can one have of literature without having read at least some of the great Russian novelists (Dostoyevski, Chekov, Tolstoy, Pushkin….)?
I want to share these lines, which contain a rather elegant simile followed by an increasingly gruesome image, from Dead Souls:
[Chichikov] was soon made aware of this, however, by a violent jolt, caused by the log paving, compared to which the cobblestones of a town are a delight. These logs jump up and down like piano keys, and the incautious traveller will be rewarded with a bump on the back of his head, or a bruise on this forehead, or – most painful of all – he may even bite off the tip of his tongue.
More on Russian literature:
Russian Literature on Wikipedia
Brief History of Russian Literature
If you want to truly challenge yourself, try Vladimir Nabokov, a 20th century Russian author (who wrote primarily in English), whose work is as infamous (Lolita) as it is outstanding (Pale Fire).
For getting a sense of that “Russian mood” so characteristic of the great Russian novels and probably the Russian people themselves, I highly recommend the film The Return – just don’t expect to emerge cheerful.
* The Namesake was made into a film, for those of you who want to watch rather than read. (I say: do both!)
Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist”
Click on the link to access the .pdf file:
The Lost Art of Reading Aloud
In this NYT opinion article, Verlyn Klinkenborg reflects on the “Lost Art of Reading Aloud”.
I believe there is great value in reading aloud. When you read aloud and read well, you can better grasp what you are reading. The beauty of words comes through. The intensity of feelings portrayed really takes hold of you. Certain literary devices – particularly auditory ones like alliteration, repetition, rhyme or rhythm – are immediately evident. And often reading aloud is a very social activity.
I remember my father reading to my sister and me – “The BFG” is one work that comes to mind. I recall my fifth grade teacher at Taipei American School using the hour after lunch to read “Matilda”. And I remember, as an IB student, reading certain books aloud with friends. I still feel chills running down my spine when recalling the time that two of my classmates and I read the play The Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman late at night in the middle of our school’s soccer field. We used flashlights to see the words on the page and were scared stiff, as our own surroundings (somewhere in the remoteness of New Mexico, with all human life around us seemingly non-existent) so well evoked the terror of the play: in Death and the Maiden a woman, captured as a political prisoner and raped multiple times by members of an unidentified dictatorship in Latin America, encounters one of her rapists after the regime has fallen. The situation is reversed, as she now takes him prisoner in an isolated country house and forces him confess his crimes to her unwitting husband.
Any “reading aloud” experiences you have to share? Any value you see in reading aloud?
Resources for Writing and Citation
A good quick checklist with basic writing rules:
Online Resource for MLA style citation
…though this document does a better job at explaining parenthetical citations than the Capital Community College page (the info is there also, but involves more navigating around the webpage).
If you have any questions, ask!
A Pattern in “Digging”
This is from the senior blog, but it points to an intriguing pattern present in Heaney’s “Digging”. Take a look at it. We’ll discuss it in class next week, hopefully before you go to camp.
Paper 2 Questions
The Paper 2 due date is being moved to May 11th – somehow I thought it was due next Friday, but apparently it was for the Monday before that, which of course does not quite work. Sorry about the mess-up!
Paper 2 Questions (choose only one)
1) Adventure and vivid action are often used to sustain a reader’s interest. Explore the ways in which at least two writers have used such means or substituted others to keep the reader reading. (Nov. 08 SL exam)
2) Conversations and interchanges can take place in literature both internally (in side a speaker’s head) and externally (with other beings). Discuss the ways in which at least two writers in your study have used conversations and interchanges to enrich their texts. (Nov. 08 SL exam)
3) Say what the titles of some individual works you have studied indicated to you at the outset. In what ways were your first impressions reinforced or altered as you read and explored each work? (May 01 HL)
You may use any work we have studied to answer the essay question (with the exception of poetry).
Don’t forget to include an outline!
)Meter / Rhyme Exercise: Solutions
“The Lady of Shalott”
“The Lady of Shalott” by Lord Alfred Tennyson has a rhyme scheme and a switching meter.
This poem has been a very popular subject for artists. The Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse has several interpretations, based on different lines of the poem. Loreena McKennitt, a Canadian musician with a Celtic style, put the poem to music.
“The Raven”
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpieces is “The Raven”. Do read more of Poe if you get the chance. He was one of the earliest practitioners of the short story and is considered the creator of detective-fiction. He represents the American Romantic movement, specifically the Gothic genre. Poe was an amazing writer who weighed every single word he used. He also had an extremely impressive vocabulary. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of my absolute favourites of his. Getting back on topic, here is some information on the style of “The Raven”.
“Kubla Khan”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English Romantic poet, and “Kubla Khan” is one of his most (in)famous pieces. I don’t have information on the meter, but the link contains details on how this poem was composed. Coleridge’s “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” is also worth reading, particularly if you can get hold of the gorgeous edition illustrated by Gustave Doré.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Here is a link to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot (most known for: “The Wasteland”). An interpretation is offered here.
Excerpts from Macbeth
The scene with the witches, which is in fact the opening scene of the entire play, is written in iambic tetrameter. In Macbeth this meter is specific for the “Weïrd Sisters” (as the witches are also known as) and distinguishes them as supernatural creatures.
The second scene is in iambic pentameter which is used for all other characters in the play (with the exception of the porter, who speaks in prose, and Lady Macbeth in a single scene). The changing meters are important. As said, the witches’ meter marks them as different from the human beings in the play, whereas the contrast between all other characters and the porter is the result of class: the porter is low-class (thus speaks in prose), all other characters are part of the nobility (thus speak in iambic pentameter). This is true for other Shakespeare plays as well. Lady Macbeth’s single scene in prose also serves a purpose: it signals that she no longer is her former self and, riddled by her conscience, is completely out of her mind.
