Class Notes: October 11-15, 18-22

Okay, I think I finally figured this out.  I'm sorry they're late.

Class Notes (October 11-15, 18-22)

Tone (Perrine: Chapter Ten)

·        “Tone, in literature, may be defined as the writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the reader, or herself or himself” (Perrine 880).

·        “Almost all of the elements of poetry help to indicate [a work’s] tone: connotation, imagery, and metaphor; irony and understatement; rhythm, sentence construction, and formal pattern.  There is therefore no pattern for recognizing tone” (Perrine 880).

·        Recognizing tone correctly is vital to any analysis of literature

http://www.blms.issaquah.wednet.edu/Teachers/greningerh/Tone-Moodwkst.pdf Tone vs. Mood

Style vs. Tone vs. Voice

Style: the language conventions used to construct the story; common styles change over time

·        Refers to the authorial persona’s personality

·        Superficial: “Here’s who I want to be as a writer”

·        Fairly stable, but it shifts infrequently when an author’s persona changes

·        Discussed in terms of character

·        Effect created by an author’s choice of techniques

Tone: the attitude that the story creates towards its subject matter

·        Can and does shift (sometimes often) with mood/subject

·        Refers to the speaker/narrator’s attitude

·        Discussed in terms of emotion

·        Happens in our heads (a deduction or an inference)

·        Effect created by an author’s choice of techniques

Voice: the communicative effect created by the author’s style

·        Does not have to do with the author

·        Belongs to the speaker/narrator’s personality

·        Can and does shift (infrequently) when the narrator is dynamic

·        Discussed in terms of character

·        Effect created by an author’s choice of techniques

http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-voice-and-tone/

1.      Voice can be referred to a writer’s attitude towards his subject or readers. Tone can be termed as that reflects the mood of a writer.
2. While voice can be attributed as a writer’s representation of the truth that he depicts, tone only pertains to his attitude.
3. Voice can be called as authoritative and tone as something that is strong.

Musical Devices (Perrine: Chapter Eleven)

Alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds (ex: pretty in pink)

Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds (ex: mad as a hatter)

Consonance: the repetition of final consonant sounds (ex: all’s well that ends well)

Rhyme: the repetition of the accented vowel sounds and any succeeding consonant sounds

Masculine Rhyme: the rhyme involves only one syllable

Feminine Rhyme: the rhyme involves two or more syllables

Internal Rhyme: the rhyming words are within the lines

End Rhyme: the rhyming words are at the ends of lines

Approximate Rhymes (or Slant Rhymes): words with any sound similarity (close or fairly remote)

“Used skillfully and judiciously, however, musical devices provide a palpable and delicate pleasure to the ear and, ever more important, add dimension to meaning” (Perrine 906).

Rhythm: any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound

Accented/Stressed Syllables: syllables given more prominence in pronunciation than the rest

Rhetorical Stresses: different intended meanings will produce different rhythms even in identical statements

End-Stopped Line: one in which the end of the line corresponds with a natural speech pause

Run-on Line: one in which the sense of the line moves without pause on into the next line

Caesura: a pause that occurs within a line, either grammatical or rhetorical

Free Verse: the predominant type of poetry now being written

Prose poetry: depends entirely on prose rhythms

Meter: the identifying characteristic of rhythmic language that we can tap our feet to

“Rhythm designates the flow of actual, pronounced sound, whereas meter refers to the patterns that sounds flow when a poet has arranged them into metrical verse” (Perrine 918).

Foot: basic unit of meter; usually consists of one accented syllable plus one or two unaccented syllables (ex: Iamb, Trochee, Anapest, Dactyl, and Spondee)

Stanza: a group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout the poem

Metrical Variations: variations in the meter; call attention to some of the sounds because they depart from what is regular (via substitution, extra-metrical syllables, or truncation.  These are usually very obvious because they deviate from the usual structure)

Substitution: replacing the regular foot with another one

Extra-Metrical Syllables: extra syllable added either at the beginning or end of lines

Truncation: the omission of an unaccented syllable at either end of a line

Scansion: the process of defining the metrical form of a poem

1.      We identify the prevailing foot

2.      We name the number of feet in a line, if this length follows any pattern

3.      We describe the stanzaic pattern if there is one

Generalizations about Scansion:

1.      “Good readers will not ordinarily stop to scan a poem they are reading, and they certainly will not read a poem aloud with the exaggerated emphasis on accented syllables that we sometimes give them in order to make the metrical pattern more apparent” (Perrine 925).

2.      Scansion only begins to reveal the rhythmical quality of a poem.

3.      The divisions between feet have no meaning except to help us identify the meter.

4.      Perfect regularity of meter is no criterion of merit.

Grammatical or Rhetorical Pauses: pauses caused by punctuation or not

Sound and Meaning (Perrine: Chapter Thirteen)

“Rhythm and sound cooperate to produce what we call the music of poetry” (Perrine 941).

Onomatopoeia: the words sound like what they mean (ex: snap, crackle, pop)

Phonetic Intensives: whose sound, by a process as yet obscure, to some degree connects with their meaning (flame, flare, flash, flicker, and flimmer are all associated with moving light)

Euphonious: sounds that are smooth and pleasant sounding (lots of vowels)

Cacophonous: sounds that are rough and harsh sounding (lots of consonants)

Synesthesia: the stimulation of two or more sense simultaneously, especially when one sense perception is described in terms of another

Pattern (Perrine: Chapter Fourteen)

“Art, ultimately, is organization.  It is a searching after order and significance.  Most artists seek to transform the chaotic nature of experience into a meaningful and coherent pattern, largely by means of selection and arrangement” (Perrine 961).

Structure: the arrangement of ideas, images, thoughts, and sentences

Form: an external pattern or shape

Three Kinds of Form:

1.      Continuous: element of design is slight (ex: “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”)

2.      Stanzaic: the poet writes in a series of stanzas (traditional pattern or not)

3.      Fixed: traditional pattern that applies to a whole poem (rondeaus, rondels, villanelles, triolets, sestinas, ballades, double ballades, and others in French poetry; limerick, sonnet, and villanelle in English poetry)

Limerick: aa3bb2a3.  Freely allows the use of a substitute foot for the first foot in any line but insists on strict adherence to the form for the rest of the line

Sonnet: less rigid than the limerick; fourteen lines in length, and is almost always in iambic pentameter

1.      Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet: divided into an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cdcdcd or cdecde), separated by a space of some kind that usually corresponds to a division of thought

2.      English of Shakespearean Sonnet: consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet (abab cdcd efef gg)

3.      Villanelle: requires only two rhyme sounds; its nineteen lines are divided into five three-line stanzas (tercets) and a four-line concluding quatrain; uses refrain lines (AbA abA abA abA abAA)

Evaluating Poetry (Perrine: Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen)

Sentimentality: the indulgence in emotion for its own sake, or expression of more emotion that an occasion warrants

Rhetorical Poetry: uses a language more glittering and high-flown than its substance warrants

Didactic Poetry: has a primary purpose to teach or preach

Questions to Consider:

1.      How fully has it accomplished its purpose?

2.      How important is its purpose?

“Great poetry engages the whole person- senses, imagination, emotion, intellect; it does not touch us merely on one or two sides of our nature.  Great poetry seeks not merely to entertain us but to bring us- along with pure pleasure- fresh insights, or renewed insights, and important insights, into the nature of human experience” (Perrine 999).